Neon engine to drive McRae's DIRT

Codemasters Studios is touting its new Neon game engine, stating that the upcoming Colin McRae game, Colin McRae: DIRT (known as DIRT: Colin McRae Off-Road in the US), will be using the all-new engine.

Today's update on the game engine explains why the next game in the series has taken so long to hit the shelves--Neon has been in production for 18 months.

Colin McRae Rally was released in 1998, and a series of sequels followed--but the last game, Colin McRae Rally 2005, was released more than two years ago.

DIRT will feature a range of off-road race events and more than 40 officially licensed cars from 12 categories, including Colin McRae's prototype R4 and Travis Pastrana's Subaru Impreza.

Colin McRae: DIRT is due in 2007 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.