Codemasters has just announced that it's extended its rights on the F1 licence to 2025 - with a further option for 2026 and 2027.

Coming off the back of two outstanding entries in Codemasters' series, it's fantastic news for fans of the sport, and it marks the longest extension in the franchise's history. Codemasters first signed up in 2008, with the first entry being Sumo's stopgap Wii effort in 2009, with the fully-fledged F1 2010 following soon after.

There have been lulls - F1 2014 marked a low-point for the series as the studio prepared for a new generation - but since then it's gone from strength to strength, with F1 2019 an enjoyable, detailed and passionate take on the sport that's bolstered by an esports offering now going into its third seasons that's become part and parcel of the sport itself.

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Microsoft has confirmed the latest batch of titles coming to Xbox Game Pass on PC - and while a few have been revealed previously, some new names, including sci-fi grand strategy game Stellaris, will also be making the leap to the subscription service before the month is through.

Alongside Stellaris, quirky (and tremendously entertaining) 60-second puzzle adventure Minit joins the Xbox Game Pass line-up on PC, as does F1 2018, a racer that Eurogamer's Martin Robison called "one of the very best F1 games to date" in his Recommended review last year.

There's more racing, albeit of a two-wheeled variety, courtesy of Lonely Mountains Downhill, and also heading to the service at some currently undisclosed point this month is Saints Row 4: Re-Elected, developer Volition's extremely silly superhero-themed open-world jaunt through an alien computer simulation, and "multi-layered" cyberpunk sci-fi thriller State of Mind.

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Codemasters is bringing the release of its annual F1 game forward from its regular slot, with the release confirmed for June 28th this year for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. And it looks like that's not the only change that's being made.

There's an edgier new look, and the introduction of a 2019 spec car designed by Ross Brawn and Pat Symonds that will allow players to employ their own choice of liveries, allowing for a little more customisation when it comes to multiplayer races.

The most exciting part, though, comes in a brief flash at the end of the short trailer as we see the silhouette of the current Dallara F2 car, which strongly suggests the series - which supports several rounds of the F1 calendar - will be making its debut in F1 2019. It's the feeder series from which the likes of George Russell and Lando Norris came, and it promises a bit more diversity to the career structure. Exciting stuff and long overdue - here's hoping we can find out more soon.

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Strip a modern F1 car of all of its sponsorship decals, goes the well-worn saying I've been guilty of bandying around myself, and you'd be hard pushed to tell any two models apart. So strictly defined is the modern rule-set, so homogeneous the designs, that underneath that lick of lurid paint every car is almost exactly the same - and it's an accusation you could well level at F1 2018, the 10th mainline outing of Codemasters' official take on the sport, and one of its most gently iterative outings yet.

To get a handle on what's new you'll need a cheat sheet to hand, and it hardly makes for compelling reading. The headline new feature is media interviews - something that returns from the series' first HD outing, F1 2010, before it was quietly jettisoned a little further down the line. Eight years on and it's not that much more convincing, a dead-eyed interviewer asking you some fairly banal questions with only a fairly banal selection of replies available, the results impacting gently on your standing within the team and its various departments. It's cute but comes off inconsequential - there are no really mischievous answers available, or at least I've yet to come across the chance to ask a fellow driver to suck my balls - and of all the features to focus on, it's surely low down on most players' lists.

How about doing away with the barebones menus and returning to the more premium front-end of those older games? Or fixing the UI so it's a little less cluttered and more in line with the FOM's official feed? And how about introducing some of the feeder series that make up the travelling circus, so we've got something to play with beyond F1 cars? Maybe these updates are to come in future editions, as the series makes its typically gentle progress - tied down as it is to yearly instalments, even if you suspect the resources aren't quite there to meaningfully move the games forward on an annual basis.

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It's been a long time since I've played a Formula One game, and in truth I've seldom enjoyed them that much - which, as a fan of both racing games and the sport, seemed a shame. There was something alienating, I found, in the monotonously fast machinery with its nervy handling and in the dry pageantry of the licence. The championship season was the main hook, but it was exhaustingly long and, without the variety and sense of progression offered by broader racing games, its payoff seemed distant.

So it was without much expectation that I covered for our regular F1 correspondent Martin at a recent preview event for this year's F1 game from Codemasters, F1 2018. Yet what I found there was, on the basis of a couple of hours' play, the most immediately involving and cleverly designed career mode in any current racing game.

This may not be news to people who've stayed in touch with the series. Since it made a bare-bones reboot on the current consoles in F1 2015, Codemasters has been progressively beefing up F1's career offering. Actual new features in F1 2018 are relatively few: I've listed them below, but the headline addition is that of media interviews, which present you with multiple choice answers and affect your driver's reputation in the paddock, the morale of your team and your position in the contract market.

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