Codemasters has confirmed that going forward Namco Bandai will be handling the distribution for the developer in the UK, mainland Europe, and Australia/New Zealand. The publisher had already assumed the distribution role for the company in North America with the release of F1 Racing Stars.

The deal outside North America will start this May when the software developer releases GRID 2 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The agreement going forward apparently covers the company’s major franchises, which are F1 and Dirt, as well as some yet to be announced additional titles.

The decision to focus on the development and not the marketing and distribution was an easy decision to make for Codemasters. Namco Bandai has the distribution in place; and with their Partners program it will allow Codemasters to expand into offering its titles into areas that were more difficult for the company to reach in the past.

Codemasters has been having much slower than expected sales with the F1 Racing Stars release. It is unknown if this decision has anything to do with this title’s slow sales, but we suspect that it is unlikely and more of a business decision in reaction to the market conditions.