Last December, Need For Speed Unbound celebrated its two-year anniversary and marked the beginning of a long hiatus for the saga. Indeed, since then, Electronic Arts has still not communicated on a potential additional opus and even confirmed, a few hours ago, that the license was on hold. The American publisher has nevertheless specified that if no plans were in the works for the moment, this did not mean that the series was dead. Quite the contrary.
Criterion Games: priority to Battlefield
While Electronic Arts has just unveiled the first images of Battlefield, laying the foundations and making it clear that it was the most ambitious and promising opus in the history of the saga, the publisher took the opportunity to talk about another cult license who would need an ambitious start from scratch: Need For Speed.
A cult video game saga since the early 90s, Need For Speed has known its glory days, particularly on the PS2/Xbox generation, with legendary games such as Poursuite Infernale, Underground 1 & 2, Most Wanted and Carbon. Unfortunately, for a good ten years, the saga has struggled to win over players and fans.
Since the PS3/360 generation, the series has even lost its way, abandoning the car racing side to offer a little too much spectacle à la Fast & Furious, integrating Takedowns (famous since the Burnout license) and scattering a little in all directions. It must be said that the developers, Criterion Games, are the ones who created the Burnout license in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, Burnout and Need For Speed were two very different series, which each managed to distinguish themselves in a specific area. Racing and tuning for Need For Speed. Racing, takedowns and total chaos in Burnout.
By buying Criterion Games in the 2000s, Electronic Arts simply wanted to kill the Burnout license, so that it would no longer overshadow Need For Speed. Over the years, we have ended up with two licenses merging for a result that does not really please players. Aware that in recent years, Need For Speed has clearly lost its aura, Electronic Arts decides to put the license to rest.
Criterion Games thus joins DICE, EA Motive and Ripple Effect, the three other studios working on the next Battlefield. Criterion is also focusing on the single-player part of the title. Their priority is therefore to produce one of the biggest campaigns of the license, forgetting the other projects, including Need For Speed, as Vince Zempella, CEO of EA, points out: "The Need for Speed team at Criterion is joining its colleagues working on Battlefield. As a company, it was important for us to spend the last year listening to our Need for Speed community and using their feedback to create content for Unbound. By better understanding what our players want from a Need for Speed experience, we plan to relaunch the franchise in new and interesting ways.".
Need For Speed is therefore not dead and could be entitled to the same preferential treatment as Battlefield, with a significant and impressive response based on (finally) a lot of listening to the community and player feedback. Which is necessarily a very good thing.
Regarding fan demand, for a potential return of Burnout, that's another story unfortunately.
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