Need for Speed Not Dead, EA Taking Three-Pronged Approach
January 30th, 2009 | Written by Chris Selogy | Topic: Industry News
With the rumors running rampant that the Need for Speed may die a quick death after a poor showing last fall, it’s a bit of a surprise that not only is the series still alive, but EA has three games planned for release this year with the Need for Speed name on the cover.
One of the biggest issues with the last few iterations was the lack of focus, with EA splitting the Need for Speed teams so one can work on a sim-style racing game for one year and the other making an arcade-style game the next. This year, Need for Speed: Shift attempts to swing the pendulum back to to the simulation side with this hardcore racing sim that has some interesting talent behind it. Black Box’s Executive Producer, Michael Mann, DICE Co-founder/EA Games Europe Senior VP Patrick Soderlund, and a group of internal and external developers in the UK, including Slightly Mad Studios, who are led by former GTR and GT Legends developer Ian Bell. At least this team has the potential, but competing with Gran Turismo and Forza is a difficult task no matter who you have on the team. This isn’t the interesting part of the announcement either.
EA has been fighting for some of that lucrative Wii cash with games like Boogie, Boom Blox, and the All Play versions of their sports games, but the second game is a Wii/DS arcade racing game from the Boogie developers at EA Montreal called Need for Speed Nitro. Not much else has been revealed beside aiming for deep but accessible gameplay and having a unique visual style, which could mean that they will use that cel-shaded style that the Boogie games have an try to do better than Capcom’s disappointing Auto Modellista. The specific quote from GameSpot’s interview is that Nitro’s graphics “will feel Need for Speed but in a more mischievous, Nintendo way.” At least they say it won’t look like NASCAR Kart Racing, which isn’t much of an assurance anyway.
The last game is really the most interesting of the three as Need for Speed Online will be a free-to-play online racing MMO for the PC that will appear in Asia this summer and will likely find its way across the Pacific early in 2009. This one is a joint production between EA Shanghai and Black Box and will be EA’s first racing MMO since Motor City Online.
Whether this new approach to creating specific games for specific platforms and not just try to stretch one idea to everything will actually revitalize the series remains to be seen, but at least the series isn’t dead just yet. Right?
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