14 DAY TRIAL // For quite a lot of years, the racing game genre has been synonymous with Electronic Arts' Need For Speed franchise, but lately things haven't been going so well for the long running series. Some nasty rumors even speculated that EA, which wasn't in the best financial situation, would cancel it, or move the project away from the EA Black Box studio.
But EA disproved all of these rumors in a big way a few weeks ago when it announced that four new NFS titles would appear this year. Among them, a professional simulator, a casual title, a new one from EA Black Box and, most important for quite a lot of gamers, a free-to-play online title, entitled suggestively NFS World Online.
The game, which will be exclusive for the PC, aims at offering a top-notch online experience with the licensed cars that the NFS series is famous for. Slated for a summer release in Asia, the game will reach North American and European shores in winter 2009. Developed by the Black Box studio in partnership with EA Singapore, the game will be published by EA Asia, and, as we have now learned, will enter a technical testing stage as early as March this year.
“Need for Speed is one of the world’s best-selling franchises, and is especially popular among gamers in Taiwan and Hong Kong. We’re thrilled to bring this EA-owned property to Asia and to begin our self publishing model in Taiwan and Hong Kong. We look forward to the results of this testing phase for continued improvement in providing the best service to online gamers across Asia,” said Jon Niermann, President of EA Asia.
Although this still means that European and North American gamers will need to wait, the fact that the development process is going smoothly will make a lot of people happy. If EA's bet with the popularity of the NFS brand will pay off is something that only time will tell. Until then, we'll keep you posted on the latest information regarding the future titles.