14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts is one of the biggest publishers in the world, owning a lot of development studios and a lot of franchises that it spreads to these smaller companies from its portfolio.
One of the biggest series is Need For Speed, which, after a few years of being developed and published on a yearly basis, has now been spread around multiple studios in order for the large corporation to make a title for every type of gamer out there.
While NFS Shift, which is handled by Slightly Mad Studios, will focus on realism and NFS World Online will be a free-to-play title, NFS Nitro will be exclusive to Nintendo platforms, the Wii and DS, and will deliver a more arcade-oriented type of gameplay.
Now, in order to grow the hype around Nitro, the company has announced that it has partnered with lifestyle and design brands tokidogi, Upper Playground and i am 8-bit in order to deliver exclusive car designs and artwork for the Wii version of the game. These custom skins will be available for vehicles like the Lamborghini Gallardo, Dodge Challenger or Subaru Impreza WRX. Over 140 stylistic brushes have also been part of the collaboration as players will be able to personalize their own cars if they want.
While tokidogi is a Japanese company that specializes in creating popular apparel lines and accessories for toys or skateboards, Upper Playground is an American brand that aims at bringing graffiti culture to all types of street wear. The most gaming oriented out of the three companies is i am 8-bit, which is an artistic team of over 100 artists that aim at reinterpreting old-school video game characters and incorporating them into the mainstream culture of today.
“tokidoki, Upper Playground and i am 8-bit create art with distinct and cutting edge personalities,” said Gil Rimmer, art director, EA Montreal. “With Need for Speed Nitro, we wanted to give players a variety of ways to customize their vehicles, introducing vivid and fresh urban art styles that have never been seen in racing games before.”
Set to arrive on November 17, NFS Nitro is looking extremely good and will certainly make a lot of the huge userbase of the Wii and DS take notice and generate quite a lot of sales for EA.