14 DAY TRIAL // Racing games are extremely popular thanks to the adrenaline rush that they offer gamers all around the world who want to have their need for high speed races satisfied.
Two of the biggest franchises in racing belong to Electronic Arts, in the form of Need For Speed and Burnout. While the NFS brand has now been spread to more developments studios and has three announced titles coming, the simulator-oriented NFS Shift, the online free-to-play NFS World Online, and the casual-oriented NFS Nitro, nothing big has been heard about any new Burnout game.
EA CEO John Riccitiello talked with Kotaku and commented on the question of whether the NFS and Burnout franchises would be merged into a single entity, which would see a few different iterations each year. Not so, says the executive, who revealed that the team at Criterion Games, which had been responsible for the Burnout series, was working on a new Need For Speed game.
He mentioned that the team led by Alex Ward was indeed working on a new racing title in the NFS series: “Alex is one of the people in the industry I would analogize to the great filmmakers, etc. He is a true creative visionary. We had a great fight about what the next Need For Speed would be like. Of course, he gets to win because it's his call. It's not that I'm without an opinion on it.”
He then said that the Burnout and NFS series couldn't be folded into a single entity: “I don't think you can fold Burnout into Need for Speed, because a lot of people like Burnout. We don't have a plan right now for a separate major launch on Burnout, because the team doing it is working on a revolutionary take on Need for Speed. I don't know, if Paramount, in addition to owning Star Trek owned Star Wars, which isn't the way it is, I don't think you'd merge them.”
This is truly some exciting news and a small confirmation of the rumors that were making rounds on the Internet at the beginning of the year, when people said that the NFS franchise would be taken by its developer for several years, Black Box, and placed under the responsibility of Criterion Games. Hopefully we will know more about this subject as time goes by. Until then, you can still look forward to NFS Shift and NFS Nitro, which will be arriving at the end of the year, and to NFS World Online, which will hit European and North-American shores at the beginning of 2010.