The development studio Criterion Games has been completely restructured and will now work exclusively on the Battlefield series. After 30 years in the racing game genre, the studio behind Burnout and Need for Speed is losing its creative independence in favor of Electronic Arts' shooter franchise.
The end of a racing game era
The restructuring of Criterion Games follows a strict realignment within the EA group. Rebecka Coutaz, Vice President and CEO of Battlefield Studios at EA, officially confirmed the focus. The new sign on the studio building now reads "Criterion: A Battlefield Studio." This effectively eliminates the chances of a new Need for Speed or a revival of the Burnout series.
Criterion's last game, "Need for Speed Unbound," was released in 2022. The game only partially met the community's expectations in terms of gameplay and visuals. Instead of relaunching the racing series, EA is now pulling the plug. The developers will be integrated into the struggling Battlefield franchise as a support team.
EA's monoculture strategy
This move follows a familiar pattern for the publisher. At the beginning of the decade, EA acquired Codemasters. The primary goal was the lucrative F1 license. Other long-established racing game franchises like Colin McRae DiRT or Grid have since been consistently neglected or discontinued.
Focusing on a single major franchise carries high risks. Despite a solid launch, the current "Battlefield 6" is struggling with declining player numbers due to ongoing post-launch support issues. This decision further shrinks the arcade racing genre. Aside from The Crew and Forza Horizon series on PC and Xbox, and Mario Kart on Nintendo platforms, major productions in the arcade racing sector are almost entirely absent.
For players, this restructuring effectively means the end of classic arcade racers from EA. Focusing all resources on the Battlefield engine and the shooter genre destroys established developer expertise in racing games. Anyone hoping for creative racing titles outside the realm of simulations will have to look to the indie sector or Microsoft in the future. EA is going all in on live-service shooters. Period.
First they buy Codemasters (Colin McRae/DiRT/WRC, TOCA/GRID) along with Slightly Mad (Project Cars) and drive straight into a wall, and now they're also cutting off their own flagship racing game franchise – this publisher deserves to be boycotted for life.
With all the crap that's come out since then and with Prostreet, you can forget about it anyway.
That's for the best. Nothing but rubbish has been coming out since 2015.
Pioneer Productions, the original studio and Black Box, were clearly the better choices for NFS; they should sell the brand to whoever wants to make it.
It was so obvious from the release of Unbound that the series would finally be buried. The garbage they released after MW 2005 and Carbon was beyond calling it NFS anymore.
The main thing is that they kicked Ghost Games out back then and brought Criterion Games back for NFS 🤣 but it's better anyway, Unbound was garbage 👍🏻 the last good one was Heat by Ghost Games, but that was scrapped when they replaced Ghost Games 🤷🏻♂️
Want a Criterion game? Then check out the Star Wars racing game. It's by the former developers of Criterion Games 👍
Not everyone likes that.
I think that's a good thing because NFS is simply dead. NFSU2 was incredibly legendary back then, Carbon was also quite nice thanks to the tuning options, but after that it just got worse and worse. Battlefield, on the other hand, is and remains legendary. Even if one or two installments didn't do so well at the beginning, they've always managed to satisfy the majority of the community. Sure, there are always a few grumpy primates here and there, but there always will be. They're probably dissatisfied with themselves too. Because the way BF6 is doing right now is really great. Only the bots are a bit annoying, but I'd rather have a server full of bots because humanity is asleep than an empty server with only 5 players.
Why Battlefield? Need for Speed was and remains legendary; they should have remastered Underground 2 for Xbox and PS5!
For crying out loud, no! Stop with this remake garbage! You kids had an underground version of the 2015 game, and yet all you did was complain.
Define Mudda because Battlefield is simply the bigger money machine…
Racing games with the tuning options of NFS incur endless licensing fees and don't bring in nearly as much money as a shooter.
NFS U2 was the game; everything else tried to copy it. They should have ended it with a third installment.
Steffen Guthy, huh? NfS U3? Where? When? I didn't know there was a third NfS U.
Bartl Wróbel: No, no, they should have made an NFS U3 and then no more games. Everything after U2 wasn't any good.
Steffen Guthy: Ah, then I misunderstood. My mistake.
In 2015 you all had an underground scene, and all you did was whine again!
Bartl Wróbel was a real person. The NFS without a subtitle from 2015 was originally supposed to be called Underground 3.
That was also the plan until shortly before the trailer release, but they listened to the beta testers and influencers who said there would be a shitstorm if they called it Underground 3, so it doesn't have a subtitle 😃