EA: "We Were Torturing NFS Devs"
The Need for Speed franchise has stagnated much over the years, introducing almost no new features over the last few games, and eventually losing its quality. EA CEO Jon Riccitiello noted his disappointment with Need for Speed: ProStreet, the latest incarnation of the series that was met with much critical bashing. He said that EA had been “torturing a very talented group of people,” referring to EA Vancouver who was tasked with 12 month development cycles.
EA revealed that EA Vancouver had been producing a new NFS game every single year for the past eight years. Thankfully, it changed last year when EA split the company into two teams, hried more people and put both teams on two year development cycles.
The next NFS game – Need for Speed: Uncover – won’t take full advantage of this new design philosophy, but is said to be a departure for the series, as it will feature a mission-based structure with a ’strong’ story.
“I’m confident that Undercover is a much better game than Pro Street, and I expect that from this point forward they will do a lot better,” hoped Riccitiello.