The Need for Speed series occupies a special, and also somewhat strange position, in the history of racing games and of EA. Through the years, the franchise has changed developers, genres, and arguably, even its identity. But the strength of its brand endured, until it didn’t.
From 1994 to 2022, EA published a new Need for Speed game within two to three years. Most of the time, it was an annualized franchise. Need for Speed Unbound released in 2022, and it now seems set to break precedent.
Criterion was the last studio assigned to the franchise, and last 2023, we reported job openings hinted that they were making that next Need for Speed title. But a few months after that, EA started to split most of that team off to work on the Battlefield reboot. While EA announced that a smaller team was still working on Need for Speed, this is no longer the case.
As reported by Eurogamer, Group GM for EA Studios Organization Vince Zampella made this statement:
“The Need for Speed team at Criterion are joining their colleagues working on Battlefield. As a company, it was important to us to take the last year to listen to our Need for Speed community and use their feedback to create content for Unbound.
With an increased understanding of what our players want in a Need for Speed experience, we plan to bring the franchise back in new and interesting ways.”
Zampella alludes to the work Criterion still did in updating Need for Speed Unbound prior to this announcement. Unfortunately, that means that fans who were hoping for news on more updates, or on that next game, are now going to have to wait that much longer.
While we don’t know how this reflects on either Need for Speed or Battlefield, it suggests that EA needs more developers to get Battlefield through the finish line. At the same time, they can’t afford to hire new staff right now, or wait until they fill those positions, and they may not even be able to revive the studios or hire back the staff they laid off in the last three years.
While it’s not great news, Zampella’s move is a refreshing one. Activision notoriously kept their studios locked onto making Call of Duty games, including those who didn’t happen to specialize in military shooters. It was certainly very telling that one of those studios, Toys For Bob, moved to leave Activision, and then made a new deal to work on one of their old franchises with Microsoft, as soon as they got the opportunity.
And so, the news itself may not be welcome, but we should definitely appreciate the honesty. It’s not necessarily something gamers expected from EA in the past, but given Vince Zampella’s own history, one could understand that he would want to be upfront with their fans. And we certainly hope for the best with this Battlefield, even if we may have our reservations, with all these studios now working to make it as successful as they can possibly make it.
