Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

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Hydro_PT
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Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by Hydro_PT »

Up until now, Need For Speed games were released under the Electronic Arts (EA for short) banner. However, that has now changed, because future NFS titles will be released under the EA Sports banner, which is famous for games such as FIFA and NHL, amongst others.

This change came as a result of a recent restructuring of one of the oldest gaming companies in the world. The new CEO, Andrew Wilson, has been busy since he was chosen as CEO of EA back in September. According to him, this change will have a huge benefit for NFS: "When you’ve had a franchise that’s been going on for 20 years like Need for Speed, I think it was time for us to get a different pair of eyes on it, a fresh look and feel on it." Patrick Soderlund, the head of EA Sports, has also commented on the matter: "I think that we can learn a lot from the sports games and what they've done. When you play a sports game, the controller in your hand will dictate how good the game is. It's all about player control and input and how it feels. It's a feeling, right? I think that focus on pure gameplay, is something that can benefit the Need for Speed brand in a very positive way."

EA Sports-branded games have shared assets and design philosophies over the years, such as the NHL team at EA Canada adapting FIFA's Player Impact physics engine for NHL 14. Soderlund noted that the change doesn't necessarily indicate a sudden move away from the sandbox-style action seen in Need For Speed Rivals, which is due to be released this month for both current- and next-gen, together with PC.

What are your thoughts on it? Will this change be beneficial for future NFS games or not?
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by DMNBT »

Eh, I don't think this will change much in the long run, but it's going to be weird seeing the EA Sports logo upon booting a NFS game...
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by Zotic+ »

I guess it is a motorsport lol

might attract some more mainstream gamers
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

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GAAAAAAAAAAAAME BREAKING!!!
GT3x24x7 wrote:I don't get why the word 'irony' has nothing to do with metallurgy.
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by MaxT »

YES! now I can hear the EA sports guy while playing NFS!

"ee, eh, sports, to the game"
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by ianism »

a) wtf is up with these spammers ^^ [-X

b) maybe QL team wouldn't have been laid off if this had happened sooner? i otherwise do not think it will change anything major we see from NFS
i have nothing more to add
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by r4ptor85 »

We still have to pay for DLC.
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Post by MaxT »

ianism wrote: b) maybe QL team wouldn't have been laid off if this had happened sooner? i otherwise do not think it will change anything major we see from NFS
Black Box / QuickLime should have been fired a long time ago. they ruined the series. yes they made some good games, like Most Wanted and... like Most Wanted, but they stole NFS from it's fans and gave it to the Fast and Furious fans.

good riddance... although I hope Easy Studio isn't put in charge of World...
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by Hydro_PT »

To be honest, the EA management, when it comes to NFS at least, should have been fired a long time ago. No one in a perfect state of mind gives only one year for a studio to create a new racing game, year after year after year. That's ridiculous. If you consider the deadlines these guys had to meet, and the limitations EA imposed them, their NFS games are actually quite good.
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by MaxT »

Hydro_PT wrote:To be honest, the EA management, when it comes to NFS at least, should have been fired a long time ago. No one in a perfect state of mind gives only one year for a studio to create a new racing game, year after year after year. That's ridiculous. If you consider the deadlines these guys had to meet, and the limitations EA imposed them, their NFS games are actually quite good.
of course EA management sucks, but EA tried giving Black Box 3 years to make a decent game, and it turned out worse than Undercover.

not to mention, NFS World doesn't really have a deadline since it's constantly being developed (or was until somewhat recently), yet it still crashes every 15 minutes and still doesn't feature a good anti-cheat.

I think what little success NFS still had up until Pro Street was thanks to what few employees of the original EA Canada were left in EA Black Box. do any of them still work with EA? I'm just wondering cause every other game developer seems to boast about having ex-Black Box and Criterion employees working on their games. Codemasters, Turn 10, I think Bugbear as well...
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by ianism »

MaxT wrote: Black Box / QuickLime should have been fired a long time ago. they ruined the series. yes they made some good games, like Most Wanted and... like Most Wanted, but they stole NFS from it's fans and gave it to the Fast and Furious fans.

good riddance... although I hope Easy Studio isn't put in charge of World...
uh, no. i am certain that if they were left alone to make good games, this would never have happened.

you forgot Hot Pursuit 2 (for PS2). that was before BB was part of EA and it made EA buy the studio in the first place. ProStreet is also pretty good, as are the UG games, though i don't like them as much because they're tuners.
that leaves World, The Run and Undercover.

EA upper management ran the studio into the ground by forcing it to produce a game every year. they could not ignore UG's (which was decent) runaway success and so came up with UG2. then MW came and it continued the hot streak, but they then ruined it by mixing it with the UG series in Carbon - they clearly ran out of ideas with Carbon and UG2. they then took a left turn and split the team. half working on Prostreet, which was poorly received because it was so different. and the other half on a game with a proper movie-like story (which they'd always wanted to do) which turned out to be undercover.
oh and world, which was rushed out before it was finished and has been run by EA like it runs everything.... for money - when you buy boost it goes straight into EA's Swiss bank account, not to BB/QL. the team was heavily understaffed for 2 years once people were moved from working on World to The Run, which was clearly their 'last chance.' and World was clearly done on a super-low budget. recycling cars, maps, dialogue etc from previous games.

the success of UG and UG2 has meant that a lot of F&F idiot kids got into the series and wanted more stuff like that, but really they haven't gotten much, except for carbon (sort of) and World - both of which have a lot of supercars, so you can't really say it was 'given' to those fanboys - just that those fanboys have been loudly whining about neons that garbage ever since.
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by MaxT »

ianism wrote: uh, no. i am certain that if they were left alone to make good games, this would never have happened.
they were, and they made the worst game in the series: The Run.
ianism wrote: you forgot Hot Pursuit 2 (for PS2). that was before BB was part of EA and it made EA buy the studio in the first place.
that's true, but it confirms what I said, was that supposed to be in Black Box's defense? :S

anyway opinions are split when it comes to HP2. some people (like myself) prefer the PC versions, others (like you?) prefer the PS2 version...
ianism wrote: ProStreet is also pretty good, as are the UG games, though i don't like them as much because they're tuners.
that leaves World, The Run and Undercover.
they have no place in this series. they took everything that made NFS NFS and ran it over with a bulldozer.
ianism wrote: EA upper management ran the studio into the ground by forcing it to produce a game every year.
yes, and when they gave Black Box a chance to prove them wrong, they made the crappiest racing game in the world. The Run had 3 years of development time.

ianism wrote: they could not ignore UG's (which was decent) runaway success and so came up with UG2. then MW came and it continued the hot streak, but they then ruined it by mixing it with the UG series in Carbon - they clearly ran out of ideas with Carbon and UG2.
I believe Most Wanted was in development before Underground 2 was released. but something tells me Most Wanted was in fact in development even before Underground was released. it would make sense that Most Wanted was the intended sequel to HP2 and the Undergrounds were just spin offs...
ianism wrote: they then took a left turn and split the team. half working on Prostreet, which was poorly received because it was so different.
I think Pro Street was poorly received because it was a crappy quality game. honestly I kinda' liked what Black Box tried to do with Pro Street, aka make an interesting racing simulator, but it shouldn't have been a NFS game.
ianism wrote: oh and world, which was rushed out before it was finished and has been run by EA like it runs everything.... for money - when you buy boost it goes straight into EA's Swiss bank account, not to BB/QL. the team was heavily understaffed for 2 years once people were moved from working on World to The Run, which was clearly their 'last chance.' and World was clearly done on a super-low budget. recycling cars, maps, dialogue etc from previous games.
NFS World is the Frankenstein of the series.
ianism wrote: the success of UG and UG2 has meant that a lot of F&F idiot kids got into the series and wanted more stuff like that, but really they haven't gotten much, except for carbon (sort of) and World - both of which have a lot of supercars, so you can't really say it was 'given' to those fanboys - just that those fanboys have been loudly whining about neons that garbage ever since.
they haven't? Black Box brought back the cops and the expensive cars in Most Wanted but apart from that it was still more of an Underground game than a NFS game. it still takes place in an empty city designed for race cars instead of exotic tracks, it still features a soap opera driven story instead of a proper progressive career, still features d3th met4l and rap instead of rock and techno, the driving mechanics still lacked actual physics, the damage model was still missing...
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by Dr Houbenheimer »

Could this just be an excuse to justify the yearly releases that are used to milk sales out of sports game franchises? I don't really see any other benefit of putting it under EA Sports..

I'd love if they had a longer window of development. Criterion's entries the last few years have appeared to be solid racers fundamentally, but have lacked character/uniqueness/depth. In a way that's what endeared me to the UG games, and whether they go back down that route or start something new, I think they need to give the racing some sort of context.
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by MaxT »

could be worse. NFS could be made by DICE...

oh wait...
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by zedex »

EA Sports used to make F1 games back in the late 90s and early 2000s (until 2002) and I remember playing them.

I'm guessing they're trying to go back to the FIA certified racing scene? like GT or LM series? (as F1 has been licensed to Codemasters)
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by MaxT »

zedex wrote: I'm guessing they're trying to go back to the FIA certified racing scene? like GT or LM series?
OR maybe it has something to do with the fact that the whole series revolves around motorsport? illegal racing but it's still motorsport.
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by RBA »

Make me laugh when I see people complain about ricing and F&F. "Ricing" is just customising a car, such as are rat-rods, Pro-street muscle-cars, hot rods and so on.

It's so funny seeing people claim they're the only "real" car fans because they hate tunning. Customising, whatever the name is: tunning, hotrodding, etc, is CUSTOMISING. A. CAR. Nothing more nothing less. If you hate so much customising, then go after every type of customising, else, just shut it. 'Cuz it's quite stupid.

ANY form of customising can be done right or... Well, not right.

Anyway, back to EA moving NFS to EA Sports, kinda surprised. But not really. I thought they'd move NFS from a studio to another each every 2-3 years, so to kick out programmers and other employees as to keep the salary mass low, but this... I mean, they just gave it to a new studio and unless I'm wrong, shifting it to EA sport, mean another move to another studio, which is a tad bit faster than I thought they'd do it.

Also what killed NFS is the impossible deadlines combined with really low budgets. And World is the best example of this. I still don't understand why people keep investing in that trash heap. So, as long as EA will expect anybody to make a good NFS game on a low budget and with short deadlines, it'll never get better.
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

Post by Kaerar »

Gotta remember we are getting two NFS this year though. NFS Rivals which the jury is still out on and the NFS film which is really what EA wanted to do from the start. Basically have a movie based game which forces players to sit still and watch for just over an hour and take their money without any further involvement...
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Re: Need For Speed series now under EA Sports banner

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Besides for some NFS fans, that don't even know why they like NFS, since most of them still play World (and spend money on that uber crap), not much people will go see this movie. I expect a huge flop and money loss from that movie for both the producers and EA. A little bit like Waterworld. Perhaps even worst. Mostly if it face off against, let say the next Transformers movie. Or a new Avenger movie... Or a Batman, or Spiderman... That movie don't stand a chance.
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