The next Need For Speed game, to be developed mainly by Criterion Games, will be coming in 2022- a year delayed from its targeted release. The developers will be focusing on supporting the development of the next Battlefield game.
EA’s chief studios officer Laura Miele said, in an interview with Polygon, that neither franchises are in trouble, and with the global pandemic still impacting work conditions is to blame.
“[Battlefield] is shaping up great, the team has been working incredibly hard, they pushed hard last year, and yes, we have been working from home,” Miele said.
“And it’s hard; it’s hard to make games from home, and the [EA DICE] team is fatigued a bit.”
EA will still have racing games releasing this year, courtesy of newly-purchased Codemasters with their annual F1 game. So this puts Criterion in a favourable position to continue their work with supporting EA DICE’s Battlefield game.
Criterion Games made a name for their arcade racing series Burnout, before being handed (one of) the keys to the Need For Speed series with 2010’s Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. By 2012, EA named Criterion the sole care-taker of Need For Speed, until 2014 when they transitioned into a supporting studio, working on the Battlefield series (including that weird battle royale mode) as well as the Star Wars Battlefront games.
Criterion’s return to make Need For Speed games isn’t that big of a story now that EA not necessarily depends on a new game for the series to hit it big. They have a whole slew of racing games under their banner now.
But Miele assures that Criterion will still be given the opportunity to make that Need For Speed game. And not an Anthem situation. But first, Criterion will continue their previous line of work, supporting the development of Battlefield.
“There’s no way we would have made a decision like this without including [Criterion] and discussing this with them first, and the impact that they could have on [Battlefield],” Miele said.
“They’ve worked on [Star Wars] Battlefront, they’ve worked on Battlefields, and they have a really tight, close collaborative partnership with DICE. I’m really confident that this is going to be a pretty positive win for them.”
Both of the new Need For Speed and Battlefield games have yet to be properly announced. The next Battlefield game is set to release later this year.
Source: Polygon