Rumor: Need for Speed series has been canceled -- or has it? [update]

The last Need for Speed game I liked was Most Wanted - even if they do keep the series going, it's not like I'll be buying them :P

"We tend to handle rumors without named sources with a bit more trepidation than others..."

Like Kotaku? They'll run damn near anything, especially if they think it'll rile up the 360 and PS3 fanboys.

hahahah griffen, that was an awesome call on the 65 rating

For me, every game in the franchise that released after the movie "The Fast and the Furious" came out I haven't cared about. I have zero interest in putting stupid lights and shit on cars that do nothing more than add weight.

Not that I'm a NFS fan, but I hope that this is not true; otherwise, EA starts seeming more like a pussy: just because you had an underwhelming game means that there's a bigger chance to WOW people in the next installment, not cancel the f---ing FRANCHISE.

(this is the same comment I posted on the Digg article about this story.)

The recent history of Need For Speed is an object lesson in what you get when marketing people and accountants make decisions about the content of a game rather than the passionate lead designers and artists.

Need For Speed's gameography can be effectively divided into two Eras: the old era (everything up to and including Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2,) and the new era (from Need For Speed Underground onwards.) With the "old era" Need For Speed games, you could tell that the designers and artists were in charge, and that they really had a passion for the game and the material they were creating. In those games, the cars were the stars; the tracks and locations were designed specifically to showcase the exotic cars that very few of us could afford.

Their magnum opus was Porsche Unleashed. That was the ultimate Porsche love affair, a game that celebrated Porsche in every way, and lovingly crafted every Porsche vehicle in painstaking detail. And it was an amazing game to boot, allowing players to get as close to feeling what it's like to drive a Porsche as possible without scheduling a trip to the dealership.

And then the bean-counters and marketing folks got involved, putting BlackBox on an annual release schedule, bringing in all the crap stories and trying to capitalize on the street-racing, "Fast and Furious" crowd. The car was no longer the star, the passion was gone. Despite that, the games still actually managed to be good. Underground and Underground 2 were decent efforts.

And when they brought the cops back in Most Wanted, they did not fuck around. Most Wanted was a really fun game; it perfectly captured the intensity of being chased by the cops, far better than Hot Pursuit or Hot Pursuit 2. MWs story was campy, but in a playfully-written, fun way that kept the player engaged.

After Most Wanted, though, NFS took an utter nosedive. Carbon was phoned in. ProStreet showed a promising change of direction, but was ultimately hamstrung by a driving engine that didn't know whether it wanted to be hardcore-sim or walk the middle ground between sim and arcade. I stayed away from those games after playing their respective demos.

Which leads us to Undercover. Never have I felt so utterly, utterly disappointed in a game. This game is all flash, no substance in almost every way. It does have a few sparks of brilliance here and there--the Highway Battle mode is a fun replacement for Drag mode in previous games, the driving engine does make for some fun racing action, and there are a handful of story missions that are well-designed and fun to play. But everything else is completely lifeless, soulless and ultimately a waste of time.

The story is completely terrible, with the worst writing yet and horrible acting, editing and cinematography. The cityscape is a hodgepodge of random roadways that you could race on a hundred times and not remember anything. The progression system is an indecipherable mishmash of bar graphs, event and location unlocks and a "wheelman level" that just seems completely superfluous. And the police chases are either completely dull and formulaic at the early levels, or brutally, unfairly hard at the later levels. Picture yourself in a McLaren F1 LM doing 230+mph, and the cop cars in SUVs not only keeping up with you, but also maneuverable enough to box you in. That's a reality in Undercover's universe.

No wonder they never released a demo for this turd.

Having said all that (and if you're still reading this far, you have my gratitude,) it would be a shame to see the NFS franchise go. I think with a little care, and a development schedule that allows the designers and artists room to breathe, NFS still has the potential to return to greatness. Corporate culture being what it is though, the only possible outcome is for the bean counters and marketeers to cancel the franchise, thereby vindicating themselves.

What a shame. NFS, a once proud franchise brought low by the whims of EA middle management.

I loved my NFS3: Hot Pursuit on PS1.

I guess EA doesn't feel the Need anymore =(.

Griffin is on fire today.

Everything about NFS: Undercover reminds me of this old Sprite Commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTRt1p5l22A

Just substitute the words "Maggie Q" for slug and "game engine" for script.

"The last good NFS game was Hot Pursuit 2 (which also had a killer soundtrack)."

Too true; that soundtrack introduced me to Bush and more importantly, Pulse Ultra (Build your Cages) and The Buzzhorn (Ordinary) who only released one great album each before splitting. The Buzzhorn's album disconnected is very hard to come by here in the UK, but I've just got a copy from the States on ebay so hopefully it'll be here this week.

I was gutted when I bought the Xbox version of Hot Pursuit 2 and found it was by inferior developers to the PS2 version, which I'd traded a few months before. Muppets.

Makes sense, considering their last statement when talking about their new IPs was that they were going to be doing some trimming essentially yet committed to their new IPs at the same time.

EA Seems to be doing a few nicer things nowadays.

Guess it is time for NFS to go though...long gone are the days of NFS greatness.

Wait, NFS on the Burnout engine?

FAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAP

Everyone's thinking, "Great! EA is finally going to start selling high quality games, rather than release crap every month!"

In my opinion: I feel that EA is planning on doing the exact opposite, by running everything into the ground and inhaling every cent, just for the holidays.

If only EA did what they should have done in the first place and remade Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit... Even though it's a relic of the 90's, it's still so much fun to play. NFSIII even has split screen on the PC! I remember racing my friends, outrunning the cops, and occasionally being the cop. Good Times. It still has an active mod community. All this reminiscing makes me want to dust off my old NFSIII disk. I'll remember the good times, and what could have been. Maybe one day, hopefully in my lifetime, EA shall redeem itself.

Well, that explains why only every third NFS game is worth playing. I loved Most Wanted and Undercover. Carbon was eh. Prostreet was just a very bad joke played on anyone dumb enough to buy it. Guess that means there won't be a Most Wanted 3, and that's a shame. Underground 3 would be welcome though.

So they are just redoing their staff and studios then. Phew! However I think they need a fresh perspective to the game and I have put up some points here. I would like people to add their own solutions so that the game does not eventually die but rather sustain itself. Check out my points here http://www.lsglive.com/2008/12/15/no-need-to-speed/

The last good need for speed game, in my opinion, was Most Wanted. It just sucks that EA has taken it overboard.

Slightly off topic*

Am I the only one who cant get into Burnout Paradise do to lack of retry option?

My problem with the Need For Speed series for a few years now is the fact that they push to put out one each year. When they started doing that they started focusing less on the actual game and more on keeping the old one going with more crappy cars and an even worse story. It's kind of like a sports game; a new one comes out every year but the only real difference is the names on the Jerseys. I for one would be happy to keep my Madden '09 and just pay for an update over Xbox live when the new season comes around rather than paying the full price again. Because of that reason I actually still have yet to upgrade from '08.

It's interesting, as I bought the NFS:U and I'm deeply disappointed. We just talked about the fact that how the Criterion engine rules the NFS engine, that is more detailed, much faster and more reliable, and would have been a nice idea to do the NFS:U with the Criterion engine. And now there is an update that NFS might be going to use this engine ... Finally. This might help the franchise big time ...

Wow am I in a minority! Most Wanted was my favorite in the series, followed closely by Carbon (Although the cliff drifting was damned near impossible). Underground was great, but the AI was quite flawed (the whole "catch up" thing was a bit unfair). And all that "sandbox" stuff is garbage. I'll stick to the old, simple "Race 1, Race 2, upgrade" formula.
Also, I loved Undercover. Controls were spot on, great feel, fun races, good cars. The only one that was garbage was ProStreet, and I thought EA recovered nicely. The sales don't show it, though.

Well... seems to me that MMO games are the big hit. That seems to be where the interest and revenues are. EA had one in the NFS series. Was called Motor City Online. Maybe its time to bring that back. If anyone remember the NFS Porsche style graphics, thats was MCO looked like to an extent. Tell you what, I still have my disk and it installed on my hard drive. Reactivate the server EA and tell me where to charge my 15/month to. It was the best of any of the NFS series to date...imho.

why not make a NFS Underground 3! that would sell out in no time

i own several nfs titles for the ps2 and xbox 360(underground 1 & 2, most wanted, carbon, pro street). just picked up undercover about a week ang, and the jury's still out. i must say, nfs underground 2 was by far the best one that was ever done; carbon was way too short(the carrer mode, finished it in about 4 days, and some of the challenges were ridiculously hard, if not impossible. pro street had a nice premise, but lacked any real work to finish the game properly(too many codes to let you skip to the end of the game, the big money races). i think they should go back to the days of the underground series, maybe a part 3, and add some more cars(like 50 or so) more rims/accesories, paint etc, and make the career mode longer. should have everything done in less than 2 weeks; makes no sense to buy it. also, add an online feature where you can race against others for in-game cash, sorta like the tv show pinks. now that would be nice!

hot pursuit 2 was the greatest nfs--straight up racing, cops, good competition, not much else. the street racing stuff, especially how they try to work in stories, started out mediocre and just got worse from there. stick with just racing, ea.

I started playing NFS with High Stakes and have purchased every copy since then except for Pro Street. My top 3 are Most Wanted, Hot Pursuit 2, and Underground. Undercover was pretty good but I could have done without the rest. Like a previous poster said, all I cared about was being able to drive really fast in cars I will never have a chance of owning in real life. The tuning and visuals were just a bonus.

no nfs shouldn't be canceled because i know alot of other people and myself has waited years for another underground 2 it was the best of all need for speeds hands down, prostreet was ok but track racing is boring with 800-1000hp tuning wasn't worthy ect the list goes on... so on that try some muscle or tuner cars with engine swaps so what and so forth i mean you can't do really anything with exotics they are as is cars that should be cut out and only to be used for cop chases. yeah the cops chasing you is ok but wheres the tuneing at, sliders on engine, transmission ect. thats not tuning thats premade tuning. i'd rather tune the cars like underground 2 because after all isn't it all about what your driving that makes it fun? and yeah a decent story for a game would be good but its not all about the story of the game. most wanted, carbon, prostreet, undercover, all of it was a waste of time and money.

I agree with everyone who said they went overboard with it,I mean you'r making a game NOT A MOVIE!!!

NFS Hot Pursuit are kick-ass on their time of release but i agree MW and Carbon destroyed the franchise, but ithink it started with underground's story telling. NFS Underground 2 threw the story to the NFS fanatics like shit to their faces (just like The Hulk by Ang Lee, shit comics-story telling). Undergound was my fave, maybe bcoz wen i played HP2 my PC was way way slower than now. Underground for me gave me more racing fun. i really liked it when my car makes a sound when it almost hits a car. Also frame speed is good and u wud really think ure in a real car, handling is arcade not simulated and it should be for about 1000 years coz simulated handling sucks. i hope next NFS titles features tracks with ramps so car can "fly", just like GTA, caoz that wud be fun. also, the feeling when a car drops to the low part of the road is fun in underground, seems like d real thing. And Nitrous? of course the best thing that happened to NFS and racing. GAME DEVELOPERS! LISTEN! YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO US! NOT TO UR BOSSES!

Whatever happend to the Need For Speed Franchise? After Most Wanted the series has not being doing so great. The Current game Need For Speed Undercover is trying so hard to make the game into another Fast and The Furious movie than a game itself. Maybe they should play less attention of the storyline and pay more attention to the game play. For example Need For Speed Undergound 1 and 2 great gameplay little story line. Maybe if they make a Need for Speed Underground 3 than a lot of people with be happy to buy the game.