EA taking Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on tour

Disregarding your obvious sarcasm, I'd say it's a highly accurate list of EA's target demographic.

You hit your three major markets (NYC, LA, CHI), the Gulf Coast (Miami), a southern, tech-centric town (Austin, home to a number of premiere developers and host of SXSWi and ATX GDC), the home of American game development (SF) and the backyard of one of their biggest business partners (Seattle and Microsoft are pretty synonymous at this point).

This tour is a pretty streamlined cross-section of urban America, and it's a short list because this thing is going to cost EA's PR millions of dollars to fund. Furthermore, each city happens to be a well-established test market.

@kojo87

Same way with me, but it was Need For Speed II SE on the PC. What an amazing game that was, and totally got me hooked into arcade racing.

@kojo87 :: Other than Midnight Club 3 DE Remix, Forza 1, Mario Kart DS, and Burnout Revenge, this was the last racing game I enjoyed.

@kenny goo
"second best arcade racer ever (Burnout Revenge)."
Fixed**

@oOWallaceOo

That's cute. You like the dumbed down Burnout, not the one that actually took skill. Lulz.

@Enraged Mailman

...except Paradise was proof that Criterion has *no idea* how to do an open world game right for a single player racing experience. There was only one race type, it was repetitive as hell, the GPS system sucked, and the rubber band AI was atrocious. And without a tried and true crash mode, it will never be able to stand up to the past Burnout games in my mind.

Sure, the online free roam was fun, the world was interesting, and bikes were a cool (albeit bare bones and completely undeveloped) addition, but overall the game was pretty lackluster in comparison to Burnout 3. There's a reason why B3 had such a higher level of critical acclaim and Paradise frankly didn't.

@Tephlon

The PS2 version of Hot Pursuit 2 is very, very different then the Xbox, Gamecube, and PC versions. They weren't developed on the same schedule or by the same teams. It's not fair to compare HP1 on PC to HP2 on PC, since HP2 was really only good on PS2, and there it was phenomenal.

@Tephlon

Totally agreed, but my personal favorite was Need for Speed: High Stakes

@Tephlon
Fuuuulllyyy agree!

Yeah, it's so you can read it in your rear view mirror.