Need for Speed franchise unlikely to be revived
It appears it’s the end of the road for the long-running Need for Speed video game franchise, with its developers now solely focused on first-person shooters.
Almost a year since the first rumours of Need for Speed’s demise circled, it seems the once-popular car racing video game franchise is dead.
Last year, car culture website Speedhunters was disbanded, bringing the future of Need for Speed into question as the two had been intertwined, while photographer Matthew Everingham said EA [Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher] had shelved Need For Speed.
Earlier this month, another nail was put in Need for Speed’s coffin, amid celebrations that its most recent developer – Criterion Games – is celebrating its 30th anniversary, having been renamed as Battlefield Studios Europe last year.
When asked by video game publication IGN whether Criterion could revive either Need for Speed or the also-EA published Burnout series, Battlefield Studios Europe vice president and general manager, Rebecka Coutaz, said: “We are solely focused on Battlefield.”
With Need for Speed’s revival not even on the table for consideration from the company which has developed the past six titles, it’s likely that this is the end for the series which began in 1994.
Need for Speed dates back to 1994 with the release of ‘The Need for Speed’, initially for Panasonic’s 3DO console before becoming available for MS-DOS, Sony’s Playstation and the Sega Saturn.
While it started out with a focus on exotic cars in High Stakes (1999) and Hot Pursuit (2002), later tiles embraced the emerging tuner culture, highlighted in the high-watermark Underground (2003) and Underground 2 (2004), as well as Most Wanted (2005).
Jordan Mulach
The franchise also dabbled in circuit racing with Prostreet (2007), Shift (2009) and Shift 2: Unleashed (2011), with the latter not only featuring most of the FIA’s GT championship cars, but also stars from the US Formula Drift series.
In 2014, a Need for Speed film was released as a loose adaptation of the franchise, starring Aaron Paul. It received mostly negative reviews.
Need for Speed returned to its popular tuning background with the release of an eponymously titled game in 2015, and has continued to focus on car modifications since, with the most recent installment being Unbound, released in 2022 and currently receiving minimal support.
