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| NFS World: Royal Purple Cars |
Thursday, 04.11.2010 |
EA announced the upcoming release of the Royal Purple-themed Dodge Charger, Subaru WRX STI and Audi R8 for Need for Speed World! Apart from the visiual tuning, the cars have all received some extra tweaking in the performance department making them well worth a test drive.
Additionally North Americans have to possibility to win an Alienware Laptop at  RoyalPurple.com/nfs.
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| Next NFS developed by EA Black Box |
Tuesday, 02.11.2010 |
 Eurogamer made an interesting interview with EA's Patrick Soderlund, where he talks about the future of Need for Speed. As EA already admitted, the quality of the Need for Speed games suffered due to short development cycles, but with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit this should change and multiple development studios will work on the NFS series.
The next studio developing the NFS for 2011 is EA Black Box, which is responsible for the last NFS games up to Need for Speed Undercover until the got replaced by the Slightly Mad Studios with NFS Shift. Since then Black Box is working on the free onlineracer Need for Speed World.
EA's current strategy is to make NFS to an brand, which the consumer can enjoy on an annual basis. Patrick Soderlund distincts between the Action-NFS and the more authentic NFS like Shift:
We want to reach a mass-market audience, and Hot Pursuit is a more mass-market appealing product than Shift. We want to come back with an action adventure type of product on an annual basis, but from a developer that's been working on it for a couple of years.
Maybe there are two or three developers going at it every second year. Then, when the market permits and when we feel ready, we'll put our side genre, the Shift brand, the more authentic motorsports segment - we'll come up with Shift versions as well.
There are two main parts. Action and authentic. Authentic will come when we feel like we can put it in the market and when we're done with it. Then the action adventure products are going to be on an annual basis.
Regarding the problem, that multiple development studios might create completely different NFS, Patrick Soderlund tells the following:
Was Activision's two-studio Call of Duty model inspirational?
Not necessarily. I thought it would be a stronger offering if we could have a slightly different flavour of NFS, still well within the franchise parameters, but have that on an annual basis.
Let's say this year you have a Criterion version of NFS that's still true to what NFS is, then obviously next year we can come back with something that's still true to NFS but maybe a slightly different approach on NFS.
That can be a stronger long-term proposition for consumers than if you have the same developer make basically the same game every year. That's where the idea came from.
Of course we looked at our internal strategies as well as what works for external companies. The one thing that's very important though is you crisply identify what your chief tenets are for the brand, so people have parameters to stay within, so you don't get a NFS game one year and then the next year something that is completely different and has nothing to do with the other one, then the only thing they share is the brand – that's obviously not the intent.
We want Autolog to be something that follows with the consumer to the next NFS product. We want them to use their log-in and their details they had from the previous game into the next. If they're a loyal consumer to us we would obviously want to reward them for that.
So there are certain things NFS needs to have, but a different take on that on an annual basis because of different developers is a good win for us.
You can find the complete interview here:
 Interview with Patrick Soderlund @ Eurogamer
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Gametrailers published some new gameplay videos of Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, which give your more insight into the game:
