Rumor has it that Criterion will finish the next Need for Speed later this year as a pure next-gen title. There is currently nothing concrete to hear about the setting.
In the final episode of the Grubbsnax! show on twitch VentureBeat journalist Jeff Grubb dropped that Need for Speed is still on schedule and should be out in November. According to Grubb, it will only be released for “next-gen”, i.e. for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X and the PC. Older consoles are not served. Grubb was unable to find out which setting the game uses. He’s heard something like Miami and is speculating in the direction of an underground part that will bring the tuning scene back into focus. That would be fitting for a soft restart, since Underground 1 and Underground gave the series a new boost at the beginning of the millennium.
Actually, the next Need for Speed should appear earlier. Developer Criterion, to whom the series was transferred again in 2020 after the permanent averageness of the games designed by Ghost Games, had meanwhile been assigned by EA to support the work on Battlefield 2042 in order to be able to bring the shooter to the market a little less unfinished. The change of studio suggests that Need for Speed shouldn’t suffer the same fate. Criterion has built a solid reputation for racing games – and it’s timely. Because Need for Speed may still be commercially worthwhile, the series is hardly perceived positively in the media after a long descent into ever lower rating regions.
In order to bridge the waiting time for a new offshoot, EA had to keep the brand present with a remaster of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. There is no shortage of racing games in general at EA anyway: After the acquisition of Codemasters, most of the important series are in the hands of the publisher.
