In this interview EA statesperson says Criterion will once again be the dev of future NFS.Also Criterion will take NFS to next generation.And if Ghost is still the dev for Frostbite and Criterion takes over from Ghost,will this mean NFS will be Renderware/Chameleon engine game again?
Horrible decision tbh. I got to playtest this, and they actually listened and the final game was brilliant i think, EA just dropped the ball again and didn't push updates fast enough.
EA seem to forget that it's their own doing that has harmed sales. People still treat EA like a bad word over the micro-transactions thing a few years ago even though they have done a lot to negate that, EA access is prob one of the best game pass deals there is IMO.
Ghost have worked so so hard trying to revive the series, they finally nail it and EA pulls the plug... i dunno if this is partly due to Brexit... The studio is mainly based in Gothenburg.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like EA couldn't get enough talent to Sweden in order to grow Ghost into a large enough studio to be able to give adequate post-launch support by way of patches and DLC updates. I don't remember Payback having as many "brick wall" bugs as Heat - the ones where people can't even get past the main menu, let-alone play the game. That's kind of a big deal. The forums have been burned to the ground with bug reports and angry customers due to some serious quality control flaws. EA may be looking at the current state, and Ghost is telling them 'hey, we can't fix this because we don't have the resources.'
So now EA is trying to figure out how to move forward... it sounds as though they will be transplanting much of the talent that makes up Ghost studios back into Criterion, so NFS may still be able to retain the identity that Ghost has refined.
@TheRealJony I agree with your post. This looks like a rerun of NFS Rivals when EA yanked Criterion out and let Ghost finish it, though NFS Rivals was in a lot better shape than this buggy mess. We might see another patch that will fix the worst of it, but I don't see any features being added to it anymore either. I do think they will release some DLC's with additional cars to milk the last bit of money out of this, but that should be about it. At least EA realized they screwed up and that Ghost sucked at NFS. Hopefully there is some talent left at Criterion after EA gutted them. We'll see.
