EA is reportedly delaying its upcoming Need for Speed game by a year to shift its developer, Criterion Games, towards assisting on Battlefield 6.
Speaking to Polygon, chief studio officer, Laura Miele, acknowledged that the EA Dice team developing Battlefield 6 is “working incredibly hard” from home and is becoming fatigued.
“[Battlefield] is shaping up great, the team has been working incredibly hard, they pushed hard last year, and yes, we have been working from home, and it’s hard; it’s hard to make games from home, and the [EA DICE] team is fatigued a bit. We have a great game and some incredible potential with this game. We’re playing to win; we’re playing to put a great Battlefield game out in the market.”
As a result, Criterion is being brought in to assist on the remainder of its development and help the team, and EA noted how their previous experience with the series will be a positive for them.
“They’ve worked on [Star Wars] Battlefront, they’ve worked on Battlefields, and they have a really tight, close collaborative partnership with DICE. I’m really confident that this is going to be a pretty positive win for them.”
Criterion will continue on Need for Speed in the future, which Miele has reportedly added will be available on last-gen and next-gen systems. She also stressed the franchise won’t be handed over to Codemasters, as Criterion owns it.
While Miele wouldn’t delve any further into Battlefield 6, she did say that they will put all the resources [they] have on this”. Sounds like Battlefield 6 is going to be one to remember!
Are you excited for Battlefield 6? Let us know in the comments below.
[source polygon.com]
Comments 9
Good, that is all
I have always liked Battlefield. Looking forward to what they have cooked up here.
I think some other developers are doing this, putting more resource into one game and making another game wait.
Covid as obviously done some damage to developers as we well know.
I guess it’s better to get one very good AAA game out than delay 2 games or release 2 poor/average games.
I imagine they are probably in the process of setting up a new NFS team as well. Now that they got Codemasters they are probably going to put them on racing game duty, having them develop the new NFS game. Obviously this means it's going to take longer to come out, but hopefully it will be a much better game than the recent titles.
As for Battlefield 6, that really needs to be a hit after BFV was such a disappointment, and considering the decline of the series I am in no rush to buy it either.
@Dezzy70 this is the way!
I was rather looking forward to seeing Criterion's new NFS as their versions of Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted are without question the franchise's best. That said, EA cannot afford to mess up with the new Battlefield. It's probably their most important game for a long time, and while every Battlefield has been beset with problems at launch (just wait and see if the servers don't crash on day one), the more help DICE get the better. As something of a lapsed Battlefield player, I'm very curious to see how this one looks.
@TimG13 Pretty sure Criterion doesn't exist anymore, last game they made was released in 2012 and Ghost Games has been making all the NFS games since 2013.
This is why I'm pretty sure they are having Codemasters handle the series for now on.
@JayJ True. The Criterion of today is not the same Criterion of 2012, and they've been a support studio for other projects ever since. Nevertheless, if only for nostalgia's sake, I'm still keen to see what they're working on.
As for Codies, you could be right. But I also think they've got enough of their own franchises to continue working on rather than inheriting NFS. I can see EA alternating between Codemasters with Dirt and Criterion with NFS every year.
Great news! Surprised EA aren't planning to follow the Call of Duty model and alternate between Criterion and Codemasters year-on-year, but fewer annualised releases can be nothing but a good thing in my eyes.
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