Well in case you were wondering what is happening to the Need for Speed series, EA let out some information on how they are going to turn it around. Need for Speed Shift will be a traditional racing simulation seen on the 360, PS3 and PC while Need for Speed Nitro will be the arcadic Wii and DS releases. We will also see Need for Speed World Online which is a PC only MMO set in the Need for Speed universe. It’s a shame that the last one is PC only because what appears to be the only wholly a new idea is going to see a limited release.
Anyway we saw some pretty interesting numbers that summed up the whole fall of Need for Speed thing that’s been happening over the last five years. According to NPD data (which are sales in the USA only) Underground 2 sold 4.5 million units while the next game, easily our favorite of the bunch Most Wanted sold a still impressive 3.9 million sales. Then the short and critically panned Carbon sold a smaller 3.1 million units. That slowed down with the experiment that was ProStreet with 2.1 million. Finally the recently released Undercover sold just under 1 million units.
Now that just shows you that over three quarters of sales have been lost in 5 years. Most Wanted along with the earlier games have been received so well because care was taken over them. But recently with the Wii and DS being so different from other consoles they decided to cater for both which is a difficult juggling act. Now with the games being complete separate with completely separate names and ideas we might see an improvement within the franchise.
Shift will be EA’s answer to Gran Turismo or Forza which will be nice to see a third parties approach on the simulation game. Will this be enough to inject some life into the franchise? Well in terms of sales maybe not. Although Gran Turismo and Forza have always done well the past they don’t really have that casual gaming crowd on board. Generally speaking gamers don’t want to drive a real car they want fast arcadey style racing and that’s why they came to Need for Speed in the first place.
I’m sure Shift will be a great game in it’s own right if it is given the budget and time it needs. We’ve seen from past simulation games that these types of experiences need to be tweaked and tweaked until they are almost perfect and that won’t be done in EA’s traditional schedule of a new game every year. Still Need for Speed is known among it’s fans for it’s high adrenaline rush feel and it doesn’t seem like this will deliver on that kind of experience.
It must have put EA in a difficult position when Burnout took the arcade racing genre by storm when Burnout Paradise came out early last year. I presume that some of the higher ups at EA didn’t want two arcade racers so decided to experiment with ProStreet and now it looks like they are prepared to push NFS fully in that direction.
What gets me is that wouldn’t it make sense to have Burnout as your open world, crash and smash arcade racer and have Need For Speed as your night-time time trial street racer akin to Midnight Club. Then start a new simulation franchise that won’t tarnish an already flagging for help franchise if it doesn’t pay off. But it will be interesting to see how this move goes. It could be the last of Need For Speed or it could be a whole new begginging.
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