Need For Speed fans might be 2 Fast 2 Furious this week as EA has confirmed that this year's entry will be delayed into 2022.
The next entry in the legendary racing series will be taking a break in 2021 as the developer Criterion is set to assist DICE with the development of Battlefield 6.
EA's Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele confirmed the news to Polygon on Monday and explained that the Swedish studio needed help from Criterion. She also said it made sense to call off Need for Speed this year as the recent Codemasters acquisition will ensure the publisher still gets a racing game.
"The team has been working incredibly hard, they pushed hard last year, and yes, we have been working from home," Miele explained to Polygon. This work on the Battlefield series has reportedly caused DICE devs to experience fatigue. She also said, "We’re playing to win; we’re playing to put a great Battlefield game out in the market.”
The Battlefield series has been on quite a downturn recently. The latest entry, Battlefield 5, failed to set the world on fire, as other multiplayer shooters like Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, and most notably Fortnite thrived. EA tried its hand in the battle royale genre for Battlefield, but the game failed to ignite the community under stiff competition. Fortnite's so big that Travis Scott reportedly earned $20 million in revenue, thanks to his in-game concert.
This isn't the first time Criterion and DICE have collaborated. The studios have worked on the Star Wars Battlefront series, as well as the Battlefield games. Miele explained that "they have a really tight, close collaborative partnership with DICE."
This might come as a frustration for Need for Speed fans, who have received stinker after stinker in the franchise. Two of the three titles Ghost Games developed, the reboot, and Payback all received middling reviews.
However, the latest entry, Need for Speed Heat, saw an upswing in critical response. We thought it was repetitive after a while, but Heat was an improvement over most of its predecessors on PS4 and a good step forward for Criterion. Fans will have to wait to see what lies ahead on the studio's race track in 2022.