Criterion Stepping Away From Need for Speed Franchise, Now “Owned” By Ghost Games
- Related Games:
- Need for Speed Rivals
Developer Ghost Games will be taking over the Need for Speed franchise from here on out, as Criterion Games moves on to bigger and (hopefully) better pursuits.
In an interview with VideoGamer, Ghost studio head Marcus Nilsson explained that consistency within the series is key, so Need for Speed will be tied to a single studio from now on.
It cannot go from black to white between Black Box and Criterion, and that’s why we’re now thinking about the brand as Ghost owns it.
We’re going to build it, we’re going to build it on Frostbite 3, [and] people will see something they are familiar with every time we release the game. And I think that is the core basis of building a brand; that people know what to expect.
When you go from a Shift experience to The Run experience to a Hot Pursuit experience, then it loses credibility. I think we now have the work of re-establishing that credibility with building the brand. You know, it’s still a really strong brand, absolutely. We just need to make sure people know what to expect when they get it, and Rivals is absolutely the first step toward that.
Need For Speed is not going to go away, right? It’s not the final or last step of that. But what you see in Rivals, a lot of those things will carry on going forward and myself and Rivals will be involved in shaping that.
Do you see this as a step in the right direction for the NFS franchise? Is a single, more focused vision ultimately going to be the best thing for the series? Let us know in the comments below.