Need For Speed: Reborn

EA announce expansion of the Need for Speed franchise as the series ups its game for 2009.

EA have today announced new NFS games for 2009, and in doing so a new direction for the franchise with a triple pronged attack on the charts. Yep that’s right, 3 NFS games for 2009 focusing in turn on the core, casual and free online play markets.

Need For Speed: Shift will be appearing on the PS3, 360, PC & PSP in the autumn. It’s being developed by Slightly Mad Studios with the help of Michael Mann (producer at Black Box), and drops the underground urban race culture in favour of a more realistic simulation approach appealing to the ‘core’ market.

Some buzzwords flying around from EA’s marketing bod are ‘driver experience’ ‘wickedly-intense race’ and apparently there’s even “a flashy 3D HUD that mimics driver head movement, inertia and G-force will help achieve this. There’s a cockpit view that lets players freely look around using the right-stick.”

Personally I’m hoping for a return to form for the series because, like Carbon & ProStreet before it, Undercover was a bit disappointing to say the least.

The two other games out this year are Need For Speed: Nitro which will be appearing on the Wii & DS and is naturally designed to appeal to the casual market, and Need For Speed: World Online coming under EA’s ‘Play 4 Free’ umbrella seen most recently with Battlefield Heroes, where you can… errr play for free.

[Source: Eurogamer]