EA delay Need for Speed to focus on Battlefield 6
Battlefield fans have been eagerly awaiting more news of Battlefield 6, which is supposed to release in 2021. New reports have it that EA are delaying Need for Speed to ensure Battlefield hits its release date.
Gamers have become accustomed to exciting video games being delayed for several months or even years – especially in the post-COVID era, where developers need to deal with the additional challenge of working from home.
Battlefield fans have been eagerly awaiting news of the next game in the franchise since its release in 2018. We were excited to learn that it should be coming in 2021, but many players feared that it would be hit by some of the all-too-common delays.
It looks like EA and Dice are working to prevent any delays of the next Battlefield game, so much so that they’re willing to delay a game in another of EA’s popular franchises: Need for Speed.
In an interview with Polygon, EA’s chief studios officer, Laura Miele, stated that Criterion – the developer behind Need to Speed – would be reassigned to help work on assets for the next, unnamed Battlefield game.
According to Miele, the decision is also related to EA’s acquisition of Codemasters – the developers behind games like F1, Dirt, and Grid. Codemasters will be releasing another racing game around the same time that Need for Speed was set to come out, so they decided not to compete with their own property.
As Miele explained, this won’t be Criterion’s first look at a first-person shooter. “They’ve worked on Battlefront, they’ve worked on Battlefields, and they have a really tight, close collaborative partnership with DICE, ” she told Polygon in an interview. “I’m really confident that this is going to be a pretty positive win for them.”
What does all of this mean for the next Battlefield game? It means that EA is loading-up resources to help ensure that the game doesn’t face additional delays and launches in a finished state.
This is probably bad news for fans of the Need for Speed franchise, but Battlefield players should take it as a positive. EA are focusing all of their efforts on major titles rather than spreading themselves too thin, which is as much as you can ask for as a player.
Image Credits: EA, Dice