It’s not the end of the franchise, but as Criterion focus on the Battlefield franchise, developer support ends on Need for Speed Unbound. The majority of the studio had already moved over to the first person shooter since the end of 2023, with the smaller Team Kaizen continuing to develop the racing game with the ninth and final content release of Lockdown arriving in November 2024.
The end of live service means no further updates or changes for NFS Unbound, but any further feedback may be used for future projects. Need for Speed Unbound launched in December 2022, and marked the return of Criterion as developers following three releases led by Ghost Games.
Need for Speed originally launched in 1994 (as The Need for Speed), and always been published by Electronic Arts. Various developers have been involved including Slightly Mad Studios and Ghost Games aka EA Gothenburg. Criterion first became involved with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit in 2010, following on from the success of their Burnout series, also developing Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and Need for Speed Rivals. They also took over development of Need for Speed Heat in 2020 after Ghost Games was downsized post-launch.
There’s currently no new Need for Speed title planned for 2025, which means the series will be taking the longest break in games since it first debuted. And it’ll be interesting to see which team within EA will be tasked with the next instalment, as the focus on Battlefield moves Criterion into the EA Entertainment side of the company rather than EA Sports. Given that Codemasters are the main racing studio within EA, having developed the GRID series, EA Sports WRC and the F1 games for the last three years, it may be that future Need for Speed titles pass to them in the immediate future.
Obviously it’s great that the Criterion team are all fully employed in a somewhat uncertain time for many developers, even if it’s a shame that any Burnout (published by EA since Takedown in 2004) or Need for Speed titles won’t be coming from the Guildford studio any time soon.
EA has made a number of staff cuts over recent years, including at Codemasters and Bioware. Perhaps moving Need for Speed over to Codemasters would mean more security for the team and an opportunity to grow slightly if the franchise took a short journey straight up the M40. The only downside would be the potential overlap between Need for Speed and any future Grid titles, although the latter is a simcade racing game far more focused on motorsport than street racing, so perhaps they could exist well side-by-side.
Keep up with all of the latest Need for Speed Unbound news, updates, DLC and more here, or check out the full Need for Speed Unbound car list for every vehicle in the game so far.
Need for Speed Unbound is available for thePC via Steam or the Epic Games Store, the Xbox Series X/S via the Microsoft Store, and the PS 5 via the PlayStation Store. It’s also available for the PC via EA Play Pro on the Origin platform. Or as a physical release from retailers including Game and Amazon.
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