The studio behind your favorite racing sim isn’t there anymore.
Well, they are there. They just aren’t making your games. Criterion Games is done. As of now, the developers behind Need for Speed: Unbound have put the pedal to the metal in one direction only. Battlefield. That is it. No side trips. No secret prototypes.
“Solely focused on Battlefield.”
That was Rebecka Coutaz talking to IGN. She runs Battlefield Studios Europe. When you hear that quote, the subtext is loud. Need for Speed isn’t getting the love. It’s barely getting a nod.
The Long Drift Away
Think about the timeline.
The franchise started in 1994. Thirty years is a long time. Thirty years is most of someone’s professional life. Yet, EA has churned out twenty-five iterations of street racing since then. The last one came out in 2022. Two years of silence is an eternity in the arcade racer world.
Criterion joined the party after EA bought them in 2004. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit dropped in 2010, clean and sharp. Then Most Wanted in 2012, the one that really cemented the legacy. It felt good. It felt like racing.
But then Battlefield 1 happened.
The pivot started in 2016. EA needed a competitor to Call of Duty. Criterion shifted gears. Ghost Games picked up the racing slack. Criterion assisted on Battlefield V, Battlefield 2042, and Battlefield 6. They only dipped back into Need for Speed for Unbound at the end of their tether. It looked like a final bow. A stylistic experiment before moving on.
The History in the Rearview
The first Need for Speed was simple. You bought it. You drove fast. You crashed into things.
It launched on Saturn. It launched on 3DO. It was on PC, of course. By the time the second game dropped in 1997—simply titled Need for Speed —the cadence was set. Roughly one game a year for twenty-five years. Different studios built them. Exient. Eden Studios. Firebrand. A rotating door of developers trying to capture that same lightning.
Platforms changed. Game Boy Advance. PSP. Phones. The medium evolved from polygons to open-world chaos, but the core remained. Illegal street racing. Hiding your engine mods. Running from the police. It’s the DNA of the brand.
If You Have to Choose
So the king is off his throne. At least, for now.
Does that mean the genre dies? Hardly.
Forza Horizon 6 (or whichever number it lands on) is there. Beautiful graphics. Deep customization. A global playground. It’s polished. It’s pretty. But it lacks teeth. Where are the cops? Where is the risk of jail time? Forza is a vacation. Need for Speed was a crime spree.
Maybe that’s not for you.
The Crew Motorfest exists too. Open world. Arcade handling. Over seven hundred vehicles. It even added planes and boats, because why stop at cars? Recently, they introduced the “Chase Squad” mode. They are trying to patch the hole where the police used to be.
Does it work?
The spirit is hard to copy.
Motor1’s Take
Here is the thing about franchises. They don’t always die with one studio.
Criterion might be too busy playing soldiers. They might not have the manpower. That doesn’t mean Need for Speed is dead. EA has done this before. They pass the baton. They let a different internal team—or even an external partner—pick up the reigns.
Will another studio be trusted with the keys? Maybe. Maybe not. The car is still running, even if the engine is cold.
The next greenlight call is coming. It just hasn’t come yet.
