EA CEO: We Were Torturing Need for Speed Devs
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:36 am
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53197
I really enjoyed Pro Street, but it was certainly lacking polish. There were so many bugs, and still there have been no patches. They did release a beta patch (if you could find it, as it wasnt advertised on their site), but that patch broke the controls for many people (including me).Speaking at an investors meeting, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello noted his disappointment with Need for Speed: ProStreet, and said that EA had been "torturing a very talented group of people" at EA Vancouver with rigorous 12 month development cycles reports GamesIndustry.biz.
Though Need for Speed: Most Wanted was a recent series highlight, newer games like Carbon and ProStreet were not received as well.
Electronic Arts attributes this to the fact that EA Vancouver had been producing a new Need for Speed game every single year for the past eight years. That changed last summer, when EA split the company into two teams, hired more people, and put both teams on two year development cycles.
Though it won't have the benefit of the full two year cycle, the first game to come out of this changed development philosophy will be this year's Need For Speed: Undercover. The game is described as a mission-based one with a strong story, with Riccitiello likening the general feel of the game to that of the The Transporter movies.
"I'm confident that Undercover is a much better game than Pro Street, and I expect that from this point forward they will do a lot better," Riccitiello is quoted as saying.