Need for Speed Undercover announced

360 News | Will be better than ProStreet.

According to Gamesindustry.biz EA boss John Riccitiello has confirmed at William Blair & Company's 28th Annual Growth Stock Conference that the next Need for Speed game will be called Need for Speed Undercover.

Riccitiello also revealed his disappointment on last year's Need for Speed ProStreet. "I thought it was an okay game, in terms of gameplay. It's not good. But who wanted ProStreet? It was a sort of made up, put numbers on the side of your car and pretend to drive your Ferrari where? Or your Porsche where?"

Need for Speed Undercover will have a strong mission structure that Riccitiello has compared to the film, The Transporter. "For those of you who ever saw movies like The Transporter - it's sort of a cult classic among people with a B-movie mentality, which fits me perfectly. I liked it. I apologize. For those of you with no taste, and you liked it too, we can go have a Schlitz after this."

The development cycle has also been changed for Need for Speed titles, there will now be two teams working on the franchise and they will be working on a 24 month cycle. "Last summer we added head count and split the team in two, so now there are two teams on a 24 month cycle. And this is sort of their first 16-and-a-half month game...Because we didn't do it far enough ago to give us a full two year dev cycle."

Related Content

Need For Speed ProStreet Xbox 360 demo released
24 Oct, 2007 On your marks..

New Need for Speed teaser released
22 May, 2007 Can you guess what platforms it will be on?

More Need for Speed Carbon downloads released
16 Nov, 2006 Though not for free.

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25 Comments

mipac

3 years ago

Sounds pretty cool.

Skiller

3 years ago

Just make NFS Underground 3, Underground 2 was the last good NFS game and if they combined some of the graphics and car editing from the recent NFS games with the driving model of NFS:U2 then that would be exactly the sort of game I'd buy.

I loved the NFS:U2 driving model because the drifting wasn't different from the driving, you could drift in a race or drive in a drift comp which felt much better that having 2 completely seperate driveing models that both sucked

Benc82

3 years ago

At least he admitted that the last NFS game was rubbish. Hopefully that means they will take the time to make a decent game this time instead of milking the NFS cash cow.

ANDYBALLINA

3 years ago

Hopefully its like Need for Speed Most Wanted, IMO thats the best Need for Speed, but I did hear it was going to more like the orginal type games, eg Hot Pursuit, Underground, Most Wanted etc

tbenton

3 years ago

I really liked Most Wanted, but I did miss the drifting mode from Underground 2.

I agree with him, I had really no interest in NFS Prostreet. It was a poor man's PGR

African Aussie

3 years ago

I am more excited about Midnight Club: Los Angels. Thats the street racing game I am really anticipating.

Snixtor

3 years ago

Porsche Unleashed is still my pick, but I doubt we'll ever see a return to that format.

kartanym

3 years ago

Need for Speed 2: SE. Enough said.

harness

3 years ago

OoOoh, nice name. I hope it's based on the underground/street racing scene like U, U2, MW and Carbon. I'm a fan of that arcade style.

Swanny

3 years ago

is it multi platform or just on 360 and PS3?

if they are serious about making it better it needs to be just next-gen in my opinon....

TheAnswer

3 years ago

Well hopefully this longer development leads to a much better game and maybe it's a part of EA realising they can't keep just making a new title in a series year after year and that the series need to actually be developed and evolve over time. Hopefully this will correspond to other series EA.

legend166

3 years ago

Remember when NFS was an awesome PC racing title?

I blame The Fast and the Furious.

Deathfiend

3 years ago

This doesnt peak my interest enough to keep me from playing Forza 2, PGR4 and GRID.

RAMPAGE

3 years ago

I use to like NFS but pro street killed it. I wont get excited untill i play the finished product. Grid must have scared them into getting there ass into gear.

Skiller

3 years ago

RAMPAGE wrote

I use to like NFS but pro street killed it. I wont get excited untill i play the finished product. Grid must have scared them into getting there ass into gear.

Man you know you've struck rock bottom when you are afraid of grid being better. I was playing the 1.1 demo last night and I have never EVER played a racing game with such a stupid driving model. After a few failed races I realised that I was playing much better when my tires and steering were "toast", and first thing I did that race was deliberately crash into barriers till my steering was as damaged as I could get it, then ended up winning by nearly half a lap.

ANY GAME THAT REQUIRES YOU TO WRECK YOUR CAR TO GET THE BEST STEERING IS A COMPLETE FAILURE!!

I also hated the magnetic car physics that mean you can't hit cars properly for corner boosting and the opponent car AI was absolutly pathetic, those other drivers clearly had no intention of winning the race. I started crashing other cars to see how long it took them to get back to their racing line and got bored of waiting long before they were driving properly again. They also lack enough aggression, once I'd figure out to crash my car to get the better steering I was able to fly past the pack from last to first and not 1 AI car seemed to mind at all

Then there's that stupid shakey camera thing that makes it near impossible to precisely navigate between obstacles optimally, and the horrific acceleration on PC which they clearly hadn't modified to handle the lack of an analogue input. The graphics were way too bloomed out and bland too, but at least it ran very well on my 9600gt with full detail at 1920x1200.

Whoops sorry for the rant, but yer, god help me if they make it anything near as bad as grid.

ANDYBALLINA

3 years ago

I agree.....I hired GRID and its crap, Handle is aweful, tracks are to restrictive, cars rubber band and spin you out, its just crap. You would think that they would finally get all racing games right with the handling.

I'm not a fan of track based racing, prefer street racing. Will stick with Burnout Paradise, now that series has the handling spot on. Also Need For Speed Most Wanted has great handling and car upgrades.

I'm also looking forward to Midnight Club LA

Jellyfish

3 years ago

kartanym wrote

Need for Speed: SE. Enough said.

Fixed.

Though I did like the McLaren F1 in 2 though

Eyce

3 years ago

Skiller wrote

the opponent car AI was absolutly pathetic, those other drivers clearly had no intention of winning the race. I started crashing other cars to see how long it took them to get back to their racing line and got bored of waiting long before they were driving properly again. They also lack enough aggression, once I'd figure out to crash my car to get the better steering I was able to fly past the pack from last to first and not 1 AI car seemed to mind at all

It's a demo.

Would you buy a game if the AI totally kicked your arse? Of course not.

RAMPAGE

3 years ago

I don't know what you guys are on but i found Grid to be heaps of fun.

ZNMS

3 years ago

Quote

For those of you with no taste, and you liked it too, we can go have a Schlitz after this.

No taste? Well, at least Electronic Arts has the Black, Burnout and skate series. Then there's Dead Space, so there are some tasteful things worth having a bite of.

Shorty

3 years ago

To be honest, Riccitiello's comments about Undercover make it sound more like the original Driver than the series returning to illegal street racing.

Having said that, I hope this means the police will once again become an important aspect of the single-player game mechanics like in Most Wanted instead of the minor irritant they were in Carbon. I also hope this means the handling will be much more arcade-like than ProStreet, which IMO didn't do a very good job of balancing arcade and simulation.

arbok

3 years ago

I agree with Kartanym - Need for Speed 2:SE really was the best - WHY? Cause my brother and I used to play two players and play knockout to see how far we could get in the game.. Man that was an absolute blast - it was a progression of races with one car knocked out for coming last on each race and we could never get it down to just the two of us racing for the final race, the closest we got was between us two and a computer car and we would always try to slow the computer car down for the other person to catch up. it was so awesome to avoid being the last car and it was very arcadey as well because the competition would get tougher and tougher.

Skiller

3 years ago

Eyce wrote

Skiller wrote

It's a demo.

Would you buy a game if the AI totally kicked your arse? Of course not.

Actually I do prefer games where the AI beats me, but they are too few and far between

. It's much more fun to beat an opponent that's above your skill level and I can't stand playing people/AI that are easy to beat.

Deathfiend

3 years ago

I really disagree with people calling GRID bad. I never played the demo but the full game I've clocked a few hours in.

It's a punishing game. Theres not a lot of room for mistakes while driving, which if you race in real life is the same story. Its your ability to push the car to limits without wrecking that creates a strong challenge and sense of achievement when you beat rival teams. The driving model while not ultra realistic still feels a lot like the V8 series and DIRT which is fine. I've gone through the Japanese championship and I belive it to have one of the best drift and touge modes I've played in a game. In fact if they added a bunch more jap cars and the ability to mod and tune them I wouldnt have to play maximum tune or Initial D at the arcades. Its very addictive. I also think the AI is pretty sweet. You drive agressive and they drive agressive back and your team mate always seems to be trying to impress you by keeping up or staying ahead of you. This game isnt perfect but its sure a lot more fun then the last handful of NFS games.

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