Need For Speed return officially teased, but we're in for a wait

The developer behind the latest Need For Speed title has assured fans that, in spite of a recent announcement, work on the series is still set to continue.

Thank you in advance to Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips for his original report!

Yesterday, EA announced that work on the next Battlefield game has commenced.

As part of their work on the next entry in the franchise, EA has revealed that there will be an in-depth playtest for the title, dubbed Battlefield Labs.

Several EA-owned developers will be assisting the newly formed Battlefield Studios team in developing the title. This includes Criterion, the developers behind 2010's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and 2022's Need for Speed Unbound.

While this might make it seem like the future of the Need for Speed franchise is bleak, Vince Zampella (who is now the head of the Battlefield franchise) has revealed that EA still has plans for the series moving forward.

Want to get involved with the Battlefield Labs playtesting programme?

"The Need for Speed team at Criterion are joining their colleagues working on Battlefield," Zampella told Eurogamer, "As a company, it was important to us to take the last year to listen to our Need for Speed community and use their feedback to create content for Unbound."

“With an increased understanding of what our players want in a Need for Speed experience, we plan to bring the franchise back in new and interesting ways."

Now, there are two different ways to read Zampella’s comments here.

By bringing “the franchise back in new and interesting ways”, he could simply be referring to Need for Speed Unbound. EA considers the title to be a live-service game, so continued support (even three years after release) isn’t out of the question.

However, I think it’s fair to say that Zampella knows exactly how the internet will interpret what he meant and that he’s actually alluding to a new entry in the series.

Unfortunately, I think we’ll have to wait until EA is finished with the next Battlefield game to find out more, however.