EA teams up Criterion and Codemasters for the next Need for Speed

The long-time-running Need for Speed racing franchise has been on ice since 2019, with Heat being the final new entry to race out of Ghost Games. In 2020, Electronic Arts announced Criterion Games is taking over the series for future entries, however, the team was moved to be a Battlefield 2042 support studio in 2021.

Now, with Battlefield out of the way, EA is putting developers back into Need for Speed development, and this time a Codemasters team is joining in. EA acquired the whole of Codemasters last year for a cool $1.2 billion after bidding out Take-Two Interactive.

"We can confirm Criterion Games and the development team at Codemasters Cheshire are officially coming together to create the future of Need for Speed," said Codemasters in a Twitter post today. "This integration builds off the close partnership the two studios have developed over the past few months."

Even though they are joining forces to make the next chapter of Need for Speed, the teams will still be working out of their original studio locations separately, in the UK.

Criterion is well known for its Burnout series and has also been involved in Need for Speed before, developing Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted. Meanwhile, Codemasters Cheshire has previously worked on PlayStation's Driveclub games and MotorStorm, when the studio was known as Evolution Studios back in the day. Both also have plenty of experience as support studios.

"Sharing common values and similar cultures, we strongly believe unifying the huge wealth of expertise across both teams will help us to deliver the best racing experiences we can for our players," continues the announcement.

While no official information is available yet on when we will see this next generation Need for Speed game, rumors suggest a November release is likely. It is seemingly only targeting current-generation consoles and PC as well, leaving behind the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 platforms.