No Need for Speed Game Slated For This Year

EA announced some of their E3 plans for next month while revealing their financial results from the last fiscal year and the fourth quarter of 2013. While this year's sports games such as Madden NFL 15, the recently announced NHL 15, and others will be making an appearance at the big trade show, one of their major franchises is surprisingly taking a year off to ensure longer development time and better quality. After consistently being released on an annual basis for over a decade, there is no new Need for Speed game this year.

Need for Speed: Rivals was Ghost Games' first game for the franchise and also released at a transitional time both on current gen and the launch of the next gen consoles. Their sales numbers across all platforms were not up there as EA expected and perhaps a big change like this is in the books, which Ghost Games do not mind. Executive Producer and GM of the developer, Marcus Nilsson, has expressed in his response to the news, "We’re going to give you the game you’ve been asking for. It will be the game you deserve, but to do that will take us some time."
More development time to a new game out next year could be the best thing for the series moving forward with this new generation of consoles. Plus taking a year off with a lot of other racing games out this year such as DriveClub and The Crew is also worth it as well. Publishers tend to be stubborn when it comes to annual franchises such as Activision with Call of Duty and Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed, but EA actually giving Need for Speed a year off could be a sign of things to come for the game industry.
Are Need for Speed fans surprised about EA's decision? The comments below are available for your thoughts.