Need for Speed: Rivals-udvikleren Ghost Games er de nye bannerførere for Need for Speed-serien, og skal også være den primære udvikler blandt fremtidige NFS-spil.
Det fortæller studiechef Marcus Nilsson i et interview med VideoGamer. Serien har manglet en rød tråd de seneste par år, siger han, hvor flere forskellige studier har været inde over med vidt forskellige bud.
"It cannot go from black to white between Black Box and Criterion, and that's why we're now thinking about the brand as Ghost owns it. We're going to build it, we're going to build it on Frostbite 3, [and] people will see something they are familiar with every time we release the game. And I think that is the core basis of building a brand; that people know what to expect," siger Nilsson.
De mange skift mellem forskellige retninger har skadet seriens troværdighed, mener Nilsson:
"When you go from a Shift experience to The Run experience to a Hot Pursuit experience, then it loses credibility. I think we now have the work of re-establishing that credibility with building the brand. You know, it's still a really strong brand, absolutely. We just need to make sure people know what to expect when they get it, and Rivals is absolutely the first step toward that.
"Need For Speed is not going to go away, right? It's not the final or last step of that. But what you see in Rivals, a lot of those things will carry on going forward and myself and Rivals will be involved in shaping that."
Det er ellers kun et års tid siden at Criterion meldte ud, at de nu havde hovedansvaret for Need for Speed, men de har tilsyneladende overdraget tøjlerne til Ghost.
Nilsson slår også fast, at vi ikke kommer til at se Need for Speed-serien rotere mellem Ghost Games og Criterion. Den hører nu kun hjemme hos det svenske studie.