Rumours have it that Criterion is no longer planning to bring the next entry in the Need For Speed franchise to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

It was announced in 2020 that Criterion Games would be responsible for the future of the Need For Speed series. Then, in 2021, came the news that the studio would be taking a break from development for a while, as they had helped DICE with Battlefield 2042 (but that game didn’t quite live up to Electronic Arts’ expectations, to put it mildly). Yes, but it’s been nearly six months since then, so it’s worth asking: is Criterion back to cars?

Jeff Grubb, writing for VentureBeat, mentioned what he knows about the sequel to Need For Speed on his show GrubbSnax. He thinks it will be released later this year, so it’s almost sure that an as-yet-unnamed sequel will be released in the fall (they can’t just call it Need For Speed because they already did that in 2015). He says it will be out in November, and that’s good news for those with a PlayStation 5 and/or Xbox Series console, as it will only be released for the current-gen hardware.

Grubb has also heard about where the next Need For Speed could be set. “There [are] rumours about what the setting is that I’ve heard. It’s hard to pin down if these are for sure or not. I’ve heard stuff like Miami, which makes me think maybe they’ll go an Underground route. That could be leaps of logic I’m making,” Grubb added. So going down the neon-filled, night racing tuning route isn’t sure to happen just yet.

All of this is unofficial, but Criterion has previously promised that they’re making the “most expressive, most socially connected, action-packed game [in the series] yet.” What will ultimately come of this is yet to be seen. We’ll probably have to wait for Electronic Arts to announce it… but there will not be an EA Play Live this year (we wrote about that), so we have no idea when the publisher will do it!

Source: WCCFTech