They will monetize differently in Need For Speed: Heat.

„I know that our players did not love the SpeedCards, and we agree that they were a bit abstract. This time, we went for a more grounded personalization experience for performance. We removed the SpeedCards, and now, you put true parts to your car by unlocking them with the progression, so those parts will change the way your car works and is driven in the game. So we made sure it was very clear and there was no confusion. And what that means to the player is that he feels rewarded for playing and improving every time, so the more extreme your car is, the more your ability and that will be the only way to improve. We will not use SpeedCards. We [have nothing similar]. We redesign the progression,” Ghost Games’ Riley Cooper, the creative director, said.

So they won’t use the annoying solution seen in Need For Speed: Payback, where you got those dumb cards called SpeedCards to apply them to your cars and improve them to keep up the almost ridiculously fast artificial intelligence on a few races – this was Electronic Arts’ method to make this game a money pump: due to the difficulty, you either had to use a better car or open your wallets. The former resulted in restarting car development… if it can even be called development. Need For Speed: Heat is going back to Most Wanted 2005’s formula (even though the previous two Underground games had them too), but it’s questionable whether it’s a good idea to reuse the formula once again after Carbon, ProStreet, Most Wanted 2012, or Rivals? (Cops, racing, tuning.) There are two driving styles in this game, bootlegging Ridge Racer: grip and drift.

Need For Speed: Heat will launch on November 8 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The launch day is shared with the currently PlayStation 4-exclusive Death Stranding. It’s questionable whether Heat can restore the good name of Need For Speed, which was tarnished by Payback in 2017. Because of Electronic Arts, prepare for monetization regardless.