EA talks about Burnout, Skate, Mass Effect 2 and next NFS

EA Games
EA, the assembly line where games are rolled out before they can be fully tested for quality-assurance talked about their Burnout and Skate franchises not very long ago. They also let out a sentence each for Mass Effect 2 (which THEY now handle, muhahaha) and the next NFS game.

Hit the jump to find out what EA said!

EA Games president Frank Gibeau declared that in fiscal year 2009 (that’s from this April to next March), we’ll be seeing “extensions” for the Burnout and Skate franchises. This most likely points towards a sequel, since EA isn’t exactly keen on releasing downloadable content or expansion packs when you can get a brand new game from it.

EA’s Skate franchise has brought it to head-on-head war against Activision, who dominated the skateboarding games genre. With the success of EA’s Skate, Activision announced recently that the Tony Hawk skateboarding franchise will receive a redesign and redirection. Man this is going to be interesting.

As for Mass Effect 2, EA announced that it will be handling publishing this time round. Not a huge surprise, since EA ever so gratefully bought Bioware last year. If you read the source’s comments, you’ll see plenty saying that EA is going to screw it up. We’ll just leave it at that!

Mass Effect was originally planned as a trilogy, so the sequel isn’t surprising either, but what is surprising is that EA doesn’t want to stop there. Gibeau said that Mass Effect “will be a franchise for [EA] for a very long time.” Whatever that means, I really hope it doesn’t mean annual releases of Mass Effect on every console imaginable. Bioware, you are our only hope.

And finally, Gibeau said that the Need for Speed franchise will see a makeover, this time for the home base. With Pro Street, the game had drifted too far, and so EA will be bringing it back to its roots. While he doesn’t mention it exactly, we’re guessing this is the tuner culture NFS that we saw Underground onwards. Why oh why don’t we have those classic NFS games anymore? 🙁

In the next NFS game, you should expect open-world racing and a new highway battle mode, among other new features. Well, I guess that counts for something. Still, it’s EA, guys.

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