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Why is EA not making NFS: Underground 3?

Zoned

Actively hates charity
It's been more than a decade and we haven't seen any other Underground game. Why is EA not interested in continuing this series? NFS UG2 is definitely one of the best NFS games ever created. I remember playing this game on PS2 with my cousins during holidays. Spent countless hours in tuning cars. It was very entertaining.

But now all we are getting is hot pursuit rehashes with some stupid always online system attached that doesn't work many times.

What's your opinion GAF?
 
What did Underground have that the newer games don't? The customization is really lacking, so if they bring back more robust customization and keep everything else, they'll be golden, imo. Alldrive would definitely be in an Underground sequel, though.
 
I've been wondering this same thing for years. Underground 2 is one of my all time favorite arcade racers and I've been dying for another game in the series. And no, I don't want some re-imagining of it like some of the NFS games lately. I want a true Underground 3. Hell, I even pop Underground 2 into my original Xbox every now and then.
 
EA, for better or worse, is a company, and has a better ability to judge what would sell to the mass audience than we, a segment of that audience, probably do.

What they probably banked on was diversity later on- so we had Undercover, The Run, Shift, MW, HP, Rivals. Whether or not this backfired, I don't know. I remember there was a rumor Underground would be the next Criterion game but we all know that's false.

Anyways, if I had to guess? They probably decided HP and MW were the better properties to bring back (in name) at the time. Underground would probably be the next on the list.
 
it has to be coming right, as they've done HP and MW already. i hope so, it started going downhill after HP 2010.
 
You've missed out greatly on Hot Pursuit and most recently Rivals.

Agree with this, Rivals more so. Rovals is pretty good game, its close to Most Wanted levels, just that the police chases need work. Not being able to pause offline is annoying too. Being able to enter a safehouse when cops are on you is dumb. Otherwise its a fun game. The only difference with Underground is the hip hop vibe, neons, Liveries etc. The head to heads are in Rivals just like Underground 2.
 
Agree with this, Rivals more so. Rovals is pretty good game, its close to Most Wanted levels, just that the police chases need work. Not being able to pause offline is annoying too. Being able to enter a safehouse when cops are on you is dumb. Otherwise its a fun game. The only difference with Underground is the hip hop vibe, neons, Liveries etc. The head to heads are in Rivals just like Underground 2.

Can't emphasize that enough. The cops in that game are insane.
 
Agree with this, Rivals more so. Rovals is pretty good game, its close to Most Wanted levels, just that the police chases need work. Not being able to pause offline is annoying too. Being able to enter a safehouse when cops are on you is dumb. Otherwise its a fun game. The only difference with Underground is the hip hop vibe, neons, Liveries etc. The head to heads are in Rivals just like Underground 2.

I had a lot of fun with the game and enjoyed it, but the loading screens for going in and out of garages, just if you want to bank points, are an issue in my opinion. Lost a race because you were wrecked? Well now you have to wait a minute to load into the garage and then another to spawn back out on the event start. It felt slow and a little frustrating. Apart from that, good game.
 
Those underground games came out because of how popular the original "The Fast and the Furious" and modified Japanese economic cars were. Even the newer FnF movies have moved more towards exotics and American Muscle.
 
Because Underground is too much like Most Wanted, and they've been tossing the series around to the point where they've almost fucked it up again.
 
I would be excited for an Underground 3, but with NFS being handed to Criterion, I'm not sure they could do it justice without some major changes to the way they make these types of games. I mean, they are good at what they do, certainly, but I wouldn't want an Underground 3 to be anything like the new Most Wanted, Hot Pursuit, or Rivals.

I've stopped buying NFS games after first Underground and from what I've seen didn't miss much

Well, you missed out on Underground 2, (and some would say the original Most Wanted.)
 
When they return the series to a closed track system, I will come back. I just don't like open world racing.

I would welcome an underground 3. It's been a long time since the last underground game.
 
I've stopped buying NFS games after first Underground and from what I've seen didn't miss much

You missed out on the far superior Underground 2 and Most Wanted (2005). The Criterion/Ghost Games NFS games aren't my cup of tea, but they aren't bad either.

NFS did have some total stinkers in there though. Anyone play Undercover or The Run?

When they return the series to a closed track system, I will come back. I just don't like open world racing.

I would welcome an underground 3. It's been a long time since the last underground game.

ProStreet, Shift, Shift 2?
 
I would be excited for an Underground 3, but with NFS being handed to Criterion, I'm not sure they could do it justice without some major changes to the way they make these types of games. I mean, they are good at what they do, certainly, but I wouldn't want an Underground 3 to be anything like the new Most Wanted, Hot Pursuit, or Rivals.

Rivals wasn't Criterion, it was Ghost Games. Although 80% of the staff moved over to Ghost Games so it virtually is. The handling model still felt arcadey but less Burnout, which is a good thing as I too didn't like the Burnout influence too much. I missed out on Most Wanted as it looked like such a shift in that direction. Hot Pursuit was really good, but I agree a new Underground should feel more authentic.
 
Most NFS fans seem to want the series to go back to the days of Underground and the original Most Wanted, and I would agree. The series has felt largely the same since Criterion started working on it, and I honestly don't see it going anywhere until a whole new team gets it's hands on the series.

They had a great formula going for them in the late PS2 days, and they couldn't just stick to it while updating the game. They should have stuck to the Underground formula and just changed up the cities, cars, and graphics over the years with minor changes to gameplay. It is one of the series out there that I feel like should have gotten the CoD treatment in delivering a yearly installment of the same core gameplay, but instead they felt the need to try something completely new every single time. And every single time you see countless comments on forums, twitter, facebook, or wherever that are always asking for a return to the Underground days. I honestly feel like Criterion's involvement should have started and ended with the 2010 Hot Pursuit as a quick, but temporary break from the Underground formula.
 
It's been more than a decade and we haven't seen any other Underground game. Why is EA not interested in continuing this series? NFS UG2 is definitely one of the best NFS games ever created. I remember playing this game on PS2 with my cousins during holidays. Spent countless hours in tuning cars. It was very entertaining.

But now all we are getting is hot pursuit rehashes with some stupid always online system attached that doesn't work many times.

What's your opinion GAF?

Underground 2 is actually the only NFS game I've ever bought myself, but I sure as hell enjoyed the shit out of it. Loved the driving/drifting mechanics in that game and I loved just cruising around the city. One of the few reasons I kept my original Xbox and games for it was this game.
 
EA is too busy having Criterion/Ghost Games reboot old NFS titles to make Underground 3.

Also Most Wanted(2005) was the sequel to Underground 2 they even reference the Underground games throughout the story in Most Wanted since you're supposed to be the same driver from those games. Just like how Carbon referenced Most Wanted, Undercover referenced Carbon, and so on.
 
EA, for better or worse, is a company, and has a better ability to judge what would sell to the mass audience than we, a segment of that audience, probably do.

What they probably banked on was diversity later on- so we had Undercover, The Run, Shift, MW, HP, Rivals. Whether or not this backfired, I don't know. I remember there was a rumor Underground would be the next Criterion game but we all know that's false.

Anyways, if I had to guess? They probably decided HP and MW were the better properties to bring back (in name) at the time. Underground would probably be the next on the list.

Just because they're a company doesn't mean they do a good job of judging the market. They've run so many studios into the ground.
 
I spent hours and hours adding fucking speakers to the inside of my car, spinners, neons everywhere, suicide doors...pretty much everything in Underground 2. It was awesome.
 
EA is too busy having Criterion/Ghost Games reboot old NFS titles to make Underground 3.

Also Most Wanted(2005) was the sequel to Underground 2 they even reference the Underground games throughout the story in Most Wanted since you're supposed to be the same driver from those games. Just like how Carbon referenced Most Wanted, Undercover referenced Carbon, and so on.
Sorry for going a little off-topic but it's sad seeing how Carbon is rarely talked about as a good NFS game. Honestly to me it was better than Most Wanted and offered the awesome canyon races and more in-depth customization.

I love that game so much! Still play it on 360
 
If I knew what box my Xbox was in I'd hook it up and go check out my cars, curious to see now how hideous I made them (or if at all) lol.
 
Just because they're a company doesn't mean they do a good job of judging the market. They've run so many studios into the ground.

Fair enough, I suppose, but they do put money and effort into deciding what should be greenlit. Regardless of their poor decisions, they do think critically about what to do.
 
Sorry for going a little off-topic but it's sad seeing how Carbon is rarely talked about as a good NFS game. Honestly to me it was better than Most Wanted and offered the awesome canyon races and more in-depth customization.

I love that game so much! Still play it on 360

I definitely agree, Carbon is a pretty great game. They bought back a good amount customization from U2, the canyon races are pretty amazing, and they bought back my favorite mode:Drift. The amount of time I spent in the drift mode on that game when it came out is ridiculous although looking back it was kinda barebones. Only thing I hated about the game was that it felt far too short but then again Most Wanted felt far too long to me at times(mostly when grinding milestones to get to your next rival). I'd put Most Wanted 05 and Carbon on same tier for myself.
 
I think the whole series went downhill after Carbon. Didn't like HP 2010 as well. I still can't believe how EA Blackbox made that NFS: Run Abomination.
 
I LOVE the Wii U version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and I'm still upset with how Electronic Arts & Nintendo had handled the marketing for that game (among other questionable things).
 
I'd be willing to bet that market testing and variant tests on games like Carbon, Undercover and ProStreet have suggested to them that Underground 3 would sell significantly worse, and that the current market doesn't actually want a tuner racer.

Let's see if The Crew will prove that point right or not.

Also, to note: slapping a "3" (or any number) for a dormant game is a surefire marketing way to kill any newcomers who don't know the series. It's why EA has dropped number for all of NFS, even though it's clear as hell that Rivals might as well have been called NFS:Hot Pursuit 4.
 
I was so disappointed in the new Most Wanted. Could have just taken MW 2005 and kept the gameplay the exact same but have even more customization and overhaul the graphics. Instead we got a piece of garbage. But I wasn't really surprised. NFS has been garbage for a long time.

I don't want a new Underground or Hot Pursuit or anything. It will just be butchered. :(
 
I honestly feel like Criterion's involvement should have started and ended with the 2010 Hot Pursuit as a quick, but temporary break from the Underground formula.
They did, both before and after. The team that got the ball before and after was Slightly Mad (NFS Shift 1 & 2), and after that was Black Box's 2.5 year in the making turd fest that was The Run.

Shift was clearly not a directly that EA was comfortable with (going more sim seemed to have scared people away from the NFS brand), and well, Black Box is pretty much dead. So yeah, who do you even task at this point in EA to make a racing game?
 
I was so disappointed in the new Most Wanted. Could have just taken MW 2005 and kept the gameplay the exact same but have even more customization and overhaul the graphics. Instead we got a piece of garbage. But I wasn't really surprised. NFS has been garbage for a long time.

I don't want a new Underground or Hot Pursuit or anything. It will just be butchered. :(

I won't buy a single NfS again until EA takes Criterion off duty. I don't want to watch a 10 seconds slow-mo sequence each time I have a crash and I want to EARN my vehicles again (why did they just stand around in the new MW?). I managed to play two hours of the new MW until I uninstalled it and played the original Most Wanted instead. So much better.
 
That whole Street Racing fascination fell off pretty hard when Fast the the Furious stopped being popular for a while. To say the first and second NFS: Underground weren't...borrowing elements from those films would be generous.
 
That whole car modding craze was kinda a last decade thing.

Maybe we'll see it in the 2020s when people look back on the 00s.
 
Rivals is great, but not super-great.
Most Wanted (2005) was the best.

EA put just enough budget into these games, but with a little more time in the oven they could be truly awesome. If they make a Rivals 2, for example, and fix some of the soft spots, they could have a classic.
 
Because Underground is too much like Most Wanted, and they've been tossing the series around to the point where they've almost fucked it up again.

This.
I don't think the whole underground vibe would be received so well today. The games were good but personally I don't habe any interest in that style anymore.
Was pretty satisfied with HP2010, MW and Rivals so no complaints about the quality of NFS either from me.
 
That whole Street Racing fascination fell off pretty hard when Fast the the Furious stopped being popular for a while. To say the first and second NFS: Underground weren't...borrowing elements from those films would be generous.

Those underground games came out because of how popular the original "The Fast and the Furious" and modified Japanese economic cars were. Even the newer FnF movies have moved more towards exotics and American Muscle.

That whole car modding craze was kinda a last decade thing.

Maybe we'll see it in the 2020s when people look back on the 00s.

This.
 
I think it was once a thing six or seven years ago, but then it was cancelled when EA did one of the few NFS rescopes.

Why is EA not making Road Rash?
Road Rash has been cancelled like five times.
 
That whole car modding craze was kinda a last decade thing.

Maybe we'll see it in the 2020s when people look back on the 00s.

car modding certainly hasn't died down at all. that culture is alive and well i assure you.

why EA refuses to do another Underground game, I really don't know. the fact that EA greenlit and released the abysmal NFS: The Run but won't make another Underground game is even more upsetting. as much as I loved some of the more recent NFS games, the Hot Pursuit formula is getting stale.

it'd definitely be refreshing if EA took the franchise to a fictional city that'd support a more versatile racing formula. bringing back the drag races, drifting and classic circuit racing would be great, especially if cops were added this time around to the circuit races. making cops playable would also be a good thing to keep. couple that with the All-Drive feature that Rivals added and the multiplayer for a new Underground/Rivals hybrid would be huge; customized cars, cops, lots of racing modes and a city to play in would be a great direction for the series to take.

speaking of NFS: The Run, that game definitely teased us with this pre-order bonus lol.
NISSAN-370Z-AND-SKYLINE-R32-NFS-UNDERGROUND.jpg
 
Dont know, as I remember NFS was just a racer being overshadowed by the the likes of GT, NFSU was a change of pace, was very successful and NFSU2, Most Wanted became game's that (in the UK atleast) would dominate the sales charts because of it and even today it's popularity is because of the NFSU games.
It's decline in sales is more then likey due to how it's moved away from what made NFSU so great, they need to return to that series and better them instead of giving is a watered down version.
 
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