Riccitiello's presentation focused heavily on the profit potential of EA's existing franchise and upcoming titles. "What we're talking about with Electronic Arts is focusing and building the most profitable possible business out of (our) collection of properties," he explained, before going through a list of what the publisher is bringing to the table in fiscal year 2011, which starts on April 1st, 2010.

The recently-announced Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 made the list of course, as did Crysis 2 and Skate 3, with Riccitiello expressing pride in taking the skate boarding video game segment from Activision's Tony Hawk franchise. EA Sports figured heavily in the list as well, with FIFA, Madden, and Tiger Woods golf joined by the mixed martial arts title MMA.

Big plans for existing franchises was another running theme during the presentation. Listing off games, Riccitiello included The Sims franchise, hinting at big announcements coming up in regards to bringing the franchise multiplatform. He also indicated big plans for EA Sports Active and the Need for Speed franchise, with new games coming from both franchises.

Some of the games listed weren't technically games at all. Paid downloadable content for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins were listed alongside the full titles, with the two BioWare RPGs inspiring the hope that one day, DLC sales would generate more income than the games themselves. "These are ongoing businesses. It wouldn't surprise me over time - it probably won't happen with these editions - to generate more in PDLC then in the package."

While we'll certainly see more from EA in the coming year, these would be the titles to watch. Be sure to bookmark this article, so if anything on the list tanks you can point and laugh.

He made the comment in a conference call earlier today, which was held to provide a "please explain" for the company's decision to axe a whopping 1500 employees.

Next year, eh? Not bad for a game we've literally heard or seen nothing about.

100 million is a large number. According to EA, it represents nearly every household in America, and is three times the population of Canada, which helps put the over 100 million Need for Speed games sold since 1994 into perspective. The driving game series has sold more copies than passenger cars in the U.S. during the same time period. Of course most of us don't trade our cars in for a new model every year, and you can't lease a Need for Speed game.

Did you know that Need for Speed games have been released in 22 languages in more than 60 countries, or that all of the Need for Speed boxes, if laid out end-to-end, would span 173,609 football fields? No? How about the fact that players have driven more than 279 billion miles in the games, and generated more than 17 trillion vehicle customizations? Impressive, right?

What's most impressive is that EA has managed to release a new Need for Speed on average every year since 1994, and the series still hasn't grown stale for countless players. With a few exceptions, ever new version has managed to differentiate itself from the others enough to keep us from constantly whining about another game coming out. That takes some serious skill. Well played, EA.

During my interview with EA CEO John Riccitiello last week at E3, I asked if EA's two big racing brands, Need for Speed and Burnout, would be merging into one.

No, Riccitiello said, but the Burnout team at EA's Criterion Games, led by Alex Ward, are making the next Need for Speed. "Alex is one of the people in the industry I would analogize to the great filmmakers, etc.," Riccitiello said. "He is a true creative visionary. We had a great fight about what the next Need For Speed would be like. Of course, he gets to win because it's his call. It's not that I'm without an opinion on it."

That still sounded like a possible Burnout-NFS merger to me, so I pressed Riccitiello on whether Burnout would be folded into Need for Speed.

"I don't think you can fold Burnout into Need for Speed, because a lot of people like Burnout," he said. "We don't have a plan right now for a separate major launch on Burnout, because the team doing it is working on a revolutionary take on Need for Speed. I don't know, if Paramount, in addition to owning Star Trek owned Star Wars, which isn't the way it is, I don't think you'd merge them."

I pointed out that Star Trek Wars could be an interesting movie, one I'd watch. "Captain Kirk meets R2D2," laughed Riccitiello. "It'd have to be in a Spaceballs kind of way."

Riccitiello did not say when Criterion's Need for Speed would be released. Need for Speed Shift and Need for Speed Nitro, which, collectively, will be released for all major platforms this year, are up next.

Still freaks me out that I'm interested in a Need for Speed game. Then again, it freaks me out even more that EA had the good sense to ditch the "Fast & the Furious" angle the franchise had taken in recent years, and make the whole thing a little classier.

Anyway, this new trailer and screens are here in honour of the announcement that in addition to featuring over 65 real cars, the game will also feature 18 real tracks.

Blur - Activision is hoping for a Call Of Duty-scale new racing franchise, from Bizarre Creations. Realistic cars, low-stress handling, mixed with Mario Kart -style pick-ups on the track. (Expected for all major platforms)

Split/Second - Disney's Hollywood-action racing game, includes huge track-deforming effects that players can trigger, like destroying gas stations or causing buildings to fall and alter the course. (Expected for all major platforms. Preview here.)

Need for Speed x3? - EA's got a Need For Speed: Nitro for the Wii, the more realistic Need For Speed: Shift for higher-end consoles and PC. Plus there's a Need for Speed: World free PC game coming. Maybe we'll see that too?

Fuel - Codesmasters' racing game with its massive world will be out the week of E3, which means it'll maybe show up at the big show.

MotorStorm Arctic Edge - Sony's PSP revival is supposed to include a cold-weather edition of the MotorStorm franchise, the one that pits cars against trucks against motorcycles against craggy cliffs. (PSP/PS2. Preview here.)

UPDATE: More avid racing games than I pointed out that I excluded the deserving Dirt 2. Consider that sin confessed publicly. Game's coming to all current platforms, handhelds and PC.

Bond Racing project - Bizarre Creations is expected to be working on a James Bond racing game of some sort, but we don't' hold out much hope that it will be at E3.

New Forza? - It's rumored, and it seems awfully plausible.

Gran Turismo PSP or 5? - GTPSP, announced in 2004, is Duke Nukem Forever of racing games. Despite the game being a favorite E3 guess of podcast pundits such as the guys on Listen Up, who wants to bet that a portable game or it's long-in-the-making first full-sized PS3 big brother will be at E3?

What's the trend here?

EA and Activision are in a deathmatch/deathrace with their competing racing franchises, pitting the branding power of Activision against the franchise success of the slightly faded Need For Speed line. In general, those games and the others point to racing games tilting more toward the arcade-y side of things.

While the racing games of E3 2009 look to have an arcade style, the cars themselves will likely continue to trend toward realistic visual styles. After all, with Nintendo coasting on sales of Mario Karts for Wii and DS — plus having just released ExciteBots Trick Racing — the chief purveyors of cutesy cars are likely on the racing sidelines for this year's big show.

But when I arrived at the EA Mobile hands-on session, the only game they had to show me was Scrabble. Which came out like a year ago. What gives?

Well — to EA Mobile, what's important here is "delivering on the promise of mobile." To do that, says VP Travis Boatman, a company has to have a great device to work with with a great operating system and a great merchandising-distribution platform.

"We've always believed in mobile," said Boatman. "We're in this for the long haul. And it's not going to stop here."

So when we got Scrabble on both Facebook and iPhone last year, that wasn't the end of it for EA Mobile. With the release of the Apple 3.0 firmware for the iPhone, they've connected the two versions so you can play against up to four people cross-platform (well, cross iPhone/PC).

I have to admit, this is pretty slick. You can see the moves your PC-bound buddy makes without refreshing the screen on your iPhone and you can even carry on a chat in the chat box.

But as nifty as it is, it's still not Wolfenstein RPG.

Look for the update to your Scrabble app sometime tomorrow or — if there's some SNAFU on the Apple side — sometime over the next few days.

I know, I know. It feels as strange to type that as it must be for you to read it. But just look at this trailer. Gone are the neon lights, the box art sluts and the general pitching at a bottom-dollar demographic. In its place, a racer. On race tracks. Which looks to be continuing PGR's insistence (one that, it should be noted, Codemasters' Grid joyfully continues) on forgoing a by-the-numbers simulation of a race car in favour of simulating the experience of driving a race car.

Love the way it handles those crashes.

Of course, we see this after Maggie (sniff ... sniff) is gone - she could read this stuff cold and tell us what is up. I ran a chunk through Babelfish and found out it translates as "Terminal Velocity Pleasant Sensation Online." Ohhhhh, brother ... All the text is in a flash presentation, so running it through Google's translation does no good.

It'll be free to play (as per the norm with many MMOs in Asia) and probably monetized through microtransactions. An extremely broken-English writeup at Online Games Magazine suggests this game is about three months away from launch in Taiwan.

Need for Speed: World Online [site, in Mandarin, via Online Games Magazine]

Blackbox - despite recent layoffs - still have the manpower and the time to work on not just NFS: World Online, but a "future action title in the franchise". Action? Since Shift is going the simulation route, Nitro the Mario Kart one and World Online the...online market, could he mean a return to the get-your-cans-out-luv, bright pink Honda racer boy theme of the last few games?

EA Games' Keith Munro, meanwhile, has said the sudden reboot of the series has nothing to do with recent financial woes, and more to do with EA's recent move towards "crafting different games for different audiences and their unique tastes in the driving category".

EA Black Box doing secret NFS game [Eurogamer]

Speaking with Eurogamer, EA have revealed that there'll be three new NFS games released in 2009, the idea being to seperate the series and provide games for the "core", casual and online gamer alike.

Need for Speed: Shift is the "core" title, and will be out on PS3, 360, PC & PSP (which is seemingly another nail in the coffin of the existing NFS PSP project) this fall. Also out in the fall will be Need for Speed: Nitro for the DS & Wii, which presumably has giant-head racers and car vaults. Finally, Need for Speed: World Online is a free-to-play online title, due for release in Asia in the summer before a Western release around Christmas.

So who's behind these games, now that Blackbox staff (the most recent devs on the series) have been gutted? Four different studios, and Blackbox are still one of them.

NFS: Shift is a far more serious take on racing than previous titles. Which you'd expect, with Slightly Mad - new custodians of GT Legends and GTR 2 devs Blimey! - working on it.

NFS: Nitro is being developed by EA Montreal, and will be an "arcade racer with a fresh and unique visual style that is very Need for Speed. The game will be rich and deep and will appeal to experienced arcade racers as well as casual players". Right. Expect Mario Kart with loud mufflers and garish paint schemes.

Finally, NFS: World Online is a joint project between the remnants of Blackbox and EA Singapore. There's no mention of microtransactions yet, but as a free-to-play game, we'd imagine driving anything beefier than a Mazda 3 will cost you real-world money.

Revamped NFS series launches this year [Eurogamer]

The count numbered as many as 55 EA staffers, according to a regularly reliable source, one who tells us that the cuts might also mean at least one casualty on the software side: Need For Speed for the PlayStation Portable.

The last entry in the long-running driving series, Need For Speed: Undercover, was called out as a likely underperformer by analysts following disappointing results. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that if sales of the console versions of NFS: Undercover were disappointing that sales of the PSP version, handled by fellow Vancouverites Piranha Games, would be any better.

If true, the series may have fallen in line with EA's plans to cut "SKUs from the bottom levels of profitability."

EA CEO John Riccitiello had voiced his complaints about the status of the series, calling Undercover's predecessor Need For Speed: Pro Street just "okay." Following Pro Street, the Need For Speed team was staffed up, split and given longer development cycles on the games, a decision that may have proven more costly than beneficial.

When contacted for clarification, EA reps responded with a reminder.

"As announced in February, all EA divisions and facilities worldwide are subject to a cost cutting initiative that will impact roughly 10 percent of the employee population," read a statement. "Those cuts will take place between December and the end of our fiscal year in March."

The latest rumor is that Blackbox, the folks behind the Need for Speed franchise and others, are next on the chopping block, with the layoff axe cutting into the studio as early as this week.

From all that we've gathered and seen over the past month or so, it looks like the cuts announced back in December are a trimming of most departments and studios, rather than deep cuts in any one place.

The publisher still plans to close nine studios, but the rest of those cuts will be across the board, we're told. The rumored Blackbox cuts, for instance, are part of the studio consolidation happening in Burnaby, at EA Canada.

We've emailed a few folks at EA for comment, but with the person who usually comments on these stories herself laid off, there's no telling when or if we will hear back.

Electronic Playground did not name its source. Reached for comment, EA said: "We're working through a process on people, products, and facilities at EA and don't have any announcements today." That's no defense for a franchise that goes back to 1994, so, it sounds like something's up.

Need for Speed: Undercover released to very unenthusiastic reviews, to put it charitably. It was one of the titles named by analysts in this week's news that holiday sales would be sharply lower than expected, news that sent the publisher's stock into a dive. EA CEO John Riccitello said the company would cut titles from its "bottom levels of profitability," which exempts EA's sports catalogue.

EA-owned Black Box Studios is the home of NFS. But it also develops FIFA, NBA Live, NHL and others for EA. Correction, that is EA Canada. EA Black Box makes Need for Speed and Skate. Killing NFS would be a serious blow.

Need for Cuts [Electric Playground via 1Up]

Need for Speed is all about the racing, however, and EA will be inviting the top drifters and time attack cars from all over the world to compete in an international race battle, along with a manufacturer time attack exhibition.

The event will be open to the public, and is penciled in for the Brands Hatch Circuit near London, though negotiiations are still underway. Hit the jump for more details, or visit www.needforspeedlive.com, where I am certain they will eventually catch up with the press release.

EA BRINGS NEED FOR SPEED TO LIFE IN NEXT SUMMER'S BIGGEST DRIFT AND TIME ATTACK RACING EVENT
London to Host Need for Speed Live 2009 International Race Event

GUILDFORD, UK – November 5, 2008 – Today at the SEMA show in Las Vegas, Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) announced Need for Speed™ Live, a unique festival and competition that celebrates car culture. This first-time event will be open to the public and will be hosted next summer at the world famous Brands Hatch Circuit* located near London, England. The weekend-long experience will be a showcase of entertainment, videogames, music, car shows and displays designed to appeal to fans of racing games, proud owners of hot vehicles, fans of exotic cars and motorsports enthusiasts.

Need for Speed Live will invite some of the world’s top drifters and time attack cars from across Europe, North America and Japan to gather in one location to compete in a battle of the continents. Need for Speed Live will also include demonstrations by some of the world’s most famous race and exotic cars in a manufacturer time attack exhibition.

“For over 14 years, Need for Speed has been at the forefront of automotive culture and this Live race event brings the spirit of Need for Speed games to life with all of the energy, adrenaline and sexiness that the franchise represents,” said Rod Chong, Creative Director for Need for Speed Live. “Need for Speed Live will definitely push each driver and their cars to the limit as they contend with dramatic elevation changes and harrowing fourth-gear 100 mph drifts.”
For more information on Need for Speed Live, please visit www.needforspeedlive.com.

* To be confirmed; Negotiations in progress.

Mr. Stubble here may be bursting at the seams to get his hands on Need For Speed Undercover, but I'd have a hard time telling you what differentiates this particular Need For Speed from the previous half-dozen. That may be based on the extremely low ratio of gameplay contained within, but is more likely due to the frequency of Burnout, Forza Motorsport, Project Gotham Racing, Midnight Club and, of course, Need For Speed releases.

The whole thing sounds sort of erotic, based on the monologue from John Q. Stubble, which may be a big factor in my aversion to learning more. Also, NFSUC looks like a dirty acronym. Potentially, gaming's dirtiest?

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the Vancouver-based Need For Speed developers (pictured) have been slaving away on a brutal 12-month dev cycle for each entry in the series. Admitting that Need For Speed: Pro Street was just "okay", Riccitiello says that they've since added more staff, split the team in half, and put them on 24-month cycles, a winning formula that will hopefully make NFS: Undercover better than "okay." Congratulations to all involved.

Riccitiello: We were torturing Vancouver studio [GamesIndustry.biz]

If that's not enough Need for Speed ProStreet for you, EA has also announced Energizer's Community Race Weekend, starting February 22. PS3 and Xbox 360 racers can compete for prizes and bragging rights, once they're registered at the official Race Day page.