EA’s official Need for Speed YouTube channel has seen all except one of its videos removed, which teases the premiere of a new announcement tomorrow morning. Similarly, the official Need For Speed Instagram account has seen every single one of its posts removed. The seeming series-wide whitewashing could point towards a complete franchise reboot being unveiled soon, which would fit with the comments made by EA’s Ben Walke regarding the new 2019 entry that we reported on yesterday.
You can see the damage for yourself by visiting the Need For Speed YouTube and Instagram pages. Whilst it’s incredibly common for companies to transition away from previous entries in a franchise when they have a shiny new one to promote, it isn’t the norm at all for them to nuke a historic property’s past almost entirely. Of course, this could serve as an acknowledgment of the fact that the long-running racing franchise hasn’t had the smoothest of rides, to put it kindly, with many high highs and low lows spanning its (so far) 23-game run.
ALSO: New Need For Speed game confirmed for 2019 release
With the latest entry—2017’s Need For Speed Payback—having drawn a middling critical and commercial response, it looks as though EA might have gone back to the drawing board and concocted a way for this year’s game to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. With only the official forums for the previous games in the franchise left standing, however, let’s hope the apparent confidence in this new direction is well-placed, or else fans of the discarded previous Need For Speed games might not be best impressed.
There are now less than 24 hours remaining on the countdown clock, and with a “full unveiling” already promised, that means there shouldn’t be long until we all learn what exactly it is that EA has up its sleeve for the latest installment of the lucrative racing franchise.
