NFS Shift 2: We won't add 1000 irrelevant cars

Spring. Sorry to be vague, but it's spring at the moment.

Bunny rabbits and... No, I'm not sure about the exact dates.

We've got a long-term strategy that we want to make a competing, relevant sim game. Shift 1 was the first step towards that. If you look back over Need for Speed's history, maybe the early roots of that started in ProStreet, getting people who aren't used to circuits.

And then with Shift 1 we very deliberately said, 'We're on circuits now.' Shift 2 is an evolution of that, taking on the feedback from the community, feedback from critics, innovating in key areas and deliberately going after the sim category now the Need for Speed franchise is open to many types of game, like Hot Pursuit and World.

So we're very clearly going after the sim guys.

Like many games, many movies and TV shows, we always knew we wanted to do another one. We had so many ideas. We always knew we wanted to add more features and innovate in new areas. Towards the end of Shift 1 we were starting to think of Shift 2.

There certainly wasn't a, 'Let's see how the sales figures go and then push out a sequel,' because it's not that type of game. We clearly innovated in key areas in Shift 1 on the core experience of driving, making it visceral, making it fun and accessible, XP and precision versus aggression.

This time around we wanted to streamline, innovate and take that core experience to the next level.

Those two games are on pedestals at the moment. When we're thinking about what we want to do in this game, it's not a numbers game. We're not going to add a thousand irrelevant cars. Both those games, to me, are almost like encyclopaedias. You've got a thousand cars, a thousand tracks, whatever, and basically the game is about earning cash to get another car, earning cash to get another car. It's like a grind. It's almost like stamp collecting.

That's not where the fun is. The fun is behind the wheel, feeling you're on the edge, pushing it to the limit, putting in the cars that are relevant and cool to drive, allowing you to completely customise those from factory to the works level we had in Shift 1, and giving you the chance to then play against your friends in a social way.

Taking Autolog, which is present in Hot Pursuit, to the next level, adding more features and making the core gameplay really fun as opposed to just adding five variations of the 1986 Toyota Corolla or something like that.

From what we've found, most people have 10-15 cars in their garage anyway. They have the first car they ever buy in career, they have a car they potentially own, a Ford Focus or a Golf or something like that, and then whatever game you talk about, whether it's got classes like Forza or licences like GT or tiers like Shift 1, people usually get a car from each tier or each category in the game. And then they get their dream car, the car they've always wanted, a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or a Porsche. That's seven right there.

Then, generally, people fill out the rest with cars they want to try out, like a Dodge Challenger, that they may not have access to. So people have 10-15 cars anyway. They certainly don't fill their garage up with every single car there is in the game – all 500 of them.

It's a different way of thinking, basically. We want to take those guys on. We want to make a more authentic experience. We've put in a new elite handling model and given you more access over deadzone, sensitivity, steering aids, break assists, all that kind of stuff, to allow you to dial in the experience you want.

We all come from different backgrounds. You may love muscle cars and might think Burnout is the best game in the world. I may like Japanese tuner cars, and may think Hot Pursuit is the best game in the world. We have very different views on racing, so we want to make sure everyone is able to get the experience they want from it.