The future of Need for Speed revealed

There have been people on Black Box that have helped Criterion with this particular game. Some of the rendering has been helped. There's always more overlap than you would normally imagine among all studios. There's always something that's a little bit late and then someone needs to come in and help.

DICE people helped BioWare guys building Dragon Age. Small things. You'll see a couple of DICE people appearing in the Dragon Age credits. You'll see some Army of Two guys from Montreal appearing in Medal of Honor credits. That always happens at a big company.

There's obviously a more natural overlap between a Criterion and a Black Box because they do the same type of job.

I don't have the details. We let them borrow two guys for a month. They may have done some art or programming. I wouldn't say DICE as a brand had a significant impact on it, more than the fact we helped them.

The idea for us is to come out with a holiday product, around Christmas time every year, that is true to the core tenets of an action NFS game, which is usually what most of our consumers are after.

We also think we can compete and ultimately become market-leading in the simulation authentic motorsport segment. One of the strongest points we have is, apart from the fact we have a very talented developer working with us and we now have an established brand underneath the NFS umbrella in that segment, we also have the advantage of being a multi-platform offering.

Forza can only be bought on Xbox and Gran Turismo is only available on PlayStation. We're the only one right now that is of a significant weight that can offer something up on all those platforms.

I'm not going to comment on the sales because EA has an earnings report going out next week and we will unveil sales in that meeting. What I can say is the game didn't meet our quality expectations. In order to be successful in that space, we're going to have to have a game that is really, really strong.

Medal of Honor is to some extent judged harsher than it should be. The game is better than today's reviews are indicating.

I'm not going to say a specific number. I'm proud of what the game is and proud of what the team did. I just think the market is obviously telling us they think the game is X. We need to convince the market we can make something they appreciate more, particularly to be able to compete.

We're looking at that clearly. We're taking that seriously. I'm not at all saying Medal of Honor is a failure. It is a successful reboot of that franchise. We're going to be strong in the future.

I can't talk about that, either. I sound like a broken record!

Of course. Why not? Absolutely they're working on something.

No.

I can't comment. That's something you're going to have to wait until we announce whatever information we have on that brand.

We are obviously working on the PC platform and we'll be ready to talk about that shortly. You should see information around the PC platform in the not too distant future.

We'll comment on it when we have information.

It's going well. I'm very happy with what we have and I'm really excited about showing it to the world because we have something that is going to be very, very cool.

You'll see. You'll know probably sooner than I will. You are going to be able to see it in the not too distant future. The marketing guys would kill me if I told you when.

Battlefield 3 will be seen as a true sequel to Battlefield 2. But considering the success of Bad Company, we haven't buried that at all. It's something we're looking at what to do with.

But right now we're focused on making the best possible game for consumers to enjoy, and that's obviously Battlefield 3.

Mirror's Edge is an IP that's close to my heart and EA's as well. It was a bold move from us. I'm proud we made it. It obviously didn't reach the commercial success we wanted, even though it wasn't bad at all.

I still think as a company we're going to talk about it when we're going to talk about it. What I can say is, we haven't buried it. We're absolutely continuing to support Mirror's Edge as an IP. When we're ready to talk about it, we'll talk about it.