Burnout is a household name among racing game fanatics, and has been running for over two decades as of today, but there has not actually been a new Burnout game in the past ten, that’s right, TEN years! Surely EA does not mean to let this franchise go neglected, right? We know for a fact they don’t, since they released the Burnout: Paradise Remastered in the next week a year ago. Let’s take a look at the prospect of a new Burnout game coming out, and if there is any chance of that coming out this year. Right, let’s get into it.
The major reason behind the fact that we have only received one remaster of a 2008 game in the past decade from the Burnout series is the internal goings-on at EA. They first gave the job of developing Need for Speed away from Criterion, who also developed the Burnout series, and handed it over to Ghost Games. Criterion was all set to steer away from the racing genre. As a result, many fans were left anguished and assumed the Burnout series was dead. After Ghost Games failed to make any real impact with their entry to the NFS franchise, they were rebranded back to EA Gothenburg, and served as a Frostbite support studio. NFS went back to Criterion, meaning they could get back to working on racing games, and developed 2020’s Burnout: Paradise Remastered. If not for all the confusion and the apparent move away from racing games for Criterion, there is no doubt we would have had an actual new entry to the series by now. The original founders of Criterion left to form their own studio, but EA still had plans on a new burnout game, which they showcased at E3 2014. They later admitted that it was not being pursued anymore. With all this in mind, it seems as though EA really did let Burnout die out!
