Need for Speed: Rivals and other next-gen racers prove there’s “real hunger for the genre,” says Ghost Games

By Stephany Nunneley

Need for Speed: Rivals executive producer Marcus Nilsson is pleased that there are other racing games in the pipeline for next-gen: Forza 5, DriveClub and The Crew. According to Nilsson, the development of said titles not only proves there’s a consumer demand, but such competition will push racing developers to innovate.

Speaking with Polygon, Nilsson, however, doesn’t really see the aforementioned games as ‘direct’ competition.

“I think it’s so great that there are other games coming,” he said. “The more games we get into this genre of action racing, the better. Because then we’re going to need to innovate. You’ve got [Ubisoft’s] The Crew as well, and we’re all going to be pushing innovation forward.

“We’re certainly doing our part in that deal of trying to get a new experience onto the consoles for the next generation. It’s just a new way of playing and I think that’s what you really need from games when we have a transition.”

Nilsson also said in the interview that developing Remote Play with PlayStation Vita for the PS4 version wasn’t that difficult.

“From day one we had it up and running,” he said. “Believe me that there are plenty of other things that are difficult with next-generation consoles, but that specific feature of running on the Vita is not quite simple, but very surprising how easy it was to get it running.”

Need for Speed: Rivals is a launch title for both PS4 and Xbox One.