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With EA’s Shift 2 Unleashed pencilled in for a spring release, the lead designer of EA’s game has resumed the offensive launched against rival offerings Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport.
Last week EA’s senior VP Patrick Soderlund stated: I think [in Gran Turismo Sony] has a very sterile, almost car collecting type of product where that’s mainly what we do and I think we can offer something different.”
Now speaking to Eurogamer, Shift 2’s lead designer Andy Tudor has turned the publisher’s attentions to Microsoft’s Forza series.
Those two games [Forza and GT] 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.”
And Tudor reckons Shift 2 has a decent shot of claiming market leadership in the racing simulation genre.
We think we can compete and ultimately become market leading in the simulation authentic motorsport segment,” he claimed. 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.”
