EA Parks NASCAR Franchise. For Now or For Good?

In the economic hard times of late, many industries have been greatly effected.  One, in particular, is NASCAR.  Stock car racing is one of the biggest sports in the country.  Now I know many people will argue with that because they might not watch NASCAR, but just look logically; the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama holds 125,000 people, the Daytona 500 is one of the most watched single day events every year, right behind the Super Bowl, and sponsors pay millions of dollars just to get their logo on a car knowing that if that car wins, the fans buy the product.  But recently, with companies not willing to shell out so much money, sponsors have gone down, ticket sales have dropped and the revenue of NASCAR in general is low.  And it doesn’t stop there…

For the first time in over a decade, EA Sports will NOT be releasing a NASCAR game this year.  Last serious NASCAR being NASCAR 2009 in ’08 for Xbox 360, PS2 and PS3. According to EA Sports President Peter Moore speaking with Gamespot, both sides agreed that there was no need for an annal release of the NASCAR series.  NASCAR had also talked about not giving exclusive rights to EA after their contract expired. So what does this mean for the series. Will their be anymore? Will the franchise go to another publisher/developer?

The most recent NASCAR game: NASCAR Kart Racing for the Wii was very cartoonish, and if any NASCAR game is going to come out in the near future, it will most likely follow that type of genre.  The tendency with racing games nowadays is for more of the street racing experience offered in Need For Speed or Midnight Club. Like anything else the car scene changes over years. Exotic cars in beautiful terrains, Street racing with hooked up vehicles, rallying, and GT track racing have all come, gone and will come again. When will Nascar have its shot again? Only time will tell if theirs need for it.

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The Bad Man
The Bad Man
I am a sports gamer. If a sports game is released, I play it.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Ok so EA isnt going to publish a NASCAR game this year. This could be by far the best news for the NASCAR series of video games. EA has sorely screwed up this racing franchise and each new addition has been horrible. The lame attempt at a simulatoin version of NASCAR didnt work on more than one occasion, the total arcade version almost worked for about 10 minutes. The problem isnt with the NASCAR racing style of game its the developer and the producer.

    This would be the perfect time to hand this franchise over to a true racing/diving expert and that would be Codemasters. This house seems to do the right investigation about a new title. They actually try to make the game appeal to all gamers from casual to expert. Take Dirt/Dirt2 and Grid for example. These are the best driving games out there. Why? not because they are graphically superior its because they work on all levels of gaming expertise.

    Ea doesnt care about the NASCAR franchise, its just money to them and a back burnner fill in when we dont have a AAA release available.

    I urge NASCAR to look at the history with EA and see that they arent helping the sport. As a racing fan of all motor sports i as EA to either put a real video game team together to make a new NASCAR game or let it go and stick with Madden because it is one of the three things you do well and i mean only three.

    Joe (HKYMAN66)

  2. I can’t fully blame EA for the franchise. I mean there is only so much you can do with the franchise itself. But it seems that every year that they added new things, they took older things away. I was a big fan of starting off in the lower levels and have it be hard to get contracts to move up, or buying teams and hiring teammates, or even the button matching to get a faster pit time. If they would have kept the features that they took out, PLUS added more stuff each year, the game would be 5X better.

  3. I was glad when EA wouldnt be making NASCAR games any more. They’ve done a horrible job for the last 4 years or so. Was a fan of EA in the past but wont buy anything from them any more. Codemasters would be a great publisher for the game. I do agree that they would turn out a pretty decent game.
    I’m just really happy that PD has the license. Iknow they’ll do a great job. Just hoping theres no made up drivers that consistently plagued the games EA made.

  4. I never really was a fan of the franchise either. I bought a total of 1 whole NASCAR game and I only liked the music that was in it. The whole game play is horrible, the graphics were not that great and the voice overs were just bad. It was boring. The only game in my opinion that will ever make it big in the EA Sports series is Madden and all the NBA games. Those are the best period. Goodbye NASCAR, hope to never see you again anytime soon!

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