CoD-style development 'has been huge' for

Although the Need for Speed games have still been coming in thick and fast lately, Black Box has actually been working on new entry The Run for a number of years. In an interview with CVG EA Black Box's Jason DeLong, who is also senior producer on The Run, was asked how important breaking out of the yearly cycle was to the development team.He replied by calling the move a huge step that allows Black Box to take the necessary steps to ensure The Run is the highest quality product it can be."It was huge for us and I think that was the great thing the company recognised, Black Box was doing Need for Speed year over year between Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted and so on," he said."At a certain point when you have to put these games out year after year you don't have time to reinvest in yourself, neither in your team or your technology," he explained.DeLong went on to praise EA for recognising that the extra time is a necessity by adopting "a split studio development, similar to what Activision did with Call of Duty and Treyarch and Infinity Ward".In the same interview DeLong also said he believes that the decline in the racing game genre were not helped by 'innovations'. Tamoor Hussain