EA ditching NASCAR games
They were just going round in circles.
EA Sports has "no plans right now" to develop any further games under the NASCAR motor racing licence, boss Peter Moore has told GameSpot.
The US-centric oval racing series falls by the wayside to make room for the addition of MMA - mixed martial arts - to the EA Sports roster, he explained.
"There are no plans right now for NASCAR from EA," he said. "We had a great relationship over the years that I thoroughly enjoyed when I first got here. Unfortunately... we had to make some tough trade-offs.
"We've had to redeploy some of those folks. A number of the NASCAR team has moved over now to EA Sports MMA, which will be shipping next year."
EA has been making NASCAR games for over a decade - since 1997's NASCAR 98 for Saturn and PlayStation, to be precise. The most recent was cartoon spin-off NASCAR Kart Racing for the Wii, which saw a US-only release in February this year.
The end of the agreement with NASCAR leaves EA Sports without a motor racing licence. It's good timing, then, that EA's Need for Speed series is about to get serious, with Slightly Mad Studios' simulation game Need for Speed: SHIFT, out here on 18th September.