jayson74 wrote:
Where was it said that the reason Ferrari isn't in certain games because of the type of game? Is this some type of official piece of information, or do people just speculate and post like it came from Ferrari themselves?
If you know a better reason why Ferrari would suddenly ditch the most popular racing game franchise of the time after years of being featured in it, I'd like to hear it. The two events, Need For Speed turning bad and Ferrari jumping ship, are consistent with eachother.
Ferrari are a very prestigious brand (which is just another word for incredibly stuck-up). They are even picky about who buys their cars, why wouldn't they be picky about what games they are featured in?
Of course, it's also possible that after Underground's success EA decided they weren't going to make real Need For Speed games anymore and let go of the licenses to various exotic car manufacturers, and when they finally realized they had made a mistake, it was too late to negotiate for Ferrari licenses. I'm pretty sure the only reason Ferrari returned to Need For Speed is due to Atari facing bankruptcy and being forced to sell it's assets (including licensing rights). AFAIK Atari was the only company that held rights to use Ferrari's on all the platforms, and since Rivals features Ferrari's on all platforms, that makes sense. (back when EA released Ferrari's for Shift it was only on Xbox due to the fact that they were negotiating with Microsoft, and Microsoft only holds rights to use Ferraris on Xbox and PC).