Burnout Dev's Extreme Sports Game Canceled and Here's Why

At E3 2014, Electronic Arts revealed a new extreme sports project from Burnout and Need for Speed developer Criterion Games. The untitled project was only in the prototype stage, but it looked promising, with hints of the Burnout Paradise chaos but with a greater variety of vehicles.

Now, EA has confirmed that the project is no longer happening, as Criterion is instead shifting its efforts to support the Star Wars series.

"While they've moved on from the previous project they've spoken about and aren't pursuing it, they are continuing to build new ideas and experiment with new IP for EA, in addition to continuing to collaborate with other EA studios," an EA representative told GameSpot today.

Criterion is contributing to EA's Star Wars Battlefront VR game, while the studio also worked on the speeder bikes in the regular version of Battlefront.

Fans of extreme sports games aren't entirely out of luck. Ubisoft announced its own game in the genre, Steep, last week at E3. A developer told GameSpot that they were looking out for the return of Criterion's extreme sports game. Now, Ubisoft has the market to itself, at least in terms of AAA releases.

Criterion had high hopes for the untitled extreme sports game, which would have included helicopters, ATVs, planes, jet skis, wingsuits, and more.

"It's probably the most diverse range of vehicles you've ever seen," Criterion general manager Matt Webster said in 2014. "The point is bringing them together. And that in and of itself is going to lead to experiences that people have not seen before, and actually, probably, emergent types of play that we could never design for, but they are absolutely all consistent with one another."