The Need For Speed Online Franchise is being revamped.  It’s coming to a ‘Personal Computer’ near you in MMO form.  What that means for you is that you’ll finally feel like you own your car and race against other online players for recognition.  I know that when I played Gran Turismo with my friends, we played for Pink slips, no copying of cars.  Whoever lost the race would have their car moved to the winning players memory card (on the PlayStation).  An idea that, that allowed the smacktalking to have meaning… and consequences!

Scott Henshaw, the producer looking after the Black Box side of development for Need for Speed World Online gave some insight on the this downloadable, free-to-play gamePC exclusive title.

Key to the concept of NFS World Online is the user interface which has been built from the ground up to take advantage of the PC architecture. Instead of a traditional console view of a game, we’re using a user-selectable gadget interface designed specifically for the PC. The system allows the gamer to choose which components of the interface they want to add to their game. The gadgets are really flexible and offer a wide range of display options: docked/undocked, floating in the game window or just sitting outside of the game space. A lot of gamers now have more than one monitor so you could keep the game window entirely clean and then have all the gadgets sit in the other monitor. We think it’s about time PC gamers had games that allowed them to arrange their information their way.

NFS World Online will hit testing in March ‘09, and is scheduled for release in Asia in the Summer and North America will see it in Winter of ‘09.

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