We first got wind of this news when Electronic Arts Senior Recruiter Pete Johnson shared the information in a recruitment post that went up on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago. At the time, he stated: Sharing common values and similar cultures, we strongly believe unifying the huge wealth of expertise across both teams will help us to deliver the best racing experiences we can for our players. The Cheshire team is actually the former Evolution Studios, once part of SIE’s Worldwide Studios, where it developed PlayStation exclusives like MotorStorm and Driveclub. Sony closed the studio in March 2016, but Codemasters swiftly acquired most of the team, which then set out to work on the arcade vehicular combat game Onrush. Most recently, the Cheshire team made DIRT 5 (rated 9/10 here on Wccftech). According to EA’s latest earnings report, the next Need for Speed game, the first to be jointly developed by Criterion and the ex-Codemasters Cheshire, should be released before the end of the calendar year.
