Riccitiello: We were torturing Vancouver studio

GamesIndustry.biz writes: "EA's John Riccitiello says that the company was torturing its Vancouver team with a rigorous 12 month development cycle, but that has now been changed for the better.

At the William Blair & Company's 28th Annual Growth Stock Conference, he indicated that he was pretty disappointed with Need for Speed last year.

"I thought it was an okay game, in terms of gameplay. It's not good. But who wanted Pro Street? It was a sort of made up, put numbers on the side of your car and pretend to drive your Ferrari where? Or your Porsche where?"

This year, the company will be releasing Need For Speed: Undercover - a game with a very strong mission structure that Riccitiello compared to The Transporter.

"For those of you who ever saw movies like The Transporter - it's sort of a cult classic among people with a B-movie mentality, which fits me perfectly."