Culture|Garage

Released in November for XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, mobile phones, Playstation 3, Playstation 2 and PC, Need for Speed: Pro Street is EA games most recent title in the Need for Speed series. The game is centered (largely) around “street racers” who have gone “legit” and their vehicles. If the storyline isn’t flimsy enough, the stability of the game is even worse.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of the consumers. You have your shiny new Playstation 3 all set up and ready to go. You have endured long download times and long registration processes, and have shelled out a LOT of cash to get to this point. You begin the game, begin to play, and the game freezes at the end of a race. You restart the machine and begin playing again. Freeze. Again. Restart. Freeze, and so on.

This was the case shortly after Electronic Arts released the 1.1 patch online for Need for Speed: Pro Street, upgrading the game by removing some of the previously enabled cheats, adding a couple of new vehicles, and expanding the number of tracks in-game. The patch, which carries an Energizer sponsorship,was found faulty mere hours after gamers began to play using this new version of NFS:PS. The number and ferocity of complaints noted in the Need for Speed: Pro Street forum is staggering, and still more stack up as version 1.2 has arrived, with very little changing. The bugs are only found on the Playstation 3 console, whereas only the PC folks have had any similar issues. The rest of the platforms have not been affected by the bugs, and the PC issues have been resolved.

For a game with so much promise, it seems that Electronic Arts has dropped the ball. Starting with a decent racing series, not only has EA watered down the “outlaw” theme of the NFS series, but now they are alienating their fans by mishandling the bug issues. Forum responses from EA personnel have been cheerful, but seldom, and seem to ignore or misunderstand the issues fans are having with the game. Technical support online yields no further assistance (mostly automated responses), and it’s clear that gamers are feeling burned by their experience. Here’s to hoping EA resolves the problem soon- future sales are at stake.

via: EA

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