An as yet unannounced remaster of 2010’s Need for Speed Hot Pursuit has been leaked, once again via listing on a ratings agency. The ratings board for the Korea Games Rating and Administration Committee posted the leaked listing, That means that we can all but confirm that a Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remaster is on the way.
Rating leaks are very common nowadays, given that information has been made publicly available online. And with the advent of automated tracking like Google alerts, it’s extremely easy to track various game franchises and spot when new leaks happen. Two different releases have been leaked in this manner in the last few weeks. A possible remaster of Freedom Fighters came after the potential spotting of a set of Konami classics like Metal Gear Solid on PC.
Anyway, back to this latest leak. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit was released in 2010 and brought the racing genre into the high-speed and high-stakes world of illegal street racing while dodging the cops. Players would have to dodge high-powered police vehicles and helicopters while trying to also race incredibly skilled racers in sports cars of all makes and models. Criterion, the team behind some of the best Burnout games crafted a really excellent racing title.
Criterion has seen taken over development on future titles in the Need for Speed franchise, so that’s good to hear. During EA Play this year, Criterion also teased a new title that would offer “a seamless immersion which gets you into the race in a matter of seconds”. All that for their newest game that’s still under wraps. That would apply to next-gen releases, and could be a reference to the Quick Resume feature on XSX. Quick Resume is basically a persistent save state for multiple games, all maintained at once. It’s a direct progression from the app pausing from Xbox One, and offers much faster and seamless transitions to different games. It will be very interesting to see how games make use of it.
This actual remaster has been teased for a while. There was a VentureBeat report back in June of this year that hinted at such a release. It originally painted the port as coming for the Nintendo Switch at some point. EA has been very tight on the details. The remaster was also rumored to be coming for other consoles too.
The Switch has been a very heavy focus for EA as of later. They have previously announced that multiple remasters of classic games would be headed to the console. While the Switch remains strong in sales, it will be very intriguing to see how the upcoming launch of PS5 and Xbox Series X impacts that.
