One would’ve thought that EA will let the NFS franchise die a silent death after the past couple of Need for Speed titles failed to impress, but that’s not the case: not only that Electronic Arts announced three upcoming NFS titles (Need for Speed: Shift, Need for Speed: Nitro, and Need for Speed: World Online), but we now have reports that Criterion, the developer of Burnout, is also working on a new, fourth Need for Speed game!

The announcement, according to G4TV, was made by EA’s COO John Pleasants who said: “We’ve taken the Burnout team and combined it with our Need For Speed franchise, so we now have that in our favor because that Burnout team is probably one of the more online-centric and notably high-quality game developers that we have out at Criterion.”

No details – not even a title for the game – were given, but we can still ask ourselves now what will happen with the Burnout series (since this announcement could mean that it was the one that actually got canned) and when will EA stop shooting a game after another and start focusing on some less paced releases, but of a much higher quality.