EA: 'No plans' for new NASCAR game

The future of EA Sports' NASCAR franchise of racing games has been in doubt since February, when The Sporting News reported the publisher wouldn't be making a new installment of the series this year. Speaking with GameSpot for a Dreamcast retrospective on next week's episode of the HotSpot podcast, EA Sports president Peter Moore has removed all uncertainty from the equation.

"There are no plans right now for NASCAR from EA," Moore said. "We had a great relationship over the years that I thoroughly enjoyed when I first got here. Unfortunately…we had to make some tough trade-offs. We've had to redeploy some of those folks. A number of the NASCAR team has moved over now to EA Sports MMA, which will be shipping next year. [We're] still a huge fan of NASCAR, but no plans right now to develop any further games for NASCAR from EA Sports."

The last NASCAR release from EA Sports was February's NASCAR Kart Racing for the Wii. Although the EA Sports label no longer has a racing product, Electronic Arts is still hoping to fulfill gamers' yen for momentum with appropriately titled upcoming games like Need for Speed: Shift and Need for Speed: Nitro. The next game to feature NASCAR content will be Gran Turismo 5, which features several licensed tracks.