Ouch. That hurts.

Like finding out that cute girl you kinda had a crush on in gym class liked you too, five years too late.

This definitely explains 200cc in Mario Kart 8. I still wish the game got made though.

2011 seems a bit late considering Wii U launched in 2012.

F Zero half life crossover confirmed. Use portal gun while racing to "jump" ahead or behind your opponents while you outrage the aliens.

Even if Criterion was committed to a Need for Speed project prior to this agreement, I'm doubtful a company owned by EA would be on board with signing an exclusive deal with Nintendo. I'm having a hard time remembering the last EA game that stayed exclusive to one console...

Too bad. Criterion is a pretty good developer.

That's really interesting! I wish there could have been more flexibility about release timing so it could have happened.

On a side note, Criterion's Need for Speed: Most Wanted on WiiU is really an outstanding port of the game. Better textures, extensive GamePad use. It even has awesome motion controls if you want to try that too. Definitely worth picking up on your WiiU for a unique racing experience -- especially if you're jaded about the Project Cars thing

Indeed.

Sometimes you need to stay clean.

Since Criterion is part of EA, I doubt they would have been allowed to create a Wii U game after Febuary 2013, where EA stopped all projects for the Wii U.

Why they didn't ask another developer afterwards is another question, but it might be that they where looking into studios with experience into racing games, and there ain't too many out there who do so. And the withdrawal of Ubisoft, Atari and Activision surely didn't help, either.

Considering how Fast Racing Neo looked in the Treehouse, I'd say they should ask Shin'en since both games are fairly similar in their concepts