Although at a risk of losing the core base that Underground and Carbon was built upon, ProStreet takes on a higher, more mature level of street racing. It's no longer focused on the neons and custom looks. Need for Speed ProStreet takes gamers to the spiritual level of racing: performance, speed, and real vehicle physics.

I think that you can signal change through more believable graphical styles, through a higher level of physics, and then I think you can be really smart about how you filter and expose the consumer to that. Just like in real life, you can jump into a car, flip off all the assists, and you're in a boatload of trouble unless you're a really good driver, right?

But like any great game that's well crafted, we need to bring the consumer through the experience and expose them to various levels of assists and really have them enjoy the experience. Need for Speed consumers playing ProStreet won't go, "Oh, my god -- this is completely unplayable and no fun! What'd these guys do?"

The initial impression needs to be, "Oh, my god -- this is a gorgeous-looking title, a higher level of quality; I can sense that there's more believability and consequences in the experience, yet it's still that same raw, visceral, kind of edgy, gritty experience I've always looked forward to. It's relevant because it features the cars and the types of game modes that I really like to play."

One of the challenges with a franchise is that it's easy to throw too much at it. You can throw in cops. You can throw in lots of tracks, an enormous open world, different kinds of cars, along with performance and visual customization. We've tried all kinds of ideas that would essentially define multiple products. I think that if we start to build a product that's too broad, it becomes "[everything but the] kitchen sink," and consumers start to feel that it's inaccessible.