Electronic Arts has been very coy about what’s coming next for the long-running Need for Speed driving series, but it seems likely that we’ll be hearing more about it in the near future. The company confirmed in its first quarter financial results for the 2020 fiscal year that a new Need for Speed game will be out sometime between October 1 and the end of the year, and while it didn’t reveal the subtitle, Austrian retailer Gameware may have.
The listing, via IGN, is for something called Need for Speed: Heat; the entry isn’t accessible through the search anymore, but for now at least, the URL is still live. The title (and probably the release timing) will be officially revealed at Gamescom, which runs August 20-24 in Cologne, Germany. Need for Speed developer Ghost Games said in a May update that "the next time we talk, we’ll be packing our bags and heading south for the full unveiling" (Ghost Games is based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and it’s a pretty straight shot south from there to Cologne), and EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed during today’s earnings call that the new game will be revealed for Gamescom.
EA also said in its financial report that a new Plants vs. Zombies game is coming to PC in the same window. Plants vs Zombies 3 was announced earlier this month, but EA confirmed at the time that it’s strictly for mobile devices. This PvZ will be a shooter, Wilson said during the earnings call, presumably a new addition to the Garden Warfare spinoff series: Eurogamer reported earlier this month that an alpha test for the new game, codenamed Picnic, is set to get underway on August 1.