Electronic Arts revealed today that the Need for Speed franchises has surpassed 100 Million units sold worldwide – making the Need for Speed franchise the best-selling racing brand in the gaming history. Along with that, the publisher also revealed that the franchise has generated a total of 2.7 billion in sales.

“Few video game franchises ever reach the 100M units mark, so this is a huge honor. We have millions of fans to thank for driving us to this milestone,” said Frank Gibeau, president, EA Games Label. “With the launch of Need for Speed Shift and the upcoming release of Need for Speed Nitro, we hope to continue to deliver the most entertaining, action-packed racing experiences.”

EA also noted that if Need for Speed boxes were laid out end-to-end, it would span 173,609 football fields. With that said, in all, the Need for Speed brand brought us 15 titles for over 14 platforms, which were released in 22 languages in more than 60 countries.

Black Rock Studios have been hard at work trying to push the racing genre by developing many over the top racers, seeing that last years high-flying ATV racer, PURE, was just the tip of the iceberg. The developer is now working on a street racing game entitled, Split Second.

An exclusive trailer debuted on GameTrailer’s GTTV showing cars flying into a city with dangerous environmental hazards – which are activated by the drivers in the game. This is sure to be something worth waiting for.

Anyway, Split Second is definitely a new look at the racing genre and we believe that the guys at Black Rock Studios know what to do, to insure that this a quality racer.

In past years, the ‘Need of Speed’ series hasn’t really been to up to speed because, really, after Pro-Street no one was willing to take another chance with a game from the ‘Need for Speed’ series. Which had led to the problematic sales of the recently released Need for Speed title, Undercover, getting some negative scores from many publications.

But, today, Electronic Arts has announced that’s plans to steer the popular ‘Need for Speed’ series in a new direction. But, not by only announcing one new Need for Speed title, but by announcing three new games.

And they are, ‘Need for Speed Shift,’ a first-person racing simulation for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360; ‘Need for Speed World Online,’ a multiplayer action-driving game for the PC; and ‘Need for Speed Nitro,’ an arcade-style racing game developed by EA Montreal for both the Nintendo system.

“It’s all about crafting different games for different audiences,” said Keith Munro, EA marketing vice president. “The ‘Need for Speed’ brand is quite powerful. It has great recognition, even outside of gaming. When we talked to consumers about what the brand meant to them, we realized that it could be stretched to new limits on different platforms.”

['Need for Speed' franchise is shifting gears via AP]

When Disney Interactive Studios purchased Climax Development many fans didn’t know what to think, even game developer Jason Avent dreaded a Mikey or Donald racing game, so what were we expected as fans? Well, it was more then what we had hoped for. Instead of some kind of extreme kid racing game, we got a game of pure amazement simply entitled, Pure. This game really does rip books on ATV games as this game ditches the standard dirt adds stunt tracks for a world of vista free fall tracks that can make you scream from the heights.

One of the key things that made this game what it is has to be the games semi-easy control system. This system is very easy to learn from both sides and the controls very from the A button for simple tracks, the B button for more advanced tricks and the Y button for some semi out of control pro-tricks. But, this depends on how high or low you fill out your trick bar by advancing your tricks, like A then B and so on.

The game also has this system called pre-load, which helps you boost up your score in the game. Well, not really because when I was playing the game I really didn’t see any real boost in my trick bar, but it did help me gain crazy air so that we can pull off more crazy tricks gaining us more trick points.

The game has three basic gameplay modes and they are races, sprints, and freestyle, but there, really is not any difference to the game modes other then the laps and time. All these are available online along with a new mode called free-ride, which gives racers a set amount of time to bet a score. Another cool thing in this game happens to bring it to the table is the game graphics system, which according to them uses instance rendering technology, which produces the smallest parts of the games environment in every frame of the game. But, this game still has some bugs. For one thing, I don’t know how I spotted this, but there is a little delay when you hit the water for the water parities to come up.

One coolest thing we found in the game has to be its campaign mode, which is called World Tour which gives you the ability to customize for ride. The game gives you 24 different opinions to change, which are the key parts to any ATV. This is a great thing because you can build your ride for any track making the track easier for you to play. You can also unlock parts for your ATV when you win or compete a mission or track.

Score: A