ESWC NFS: Shift platform change

First of all, we as the Need for Speed gamers community want to thank Games Solution for picking up Need for Speed: Shift as an official platform for Electronic Sports World Cup 2010. It is a thing that many of us waited for a long time since the ESWC idea was born.

But we also want to express our concern about the main decision that was made with this tournament - the platform chosing. As we all know, most of the Need for Speed gaming community is devoted to PC, which for many years has been a standard in racing games. Albeit that, You have chosen the Xbox360 as an official tournament platform.

As the idea behind tournaments like ESWC is to bring the best gamers in the world fighting for championship titles, we as the community must say, that this decision is far away from this. At the moment, there is no console Need for Speed scene, also there isn't any specific Xbox360 for our game. There are also some technical difficulties, which make us think that this is not the best choice. The goal in online racing is to acquire biggest possible precision in driving to make best possible results, and You cannot make that without best possible controllers. For now, the best possible controllers are all marked Logitech and they are unable to be used with the Xbox.

Forcing players to use gamepads or specific Xbox wheels, which have all been designed for casual gamers rather than hardcore performance, is like forcing Quake or CS players to use ball mouses instead of the new-generation optical/laser ones - a clear step back. This brings down also the game itself, which is the best recent Need for Speed and keeping it on Xbox will not allow the professional racers to explore whole game potential - which we consider as the main goal for tournaments like Electronic Sports World Cup.

Therefowe, we the undersigned members of the Need for Speed community, want to ask Games Services to switch Need for Speed: Shift tournament back to PC or opionally change the platform from Xbox to PlayStation 3 (same as the second EA title - FIFA), as the Sony console is not limiting the controllers usage to their own casual products.