Criterion Games | Code Like It's 198x

Criterion began as a Japanese camera company’s 3D research lab in a Surrey commuter town, and became best known for teaching racing games to crash. Canon set it up in Guildford in December 1993 to sell RenderWare, a 3D library that ran on an ordinary PC. Two years later it opened a game studio of its own, partly to show what its engine could do. That studio made Burnout (2001), a PlayStation 2 racer in which the other cars on the road were the whole point: you drove into oncoming traffic to fill a boost meter, and when you hit something, the game slowed down to show you the wreck. In 2004 Electronic Arts bought Criterion, engine and studio together.

Fast facts

Formed: December 1993, in Guildford, as Criterion Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon.
Founder: David Lau-Kee, from Canon Research, the company’s managing director and later chief executive.
Game studio: Criterion Studios, opened January 1996; later Criterion Games.
Best known for: RenderWare; Burnout (2001) and its sequels; Black (2006); Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010).
Owner since 2004: Electronic Arts, which completed the purchase on 19 October 2004.
Since 2025: “Criterion – A Battlefield Studio”.

A tools company in a Canon lab

Edge told the origin story in 1996. Asked to set up a European research and development centre, David Lau-Kee, then working at Canon Research, founded Criterion Software instead. His own work had moved from interactive 2D image processing to 3D image processing and then to 3D graphics, and Canon’s long-term plan was to build up multimedia software. Games were not in it. “The games thing is more of a Criterion than a Canon thing,” Lau-Kee said. “If you want to see the best use of 2D, 3D, image processing, sound, then it’s all in games.”

RenderWare was announced in early 1994 and sold to other developers for a royalty; the RenderWare entry follows it from a software renderer on a 486 to the engine under Grand Theft Auto III. By 1996 Edge said it was used by over 800 developers.

Criterion Studios

Selling an engine was not enough. Edge noted that engine makers “watch developers and can’t help but feel they could do a better job”, and in January 1996 “the Guildford-based tools house launched Criterion Studios”, already employing about 35 people. Its first three games were Scorched Planet, a 3D shooter that Lau-Kee said owed “a great deal to Defender”, with a jet that turned into a tank when it ran out of fuel; Sub Culture, an underwater adventure in which the player was a quarter of an inch tall; and a power-boat racer, Aqua’Tak. Edge called the studio “an organisation to watch”.

Scorched Planet came out through Virgin in 1996. Sub Culture ended up with Ubi Soft, which published it in 1997 on an upgraded RenderWare engine; Edge gave it seven out of ten. The studio’s next game went to Acclaim: TrickStyle (1999), a hoverboard racer for the Sega Dreamcast. Ubi Soft also published Deep Fighter, another submarine game, reviewed on the PC in 2000.

By 2001 the studio had changed. “Two games. That’s all it’s taken Criterion to alter its image,” Edge wrote when it visited the “Canon-owned codeshop” in Guildford that September. “The right people have been employed, a number have left.” The two games were AirBlade, a hoverboard game for Sony, and a racer that had begun as a prototype called “Shiny Red Car”.

Burnout

Alex Ward started “Shiny Red Car” with a small team: a stretch of city streets, some lorries and cars, and a small red coupé to drive between them. Paul Glancey later recalled that it did not even have collisions at first. Publishers were not interested. “The game that publishers were really looking for was something like Gran Turismo,” Glancey said, and Criterion’s reputation as a maker of big games “hadn’t really kicked in”. Acclaim, which had published TrickStyle, agreed to take it.

The traffic was the idea. Hamish Young, who wrote the game’s AI, told Edge that Burnout updated “about 300 cars a frame”, and that a lap of a larger track passed a thousand to 1,500 of them. Driving close to that traffic, and on the wrong side of the road, filled the boost meter. Edge’s review in December 2001 gave the game eight out of ten and called it “a valiant, much-needed adrenaline-filled syringe passionately thrust into the exhausted heart of the videogame racing community”. Ward, looking back in 2019, remembered it differently: “Burnout was spectacularly misunderstood all through its development, promotion, and release… I remember being truly heartbroken taking the game to the annual E3 show and no one being interested in seeing it whatsoever.”

Burnout 2: Point of Impact (2002), again published by Acclaim, added Crash mode: 15 junctions taken from the game’s courses, in which the aim was to cause the biggest and most expensive pile-up possible. Edge gave it eight out of ten and called the game “a true digital toy box”.

Electronic Arts

By the time Burnout 3: Takedown came out in September 2004, Electronic Arts was publishing it. The new game rewarded attacking other racers: shunting a rival into a wall was a “Takedown”, worth a chunk of boost. EA had announced in July 2004 that it would buy the Criterion group from Canon Europe, with its studio, Burnout, Black and RenderWare, and completed the purchase on 19 October; its quarterly accounts put the purchase price at $67.7 million. Edge‘s news pages argued that the deal “boils down to RenderWare”, which rival publishers’ biggest games depended on, and Lau-Kee insisted that “we always have, and we always will, provide precisely the same technology internally as we provide externally”. The RenderWare entry tells how that turned out.

Edge found Burnout Revenge (2005) throwing “the complete RenderWare manual” at the screen, and called Criterion’s first-person shooter Black (2006) “a last hurrah for last-gen RenderWare”. At the end of 2006 Edge’s studio profile of Electronic Arts UK, which covered EA’s Chertsey and Guildford teams, listed Black and the last two Burnout games among its work, with Fiona Sperry, “former general manager of Criterion Games”, as general manager and Alex Ward as creative director.

Paradise and Need for Speed

Burnout Paradise (2008), the last game in the series, turned the series into an open world, a city to drive around between events instead of a menu of tracks. Ward said he took the idea from open-world games such as Mercenaries and Crackdown; his “mantra for the game became ‘not playing the game is the game’”. Criterion kept adding to it for a year after launch, and Matt Webster later said “the first year of Paradise’s launch” taught the studio “a huge amount about how players interact with an open world” — “a precursor to what we call ‘live service’ in games today”.

Then EA gave Criterion its long-running Need for Speed series. Criterion’s first, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010), was built around a chase: “this guy runs, this guy chases,” creative director Craig Sullivan explained to Edge, putting a Lamborghini and a police car on the table. It was the first Criterion game not directed by Ward. Need for Speed: Most Wanted followed in October 2012.

After Burnout

On 3 January 2014 Ward and Sperry left Criterion, and later that year announced their own studio, Three Fields Entertainment, which went on to make the crash-mode game Danger Zone and the Burnout-style racer Dangerous Driving (2019). Criterion, much smaller by then, worked for several years on other EA games, including Star Wars Battlefront and Battlefield. “We never say never,” Webster said in 2019 when Wireframe asked whether the studio might go back to Need for Speed.

It did. In 2020 EA made Criterion the lead studio on Need for Speed again, and in 2022 merged Codemasters’ Cheshire studio into it, the team that had been Sony’s Evolution Studios. Criterion’s Need for Speed Unbound came out in December 2022. After that the studio moved to Battlefield 6, which EA released on 10 October 2025, and in August 2025 its name changed to “Criterion – A Battlefield Studio”. The Guildford games cluster entry follows the studios that Criterion’s former staff founded, among them Hello Games and Fireproof.

Sources

Edge issue 7, April 1994, pp. 16–17: Criterion Software as a Canon subsidiary, and the announcement of RenderWare.
Edge issue 36, September 1996, pp. 39–43, Criterion profile: David Lau-Kee and Canon Research, his quotes; RenderWare “used by over 800 developers”; Criterion Studios launched in January 1996 with about 35 staff; Scorched Planet, Sub Culture and Aqua’Tak; “formed in December 1993, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon”; “an organisation to watch”.
PC Player (Germany), November 1996, p. 126, and Computer Gaming World issue 153, April 1997, p. 98: reviews of Scorched Planet (Criterion Studios, published by Virgin).
Edge issue 52, December 1997, p. 66: Sub Culture review (developer Criterion, publisher Ubi Soft; upgraded RenderWare engine; seven out of ten).
Dreamcast Magazine issue 1, September 1999, pp. 46–47: TrickStyle, Criterion Studios, Acclaim.
PC Gamer (UK) issue 88, September 2000, p. 96: Deep Fighter review (publisher Ubi Soft, developer Criterion).
Edge issue 87, August 2000, pp. 48–51: David Lau-Kee on RenderWare and Criterion’s “sister game studio”.
Edge issue 101, September 2001, from p. 48, “Inside… Criterion Games”: the change of image, Burnout (formerly SRC), Alex Fry, Hamish Young and the traffic figures, AirBlade.
Edge issue 104, December 2001, p. 70: Burnout review (publisher Acclaim, developer Criterion Games; eight out of ten).
Edge issue 104, December 2001, p. 76: AirBlade review (publisher SCEE, developer Criterion Games).
Edge issue 116, November 2002, pp. 73–74: Burnout 2: Point of Impact review (Acclaim; Crash mode’s 15 segments; eight out of ten).
Edge issue 141, October 2004, pp. 7–9, “Has EA become too big to play?”: the takeover and RenderWare; Lau-Kee as chief executive. p. 85: Burnout 3: Takedown review (publisher Electronic Arts, developer Criterion Games; Takedowns).
Computer Gaming World issue 244, November 2004, p. 37: EA’s acquisition of Criterion and Burnout 3.
Electronic Arts, quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter to 31 December 2004 (public record): “On October 19, 2004, we completed our acquisition of 100 percent of Criterion Software Group Ltd. … for an aggregate accounting purchase price of $67.7 million”. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000712515/000095013405001913/f04993e10vq.htm
“EA Acquires Criterion”, Game Developer, 28 July 2004 (web, secondary): the agreement with Canon Europe covering Burnout, Black and RenderWare. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/ea-acquires-criterion
Edge issue 155, November 2005: Burnout Revenge review. Edge issue 160, March 2006: Black review.
Edge issue 170, Christmas 2006, p. 85, studio profile of Electronic Arts UK: Chertsey and Guildford; Fiona Sperry, Alex Ward; Black, Burnout Revenge and Burnout 3: Takedown.
Edge issue 216, July 2010, pp. 54–59: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit preview, Craig Sullivan and Matt Webster.
Edge issue 222, Christmas 2010, pp. 82–83: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit review (publisher EA, developer Criterion).
Edge issue 247, December 2012, pp. 98–100: Need for Speed: Most Wanted review (publisher EA, developer Criterion; released 30 October in the US).
Aaron Potter, “Burning Rubber: The race to recreate Burnout”, Wireframe issue 29, December 2019, pp. 18–23: the series from 2001 to Burnout Paradise in 2008; “Shiny Red Car”, Paul Glancey on Acclaim and TrickStyle; Alex Ward on Burnout’s reception and Paradise; Three Fields Entertainment; Hot Pursuit as the first Criterion game Ward did not direct; Most Wanted; Matt Webster; Criterion’s work on Star Wars Battlefront and Battlefield.
“Criterion co-founders create new indie studio Three Fields Entertainment”, Shacknews, 5 March 2014 (web, secondary). https://www.shacknews.com/article/83411/criterion-co-founders-create-new-indie-studio-three-fields-entertainment
Wikipedia, “Criterion Games” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Ward and Sperry leaving on 3 January 2014; the return to Need for Speed in 2020; the Codemasters Cheshire merger in 2022; Need for Speed Unbound; the August 2025 renaming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_Games
“It’s Over Need For Speed Fans – Criterion Has Officially Been Renamed To ‘A Battlefield Studio’”, TheGamer, August 2025 (web, secondary). https://www.thegamer.com/burnout-creator-need-for-speed-developer-criterion-renamed-battlefield-studio/