EA Black Box is a defunct Canadian video game developer that was based in Burnaby, British Columbia. They were best known for their entries in the Need for Speed franchise and for their skateboarding game series Skate. The studio was founded in 1998 as independent developer Black Box Games, developing sports titles for Midway Games, Sega, and Electronic Arts. The last of these publishers would purchase the studio during the development of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 in 2002. Now known as EA Black Box, they would continue to produce racing games for EA for the rest of the decade. The studio would change its name to Quicklime Games in 2012, before being closed in 2013 due to various restructures at EA Canada, with oversight of the Need for Speed franchise transferring to EA Gothenburg.
Several developers who worked at Black Box would go on to found their own studios: most notably Nintendo subsidiary Next Level Games in 2002 and Xbox Game Studios' partner SkyBox Labs in 2011.
Games developed
As Black Box Games:
- NASCAR 2001 (2000)
- NHL 2K (2000)
- NHL Hitz 2002 (2001)
- NHL Hitz 2003 (2002)
- Sega Soccer Slam (2002)
As EA Black Box (and Quicklime Games):
- Need for Speed (2002-2013)
- Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002; PlayStation 2 version only)
- Need for Speed: Underground (2003)
- Need for Speed: Underground 2 (2004)
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)
- Need for Speed: Carbon (2006)
- Need for Speed: ProStreet (2007)
- Need for Speed: Undercover (2008)
- Need for Speed: World (2010)note
- Need for Speed: The Run (2011)note
- NHL 2004 (2003)
- NHL 2005 (2004)
- NBA Street Homecourt (2007)
- Skate series (2007-2010)
- Skate (2007)
- Skate It (2008; Wii version)
- Skate 2 (2009)
- Skate 3 (2010)
