Two weeks ago EA announced that the next entry to the Need For Speed series is scheduled to launch in the middle of 2011, but curiously the official title for the sequel to Need For Speed: SHIFT omits the time-honoured franchise name.

Simply called SHIFT 2 Unleashed, this new racing title includes a host of refinements and wholesale improvements over the original arcade/realism hybrid, with the inclusion of a couple new features and an all-new graphics engine.

You can have a look at how this new engine is shaping up with the first ever set of SHIFT 2 Unleashed screenshots below:

Tags: ea, needforspeed, needforspeedshift, shift2unleashed