Electronic Arts always surprises us when Peter Moore from the EA Sports division is the one doing the talking. He is being quoted as saying recently that, “There are no plans right now for NASCAR from EA.”

The news isn’t going to come as a shock to those that have been following the NASCAR and EA Sports saga over the last couple of months. The news is also sure to make a lot of hardcore fans of the series unhappy.

While Moore admits that they are huge fans of NASCAR, the majority of the developers from the NASCAR team have already been moved over to the EA Sports MMA project, or to other areas within the company that could best use their talents.

Moore claims that it was a difficult decision for EA to move on from NASCAR, but our sources tell us that much of the decision centered around the fact that NASCAR wanted too much money for the licensing rights; and in addition it wanted all video game licenses to be non-exclusive, meaning that they were free to license it to other companies, as well. Our sources say that EA was aware that NASCAR was talking to Sony at the same time they were also talking to them.

We have to believe that our sources are correct that the lack of exclusive rights to the NASCAR video game titles had to have played into EA’s decision. While some fans of NASCAR will not like this development, our sources suggest that as with the F1 license that moved from Sony to Codemasters, rumors suggest that several companies are looking at the possibility of acquiring a NASCAR license, but it is hard to say if we have seen the last NASCAR game for a while.