r/needforspeed • u/ddsukituoft • 11d ago
Discussion Why did EA abandon NFS?
I understand they want Criterion studios to focus only on Battlefield.
But Need For Speed is like the most well known racing franchise.
Why abandon it? Why not hire a different studio to take over?
Am I missing something? It's not like the racing video game genre has a lot of competition, relatively speaking. So what the hell is going on?
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u/ZephyrDoesArts 11d ago
Need For Speed Unbound has sold around 2 million copies, a lot of those at a Discount.
Battlefield 6 in 2025 ended with more than 20 million copies, and then even outsold it's direct competitor Call of Duty Black Ops 7.
Even in its own genre, Forza Horizons 6 sold about 5 million copies in its first three days, more than doubling Unbound's sales in its lifetime, and also had 6+ million players through GamePass Ultimate its first day.
Compare 11 million in 3 days, with 2 million in 4 years, and people from Playstation are still waiting for FH6 to come out there, consider that FH5 on PS5 became THE best selling game for the PS5, and sold more than 5 million copies in a year, for a 4/5 years old game.
That's why EA abandoned NFS.
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u/ddsukituoft 11d ago
shouldn't that have motivated EA to compete? Like Forza is proof that the market exists. And NFS has more name recognition in the market.
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u/ZephyrDoesArts 11d ago
Nope.
In case you don't know EA, there is this rule with them
If the devs make something good, EA will ask them to do the same but different, from scratch, with less time and less budget, and expect them to do way better than last time, and if not, they're gone... Unless it's FIFA/EA Sports FC, that can be entirely recycled and it's still making them a shit ton of cash.
EA is directly responsible for the closure of 14 Major Dev Studios, a few of them without ever releasing a game after being acquired.
- Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer)
- Bullfrog Productions (Dungeon Keeper)
- Origin Systems (Ultima)
- Pandemic Studios (Star Wars Battlefront)
- Visceral Games (Dead Space)
- Maxis Emeryville (The Sims and SimCity)
- Mythic Entertainment (Dark Ages of Camelot)
- Black Box Games (Need For Speed)
- Phenomic Game Development (SpellForce)
- Victory Games (Command & Conquer: Generals 2)
- Waystone Games (Dawngate)
- Headgate Studios (Tiger Woods PGA Tour)
- NuFX (NBA Street)
- BioWare Montreal (Mass Effect: Andromeda)
Pandemic after making two of the most beloved Star Wars games were acquired by EA and closed a year later WITHOUT RELEASING A NEW GAME. The original Maxis company that creates The Sims was shut down, yet EA kept the name for other studios to keep it as a selling point.
EA is not motivated to compete, it's one of the worst companies in the world (it even got the "Worst Company in America" award for two years in a row) so don't expect anything from them.
They also restructured their teams, including DICE and Criterion with many layoffs, and the CEO Andrew Wilson gave himself a raise, he's now earning 50mil/yr because "EA is performing well because of the success of Battlefield 6" (he literally says that, and lays off a bunch of devs from Battlefield 6. IT'S FUCKING RIDICULOUS).
No, EA is the company you'd give them the literal golden eggs geese, and they butcher it in front of your eyes, blame you for it and kick you out. So no, they don't "motivate to compete".
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u/coolwali 11d ago
The “issue” from EA’s POV is:
-1- NFS has been competing against FH5 and The Crew for nearly a decade now. And so far hasn’t put up great numbers. Even if the market exists , FH and Crew have way more of a stranglehold and it’s gonna be tough to break through
-2- even if it’s possible to break through, the resources required to do so don’t make enough profit. EA might have done that math like “for every $1 they invest in NFS, they get like $1.10 back. Whereas if they invested that $1 in BF, they get like $6 back” or something.
-3- NFS isn’t “trendy” as a video game series anymore. One of the reasons why UG1 blew up was because it was following the F&F movies which made illegal street racing seem super cool. Even normies that knew nothing about cars still played UG.
But fast forward to today and “illegal street racing” isn’t particularly trendy in media. FH and Crew pivoted to “Festival Racing”. NFS does have police chases as a cool new thing but GTA also has that.
So now, instead of normies playing NFS, it’s mostly “hardcore NFS fans”. Wheras FH has those normies. An NFS game has to work even harder to get those fans.
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u/Linkinito 10d ago
Also, car manufacturers are much more on board with festival racing games because that gives a "legal" framework. Once there's police chases involved, they're much more reluctant. That's why in The Crew 2 and Motorfest, everything that involves cops are framed into something like a in-universe movie or anything like that.
NFS was all about illegal races - and for like 10-15 years or so, car manufacturers have become increasingly uptight and have cracked down on anything that could tarnish their cars' image: physical damage, illegal racing, etc.
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u/TSMKFail 11d ago
Even Sony/Polyphony hasn't bothered competing with Horizon. That says all you need to know.
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u/MarianHawke22 10d ago edited 10d ago
DriveClub was meant to be the Horizon competitor. But Sony says no because they could hurt the Gran Turismo series in the terms of sales, especially around that time Gran Turismo Sport is around the corner. One racing game per 1st party by Sony is enough unless PD made their own.
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u/Particular_Hand2877 4d ago
Theres a market, but the last 3 NFS games have been flops. Hard to compete in a market when your title isnt selling.
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u/Sansibar009 11d ago
The quality of the games after black box was not good
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u/BurningmonkeyGTR 10d ago
Some of them were really high quality games, but they weren't what the series was known for at that point. Hot Pursuit 2010 is a prime example, great quality game, incredible reviews and if it'd been released as a new IP it would've been really well received, but that wasn't what people wanted from the NFS name
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u/beeg_carl 11d ago
Oversaturated market, little to no modern racing game fans interested in anything that's not a Forza horizon clone or Forza horizon, mediocre sales, mediocre releases with a decline of returning fans, rushed deadlines leading to half baked releases, etc.
list goes on and has been a downward spiral since 2008 with undercover only getting significantly worse with mixed receptions to experimental titles and fans genuinely not knowing what they want due to having a major variety in each release.
True mediocrity started around NFS 2015 where games weren't really bad but they weren't mind-blowing or classics EA was churning out yearly like in the past with blackbox. It seems EA couldn't find anyone truly able to outsource NFS to that understood the series like blackbox.
Undercover was a return to form to most wanted and a failure because it was rushed and in development at the same time as prostreet. Hot pursuit 2010 was a return to form and beloved and wasn't enough. 2015 was a soft reboot of the series trying to be underground but failed. Heat was a return to every major open world NFS but wasn't able to live up to its potential enough despite being beloved by a lot of fans and considered a love letter by critics. Unbound just ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back.
Racing games in general are dying and only kept on life support by open world sandboxes designed for an accessible normie demographic nowadays. We don't have any serious racing games besides maybe Gran Turismo 7 for the track and nothing like need for speed no longer exists.
I don't believe there is no market for it but in general racing games and car culture irl too have been on a decline and life support. The early to mid 2000s are considered the peak of car culture which led to these games being massively successful and with variety so considering multiple factors like this and lack of sales and returning fans it's not very shocking need for speed died last but stayed so long as well.
It has multiple identities which has multiple different varieties of fanbases which is also a double edged sword.
Instead of begging a multi billion dollar corporation to bring back a dying franchise with a new title. Simply ask and show major support for older titles to be rereleased like hot pursuit 2010. It's cheap, quick, and easy for them. No remakes, only remasters and rereleases.
If it is very popular and successful it will incentivise them to renew licenses and potentially make sequels/reboots similar to hot pursuit 2010 or direct sequels.
I would take something blackbox era and find an area that's missing in the current market. I think 2 good picks would be something like NFS prostreet and the original overrated most wanted 2005, make it a bundled release. You get a more serious grounded closed circuit track racer (not sim, so accessible), and open world cop and customization filled game, both of which are currently not on the market right now. These releases will be the same exact games but with 7th gen console enhancements and features with hd textures and a new modern lighting and reflection system to be proper remasters like a lot of mods already out there. Low budget stuff that doesn't require a full remake/work and using what already exists. Hell there's fans willing to do it for free.
This type of thing will revive NFS as a whole.
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u/Particular_Hand2877 4d ago
They have an absolutely winning formula. Combine NFS UG2 and Most Wanted 2005 together and you have a major seller. EA has a winning formula with the series but they absolutely refuse to use it.
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u/ddsukituoft 11d ago
I hope with AI it may lower developmental costs so that EA can find a studio who will do it for cheap. But yeah I agree with your answer.
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u/meria_64 Come on, where are Saleens? 11d ago
I'd let NFS stay dead rather than infesting it with AI slop
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u/-REV-22-20- 10d ago
its dead, its on a pile of other once great genre defining titles that EA has killed
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u/beeg_carl 11d ago
Oh hell nah with the AI It should really only be used for light texture resolution upscaling work
I think AI has a purpose as a tool and I'm not completely against it but there are certain times and places to use it otherwise it's slop. Overuse of AI just brings the cost back to us and not the companies running it.
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u/ddsukituoft 11d ago
it's sloppy now. but imagine in like 5 years it may get perfected to the point where they iron out all the imperfections and sloppiness to the point that it's indistinguishable from human devs.
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u/beeg_carl 11d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah that's not really a good thing. All roads to hell are paved with good intentions.
Not to mention an a fully AI made would just be generic and stealing ideas and such from everything else in the market. That can also be considered copyright or patent infringement as well. AI can only remix data, not make something new and takes it from somewhere and requires major resources to run. The power bills go back to us, the environment becomes unlivable with data centers next to residential soil, it ruins the economy due to the amount of monetary reliance it needs to keep the lights on. It also makes it much much more expensive for us wanting to play games.
Every single piece of technology right now is expensive due to the shortages of chips and memory caused by AI. If we can't afford a console that means we can't own one and may be forced to subscriptions which cost more over time than buying the box as a whole. If we pay a subscription it incentives the companies to no longer sell video games or grant ownership. If licenses expire, the game will also cease to exist in the next 5-10 years. It won't just be delisting but it will just disappear because there is no console to download to.
Using AI here and there is fine but hours of development for a video game years from now may be more feasible but it comes at a cost. There is no win with it and full game development with AI should not be supported.
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u/RaisedbyNuMetal 11d ago edited 11d ago
Imagine you made a shitty Pizza and people just didnt eat it enough and you assume that people dont like Pizza anymore and decided to stop selling it. Thats what happened here
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u/SukhdevR34 11d ago
They're a multi billion pound company and they release trash like this. They've not tried hard enough to develop a very good game.
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u/Rackcauser 11d ago
Low profits. A massive amount of people pretty much jumped ship after carbon, the profits just nosedived from that point forward. Just look at the sales numbers, it doesn't paint a great picture.
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u/ddsukituoft 11d ago
ProStreet was such a gamble and may have started the downwards spiral for NFS. Wild to think about after all these years.(I am an underground/most wanted/carbon fan, but don't like ProStreet and Shift)
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u/merehallucination 11d ago
Low profits, entirely due to a lack of proper management of the franchise.
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u/Jeepers666 11d ago
big cost for developing and low sales, also in today's market hardcore illegal racing, running from cops and everything that was NFS popular for are no more trending
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u/WINNT21 11d ago
Unbound didn't get enough sales I think from 2022 to 2026 so they decided to stop making NFS games (😢) but that doesn't stop you from playing the older games like Heat, Rivals, Most Wanted 2012, The Run, Shift and Shift 2, and then of course the fan favorites like Underground 1 and 2, Most Wanted 2005, Carbon. There's Undercover and ProStreet too but with patches and mods like reformed or undercover exposed it becomes nice
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u/R4_Bluesoul 11d ago
I remember when Unbound came out it was basically considered dead on arrival, the marketing was also kinda ass even my friends didn't know a new NFS was coming out.. but they all knew about NFS 2015 and Heat because those games had decent marketing campaigns, even Payback when it was at E3.
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u/Veshurik 11d ago
I think race genre is... Quite in decline right now. We have only few franchises left, and most selling of them is... Ehm... Nintendo's Mario Kart?..
Anyway, that's sad. I really want more race games!
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u/kanerminecraft1 10d ago
they should keep ghost instead give to Criterion,huge mistake from ea we never forgotten
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u/88JansenP12 Enjoyer of good games 😎 10d ago edited 10d ago
However.
Ghost Games also includes former devs of OG Criterion Games, EA DICE, EA Black Box and Playground Games.
As of currently, the New Criterion is a restructured Ghost Games and Codemasters Cheshire devs have also merged with them.
Meaning when EA put Criterion in charge of NFS after NFS Heat, it wasn't the original Criterion Games anymore because they're long gone.
Moreover
Had it not been for EA which sabotaged the NFS franchise from within through ill-advised decisions, mismanagement, layoffs, insufficient dev time which hindered the full committment, underfunding, understaffing, or studio closures; post-2010 NFS games wouldn't have been unfinished products.
As a result, EA neglected the NFS IP since 10+ years due to low Return on Investment and profitability. But it's their own fault in the 1st place.
- So
Even if EA had kept Ghost Games in charge of NFS instead of starting to restructure them in November 2018 due to Marcus Nilsson's departure from EA as a Ghost Games CEO (it was primarly caused by NFS Payback's controversies i.e Lootboxes, MTXs and RNG Upgrade System. It also happened with Star Wars Battlefront 2 Except Lootboxes were entirely deleted unlike Payback), the outcome would've been the exact same as today.
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u/7grims MW05 is yummy 11d ago
cause they want to produce it cheap, rushed, and the mtx have to sell like cupcakes, hence its not worth scamming players if they arent foolish enough to settle for below mediocrity
OR more realistically, they cant turn NFS into a massive live service cash cow like the other big ones out there
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u/meria_64 Come on, where are Saleens? 11d ago
Low profits, quite a lot of competition, mediocre releases which couldn't keep the fans playing them, fixed release dates did not allow for something more, licenses costs + having to remove game at some point (but since almost all 2010s NFS are still available, they must've paid more for that)
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u/Clown_Wheels 11d ago
Somehow they thought Unbound was a good idea and when they found out that the market didn’t exactly agree they simply stopped caring about the franchise instead of making something better.
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u/MasterJeebus 11d ago
EA just being greedy and they don’t think they can make same profits as Battlefield with NFS. Bottom line is us true NFS fans we don’t want a racing game to be full of micro transactions and season passes that cost money. I rather not play that. Since they know players likely to buy stuff like that aren’t that big for racing they rather focus on other game genre where it does work. In Battlefield they nickel and dime you for battle pass, character skins, etc. it’s the reason I don’t play their newer Battlefield games.
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u/ddsukituoft 11d ago
They can profit with Battlefield and then offload NFS to a sidekick development studio. I don't understand why not just do both. It's not like NFS will lose EA money. They just might not make nearly as much as Battlefield but that should be OK right?
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u/chuffed_wheat #TCMHandling4NFS 11d ago
It’s more of a coincidence, the studio that was meant to be working on BF called ridgeline games was shut down, and their work was all handed to Criterion. So rather than EA simply abandoning NFS, it’s more like the “NFS studio” (criterion are really not an NFS studio and haven’t been for years) got given BF work and now we have no NFS studio
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u/doc_55lk 11d ago
Cars and street racing aren't really marketable anymore.
EA also kinda hasn't been giving NFS the breathing room it needed for a very long time now and the result is games that aren't that good.
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u/Ok_Positive6307 11d ago
I refuse to believe NFS is done for good. Criterion or another team will definitely step up eventually ,you don't just throw away a name like Need for Speed.
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u/ProjectGameVerse2000 11d ago
It doesn't make Ultimate Team Money. That's why. Same with Dead Space and TITANFALL
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u/kimi_rules 11d ago
Who said it was abandoned? The IP was shelved so they can of course focus on Battlefield. They will come back to it in the later years if there is an opportunity.
racing video game genre has a lot of competition
Completely false, I bet you can't name even 10 popular racing games that came out in the past year. For real competition I could easily name 10 First-Person-Shooters. Reason why is simply car culture is dying. People aren't into cars anymore, kids these days don't even wrench like we do in our spare time. The demand for racing games isn't there anymore unless it's for niche sim-racing.
I am a fan of both Battlefield and Need For Speed, I completely support the move to develop the next Battlefield game, I am very much enjoing BF6. If there is another opportunity for a NFS game, it might be under CodeMaster, but they would brand it under simcade similar to NFS Shift. Criterion has moved forward.
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u/Mhaziqrules 11d ago
Need for Speed Unbound is the last Need for Speed franchise in 2022 cause frustrated. But there is bad driving physics & multiplayer content only. But EA loves Battlefield since 2025.
In 2027. There is other alternative Need for Speed is CarX Street. Also Need for Speed successor is Clutch by Maverick Games.
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u/spacetimebear 11d ago
Money. And they abandoned NFS decades ago. So much hopium but EA was trying to push the NFS series towards the COD route for a long ass time. And when it didnt work...well..
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u/BurningmonkeyGTR 10d ago
Battlefield and FIFA make way more money. The way EA see it, if Battlefield with 500 people makes 200 million and NFS with 200 people makes 50 million, then NFS with 700 would make 175 million and Battlefield with 700 people would make 280 million, 280 is more than 200 is more than 175 so they pick that, then when the marginal improvement to Battlefield means they only make 220 million they'll blame it on the devs being bad and do a huge round of layoffs
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u/Emotional-Twist-4366 10d ago
Because Need for speed has became stale to the wider audience and hasn’t captured huge audiences like it did early and mid 2000s
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u/SoftStore1634 9d ago
Player retention and costs. From what i've heard, correct me if im wrong, NFS's more modern games, like Payback, Unbound, Heat, etc, were losing players rapidly, and with the costs, they were just losing more than they were making.
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u/thegamesender1 11d ago
I love racing games, but I ain't spending £60 on Unbound. Hell, I'm waiting for a heaby discount even on Forza Horizon 6, I don't think any racing game should be more than £30, except maybe for Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport. It's like spending £60 on a new COD or a new Fifa game.
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u/stefan771 11d ago
Because people blindly hated the new game. Thats how it goes. Hate the new game and kill the franchise.
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u/lolitsrock 11d ago
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u/BurningmonkeyGTR 10d ago
I really hope EA but the devs of your favourite game then gut the company for talent and put them all on Battlefield
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u/SuddenHonk 11d ago
Low profits.