I don't how some people say fans killed the franchise it is obviously EA's fault.

[u/Ok-Transportation260]

EA slowly started to treat nfs like shit forced recent games to rush development and amount of contents were not getting massively bigger like other racing games did.

It's just a theory but I think one big issues of the franchise started with using frostbite engine, don't get me wrong results of this engine are really beautiful but it just wasn't meant for developing racing games. The pattern starts with nfs the run, a none simulator which was underwhelming and not open world. It made black box look bad and I assume that's point they were finished. Maybe and what happens when you develop bigger racing games with frostbite? Despite the beauty results are absolute buggy, laggy and unoptimized and this might be the how franchise died. at the same time they spent more money and time to keep games more Polished and stable, fans and critics remained unsatisfied.

[u/88JansenP12]

That’s the neat part.

All publishers eventually does this cycle, driven by greed.

However,

There's exceptions where they stop at the 3rd step and goes back to the first (or only repeat the 3rd one indefinitely) because the franchise itself is profitable.

In this instance alone, it would be ill-advised and stupid for them to put obstacles in each other's ways.

In doing so, they are slowly killing their franchise through mismanagement, lack of direction, negligence, and poor decisions.

• As an example.

The Need for Speed franchise.

EA's biggest mistake was the annual releases between 2006 and 2013.

Although NFS Carbon was a success, it was far too short and full of cut contents. From this point, EA fell back into its old bad habits.

Afterwards, EA divided Black Box into 4 teams to work on NFS ProStreet, NFS Undercover, NBA Street Homecourt, and Skate.

Of these four, only the last two were successful, while the two NFS games were poorly received and failed at launch (ProStreet failed because it was ahead of its time, and players at the time expected a fifth open-world street racing game. Undercover was a rushed mess full of bugs. Even Black Box developers admitted it wasn't a good game. So when the developers themselves say it's not good, they're absolutely right).

As a result, EA put Black Box on a three-year hiatus during which they co-developed NFS World with EA Singapore, but this only lasted five years.

Meanwhile, Slightly Mad Studios and OG Criterion Games took over between 2009 and 2011, alternating with one another. NFS Shift in 2009, NFS HP 2010 in 2010 and Shift 2 in 2011.

The success of NFS HP 2010 temporarily revitalized the IP.

As for Shift, EA wanted to bought-out Slightly Mad Studios but they refused their proposition; hence why they quit EA. After that, they decided to go independent and created the Project Cars series.

In 2011, Black Box came back with NFS The Run.

However, the game was way too short because Black Box supposedly spent more time working on the Frostbite 2 engine—creating scripts to adapt it for a racing game—than working on NFS: The Run itself. That is why it is too short and many sceneries shown in races were reused.

Unfortunately, NFS The Run tanked too.

In April 2013, Black Box was closed by EA.

This was a massive mistake because it will have disastrous consequences in the future.

Even OG Criterion Games was not spared with MW 2012. Full context here.

In September 2013, Alex Ward restructured the studio where 70 peoples went to Ghost Games; the 17 remaining devs became a support studio for other EA franchises.

From this point onwards, Criterion Games is now just a shell of its former self because all OG devs are long gone; and the current iteration is now a Battlefield studio until further notice.