Cash-Cow Franchise: With over 150 million copies sold in its history, NFS is the second-most successful racing video game series of all time, and was the most successful until Mario Karttook the lead.note That being said, EA hasn't updated their sales numbers for the NFS franchise in years.
During the late 90s and early 2000s, it was Test Drive. Test Drive fell off by the wayside and had a reboot with Test Drive Unlimited, but that series was eventually defeated by EA's series, although a third TDU is in development for a planned 2023 release.
The second era of NFS actually saw two different parts having different competitors; during the first part it was Juiced and Street Racing Syndicate, Underground trounced them both; and during the second part of the same era, during which NFS took dips in quality, it was being beaten by other games like Midnight Club: Los Angeles and EA's own Burnout Paradise. It would take the third era's Shift subseries and a revival of the Hot Pursuit name to get out of that funk.note An interesting situation happened with Midnight Club, as the Complete Edition of Los Angeles would end up being the game's last release before going on an indefinite hiatus as its publisher, Rockstar Games, focused on their Grand Theft Auto franchise, meaning that Midnight Club more or less "forfeited" this duel.
Finally today, it's mainly Gran Turismo and Forza. GT has actually been the strongest competitor to NFS for years despite being a semi-sim PlayStation first-party exclusive and not a usually-arcade-like racer on multiple platforms like NFS, while Forza on the Xbox has been using the Horizon series to go after the Wide-Open Sandbox aspect of more recent racing games to target NFS among others, even though it too is a semi-sim series. In addition to those two games, Ubisoft's The Crew games have joined the fray with their massive open world and ability to customize vehicles. And as noted above, Test Drive Unlimited will be rejoining the open-world racing game competition after a decade-long Sequel Gap.
Forza is also a competitor to the second era of the NFS games, due to "Design-It-Yourself Equipment" abilities like vinyl editors and performance upgrades. Need for Speed 2015 would later take on Forza's vinyl/wrap editing capabilities, with design sharing later added in the Showcase Update.
On the mobile front, NFS: No Limits is dueling against the Asphalt series, particularly the eighth and ninth installments, a game that plays similarly to the console and PC versions of NFS. While Asphalt has normal racing event lengths and is not limited by fuel (except for exclusive events), No Limits focused on short drag race-like events (and all races are ironically limited by fuel).
Keep Circulating the Tapes: By being a 25-year-and-counting racing franchise with licensed vehicles, this was eventually bound to happen. You would be hard-pressed to find games from the classic and tuner eras in game stores nowadays, or at least a new and unsealed copy for a cheap price, and all games before Shift (and even The Run after that) are not available for purchase in any online stores, unless you don't mind pirated, abandonware copies.
Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 made its debut as a base car in Underground... that is, if one doesn't count that it already appears in the Japanese release of High Stakes (Over Drivin' IV) four years before. The same thing also applies to Skyline 2000GT-R and Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 (debuted in Over Drivin': Skyline Memorial) as well as Nissan 180SX Type-X (debuted in Over Drivin' GT-R)
Production Throwback: The menus of GT were based on the ones from the arcade version of San Francisco Rush 2049, whose developers moved to Global VR after Atari Games shut down.
Series Hiatus: The franchise has previously seen yearly releases of games from 1997note in which the series was officially established as a franchise with NFS II to 2013, with the exception of 2001.note Motor City Online was released instead that year. However, during the Ghost Games years from 2013 to 2019, the franchise went biennial.note That said, 2014 received a film adaptation and a Complete Edition re-release of 2013's Rivals, but no new game due to the mixed fandom reception of Most Wanted (2012) and Rivals. Also, the 2015 reboot, Payback and Heat each got several updates up to the years after their releases, and Firemonkeys's mobile No Limits sees numerous updates. Although Criterion returned in 2020 with a remaster of their Hot Pursuit, the next new Need for Speed title, Unbound, will not be released until December 2022, the longest gap between new entries at three years (between that game and Heat).
Still going after 25 years since its first release.
It also applies to some cars in the franchise. The Mazda RX-7 FD3S and the Toyota Supra Mk IV are the longest runners in the series, having made regular appearances since the very first game (although it took untilUndergroundfor them to return). The McLaren F1 (Need for Speed II) and the Lamborghini Diablo SVnote More specifically its 1995–97 models (Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit) follow them.
What Could Have Been: With the number of titles the franchise has released, it's no surprise that there were a few concepts that were left by the wayside throughout its history.
In the late 1990s, EA Canada partnered with Paradigm to work on an entry in the series for the Nintendo 64. It was described in the Next Generation magazine as having exclusive tracks and vehicles, Rumble Pak support and the series' trademark gameplay mechanics. However, the game was ultimately canceled between late 1998 and early 1999 after Electronic Arts signed a deal with Volkswagen to make a game around the New Beetle, and the Need for Speed 64 project was shelved in favor of developing Beetle Adventure Racing.
A concept pitched to Electronic Arts around 2008, according to the portfolio page of a former presentation director of EA Black Box, was a game whose goal was to answer the question "How can large scale street races take place in a post-9/11 U.S. city?" Tentatively titled Need for Speed 10: TerrorFive, conceptart depicts a group of street racers named "TerrorFive", alongside a mockup of gameplay in which players seemingly hack into police cars. Yes, apparently at one point, Need for Speed seriously considered doing a Post-9/11 Terrorism Video Game.
There were plans for an online-only game developed by Criterion Games, which started development around 2008 after the release of Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Undercover, that would've been titled Need for Speed: Millionaire. It would have seen the player and their friends go on adventures after winning the lottery and using the money to purchase supercars, described by Criterion director Alex Ward as "Freeburn meets Top Gear challenges". The game was worked on for six months and had a playable version, but was canceled in favor of the 2010 Hot Pursuit.
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