Rather than shutting down NFS, apparently EA want's to cut back on EA Black Box, in spite of the fact that Black Box games have sold 55 million copies, starting with NFS6 - Hot Pursuit 2, and one non NFS title, Skate, and hand development over to Criterion.
I'm not so sure about this. EA is complaing about sales during a recession? EA stated sales of ProStreet were dissappointing, but it sold over 5.5 million copies, the #6 top selling game and #1 selling racing game during the period from March 2007 to March 2008 (5.4 million copies during this time). I think EA got spoiled with 9+ million sales of Underground 2 and Most Wanted.
EA Black Box took over the NFS series back with NFS6 - Hot Pursuit 2. Prior to that different developers made the NFS games. The original NFS was made by the same guys that made the older still game called Stunts. I don't know about NFS2 or NFS2SE. NFS3 - Hot Pursuit (1) and NFS4 - High Stakes were made by the same group. NFS5 - Porsche Unleashed was made by another group, but EA bought the game and put a NFS label on it.
The current release, Undercover was getting panned by the critics for a weak storyline, but it's no worse than some popular movies. In racing games, conflicts are settled with cars instead of guns, given that, the storylines of the last 3 NFS games are OK.
One trend in the last two NFS games, is that the cars are getting too far over the top in terms of performance, more like driving Star Wars swoop racers than cars, example video from Undercover. This particular track is mostly open turns and only has two braking zones, but you'll get the idea. The pause at about 47 seconds to the video is due to using fraps to capture live video:
http://jeffareid.net/nfsuc/nucsbbz06.wmv
> all of the cars end up the same after upgrades:
This simply isn't true an any of the NFS games. There are usually one or two dominant cars for each tier level (if there are multiple tiers). For NFS1 - It's the Lamborghini Diablo (ignoring the bonus Warrior PTO). For NFS2 - The McLaren was the fastest car, except for Mystic Peaks where the Lotus GT1 was faster (ignorning the bonus FZR2000). For Hot Pursuit, it was the Mercedes CLK GTR (no Mclaren in this game). For High Stakes and Hot Pursuit 2, the McLaren F1 GTR or the Mercedes CLK GTR are the fastest cars, depending on the track. For Porsche Unleashed, it was the GT1 for all but Corsica where the 1995 911 Turbo was fastest. For Underground 1, it was a mix, but the RX7 was generally best overall. For Underground 2, the Corolla (of all things) was in a class by itself. For Most Wanted, it's the Carerra GT. For Carbon, a trade off between Z06 and Audi Lemans Prototype. For Undercover, the tier 1 cars are a good mix. The Z06 best overall, with the Zonda better at some tighter tracks, and the Veyron at a few high speed tracks.
One issue now facing EA, is the fans of the exotics versus fans of the tuners, and EA switching back and forth, following the fads. Take a look at this intro video made from High Stakes, 3 versions before the Underground 1 tuner oriented game:
http://jeffareid.net/nfs4/n4intro.wmv
Obviously no one will confuse NFS as a racing sim, but Underground 2 had the most realistic physics of the series, that included throttle induced oversteer. It was mostly a one car game (the Corolla), but it made up for it with huge free roam area, great background views, and a large number of tracks and multiple modes that used both street and track courses.
What most are now asking for is something similar to Underground 2, free roam with a purpose (driving to events), and pursuits with the cops. My guess is this will probably happen in the next NFS game.
One thing mentioned in the Marc DeVillis video interview at the official web site is that Undercover has 400 tunable parameters for each car. With this kind of capability, EA Black Box has the ablity to make a very good sim racer, but it will never happen. Another thing mentioned is Black Box spent a lot of time on maintaing a stable camera view (if using chase view which I don't use, mostly a console thing) while the player peformed stunts like 360's or 180's going into reverse, but the actual game play in Undercover doesn't include any events that focus on these stunts. This only existed with Porsche Unleahsed, where there a was a factory driver mode that included peforming stunts like 360s and 180's on a course layed out with cones.
I've been playing the NFS series since NFS2 (except motor city online), and recently got NFS1-SE earlier this year to check it out. My first racing sim was Grand Prix Legends, and my experience with the arcade physics of the Mercedes CLK GTR in High Stakes actually helped a bit, in that both cars had a high working slip angle and had to be steered a bit early to allow time for the cars to yaw inwards and start turning. I wasn't great, but I did manage a negative GPL rank in about 6 months of actual play. I've since bought most of the sim oriented games, F1 Challenge 99-02, Live For Speed, rFactor, and the GTR series, although now I'm more of a casual racer, player of many games, but master of none.
I have a collection of videos of various racing games, to give non-owners an idea of what these games are like:
http://jeffareid.net/rgv.htm