yep, ea has announced the need for speed series has raced past the 100 million sold mark -- thanks to recent sales of need for speed: shift -- and earned $2.7 billion in life-to-date sales, cementing its status as the best-selling racing brand in gaming. just because it's sold the most doesn't necessarily mean it's the best franchise in terms of quality, however -- so we cooked up the graph you see above!

there are a couple of things to keep in mind as you follow the red line's progress:

• first of all, we didn't include cell phone entries and tried to focus on the main entries in the franchise
• the general quality of the series seems to be high, yet starts to dip after the release of underground 2 in 2004; shift seems to have brought the series back from the brink of critical mediocrity

ea's focus now is on rebooting the franchise -- the first step was to release a new hardcore sim racer in need for speed: shift. the next move is to release need for speed nitro, an arcade racer for the wii and ds market, and follow that with need for speed world online, a free-to-play pc racer for the casual audience.need for speed series sells 100m copies, earns $2.7b life-to-date originally appeared on joystiq on wed, 21 oct 2009 14:30:00 est. please see our terms for use of feeds.




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