The games are published by the American software publisher Electronic Arts. The series began with the 1994 game The Need for Speed and continues to this day. Since the sixth part Hot Pursuit 2 to Undercover, the games were produced by the developer studio EA Black Box. Subsequent titles (Shift, Nitro, Hot Pursuit and Shift 2: Unleashed) were developed by different studios. In 2011, however, Need for Speed: The Run was once again programmed by EA Black Box. The online open-world game Need for Speed: World, released in 2010, was also programmed by Black Box. The 2012 remake of Most Wanted was handled by Criterion Games, who had previously developed Hot Pursuit. Initially, it was said that Criterion would take over the complete game series. However, back in 2013, while still working on Rivals, Electronic Arts handed over development to Swedish studio Ghost Games (formerly EA Gothenburg) after much of Criterion's staff had already moved to Ghost Games. Between Rivals and the 2015 reboot, Electronic Arts and Ghost Games interrupted the annual release schedule of the racing game series to give themselves more time for development, bridging this break in January 2015 with a spin-off for Android smartphones, Need for Speed: No Limits, for which Firemonkeys Studios was responsible. In November 2017, another Ghost Games-developed installment in the series, Need for Speed Payback, was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows.
