Currently, there are four games under development in the series.

Gameplay

The Need for Speed and its sequels are racing games, all of which employ the same fundamental rules and have similar mechanics. In each game, the player controls a race car in a variety of races, the goal being to win the race. In the tournament/career mode, the player must win a series of races in order to unlock vehicles, tracks, etc. Before playing each race, the player chooses a vehicle to race in and has the option of choosing the transmission of the vehicle, which includes automatic and manual transmission. All games in the series have some form of multiplayer mode allowing players to race one another via split screen, LAN or the internet.

Although the games share the same name, the tone and focus of the games has varied significantly, in one form or another. For example, in some games the cars can suffer mechanical and visual damage, while in other games the cars cannot be damaged at all, some games have physics -- that is, the way the software simulates a real car behavior -- that are reminiscent of a real car, while others game have more forgiving and less realistic physics.

With the release of Need for Speed: Underground, the series shifted focus from the racing of exotic sports cars on scenic point-to-point tracks to import/tuner subculture, and street racing in an urban setting. To-date, this theme has remained prevalent in all following games.

Most of the games in the franchise include police pursuits in some form or other. In the first game, the player races against the X-Man, the objective is to beat him without getting arrested. In some of the games featuring police pursuit, the player can play as either the felon or the cop; as a felon, the player must elude the police, or if playing as the cop, must pursue and capture the felon. Introduced in Need for Speed: Underground were the concepts of drifting and drafting, which are used in drift and drag racing, respectively. These new mechanics are included in the tournament/career mode aside from the regular street races. In drift races, the player must defeat other racers by setting higher points than the other racers; these points are earned by the length and timing of the drift made by the player's vehicle. In drag races, the player uses a car set in manual transmission. The objective in this type of race is to follow an opposing car and mimic its performance to gain a boost in the player's speed. Like an ordinary street race, the player must finish first to win the race, though if the player crashes into an obstacle, the race ends.

The concept of car tuning evolved with each new game. In the earlier games in the series, it focused mainly on the mechanics of the car rather than the looks of it. Every game has some form of car tuning that can be set by toggling options on and off (i.e. ABS, or traction control), adjusting options (ie front downforce, rear downforce, brake bias, gear ratios) or upgrading parts (ie engine, gearbox). From Underground to the current game, customization of vehicles is based on the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious. The two categories in which the player can choose to modify his cars are visual and performance. The visual of the player's car becomes an important aspect in tournament/career mode after the release of Need for Speed: Underground 2. The way your car appears is measured by a visual rating out of ten possible points; the more visual points the player's car has, the more likely it is for the car to be featured in fictional automobile magazines. When a car has a high visual rating, the player is told that their vehicle is eligible to be on the cover of a magazine; thereafter, the player must drive to a specific location to take the photo of the vehicle.