In my case, I don't own any consoles, only a PC, and consoles are part of the problem, at least in the USA, since there are a variety of consoles in addition to PC, that splits up the number of players for any EA title into groups based on what console they use, or if they use a PC. The older games were mostly PC, but the servers are shut down except for NFS Carbon, and few players are doing multi-player events on the older but more recent titles like Shift or Undercover.
In the case of Shift 2, the chat feature was completely removed, so players can't chat even while waiting in a "lobby" for an event. Without any form of communication between players, the experience, is like playing offline, but with other players controlling the AI. This is probably the main reason that relatively few players ever played Shift 2 online.
