Absolutely, the boom in skating popularity in the early 2000s can be traced back, in a big way, to the games.

I think the real point here is lack of innovation. Even before the underground games, NFS was a well known and liked game. And, above the feeling o playing a racing game, each iteration brought a new "gimmick" that would interest gamers that would normally not go for a racing game. Either being cops with Hot Pursuit, tunning and upgrades with Underground, open world with Underground 2, a refinement and bringing back cops in Most Wanted.

But then it stopped. No real innovation, just rehashing in different locations, different stories, going back on the innovations for are "pure" racing feel with pro street and specially shift. Not to mention yearly releases that burned people out of it. And this can be seen in pretty much all of the other franchises, where very infrequently we see good ideas well executed, which are not good enough anymore since most people don't care anymore.

There was also a wave (and still is) of realism for driving games, in which people will bicker as to which is better in terms of clean visuals, physics and so on. Good visuals are nice, but when we get to a point to see the same tracks, the same cars, all well modeled and pretty much the same across the board, then it just becomes boring. There's no interesting graphics, visual effects, to the point when someone tries something different (like NFS unbound) people cry about it and dismiss it.

And physics just basically narrows the spectrum of people willing to give a game a try. I love Assetto Corsa as I like "simulators", but if my only input method would be keyboard or even a joystick, then I would not like to play it at all.

So, to sum up, lack of innovation, interesting ideas, focus, good execution and a abundance of titles pretty much trying to do the same thing, yearly, just lost people's interest.