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Franchises destroyed/fatigued by countless sequels

A

AppleSeason

Member
I've been trying to think about a franchise that has not been mentioned yet.

Metal Slug.


The initial mainline run of Metal Slug, 2, X and 3 was practically perfect. Then after the original SNK collapse... 4, 5, a 3D title, portable versions... In the end so many games had come out and not a single one could get close to the originals. It ended becoming a joke

Although maybe Metal Slug is not actually destroyed, as time seems to have helps. It's like anything past 3 has been forgotten and just the original saga keeps getting re released or being advertised.



A debatable one is Castlevania. They bottled lightning with Symphony of the Night and for years they kept trying to replicate the game with the GBA and DS versions. Sometimes they got pretty close, but in the end fatigue was palpable. Then they tried to reboot and innovate.
 
C

Cepheus

Member
New Super Mario Bros. They should have stopped making them after the Wii one. Too many samey games that I now have no interest in any future games that might come out in the series.
 
S

seady

Member
Not counting CoD as it's too obvious, then Halo for sure.

It's still great but unlike other bigger franchise it barely evolved.
 
C

CreatureX3

Member
TreasureHunterG said:
Mario Party: It was among Nintendo's top seller titles during the N64/GCN days, but Nintendo dropped the ball here. Yearly releases during the N64/GCN milked it dry and ever since, the franchise lives on the shadow of it's former self and Nintendo itself doesn't treat it as a major title like before. From 1998 to 2007, we got 10 Mario Party installments, 3 for N64, 4 for GCN, 1 for GBA, 1 for Wii and 1 for DS. From 2007 till now, in a 10 years gap, we only got 6 titles. Obviously, Nintendo doesn't rely on it anymore as they once did before.
Click to expand...
Whenever MP Switch releases, it well become the best selling in the series!
 
O

oddj0b

Banned
Battlefield_Hardline.jpg
 
J

JC Lately

Member
GSR said:
This is starting to hurt Ace Attorney in Japan - they've had a yearly release in the series since 2011 (except 2014, where they pushed the trilogy port on 3DS) and the sales have been slipping. Obviously there's other factors involved as well but I would be stunned if Capcom doesn't tap the brakes.
Click to expand...

Came to post this. Might be a good idea to ease up in releases for a second, let people actually miss it for a sec. Maybe another season of the anime is in order to wet the appetite.
 
I

icecreamsnow

Member
Dynasty Warriors & WWE Wrestling franchise spring to mind. Some of the early ones were pretty good, only to end up drowning in pointless sequels where the combat was rewritten to make in progressively worse.

Ratchet & Clank 2 & 3 were great, and I remember some lackluster sequels afterwards.
 
K

Keinning

Member
If people are counting Halo because of stuff wildly different (which just share the same setting) like Halo Wars then Pokemon is the God of milking when you count all the mystery dungeon, pinball, TGC, etcetera games. and unlike mainline they don't all sell that well.

SMT would have an ungodly amount of sequels too but they all sell well enough (even that wii u idol game sold well, if im remembering it correctly). Arguably, it dropped in quality for some.
 
Silvawuff

Silvawuff

Member
I disagree about Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts; both seem to be enjoying a robust and successful following. There are some stinkers across both franchises but for the most part I think they hold on under their own, unique merit.
 
R

Raiden

Banned
DNAbro said:
I completely disagree with Mario Party. Wasn't Mario Party 8 one of the highest selling Wii games? Oddly enough they stopped making a ton of them once they had their biggest hits. The games only started declining when they decided the original formula needed to be changed for some goddamn reason.
Click to expand...

Yeah. All in one vehicle killed it for me. Probably the dumbest thing you can do to the franchise.
 
O

OfficerRaichu15

Member
I think we will see how AC Orgins does to see how bad the fatigue has been.

Anyway my vote goes to Pokémon recently.
I mean I love Pokémon. The new Pokémon in Sun and Moon were awesome to use, but it has a been a yearly release for almost every year since Platinum and the gameplay just feels like it hasn't evolved enough. Personally think they need to make it much less linear and more open(not open world per say but maybe add more side quests and stuff to do in towns that changes much more during the story progress).
 
I

IcyRhythms

Member
COD(but not every new entry sucks, so this could go either way)
Tony Hawk
Pretty much all of the more popular music titles (Guitar Hero and Rockband come to mind)
Crash needed about a ten year break or something, right? The new game is just remasters for the only ones that were ever good anyway lol
Burnout kind of suffered from this
 
chemicals

chemicals

Member
Assassin's Creed. It felt like I had just finished the first game when there were 3 more games out (2, brotherhood, revelations) I didn't even know which one to play next. Fast forward to NOW and I just recently finished Revelations and started 3. I still haven't played any of the current gen AC games.
 
theclaw135

theclaw135

Banned
Puyo Puyo. Between ludicrous spinoffs like Puyo Wars and Puyo Puyo Da, and the localizations ruining its name recognition outside Japan... Puyo Puyo Fever proved to be the fresh air needed to return the series to a relatively consistent style.
 
Jubenhimer

Jubenhimer

Member
Anything Activision touches really. The minnute it sells well, they spam it as much as they can on as many platforms as they can until people get sick of it. It happened with Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, and now CoD seems to be suffering the same fate.
 
D

DVCY201

Member
Silent Hill, there were a lot of mediocre sequels and poor mismanagement of the franchise as a whole.

Resident Evil was headed that way too, then the genre shift saved it
 
L

LCGeek

formerly sane
Need for Speed
Burnout

Both ruined by EA lack of awareness and understanding at what made the great titles within them work and every medicore or failure continue to drive away consumers in to other genres or franchises.
 
G

Grassy

Member
Romars202129 said:
... Dark Souls.
Yearly sequels there for a while. Thank god they took a break, I liked 3, but the formula was starting to wear thin for me. And I always put three playthroughs into those games so it was triply too much.
Click to expand...

I mean only because of staggered release dates between regions/platforms. There's always been two years at least between main Souls releases, not counting Bloodborne.

Demon's Souls - 2009(EU/AU 2010)
Dark Souls - 2011(PC port 2012)
Dark Souls 2 - 2014
Dark Souls 2: SotFS PC update/current gen(+ Bloodborne) - 2015
Dark Souls 3 - 2016

Lux86 said:
Dark Souls does not belong here imho. A trilogy of amazing games. It's normal to prefer one or another, but i'm happy they all exist.
Click to expand...

True, the Dark Souls 2 hate-on here mystifies me. I loved it.
 
T

Triscuitable

Member
Lagamorph said:
Infinite Warfare is the best CoD since 4 though.
Click to expand...

Shame nobody played it. IW and AW are among the best games in the series, but fans and anti-fans of the franchise alike are so obsessed with the idea that "futuristic CoD is bad and boots-on-the-ground is the only way to play" that they missed out on some of the best character storytelling in the genre, much less the franchise.
 
C

Celine

Member
TreasureHunterG said:
I did read your post and I did consider your points but I don't agree with you. You are making strawmen to hide the fact the series is under a process of diminishing returns since the Wii/DS as the latest installment from the series failed to sell 1M+, something unprecedented in it's sales life, but you're trying to justify that by claiming they are selling the same as always, when this is not true, as never on N64 or GCN a MP game failed to reach 1M, and neither had such a nosedive sales drop between versions as there was from MP8 to MP9.

Really, if disagreeing with you makes you upset then I suggest you to go anywhere else, because you are in the wrong place. This is a discussion board.
Click to expand...
It isn't a wise behaviour to make conclusions by considering sales numbers in the void.
Understanding the context behind them is fundamental.

By just looking at sales figures without any context one could say that series like Super Mario Bros, Pokémon and Kirby are in decline just because they peaked, sales-wise, with the very first episode.
However this would be a myopic point of view that do not consider how a franchise stabilize during time and what may influence it (for the better or the worse).

Both Mario Kart 7 and 8 declined by million of units compared their predecessors on home console (MK Wii) and handheld (MK DS) but this has more to do with commercial success of the platform they were released on than an unproven cause related to fatigue (both MK 7 and 8 can be considered to have performed well sales-wise).

Why did Mario Party 8 and DS had sharp increase (sold several times more) compared to the MP series average sales until and after that point in time?
Until one put thought behind the market condition the game were released on or what it did different compared the past to cater to the contemporary audience he can't have a realistic grasp of what sales figures can suggest.


EDIT:
Mario Party Star Rush failed to sell-in 1M+ in its first 5 months on the market but it is currently unknown if the game overall will fail to cross the 1M threshold.
At the same time Mario Party Island Tour is likely to have sold considerably more than 1.66M (we miss 2 and half years of sales which include the Nintendo Select re-release).
All of this is because we have incomplete data on those two games.
Making statements by using incomplete data is also not a very wise move.
 
Boss Doggie

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Stallion Dan said:
New Super Mario Bros.

Remember when the classic 2D games all looked different and unique? (Yeah yeah lost levels).
Click to expand...

to be fair, that's because those games were their "own" series

it's like saying Galaxy 1 and 2 are "similar", same with your lost levels comment, since it is a direct sequel to SMB
 
J

jdmonmou

Member
Call of Duty definitely. The game is still good but there have been annual releases without much new added to the multiplayer, so I've grown fatigued by the franchise.

And I'd like to see sports games like Madden, NBA 2K, and MLB the Show switch to 2-3 year cycles where they support each release through DLC while taking more time to add upgrades to the core game. Each new release currently only brings roster updates and minor refinements. I still buy these games, but I resent doing it because I'm only doing so to stay current.
 
E

elhav

Member
Assassin's creed started as a nice franchise that I had fun following, but after 3 the avalanche of AC games was getting ridiculous. Stopped giving a shit and I can't stand to look at these games now.
 
L

Linkark07

Banned
phant0m said:
Another: Command & Conquer.

Now, this is partially genre death, but they really cranked that shit out in the last years before EA shuttered it for good. In the decade following RA2/Yuri there was:

Renegade (the FPS hybrid)
Generals
Generals Exp
C&C3
RA3
C&C4
Generals 2 (cancelled)
Click to expand...

You know, it wasn't because of being fatigued that killed the franchise. It was EA stupid decisions that killed the franchise.

People were wary of RA3 because it was more wacko than usual (I liked it though).

C&C4 is what really annoyed the fans, by trying to make it a cheap ripoff of Warhammer 4K Dawn of War 2.

Then come Generals 2 and EA tried to make it a F2P with microtransactions like buying commanders with different units. EA saw fans hated that shit and canned the franchise.

My answer is Assassin's Creed too. Until 2 everything was fine. Brotherhood was ok, an excellent game but not needed. But after Revelations, they really dropped the ball releasing sequels each year. Thing got worst with Rogue and Unity in the same year.
 
V

Vandole

Member
Harvest Moon. During the DS era it almost became an annual franchise. Six games got released on the handheld, not counting the spinoffs and it definitely started to feel stale. Best thing that happened for them was taking a few years off and making a New Beginning for the 3DS and then ultimately having to change the name of the series to Story of Seasons. Now Natsume can focus on completely destroying the brand's name without the actual game sinking with it.
 
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