6 Beloved Video Game Franchises That Died In 2017
They're never coming back.
Take a step back and analyse the games industry right now, and you'll find it's one hell of a brutally efficient beast. Or at least, it certainly tries to be.
Yes, games get released buggy as hell, pre-order bonuses are tacked onto even the most threadbare of projects and every other title is a shooter, but each move is calculated years in advance. Thanks to the rise of social media, widespread consumer feedback and the sheer fact that with constant online connections, developers and publishers can literally monitor which parts of their games are being interacted with the most, it's resulted in thousands of video games that SHOULD (and that's the key word here) fly off the shelves.
You see the same thing in Hollywood. Movies like King Arthur, Pixels, Jurassic World - all combinations of "surefire" successful elements resulting in soulless, synthetic, forgettable nonsense.
Back to gaming, and that pursuit of the focus-tested "perfect product" has resulted in far more IPs getting their most recognisable and cherished aspects gutted or heavily modified.
When the mandate is "please everyone", no one is truly satisfied...