ITT: Games that were supposed to be huge franchises

Unknown 9

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Concord
Marathon
Diablo
City of Wolves

Halo

Clair Obscur Expedition 33

Unknown 9

8 releases

ONE. JOB.

The 9th one is unknown

Why are they like this?

There are two of these that I am currently fascinated by but they haven't flopped (yet, at least) because their games aren't out.

First up, there's Exodus. The game isn't out yet but they already released a setting guidebook, a book, a secret level episode, a shitload of articles, a super "founder membership" with perks (and an extra perk if you refer 3 people to it), and they have more books about to release and a TTRPG. We don't even know when the actual game is releasing. The hubris is insane.

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Funny name because I don't know what the fuck is this

Do we even have a trailer for the game, all I know is that its BioWare people doing it...

What is it with companies trying to create multimedia franchises out of new IPs before even releasing them and knowing if anyone likes them or not

that keanu reaves wannabe

who owns the IP? Is it in limbo like NOLF.

The other one I'm fascinated by is what Dan Houser has been working on ever since he decided to leave the cash cow that is Rockstar. He has three "franchises" already, one that was an audiobook and will be getting a novel this year and supposedly a video game in the future, another that is a comic book and then another one that will be getting stories and supposedly an open world game later down the line. This one is not as embarrassing in my view because I think this is just Dan basically wanting to stretch his wings and just write whatever he wants. He was probably sick of working on GTA games and having to wait a decade for them to come out so now he just wants to write a bunch of shit and get loose. Still, two games planned that are far away for books he's only writing now is funny.

They got two trailers for the game awards. And in the first one, they even brought Matthew McConaughey out to shill the game. He will be voicing a character in the game, apparently. When the second trailer showed up, I had completely forgotten that there was even a first trailer until I looked it up out of curiosity. It doesn't look bad, but it also doesn't look particularly note-worthy.

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Fuck, that last one hurts, but is for the best

Everyone wants to be the next Marvel Cinematic Universe. Number go big.

I literally didn't hear about unknown 9 until it had been cancelled lol

Kino

this and Blue Protocol ate up all of Bandai's profits from Elden Bling

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destiny, though to be fair I never thought they'd make it the ten years

start series with a video game

continues series with non-video games

The Sims Killer

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This is a concord waiting to happen

Nightdive
And five years later and they still haven't released the fucking remaster and probably never will.

want to build a multi-media franchise

anchor your success to a DEIslop videogame

Should've opened with the comics then gone into podcasts and books second
A game adaptation should be your last step. Franchises that branch out from a videogame will always be seen as the additional content to your game, not as a worthwhile thing on its own that also has a game

I'm not betting against Naughty Dog desu senpai. I bet this one will actually get pushed down everyone's throats. Sony will make sure of it. This is not gonna fail like Concord and Marathon.

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im still surprised they cut the cord (lel) on concord this fast
wasnt it released for like a week only? and full refunds? considering the fact that they already had plans for an entire universe (with the secret level episode), this was just an enormous waste of money

Mighty no. 9

This one is still unbelievable, how the fuck Bandai was tricked into thinking that this slop could have been a profitable multimedia franchise when no one didn't even know it was out?

This one fucking hurts man all they had to do was release the game with content thats it it had all the foundations to be way WAY better than sims but then they just fumbled btw the game hasnt gotten a single massive update since release and its $40 and EA fuck these devs refunded at 1.9 hours and went back to sims

This shit is never coming out. There's never gonna be any new news about it and it will get canceled next year

In August 2020 the studio unveiled the game Unknown 9, a new franchise designed as a cross-media property with comic books, podcasts and a novel. On 18th September 2020 BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. announced the acquisition of the studio.

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go back to sucking dicks on reddit

Unknown 9

Bamco trying to sell that they literally invented the concept of multimedia will always be hilarious.

Would Unknown 9 had stood a chance if it started with podcasts and comics first instead of a game?

Yeah, the second season of tlou has only confirmed that drunkmann is a bad writer, so bad that even normies noticed it

the game is basically one giant non working placebo

Shame

this is quintessential ideas guy shit where they plan out an entire franchise with multiple products across multiple forms of media without a shred of doubt that any of it can fail

Hyenas is literally memoryholed

It would had stood a chance if it have any kind of publicity

Why use one of the most generic titles every conceived for a sci-fi franchise? Might as well call it "stars" or "space travel"

That one's guaranteed to happen, at least for a sequel, they have separate trademark filings for the game itself and the series title as a whole, like a French Final Fantasy.

they probably wanted to write as much of it off as possible

I'd say a franchise that just released their 33rd entry is pretty successful

They're dead after tlou2, and they're double dead after tlou2 tv reiterated the exact same scenario again. Just a full repeat of the exact same failure squarely aimed at the writing.

creatives no longer fantasize about telling a particular story, but instead fantasize about achieving a certain level of popularity.
no originality, their vision is to make the next avengers, or the next overwatch, or the next halo. they only want to be "the next" of something, instead of carving their own paths.
i think the only fix would be for investors and publishers to stop chasing one big hit and only fund smaller projects. probably won't happen until after GTA6 comes out and several studios die of trying to copy its budget.

The Order: 1886

Several things against it. Ugly protagonist nobody wants, men or women, ND has never done melee games, sounds like the story is lame. When I heard they were making a sci-fi game I thought it was going to be something like Mass Effect/Star Warsy but action-adventure

That's not how it works. What most people actually mean when talking about "tax write offs" for media is the studio never releasing the movie/game, and filing the costs of production (likely inflated on purpose) as r&d/experimental, which lets them deduct that cost from their taxable income. Hence Hyenas, or that Batgirl movie.
Concord released. It made income, however little, it's no longer R&D, it's a product. What their analysts probably realized was that the damage to their brand for leaving that stain online would exceed just refunding everyone and cutting their losses.

There's nothing appealing in this game. Tlou was carried by the story in the first game, this game has nothing on it.

City of Wolves

? Did it flop or what

They got multiple sponsors. They'll be fine.

The Order: 1886

I felt I was taking crazy pills seeing Expedition 33 everywhere, and nobody bringing up this game in comparison, it's pretty forgotten and not very good, but the visuals and atmosphere are very similar.
Then I went to their website and an artist had The Order: 1886 listed as an inspiration, that seems about right.

No amount of penaldo and Saudi prize pools could save it

Yeah.

The Order: 1886

No im pretty sure it was only ever supposed to be a tech demo.

It's not out yet and it's not for westrannies~

fucking oof

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I don't think it was a Knack situation. It was supposed to be a system seller for PS4, it followed the same cinematic formula and the devs wanted to make more games.

How the FUCK do you present those numbers to some old fart Japanese Bamco manager?

it’s got that doomed ESG vibe with random nigger faces all over it

It was doomed the moment that negress Kim Belair touched it. The fact the protag was also a pajeet affected it.

Why are they spending most of their marketing budget in the west then?

Hyenas never made it to release.

That only means that when this game flops, it'll make Snoy bleed even more.

It's a shitty fighting game that got ruined by gay guest characters. What do you think?

Concord half a billion kekerinooo

You know Fatal Fury was/is already a franchise, right?

It's just alot of hype and a way to get investors on board. It costs basically nothing to have your marketing team drum this up so you can present stuff in front of a board of people.

But you can tell they didn't know what they were doing just from this. Comic book series, novels, mini series, and a podcast but can you see what is missing? A fucking sequel to the game, the most important part of the franchise. Like books, comics, and podcasts are fucking peanuts to what the game should make.

the writer of tlou2 even retroactively changed the first game's writing to justify the second game's motives.

jesus...

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crtl+f

anthem

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This was supposed to have an MMO, and events in the show was supposed to influence the game (and vice versa).

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Apparently someone high up thought this was going to be franchise material and had a lot of ideas for it. Action figures, comic books, shit like that.
Needless to say, it did not happen. Game was one of the biggest flops on XBOX OG that didn't involve Japan trying to sell an exclusive in Japan on the console.

I'll give it this, I'm impressed they got the texture of the Music CD with the small readable print.

This and Drake of the 99 Dragons were planned to be multimedia franchises.

People REALLY liked that MMO for some reason, kept on going even after the series it was made for ended.

33rd

Look another retard who hasn't played the franchise. This is their 67th entry

Obsession with creating big new franchises existed long before MCU.

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I'm still more impressed that text on the Shadow Files in SA2 were not just actually legible but had were in decent if occasionally stilted English.

They technically are a franchise already, but the Remedyverse is so fucking good, yet keeps losing money, Alan Wake 2 also didn't sell enough.
Just release Control 2 somehow, it's already done, studios much shittier than Remedy have gotten funding for less.

The MMO lives again, surprisingly.

sponsors

they're 100% taking the money and running

I remember hearing that stupid song every time I went to gamestop in 2013. It's a wonder the employees didn't kill themselves.

And it killed Code Vein 2, Ace Combat 8 and Soulcalibur.

Dissolve Bamco.

It's physically painful to consider how many man-hours of creative work went into something absolutely NO ONE cares about, not even to mock. At least a Concord-tier failure has a degree of notoriety to it and is amusing to laugh at, but this is just a horror.

Thank you for reminding me I should get that game, love that aesthetic and it shouldn't be too expensive this long after release.

I remember randomly stumbling onto that MMO and playing it for a bit. It was surprisingly okay.
Private server?

how many man-hours of creative work went into something absolutely NO ONE cares about, not even to mock

Y-you don't understand - it's "DOING IT FOR THE ART" in its purest form...

i did not ask for or want remedy's games to become a cinematic universe clusterfuck. i dislike that alan wake 2 expects me to be familiar with control and quantum break. alan wake was self-contained and alan wake 2 should not expect me to be familiar with any games except alan wake 1.
i am almost afraid to play control because it clearly has some kind of brainwashing effect on people to make them like this shit instead of complain about it.

If AC8 really never sees the light of day because of this, I might do something drastic- like penning a strongly-worded letter!

Please tell me that's a delusional schizo theory of yours. I won't hold it against you if it is.

Lie if you have to.

Last October Bamco cancelled multiple games in development, including some for One Piece and Naruto and one commissioned by Nintendo.

It may as well have, it was like two weeks from release when it was shitcanned.

The entire concept of "supposed to be a franchise" is so confusing to me. In the 80s, everything that became a franchise was started with a single, standalone feature that was SO INCREDIBLY POPULAR that it demanded more content to follow it. Thus you had dozens of original concepts all getting franchises, because they all had solid foundations. Even the MCU understood this - it started with Iron man, which was a fantastic standalone movie. What happened to marketing teams in the last 20 years that caused them to completely forget this core tenet of making money? "Make something good first, numbnuts."

You should play Control just because it's a good game.

scripted podcast

what?

Probably what they call Radio Dramas now.

You guys ever notice that every major flop recently has had a non-White or non-Male lead? Any conclusion that we can draw from this?
Maybe something that we've been saying all along?

Immortals of Avenum
It's hard to believe hundreds of millions of dollars went into these stillborn projects. Aren't all these people supposed to be qualified and studied hard to be successful? How can you greenlight stuff like this?

Everything has such lame names these days

Anon Babbletards were pushing this memegame as the Elden Ring killer

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it's insane they're still charging full price for this shit. SteamDB has an all-time peak of 750 players and only 20 people playing right now

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premise and content that appeals entirely to men

protagonist is an ugly chink femchunk

Yeah it's gonna sell trillions

Because those who manage the companies don't care, for them everything is the same, that's why they keep hiring people who only give them failures, because they can't see the difference and because it is easier for them to control production and adapt it to what they consider correct.
And that's not to mention that what they are looking for is not directly to defraud investors or launder money.
Or are you going to tell me that you think Snow White cost 300 million dollars, a movie with no big name actors, no quality scenery, where everything is a green screen, no quality costumes, no decent musicians, no extras doing great choreography, with a CGI that puts 3D Mini Spies as a masterpiece.

Why do they do this? This ultra tryhard cringy as fuck "TAKE US SERIOUSLY" shit repels due to how desperate and pathetic it is
Just release the game and if it does well, make a sequel

No, it was still such a laughably bad game that no amount of corpo glazing could convince people to buy it.

oh so it's ok when E33 does it?

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I feel like this might get a starfield like arc, but worse. The whole theme of the trailer and game appears to be exploration and freedom, but if this is just a somewhat linear story game, which is druckmann's mo, you will lose the sci-fi autists and hope the game is carried by your already existing fanbase, zoomers who don't like sci-fi.

Think of all the things these resources could have gone I to instead, hell think of that for the game itself.

I will never understand how people get this fat
t. Fat guy who loves eating

They are sort of ponzi schemes full of "yes men". They all go along with it. There are sometimes people among them who just states the obvious but they're immediately dealt with. "Negativity" is often the word for those who tell the truth.

Even when they fail the sales, why should they care, most of the time it just ends up okay. Studios, investors, rarely go with layoffs but the retards responsible get to fail upwards in the industry thanks to their cronies.

I love E33, and don't get me wrong, this is cringe. But at least it's only one movie and I believe this got announced a month before the game came out. It's not quite the same thing.

Did anyone ever win the contest this game had? I Remember a massive promotion in magazines and techtv.

Tekken gets to live while Soulcalibur dies

Tekken 8 does almost nothing but piss people off

We're living in the wrong timeline and I hate.

Dan’s writing is “good for a video game” good but not nearly good enough to at stand on its own

Least the demo is still up instead of trying to trick people

Kepler does this for every game they publish, they grab movie rights for their Hollywood friends to add to their portfolios.
It was never going to be actually made until they saw the game outselling their whole catalog so they now want to cash out on their adaptation rights.

You now remember that Concord got a Netflix episode

ND has never done melee games

Basically every ND game has melee except Jak X and Crash Team Racing?

have to create an EA account regardless to play the demo

I don't give a fuck about whatever that is, don't reply to me with that faggotry

Secret Level but yes.

stop acting cunty because your argument was immediately refuted

Or are you going to tell me that you think Snow White cost 300 million dollars

I dunno, man, think about it. Let's start with a basic: food. The cast/crew need 3 males a day and you can safely assume $30 per meal because those Hollywood types need their steak and lobster for breakfast. Google claims that 750 animators worked on the movie, so let's extrapolate that to 1500 people for the total combined cast and crew.
This means that they're eating $135,000 per day.
Filming apparently took roughly 6 months, or 180 days.
That brings food costs to $24,300,000.
I could see people who are completely retarded about money blowing $300 million easily.

3 males a day

Didn't know Snow White was such a man eater

This guy gets it. Earlier this year some "agent" in movie industry had charges brought against her in Turkey. The allegations were that she was close with Netlix, Warner, Disney bosses here in my country so whenever they want to push some goyslop, actors from her company would get hired. Which explained a lot because a lot of talentless faggots and cunts are always taking lead roles happened to be hers.

Another insider that I know from industry told me couple of years ago that they screwed Disney and others so much here for shit series and movies, because those retards from the West apparently just blew money on whatever they were told to. It wouldn't surprise me that same shenanigans are taking place in gaming industry.

Bandai will literally fund anything.

The man power... the hours... the money... all into fucking nothing. Numerous heads should've rolled for that.

Concord at least has the Secret Level episode and Bazz to show for it, what the fuck does Unknown 9 have?

wasn't that game so underdeveloped? I heard that a QA tester said they made the last level near the time it was supposed to be sold in stores and it was all shit buggy?

Freud strikes yet again...

It was absolutely underdeveloped. It was just a mess in general.

i've played sin episodes, I suppose it looks nice visually but it's short and feels very empty

Nothing at all.

this has to be some money laundry operation or something, there's no way this is really intended to be a real product

Cuckrada pretty much admitted Soulcalibur, as an IP, is dead . Bamco simply wanted to fund this multi media franchise project as a next big thing.

Anya Chalotra who during her interview regarding the game looked and sounded somewhere between holding back tears and thinking "Oh god, what the fuck did I sign up for...again...".

The really sad part is that a good chunk of that was probably other employees testing out that the video was working and what not

lol. more like redditverse. garbage games. only max payne 1 was good

I'm not saying that producing high-budget films is easy or cheap, and obviously there will always be overhead and someone will keep a change.
But let's not go crazy to believe that Disney or any other production company treats their replaceable workers well, especially animators, if they cared enough about them to pay for their food, and even 30 dollar meals, they would give them the time to finish their work, which is precisely the problem with these productions with horrible CGI, everyone wants to pass the problem to the last in the chain which are the animators, who also tend to be outsourced to reduce costs, and end up with half-finished and unfinished products.
And not to mention the fiscal juggling that has been going on for decades to say that the highest grossing films in history have shown losses.

If that were the case they would've funded some of the sequels to actually successful games by now.

But no. This isn't competent corruption. This is incompetent suicide.

This game is getting cancelled or delayed 100%

they aren't even 9

The announcement was only 5 months ago you braindead ADHD zoomer

Bamco is a super schizophrenic company run by the oldest japanese men that would rather try to get people to buy anything except a video game. They want to sell people a bunch of shitty merch and make money off dumb shit than make a good game with their IP. Just look at tekken, the karate kid collab, the kazuya glasses, etc. They're carried by having strong IP's and or their IP getting big by a fluke.

Half a year ago and STILL no gameplay? lolmao

This is why Asians are superior. More often than not their game announcements are just gameplay reveal trailers.

what's with studios trying to force things to be a huge franchise immediately instead of waiting until they create a game that people love and then organically build up the franchise around that? in fact, have any of these planned massive multimedia franchises ever succeeded?

Fiduciary responsibility. The studio heads don't give a shit about what it is, they just want it to be big so the line on the graph goes up. Why do you think Bungie got caught stealing art multiple times? Or forced their devs to make a multiplayer shooter a marathon game, despite the devs begging them not to. The executives only purpose is to churn out slop to make the shareholders money. Hop on trends, steal, manufacture hype, etc. This line of thought is not just destroying the industry, its destroying everything.

Why would they cancel a commissioned game? Wouldn't the commissioner be the one to do that?

ugly woman game that isn't hijacking an existing IP

Nah it's dead on arrival.

Stop the cap

Early Access is release, it's just an excuse for releasing unfinished.

It's even higher when it comes to Revenue and Earnings

Because of narcissism and cocaine the kind of people who end up in control of companies don't think they can possibly fail.

He eats because he's unhappy
He's unhappy because he eats.

But at least he isn't boogie lel

It's considered responsible to make failure after failure and be mocked by people worldwide?

Context behind the clip?

lol, they're not sponsors.
they are most definitely paying the brands, or had some sort of deal of minimum units sold before they pay a penny, meanwhile the devs still have to pay for the rights to show the brands
it would be a sponsor if instead of Porsche, they got BYD, and instead of Adidas, they got timberland or some shit

pathetic fat retard gets his ass beat by a less pathetic fat retard

I can tell that much, but what was the deal with this boxing event?

Concord

Imagine the timeline where Concord is an actual franchise.

Organizers saw the inherent entertainment value in watching two overweight lolcows fight each other and they both agreed to it, there's not a lot to say

Horizon feels like one of these except it's somehow got multiple games.

FFXV

prequel movie

prequel OVA series

prequel drama CD

main game

DLC season pass 1

DLC season pass 2 (cancelled)

standalone online co-op title

tie-in mobile title

sequel novel

dozens of crossover appearances

flopped so hard and has so little lasting power that it barely even got cards in the FF shill set for MtG

Who the fuck let this happen

That's clearly some top level exec's baby project. The games were...Average. But so much support for something so average? Yeah, it's one of the top wanker's pet project they're forcing.

yes and no.
yes because that would have given them a chance to build a fanbase. said fanbase would then build hype by themselves, something like "i liked x character in the comic, cant wait for what it does in the game". this fanbase would shield the game from your average gamer, and would probably be willing to buy 150+ collector editions of the game just to make sure the franchise stays afloat.

and no, because you don't really start seeing money until you release the game, or merchandise. the most likely reason why they released the game first was because they wanted to get as much money as possible from the get go. issue is that they didnt release said game to an already established fanbase that would take a shit game as fanservice, but to the average gamer public that sees a game with dei writing and below average gameplay.

they should have started as a podcast but stayed as a group of 10 people or so and go off from there

Think this is the first I've heard of it so at least part of the title was accurate.

Nu-Deus Ex
They banked so hard on the ARG QR codes, Breach, comic books, actual books (iirc) and building an interconnected universe among Deus Ex. And then Mankind Divided flopped so hard that Squeenix just gave up and left it on a cliffhanger that will never get resolved.

I think it sold somewhat ok, but its sad that we will never get another killzone again because of this franchise.

every succesful franchise needs spin offs!

if we do what the big franchises do, people will like us too!

we're the next marvel! suck it stan lee!

hubris

Kingdoms of Amalur, they were supposed to be making an MMO after Reckoning.

The game's backstory explains that human civilizations have risen and been destroyed in a series of endless and inevitable Cycles. Nine members of one ancient and advanced civilization, the Sahin, obtained immortality in order to survive the end of their Cycle in the hopes of finding a way to put a stop to the Cycles. These surviving Sahin influence humanity from the shadows as the Unknown 9.

Sounds like SHIT

What the hell is a scripted podcast? Isn't that just a normal audiodrama?

Easy.

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Online servers are very expensive, especially if you're renting enough for, a bajillion players

You have to understand that a lot of people nowadays are unable to comprehend that stuff older than 2010 exists, so they reinvent it and call it a new name.

get hit in the dick

grasp at your thighs