Most mismanaged franchise of the past generation.

I was thinking about Mass Effect 4 after reading an article about the top metacritic games of all time. I started thinking about how Andromeda was a soulless husk of a game and how if you stretch back TEN years to when mass effect 3 released you start realizing that EA has owned and operated one of the highest rated, most lucrative franchises in gaming, with a legion of loyal followers and all generation long, while the franchise is fresh in our minds from its previous successes EA/Bioware didn't give a JV effort on a follow up game....

I cannot think of a more mismanaged franchise in gaming right now. During the entirety of Andromeda development the devs were asking fans what they wanted... That was a tell tale sign that they had nothing to say. EA didn't prioritize moving the franchise forward in any meaningful way and didn't even use bioware main studio to make the game...

Think back 10 years... Can you think of a more poorly handled franchise than Mass Effect over the past generstion+?

Edit : Sonic doesn't count because sonic has never been good...

Ghost Recon had a rough go of it.

Wildlands was a generic Ubisoft open world game but still kinda fun with friends.

Breakpoint was a travesty though, a broken live-service mess that felt incredibly far removed from what the series was supposed to be about.

Fallout and The Elder Scrolls also didn't have great generations

halo for sure

Stop beating around the bush. You could've just said EVERYTHING RELEASED AND UPCOMING FROM UBISOFT.

Man, good thread, good question to ask.

Honestly I'm going to have to argue that any large, publicly-traded publisher has mismanaged the shit out of their franchises from a consumer standpoint. At some point in the last ten years I think all the major publishers had found a happy middle ground between making customers happy and being very successful sales-wise, but then they seem to have pissed that all away.

But if I had to choose one, going to have to go with Tom Clancy.

What they've done with the franchise, from Splinter Cell to Ghost Recon, to Rainbow Six and to newer IP's--is just tragic.

I don't think we are ever going to get a good game from Ubisoft again unless they backpedal away from their "games as a service" outlook and start making "games as a product". I don't think they'll do that.

From what I've read they essentially gave the project to their "B team" which is just something you don't do with one of the best IP's in gaming history.

I personally enjoyed the game because I judge games on their own merits, and then compare them to the series. But yeah, definitely a disservice to the franchise.

• Resident Evil
• GTA
• Ninja Turtles
• Halo
• Mario
• Battlefield

... I could go on.

Uncharted. They killed the game.

@Pedro: I'll agree that Naughty Dog screwed the pooch on the multiplayer. The single player, however, was incredible.

Yea go with this. If we're being truthful, they fucked it up after GRAW.

But they became so transparent with their cynicism and sheer lack of respect for the product that it's became parody.

Say the same for R6 really, people like Siege, don't are, that shit ain't R6.

Outside of Assassin's Creed (which has itself not been ideally managed), everything Ubisoft owns.

Halo takes second place, personally.

Andromeda may have been lifeless on the story/characters front ... but it was pretty fun to play. And there was a sliver of redemption with Legendary trilogy and they also announced a new game ... although I don't like the idea of them going back to old characters and probably f***ing them up.

Personally ... I threw up when I saw the Dad of War reveal in 2016 and have never gotten the bad taste out of my mouth .

I think MGS was pretty poorly handled. MGSV had really good gameplay, story was a let down to most .... but idc about that anymore. Then they follow it up with Survive and ..... that's it.

Prototype - got a shitty port and then nothing.

I guess there's lots of franchises which made no appearances. I won't list them.

The Last of Us

@TheEroica: Sonic never good...again this sort of trolling from a mod is just a piss poor look.

Sonic (we're still getting a lot of junk, one of which being a REALLY bad botch job of Sonic Colors)

Mass Effect (Andromeda was just disappointing)

Just anyone you don't like is a "troll".

Star Wars

Xbox!!!!!!

Paper Mario.

Battlefield.

lol. Not sure how not liking Sonic is trolling. I've never found it good either. The graphics look good, but also very cluttered. The sounds are great. The gameplay is annoying as hell.

I was a Sega boy and I can attest to the veracity of Sonic not being good.

Troll!

EA's NHL franchise. They have fucked up so bad over the years. It has been downhill since NHL 15.

Gran tarismo.

It's irrelevant,used to be a Sony big bun.now it accepts being bitch to Forza,FH.

Still outsells your beloved Forza EVERYTIME though hey!!!!

Pretty sure both are not struggling at this stage, & seeing GT7 is supposedly going the ol' route of campaign, etc, then it may win back a lot of the disgruntled fans pissed about GTSport omitting what the series was revered for!

It is Gran Turismo too, if you can't even spell it, you've obviously never played it, nor plan to...just fanboy hatin'! lol

Guess I'll contribute by adding something different than what everyone else has already stated

Unfarted, The Flop of Us, Dad of War. :P

To me it seems like EA and Ubisoft have compltely missmanaged all their classic IPs. Splinter Cell, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Prince of Persia etc. It’s like they don’t even care. And they don’t because they make soooo much money on other stuff.

I guess EA’s handling of the Star Wars licence is a standout though. That was an embarrasing 10 years output lol.

I agree with others when it comes to EA. I'd put Fable on the list too. 1st game was 7 hours long, 2nd was padded and shallow, and 3rd was a disaster. Then It was a failed kinect Fable game, followed Last gen by Legends, a forced co op game that was cancelled before release. Every generation the IP has missed the mark in some way.

@kizza_soze:

Don't cry son,just accepted GT is forza's bitch,and if you are gonna respond to me with butthurt gibberish like this,you will soon be my bitch,up your game

Lol... That's hilarious to assume that mods shouldn't have opinions on the games we play.

Piss poor look 😂🤣 lol!

Can't believe that line ruffled your feathers. You don't have game franchises that you see as underwhelming? How did you make your way to system wars?

That's actually embarrassingly hard to call,

Halo arguably had a pretty poor showing last gen, (despite my personal enjoyment)

Splinter cell was awol

Ghost recon struggled for an identity

Mass Effect managed to get an entry that killed any enthusiasm for the IP

Star wars got what? one title worth playing

any EA sports title not called Madden or FIFA

Metal Gear solid really fell off a cliff

Sonic hasn't had a good entry in a LOOOOOOng time

And again despite my personal enjoyment of the titles there is an argument Pokemon hasn't really been expanded or developed to maximise the franchise.

The gameplay is garbage. Couldn't agree more. I'm not saying there isn't some fun moments to be had in levels, but... Nah, not really. Sonic always felt off to me. Hate the character control.

Best sonic game is the kart racing game I played on my vita.

I'd have to say Sonic.

0/10 troll attempt. C'mon dude, you can do better than that.

Paper Mario

In a world where Konami exists why is there any discussion?

Gears of War.

Dreams. One of the most interesting and innovative IPs consoles have ever seen, yet both Sony and Mm don't seem to know how to move it foward.

At this point there should be a PC version, a free to play/pay to create model, a PS5 update, pre-instalation on PS5, a monetization system, etc.

@PAL360: The moment I saw your name I knew exactly what game you were going to reference. 😁

@Pedro: Of course you did 😄😎

Grand Theft Auto. 5 milked to death, GTA Trilogy horribly butchered. Still no 6 eight years later.

The problem is they've been selling the game consistently all generation long. From a business perspective they print money, from a gamers perspective they've been yawn for a while now.

SOCOM and Medal of Honor come to mind.. so much wasted potential. Especially after the letdown of CoD and BF.

@vfighter: Agreed. OP copy-pasted an outdated IGN meme, and then tries to act surprised that someone would call him out for trolling... Even IGN thmselves disowned that meme when Sonic Mania came out.

Anyway, 2D Sonic has always been better than 2D Mario... I said what I said.

Sonic not good? Uncharted being killed?

Bizarro world! The answer I can think instantly is FIFA. From a player side, business wise it’s handled brilliantly.

My answer to OP's question:

Konami

They've mismanaged multiple franchises:

Metal Gear - They killed the franchise by firing Kojima, creating the flop MG Survive, and then turning MGS3 into a pachinko machine.

Silent Hill - They killed the franchise by disbanding Team Silent, outsourcing to unknown foreign developers, and then firing Kojima after he announced Silent Hills. And they also turned it into pachinko.

Castlevania - They almost killed the franchise when they outsourced to MercurySteam (before they became good under Nintendo), and then turned it into a pachinko machine as well. The only good thing to come out of the franchise in the last decade or so is the Netflix show.

Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) - There was a time when it was the greatest football game franchise, better than FIFA. And it was able to match FIFA in sales too. But a series of blunders from Konami led to its fall from grace. And Konami somehow managed to sink to a new low with eFootball (lowest-rated game on Steam).

Frogger - This was the game that launched Konami's career back in the '80s. Yet Konami hadn't done anything with the IP in decades... until they launched a recent NBC game show called Frogger, which is basically just another Takeshi's Castle clone that doesn't do much to stand out from all the other Takeshi clones on TV nowadays.

Ghost Recon is one for me, felt like Wildlands Multiplayer was a spiritual successor to Socom, then break point happened and yeah what a mess.

Halo is another, it really fell off and was over taken by COD, Battlefield, and now Fortnite. Maybe Infinite can re-light the fire.

I don't agree with Gran Turismo, the game has it's fan base and sells more than any other racing game. Every release is an event. I just don't think gaming journalists and casual gamers are into racing sims anymore, and racing games in general have kinda fallen off.

Splinter Cell because they didn’t even make one.

• GT Sport
• TLOU2
• Cyberpunk 2077

Mass Effect ... that's the only correct answer, at least for me. You took one of the most beloved franchises from previous gen and turn it into a disappointing mess.