| Jay520 said: I don't think milking automatically causes diminished sales or quality. Last generation for example there were way more IPs on annual release schedules. Grand Theft Auto, Hitman, Ratchet & Clank, etc released annually and are considered to have stayed high quality. (Except for Deadlocked in the R&C series). I do agree that multiple entries per year will cause issues, but those cases are so rare, I didn't think they were relevant. |
If you look, you'll see that I never actually said that "milking" means "releasing a lot of titles". Annual release schedules aren't an issue, so long as quality isn't allowed to diminish as a result. Indeed, you could release a new title in the same franchise every month, and still not be truly milking it, if there's strong quality and continued innovation to keep the games from becoming just more of the same.
Essentially, there are three elements to consider when trying to decide whether a franchise is being milked:
1. Frequency of release - when a franchise sees a significant ramp-up of release frequency in a consistent manner (two games in one year, once, is not a ramp-up, it's an anomaly), it's usually due to a developer/publisher trying to get as much as they can out of that franchise.
2. Use of gimmicks - "Guitar Hero: Van Halen" (Because they couldn't just have a Van Halen track pack) is a strong demonstration of this. Rather than coming up with actual new content, they go with easy-to-implement, trivial gimmicks that are more about being able to put it on the box than actually innovating. Let me be clear, here, that if it's just something within the game that does things a bit differently (like motion in Super Mario Galaxy), that's not a gimmick. A gimmick is where it's something added to be listed on the box (you wouldn't see "Swing your Wiimote to attack" on the Super Mario Galaxy box) - think "Become a Van Halen cover band, play all of their songs!".
3. Sales downturn - when a franchise is being milked, the sales always turn downward per game. This downward turn is a strong sign that they're flooding the market with similar games, because people will only buy one of the entries, and sales will be split significantly... but for a short time, total sales across all entries will be a little higher, which is what they're going for by milking the franchise.
The term should have a negative connotation. As far as I'm concerned, the terms should be a reference to "Milking it dry" - that is, milking until there's nothing left. Which is why I don't consider CoD to currently be a case of milking, despite being an annual release that trades on its name to help boost sales.
As I noted, there's just signs that Activision are starting to think about milking it. That they took Sledgehammer Games off their spinoff title in order to have more people working on their main one tells me that they're not quite there, yet. But I suspect that they'll begin to milk it in a couple of years. Indeed, I'm going to make the call - after a slight downturn in sales in 2013 (which will mostly be driven by lack of same management at Infinity Ward, combined with competition from the new company they made at EA), Activision will have Sledgehammer Games finish off their spinoff, and at least one other CoD title will be announced as well. There will be three different CoD titles in 2013, I predict, and none will sell as well as World at War did, let alone any of the more recent ones.
I could be mistaken on this prediction. But Activision's track record hasn't been good.
