There are a few IPs in gaming that are extremely beloved and this makes it seem like they sold amazingly well. Nintendo's Metroid is the most obvious example of this, but Capcom's Mega Man and Konami's Castlevania fall in the same category.
Making a new game isn't easy when management has this idea of mandatory high production values for its games. It quickly leads to the conclusion that there's no good return of investment when the game needs to sell 2m+ copies at least, but the historic sales data for the series just isn't there to make that look realistic. Hence why legacy releases and collaborations with other companies are all we get, because the IPs still have a lot of value.
It takes talent to make great games on reasonable budgets. The AAA publishers of today are for the most part not capable of this anymore, because they've circumvented the need for talent by simply outspending smaller competitors for software sales. There's a reason why AAA games often feel soulless. All too often they are just mediocre games lifted up by production values. Graphics sell, that's nothing new. But the industrialisation of everything has made this much more widespread than it used to be in the 1990s and 2000s.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
