When Do You Consider a Franchise Dormant?

[Signalstar]

I know we all crave originality and new IPs in gaming, but most of us likely have a yearning to see the return of past franchises that have not seen a new release in quite some time.

When do you consider a franchise dormant? How much time has to have passed since its last release?

For me if a franchise skips an entire generation of consoles without a new release of some kind I take it as a bad sign. Perhaps that franchise is no longer active.

I also don't think we are prone to seem much revivals as we used too. I can think of dozens of gaming IPs from yesteryear that I think deserve another shot and to be resurrected.

Rayman comes to mind. Origins and Legends were excellent yet we never got another game.

Then again GTA did not release a new entry on the PS4/Xbox One generation, instead remastering GTA V and exploiting GTA Online for all its worth.

Metroid Prime hasn't seen a new game since the Wii. We know they are working on 4 but haven't seen anything of it. The remastered the original Prime game last year though. Some suspect Prime 2 and 3 will also be remastered at some point. Unexpectedly the 2D Metroid series was revived during the wait for Prime 4.

So what franchises are dormant for you and which are just caught up in a long dev cycle?