Xbox |OT|

[chakkra]

Machiavellian said:

chakkra said:

I mean, I would take an stagnant audience over a shrinking one any day of the week. Especially if that gamble would cost me years of work and more than 100m dollars.

As per devs wanting to do "something new".. well, that is where Management's job comes in. I think managers across the board have become soft in recent years. A good manager should be able to sit their creative directors and very gently tell them: "Sweetie, I know you want to feel good about yourself, believe me, we all do, but the job of hundreds of people are on the line here, not just yours".

Oh course you would take a stagnant audience but that is because you are thinking of the situation as a consumer.  Each iteration of the game has not increased its audience but instead dwindled it.  You can either continue to go down the same route or try something totally new.  Either a developer has confidence in their direction and what they can do or they can fade away.  One thing for sure, doing the same thing where each iteration not giving you any results probably isn't going to change either.  So why not go for a new audience.

You call it soft but that is exactly how a game becomes stagnant.  "Hey, just shut up and do the same crap you already bored of doing and have no passion to continue to do anymore."  That is pretty much how I see it.  When the passion is gone, you only get subpar results.

Hold on.. Where exactly did you get this info from?

This is what I found:

It doesn't look to me that the franchise was "dwindling" in any way.