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BraLoD said:
No connection at all. Every single Playstation game was elevated because of The Last of Us, and Sony first party games garnered a lot more attention from everyone after it. Even games like Ghost of Tsushima sold 10M. Uncharted went from selling 6M to selling 16M. Sony games became symbols of high quality, and not necessarily any game philosophy change was responsible for it. Uncharted 2 is widely regarded as the best in the series and 4 still sold 3x what it did. |
I'll simply agree to disagree here then. Way too much nuance to dissect, we'll be here all day properly discussing it but I'll drop some notes.
Yes, there is higher sales potential in modern era but that doesn't necessarily relate to equal growth seen and sustained for each respective franchises. Ratchet for example did not become a 20m seller. GT didn't suddenly multiply its sales by 3x. Killzone didn't suddenly do 10m. Returnal didn't do 5m and probably neither will Saros, or at least it would be a big achievement if it did.
Uncharted 4 is based off the blueprint Uncharted 2 created, and with each entry it grew its fanbase and reached new sales feats, with the 3rd game hitting 9m. It wasn't suddenly at 4 that we saw notable growth.
GOW across 3 entries remained between 4.5-5m mark and then sunk well below that for GOW ascension in 2013 (yes, its a spinoff but still). There was very little audience growth seen in the trilogy and then suddenly bam, its the fasted selling game from Playstation outside of Spiderman.
I don't believe a game made in the old style would of sold 20m back in 2018. The cinematic third person pedigree Sony created with Uncharted and TLOU was reflected in the shift in tone and characterisation (deeper story) of the 2018 GOW game. Not saying it was done intentionally (although I'm sure they were inspired by TLOU) but simply it is reflective of the traits that made those Naughty Dog games popular and expanded the audience. The original trilogy and styling does not reflect those same popular and appealing traits.
We also don't have linear driven action games of the trilogy's styling do huge numbers from any franchise but correct me if I'm wrong? The gameplay style and tone genuinely impacts sales potential. To me it's like looking at BOTW's sales and ignoring the open world +Ghibli appeal in 2017. Or Eldenring being open world compared to Dark Souls.
Since you brought up Crash. Crash Trilogy was lighting in a bottle with cross generational nostalgia being a huge influence and a huge collective userbase. It's new sales peak was not sustained for the true follow up and it went back to a respectiful 5m when an actual sequel came out.
Lastly, regardless of the cause of the sales inflation, I do I believe that these sales still reflect new fans to the series since 2018. And so remains the point that I expect the team to feel confident in using their own judgement which also cultivated these fans to begin with. The point is more for you measure you expectations more than anything else. Those games reflect less of what made the franchise popular compared to the more modern ones.
Having said that a lower investment reskin (ala Olivion remake) may be more likely than the studio committing to remaking the trilogy with modern AAA production values and creative aspirations. We still have to wait and see what the intention is with the project.
