No, they didn't. Going Commando had only one planetoid which isn't anywhere close to what you find in Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 which is what the topic creator is getting at. I have only played a few levels of Up Your Arsenal, but none of them were planetoids, so unless the rest of the game was heavily composed of planetoids, it too wasn't a game that is like SMG.

As for the decline in sales, the excuse of installed base doesn't hold up universally, because Metal Gear Solid didn't decline from the PS2 to PS3.

No, they didn't. Going Commando had only one planetoid which isn't anywhere close to what you find in Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 which is what the topic creator is getting at. I have only played a few levels of Up Your Arsenal, but none of them were planetoids, so unless the rest of the game was heavily composed of planetoids, it too wasn't a game that is like SMG.

As for the decline in sales, the excuse of installed base doesn't hold up univerally, because Metal Gear Solid didn't decline from the PS2 to PS3.

I say all of this as one of the biggest R&C fans ever...

As others have said, R&C has done spherical worlds before, since GC. Obviously not to the extent of SMG, but they have been there before. Really though, making R&C into a Mario clone will not make the series more popular.

If you look at sales of the PS3 games, you'll see that ToD has sold much more than ACiT. Part of this is no doubt due to bundling (as I believe ToD was bundled extensively), but also, at the time that ToD was released, it was one of the premiere titles for the PS3, because there were relatively few top tier titles at the time.

If you remember this ScrewAttack list of the top ten PS3 games in 2007... well, obviously they were having a bit of fun. But there's some truth to what they said. At the time, ToD was one of the standout games. By the time ACiT came out, there were tons of other games for people to choose from.

Really, the best thing for the franchise right now is to take a break. While I personally would love more games, everywhere I go, I see people complain about all of the games that have come out. And I can understand why yearly releases can get old. You see people get sick of Assassin's Creed as well for the same reason (for other reasons as well...).

Then, in the future, all they need to do is get more inventive with the weapons (seriously, a lot of the weapons in recent ones are basically just reskinned, renammed versions of older ones... not to say that there haven't been some great ones too, though) and keep the classic humour. I don't think that the series has gotten any worse at all since it began, and I think that ACiT is the best one so far. But it needs a break.

Jay520 said:
I honestly blame low advertising for the (relatively) low sales for ACiT. I've never seen it mentioned beyond internet forums. Of course, A4O sold poorly on it's own though.

I think maybe Insomniac could have added a bit more content in the game also. I spent a good 35-45 hours trying to plat it, but the average gamer is only interested in one playthrough which would last about 7-10 hours.

Of course, it doesn't have much appeal amongst PS3 owners. Most people would probably think it's childish. (There is LBP which is kiddy, but that actually does appeal to the kiddy audience).

Also, Last time I checked, ToD didn't sell much more than ACiT. It only outsold it by about 5-600k IIRC.

I hate to say it, but a multiplayer mode might have been a good addition. I don't know if anyone remembers the multiplayer in UYA, but that was a ton of fun (and I hear it's coming in the R&C collection too). It doesn't have to be the main focus, or a CoD killer, but just something simple like what we saw in UYA could have helped a lot.

LBP also appeals to people who love to build things. Some of the levels that people created are incredible. R&C doesn't have that. It's appeal for (relatively) older people is the humour and guns. And eye candy. The games look great. But I do think that a lot of people look at the series and just sort of assume it's for kids.