Those of you lumping in New super mario with Call of duty and Assassins creed are ignorant, New super mario has one iteration per platform where as Call of duty has 8 games so far on xbox360 alone with the 9th surely on it's way and Assassins creed will have 6 by the years end..

but you do realize that 2 new super mario games came out in just a few months last year right?

I would like to say that I feel Metroid Prime is a radical change from the source Material, and so is Fusion (but that's more theme like you said). Sometimes games do change, and while rare, it can be amazing. Metroid Prime, Ocarina of Time, and Super Mario Galaxy are all examples of old franchises seeing radical, and favorable changes. Plus the next Zelda is said to be non-linear, and very different, so is Smash Bros.

Either way, these games aren't milked because while the core concept stays the same, each game is unique. We agree on this. However games like Dead Space, are they any different or more of the same? This is why I think Dead Space was milked to death.

Uncharted (is a really great franchise), God of War, Gears of War, Halo, New Super Mario, Just Dance, Forza Motor Sports, Gran Turismo (prologue and the variety of versions - more tracks, more cars), Street Fighter, Need For Speed, Call of Duty, Assassin`s Creed, Medal of Honor, F1, sports franchise, etc.

Any franchise that has 4 or more titles on a single platform and start to decrease in quality. Assassins creed has already had more than 4, but I have found each game to be awesome. So to me it's not milking as long as I like it.

Anybody who doesn't consider COD to be the epitome of "milking" a franchise is crazy. They will have like 8 or 9 games on ps360 alone and will continue into the ps4 and nexbox and will probably still be made using the same engine. Yes, I don't like COD, but I did like them up until black ops and then they sucked to me.

And lol at the people saying God of War is being milked. They have had 2 on ps2, 2 on psp, and 2 on ps3. 6 games that are the highest rated and highest selling of all hack and slash games over 3 consoles is definitely not milking. I wouldn't consider any exclusive game as milking.

I wouldn't call any of the newest Final Fantasy offerings any good except the Dissidia games or ports/remakes of good games. 

Crisis Core (2008.)  This is opinion only.  While I did like the game when it first came out, the battle system got boring far before end game.  I recently tried to replay this one a few months ago, this time on hard mode.  While enemies are quick to defeat on normal mode it still became boring mid game, but hard mode on new game really gives light to how bad the game is.  Constantly mashing x and then dodging enemy attacks with a world that is practically halways and rooms with nothing really worth exploring other than to look at how well they replicated the small portion of the world you can go around.  The storyline was very bad and so emo that you wanted to play this game where friends and family couldn't hear the crap you were watching.  The sidequests were borinig.  Most spells and skills are useless compared to attack except when fighting specific enemies, like Blizzard against Ifrit, etc, and while costly punch is overpowered, using that over and over again would be even less fun.   

Final Fantasy 4 The After Years (2009) episodes 1-9 were complete trash.  The story was complete garbage and the games had horrible balancing issues.  Now there was one good thing about The After Years.  Chapter 10.  About two hours into chapter 10 you reached the e nd game.  At that point you could pick any of the characters you've played up to that point and go through a 10 hour dungeon.  The dungeon was well designed, extremely well balanced.  Literally the only thing good they did in the game.  In my opinion, suffering through the first nine chapters was worth it.  As amazing as the final chapter is though, it doesn't change how poorly developed the rest of the game is.  With them reusing all the resources, you've got to wonder how the overall game could have been this bad?

Final Fantasy 13(2010.)  The quality of the game is debatable, but I think most people enjoy this game because there's very little of quality in the RPG market these days.  The gameplay wasn't good at all.  While you somewhat controlled the characters actions by using the paradigm shift, the entire game was auto battle where you had pretty much no control.  Even over your own character the game recommended using auto battle at the very beginning.  The reason they recommended this is because your skillset is ridiculously limited and there are two ATB speeds.  Either extremely fast or painfully slow.  I wanted to do every action myself and in the beginning if you're using the quick ATB before you get paradigm shift, even then it was difficult to do so and you had no skills anyways so why?  When you got paradigm shift, switching  your classes back and forth while choosing your skills was near impossible to do without wasting ATB that you could have used by just hitting auto battle.  Using the slow option is painfully slow, and again, you had few skills even late game, so what's the point.  I only got 10-15 hours into that hallway simulator before I couldn't take playing anymore.  I couldn't take playing even before that but I was really giving this game a chance.  20 hours the game apparently opens up and gets good, but I've read reviews and have friends who say they still didn't like it after they got to that point, so I'm not going to play through it in hopes that I'll like the game later on when I hated the gameplay for the first 10 hours.  Don't even get me started on the awful story.  Even people who liked the game hated the storyline.

But enough of that.  For others I'll just list the game and date.

Final Fantasy 14(2010,) Type-0(2011,) 13-2(2012,) Lightning Returns (2013,) Tactics rerelease(2007, 2011, 2013,) Tactics A2(2008,) Final Fantasy Fables(2008,) Crystal Chronicles Rings of Fate(2007,) My Life as King(2008,) Echoes of Time(2009,) My Life as Dark Lord(2009,) Crystal Bearers(2009.) etc.

That's not even the half of it, and yes I did use Wiki so I didn't have to waste anymore time than I had to.  But regardless how much of the games are quality, as it all depends on the persons opinion.  Some of you may think everyone of these games are amazing.  Between 2007-2013, I listed 17 games that have came out or are coming out(including rereleases) and there are many more to add to that list if I chose to.  At the end of the list, the Crystal Chronicles games had five games released in a time period of three years.  While the My Life as King and Dark Lord just have you sending people out and building your town are different, they still bear the name, but if you wanted to take those with the traditional gameplay, One in 2007 and two in 2009.  Two released in the exact same year.  Is this not milking a franchise?  Especially the poor reception to Crystal Bearers had to a series which never had much of a fanbase to begin with.

In my opinion though, Final Fantasy has had very few good releases among the garbage.  Even if they didn't, Square Enix is milking the series for all its worth and killing what fanbase they have left.  Given my screename, you'd assume I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan.  I was.  I couldn't care less about the series anymore, though it never stops me from purchasing a game in the series that I think "might" be good.     

And lasagna, if that still matters.

In general, I wouldn't say that Nintendo has "milked" the NSMB series, they came out years apart before these last two, and that was honestly poor planning on their part. NSMB2 should have been released for 3DS earlier, to spread them out more. But I do understand, they wanted and Mario game for Wii U launch, and I'm glad they did it. Otherwise, I wouldn't say they've "milked" the main Mario series at all. As for Mario in GENERAL, sure, I could see the argument for he and his co-characters getting overexposed. But then again, I guess that depends on whether or not you see it as all one big "Mario thing", or if you see franchises like Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, the Mario Sports games, Mario Kart, etc., as separate entities or not. I do, but that's just me.

When it comes to a specific franchise, I would say Activision certainly milks the SHIT out of Call of Duty, though that's to be expected these days. Activision seems like they won't publish anything without being able to pop out a yearly release. They've done the same thing with Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk and even Spider-Man in the past.

I guess a general rule for me would be, that if a company tries to release a new installment more or less every single year in main series of anything, that would be "milking".

You forgot the GOW collection, origins and omega. So, we have 9 games in 7 years. (maybe I forgot some game...)  

For me, wrost than launch a new game, is release the same game in a different package.

Ya, but having ports of older games is probably gonna be a regular thing now. Maybe not with ps4 since they have the new gaikai streaming tech.  But I'm just going based on new games.  But I still stand by that no exclusives are milked because they are usually high quality games.

Okay, from the responses and opinions lets just chalk it up to this:

Any franchise *person* doesn't particularly like = milked