Meanwhile "The Evil Within" comes in and does pretty good for a new IP.

One wonders how much better Sunset Overdrive would sell if they muted the color and "personality" and made it a more straight forward violent shooter game.

It's tough for colorful and/or creative games when the vast majority of gamers are kids/young adults that only want to play stuff that makes them feel mature.

I think social media has a lot to do with it. The times of playing whatever you want in privacy is largely a thing of the past, and Facebook has made everybody feel like the world is watching them at all times. You could probably write a thesis on this theory, actually.

Maybe the games aren't that good?
If you were a kid and you had to choose between Sunset Overdrive and Call Of Duty, which would you pick? Call Of Duty because you've heard of it and all your friends have it.

Yeah I'd agreewith someone of that. I think there's a schism developing in the business too ... kids do still play cartoony/colorful games, they're just all on the iPad/iPhone/smartphone. 

Overwhelmingly the most successful smartphone IP -- Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Plants Vs. Zombies, Farmville, etc. are cartoony games. 

Except Sunset Overdrive, Tearaway, Puppeteer, The Wonderful 101, Rayman Legends, Nintendo Land, Pikmin 3, etc. are all legitimately good (even great in some instances) games. 

Yet this game does pretty well as a new IP with limited marketing:

Instead of this, which actually had a fair amount of marketing behind it:

Not rally bra.

One should wonder what if they didnt force grinding game play on the player and if they toned down the douche ness of the characters world and the generic ness of the baddies.  Im happy to see people are not buying into Sunsets over blow douche/moron humor.  Insomniacs should grow the hell up.  

has shit all to do with color.  

By the way Trine's sales really poop on your theory.

Or people have gotten bored of them.

People still say there's too many dark or 'brown' games, or shooters, but I really feel like the whole bright, colorful Pixar thing has really been done to death now, and there's just a ton more of them coming, no end in sight.

Those and 'retro' games, particularly games with pixel art. They're just as done to death as military shooters, but no one seems to mind because it's not the trend to hate on those.

1. He is talking about new IPs.

2. Despite being successful these Nintendos IPs are not doing as well as past. Example, Mario Kart Wii - 34.87 million vs Mario Kart 8 2.87 million. Huge drop.

3. Now a days COD, AC or TLoU are big money makers.

The console they're on is selling like water to fish. We can go ahead and blame that on the games being too colorful.

Umm... #2 is due to install base... The wii has over 100 million in sales... WiiU will be lucky to even get 20 million... Even if MK8 had 1:1 attach rate, it still wouldnt even beat MKwii...