Squaresoft - Final Fantasy

Nintendo Gameboy - Pokemon

At the time Pokemon Red and Blue came out, nobody really wanted to bring anything to the Gameboy anymore and was basically considered end of life. Pokemon gave Nintendos Handheld a second life, and by extension, handheld gaming in general.

Pokemon Gamefreak. Before that, they had Pulseman on Genesis.

I'm going to say Hellblade for Ninja Theory. They were going nowhere after DmC blew up in their face. They became an assist studio with Disney Infinity. They had to cancel one game as well in Razor. They were not in a good place.

Sonic-SEGA. SEGA has much much much better IPs before and post Sonic but Sonic still had that X factor to counter Mario in the 90s and be a great pack in game with a new Genesis. Altered Beast was not going to cut it. Nor was Alex Kidd.

Xenoblade-True Nintendo already bought them by this point. Thing is their previous games were sales disasters. They probably had one last shot at a new IP on a console.

Nier Automata-Platinum games. Scalebound about killed them. NA saved their bacon. Now they are working on Babylons Fall with Square. Just put out Astral Chain which sold 1 million copies. Working on Bayo 3. Scalebound nearly sunk them but NA sold 4 million copies.

/thread

Mario 3D Land on the 3DS. Well it saved the 3DS not so much saving the company.
Wii Sports got Nintendo out of the Gamecube era and put Nintendo back on top.
Zelda BOTW got Nintendo out of the WiiU sales era where everyone was claiming Nintendo was Doomed.

Uncharted 2 for PS3

When it was shown on E3 back then. It blows people mind and make PS3 sold a lot

Halo for Xbox classic 

Without this Xbox should have been dead

agree

Well , in my opinion they should revive those great franchise, but in the early years of Xbox classic they still confuse with their vision and their target market. As the time goes by and then they realize that they have a good franchise , and they realize they need to have proper exclusives . They regretted, because many old employee has gone. 

It will be hard for them to revive the franchise , what i can expect to see a new mascot and new Ip from the new rare. 

Funny enough Gears, Halo, Forza while selling decently. They are not growing franchises anymore. They seem to be driving Xbox brand to irrelevancy these days. All the more reason MS had to buy some studios. MS is sitting on a mountain of old IPs now they could revive on top of getting new ones.

Fire Emblem: Awakening probably pulled Intelligent Systems' fat out of the fire in addition to turning FE itself from a dead franchise into a lucrative one in one stroke.

Pillars of Eternity definitely saved Obsidian. Fallout: New Vegas nearly ran them into the ground after Bethesda denied them their bonus. All the chaos around South Park: The Stick of Truth after THQ went under didn't help Obsidian either. By the time Ubisoft stepped in they didn't make much money off of it.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater resurrected Activision. Bobby Kotick did keep them from being outright liquidated in 1990, but the company was basically a zombie until THPS.

Mortal Kombat 9 was a much needed hit for Netherrealm after Midway collapsed and WB bought out the team. I'm sure they knew they'd likely be shut down by WB if MK9 didn't perform.

Resident Evil 7 helped restore Capcom to health from a company that couldn't afford to make SF5 without Sony's bankroll, while Monster Hunter World made them a major publisher and developer again.

WCW vs. nWo: World Tour for THQ - at least for another decade.

Demon's Souls for From Software.

King of Fighters XIII saved SNK and got them back into video games to the point where they actually stopped making pachislot machines to survive.