Sierra On-Line as a whole. They were the biggest PC games publisher in the 1990s, bigger than EA. King's Quest, Police Quest, and Phantasmagoria. They were the original publisher of Half-Life. One bad business deal tanked them in less than two years.

F-Zero was more like a franchise that never really took off. About half of the entire series' sales were for the SNES game. 

Bioshock and Mass Effect. They were defining franchises of the 7th generation that ultimately turned out to be products of that time, as they didn't really survive the end of the 7th generation. Andromeda tanked, and 2K didn't even bother with Bioshock.

The director of the first game is trying to pitch the idea of a prequel that brings the game back to its roots (PCGamer article here). I doubt he'll succeed, but who knows 

Mass Effect is still alive, with Bioware working on it for a while now.

Meanwhile, there are two games with Mass Effect "vibes" that will likely come before that; Exodus, made by former Bioware veterans, and The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.

Bioshock 4 has also been in development for a while, but the last I heard about it, from August (here), was that there were problems.

Ken Levine's next game, Judas, might be an option... whenever it launches.

OT: I'd say SimCity. The decision to go with smaller maps in the last one, along with the launch of Cities Skylines, hurt the franchise badly, and I recall that EA closed the side of Maxis that worked on them so yeah, it's a dead franchise.

I'm not going to believe either of them until I see them. I'm skeptical that either of them will actually come out, and if Mass Effect 4 does come out, it had better be the highest-rated RPG in the history of the genre if Bioware is to survive, and I'm not seeing that kind of potential. 

I'm going to define "dead" as "there has been no major new entries released or announced for 10+ years" (barring games that were cancelled). I was going to just say "10+ years with no new entries," but that would include Grand Theft Auto, The Elder Scrolls, etc.

• Bioshock - Some of the definitive games of the 7th console generation, this series has been relegated to re-releases since 2013. The series sold 43 million units, so it's quite the big series to lie dormant. I'll believe in that new entry they announced in 2019 when I see it.
• Castlevania - 
• Command & Conquer - This was once the face of the RTS genre, and had some pretty popular spinoffs too. Red Alert 3 and C&C4 were released way back in 2008 and 2010, and the series has since consisted of a free-to-play mobile game and a remaster of two mid-90's games.
• Driver - 
• Frogger - 
• Guitar Hero - This was at one point one of the biggest series in the world, selling 40 million units in its first four years, but the last entry was back in late 2015.
• JB Harold - 20 million sales, mostly in just Japan, with no new releases of any sort since 2008.
• Medal of Honor - These were some of the early big FPS games on consoles, and part of the late-90's-to-early-00's wave of WW2 themed media. Even 2010's reboot had 5+ million sales, a respectable amount. However, the series has been mostly made obsolescent by EA also owning the rights to Battlefield.
• NBA Live - Prior to the rise of NBA 2K, this was the big basketball game series.
• Nintendogs - Last seen at the launch of the 3DS in 2011, Nintendogs + cats still sold 4 million copies.
• Petz - I know virtually nothing about these games, but they apparently sold more than series like Bomberman and Metroid.
• Rayman - Legends was released in 2013, and despite it being the best-selling Rayman ever, we never got a successor.
• SimCity - The 2013 reboot was notoriously bad, but it's funny because Cities: Skylines came out two years later and sold 12 million copies.

Fair enough.

But what Bioware needs to survive is not the best RPG in history. What they need is a best-seller... and that's far from guaranteed.

Was Socom ever that big?

Not knocking it, but I never got the impression it was a megaton seller.

I've always been into racing, some of the biggest corpses

Need For Speed, over 150 million sales over the decades. It should have died sooner though, and can still come back ('shelved' for now).

Burnout, Paradise killed it.

Wipeout, went portable and died. It did come back to console remastered but Psygnosis is no more.

Forza Motorsport, MS killed it.

Colin McRae Rally, went through the Dirt. Died with Colin McRae himself.

SSX, last game focused on Survival, it did not.



After playing Exocars (rally) and VRacer on PSVR2 (Wipeout clone) I wonder where all the talent went. So much forgotten when it comes to handling and track building :( It feels like arcade racers have been set back decades. Big step back from playing Dirt Rally and Wipeout on PSVR1.

No it wasn’t lol. Last I checked the series had sold less than 10 million copies combined. Top 5 Sony franchise for me, but anything but a big franchise.