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How do!

I’ve been enjoying some Red Alert 2 footage on YouTube, and it got my pining for when the Command & Conquer series was really good. And in turn, it got me thinking to how many other once beloved franchises/game series just kind of….became lesser, when a major studio bought them out. But it’s not an area I’ve any real knowledge in.

So bring the question to Dakka.

Has any game series gained or benefitted from a change in ownership?

Well Baldur's Gate 3 did amazingly well and that wasn't even a studio buy-out it was an entirely new studio.

You could argue that Duke Nukem Forever also benefitted because it actually got made whilst previously it had just languished in being forever in development.



Honestly I think you'll find there are stories on both sides. When studios have stepped in and done amazing work because now they've got bigger backing to let them do wild stuff; and examples where they a series gets torn apart.

Eg CnC 4 was rushed out when they took a mobile game from China and pushed it out fast for marketing and it flopped and the series never recovered.

Homeworld 3 was similarly mess around with as they tried to go for that whole online competitive micro transaction heavy market and a bunch of other things

Meanwhile a good few firms that work under Paradox now can enjoy some really massive games because of their approach to funding and DLC and favouring continued ongoing development and addition over starting sequels. So you get games just continue to grow and grow and deepen with way more than you'd get for a standard purchase.






Honestly in the end studios that don't change can mess things up too.

I never played the original Tomb Raider games so I can't comment on how good those were, but I think the 3 games we got under Crystal Dynamics were some of the best action adventure games I've played in the last decade.

I'm not sure if Metroid Prime counts, as that was still under Nintendo's umbrella, but I believe it was the first Metroid made by Retro Studios rather than Nintendo proper. Having never played the original Metroid games, I'm also unsure if that one counts as 'improvement' under new leadership. It was definitely one of my favorite games on the GameCube.

Space Marine 2 finally happened after a change of ownership, so that's something!

Ditto with the already mentioned Baldur's Gate 3.

There's the Fallout franchise, but at this stage it's a big old fething mess of the same factions being regurgitated every time now. Personally, New Vegas aside (a proper sequel to Fallout and Fallout 2), the franchise has not improved since Todd and company got their hands on it, but again, that's my personal opinion. It did bring Fallout to the larger masses, as the first two games, while cult classics, are something of an acquired taste.

A lot of them just get new games where they otherwise wouldn't have. New Crash Bandicoot games for example have been solid returns for the character that wouldn't have happened any other way.

There's also a lot of franchises that don't change companies but get shuffled around internally. Devil May Cry being a big one and notably Street Fighter 4 was built by an outside studio and relaunched the genre while still saying under the Capcom banner.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!

I’ve been enjoying some Red Alert 2 footage on YouTube, and it got my pining for when the Command & Conquer series was really good. And in turn, it got me thinking to how many other once beloved franchises/game series just kind of….became lesser, when a major studio bought them out. But it’s not an area I’ve any real knowledge in.

So bring the question to Dakka.

Has any game series gained or benefitted from a change in ownership?

Honestly i was wondering this myself and i feel like once the creators leave a franchise then it goes downhill. Look at terminator after 2 or GW with warhammer in general and you'll see a pattern. Last really good c&c game was c&c 3 and i think the creators had some small idea what they wanted to do with the franchise before they left. Part of why c&c 4 probably sucked so hard.

Keep in mind i'm not saying GW is doing badly by any stretch of the imagination but i feel like the soul of the game left a long time ago. I started in 4th ed 40k and a lot of people say 5th ed was the best. That's switching topics somewhat to warhammer however. Of course video games for warhammer helped out a ton after GW made some bad decisions.

The XCOM remake did well.

But it was headed by a guy who went to study computer science specifically to do an XCOM remake.

And his sacrifice will be remembered in the coming empire! Great game.

Fallout is by far the most famous example of this. Fallout 1 & 2 were great games, but Tactics was mediocre and Brotherhood of Steel was the worst game of 2004. Bethesda bought out and took over the franchise, and now the Fallout IP is worth over $1 billion.

 Calbear wrote:
Fallout is by far the most famous example of this. Fallout 1 & 2 were great games, but Tactics was mediocre and Brotherhood of Steel was the worst game of 2004. Bethesda bought out and took over the franchise and now Fallout IP is worth over $1 billion.

That is debatable, story wise that is. And a hotly debated topic in the Fallout community.

IIRC the Halo franchise started life with Bungie? on the macintosh as Marathon. Great game, with some innovations in the FPS genre at the time. But small company and not hitting the PC market. Bought by microsoft, hit it big.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Calbear wrote:
Fallout is by far the most famous example of this. Fallout 1 & 2 were great games, but Tactics was mediocre and Brotherhood of Steel was the worst game of 2004. Bethesda bought out and took over the franchise and now Fallout IP is worth over $1 billion.

That is debatable, story wise that is. And a hotly debated topic in the Fallout community.

There is zero debate that the value of the Fallout IP has increased exponentially.

trexmeyer wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Calbear wrote:
Fallout is by far the most famous example of this. Fallout 1 & 2 were great games, but Tactics was mediocre and Brotherhood of Steel was the worst game of 2004. Bethesda bought out and took over the franchise and now Fallout IP is worth over $1 billion.

That is debatable, story wise that is. And a hotly debated topic in the Fallout community.

There is zero debate that the value of the Fallout IP has increased exponentially.

So has housing. Also value is at most one of many quality markers of a series or franchise.
Especially storywise it may have taken Bethesda to go 3d that increased the market, but in regards to worldbuilding 3 was a downgrade that had to get a dlc ending and NV was made by the original owners and developpers and has arguably better worldbuilding than anything bethesda did.

Commercially Fallout has absolutely gained from BGS, no arguments there!

Creatively though? New Vegas was 15(!) years ago now and it's been pretty rough since then.

I think Age Of Empires is the one that comes to mind for me? Microsoft have done some great things with AoE2 and AoE4, although they did release a scummy live service and mobile game to milk people's cash...

I'd throw Age of Mythology in there too - they are generally doing good things with those games right now.

Age of Empires 3 was a bit rough around the edges and the whole "colony" thing I think wasn't quite as fun as expected with the whole "level up your home baes with loads of games to get more free units during each battle" which I found just meant I mostly "built" a free army just teching up.
Felt like in the end they just found a way to build a micro-game in and try to speed up gameplay.

AoE 4 and Mythology both feel like proper RTS games that take what worked before and polish it up - though I'd argue AoE4 is somewhat heavy on the damage. I find armies tend to just vanish very fast to damage.

 Overread wrote:
I'd throw Age of Mythology in there too - they are generally doing good things with those games right now.

Age of Empires 3 was a bit rough around the edges and the whole "colony" thing I think wasn't quite as fun as expected with the whole "level up your home baes with loads of games to get more free units during each battle" which I found just meant I mostly "built" a free army just teching up.
Felt like in the end they just found a way to build a micro-game in and try to speed up gameplay.

AoE 4 and Mythology both feel like proper RTS games that take what worked before and polish it up - though I'd argue AoE4 is somewhat heavy on the damage. I find armies tend to just vanish very fast to damage.

No they are not.


Microsoft has just recently gutted the studio, AoM dropped under 3 DE which was dropped unceremoniusly and 4 and 2 hog all the attention.

Age of Mythology just got new expansion

 Overread wrote:
Age of Mythology just got new expansion

And it still has lower player numbers than 3 de did and that got gak-canned

AoM Will also inevitably get gak-canned with the way Microsoft is going about game development currently