Another Top 10 Franchises That DESTROYED The Competition

Alex Kidd was once a popular character and franchise. His first title “Alex Kidd in Miracle World” was preloaded into most Sega Master System’s and was considered the mascot of Sega at the time. However, under Nintendo’s domination of the market with Mario in the spotlight, Sega realized that Alex wasn’t good enough and needed a new mascot in order to compete. The result of course was Sonic the Hedgehog whom Sega marketed as more edgier and cooler than the competition and the rest is history. Sonic sped off into the history books and Alex Kidd was left in his dust.

“MLB: The Show” was introduced in 2006 by SIE San Diego for the PS2 and PSP and was an immediate success, garnering great reviews and sales. The series has improved on every iteration since, and has become the go-to baseball franchise for its stellar gameplay and inventive new game modes. That’s because it obliterated 2K Game’s “MLB 2K” series, whose final iteration came in 2013. After “MLB 2K13” was released to poor reviews due to its recycled content from the previous titles and mysteriously absent game modes, the series was cancelled. From that point on “The Show” got the market all to its self.

There’s absolutely no denying that “Titanfall 2” is a fantastic game. It is fluid, exciting, and a hell of a lot of fun. That said, there is also no denying that “Battlefield 1” absolutely decimated the game in terms of sales and dominated the multiplayer market. “Titanfall 2” was bafflingly released one week after “Battlefield 1” and sandwiched between it and “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.” This resulted in Titanfall 2 selling only a quarter of the original’s launch week sales. But what makes this story even more baffling is that both games were published by EA, meaning that this wound was entirely self inflicted. Fail.

Blizzard really does have a habit of killing their competitors, don’t they? Once upon a time, “Gauntlet” was a hugely popular series of dungeon crawlers that were released to arcades throughout the 80s and early 90s. The original 1985 title was enormously profitable and won many industry awards, putting the “Gauntlet” name into the mainstream. Then Diablo came out and took the mainstream dungeon crawler crown. The first title released after “Diablo” was “Gauntlet Legends” in 1998, which was good, but it just couldn’t match up with the PC juggernaut. Nor could any of its subsequent sequels, as they have seen…mixed reception, at best.

The spiritual successor to Goldeneye, Perfect Dark was released on the N64 to universal acclaim and looked to be able to carry Goldeneye’s torch as THE dominant console FPS. Then a year later with the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox, Halo arrived on the scene and pretty much snapped that torch out of Perfect Dark’s hands. Microsoft would later go on to acquire Rare, and force their prequel Perfect Dark Zero to be rushed out for the launch for the Xbox 360 and sales suffered because of this. The final nail however was an unreleased sequel codenamed “Perfect Dark Core” That was pitched to Microsoft for the 360 but rejected because: They already have Halo and didn’t want another Sci-Fi FPS. Wow! Really Microsoft?

There was once a time when the name “Tony Hawk” were THE words in gaming – the original five or so games that were found on the N64, PlayStation, and PS2 were masterpieces not only of skateboarding titles, but of games in general. “Skate” then skated onto the scene in 2007 with a much more realistic style, and fans instantly switched alliances, Activision tried to win back audiences with the Motion Controlled focused “Tony Hawk Ride” & “Shred”, only for that to blow up in their face, They tried again in 2015 with “Pro Skater 5,” but…well, we won’t get into it, for our own sanity.

The original “Command & Conquer” is a historical title and helped to popularize the RTS genre for mainstream audiences. It enjoyed success for many years after, with its numerous expansion packs and sequels. While Starcraft came out in 1998, and despite only having one expansion remained an RTS mainstay for many years. The two franchises constantly were the biggest names in the RTS community but it wasn’t until 2010 that a victor emerged; Starcraft 2 reignited the competitive scene, while “Command & Conquer Tiberium Twilight” was such a radical deviation from its formula that the series ended up fading into obscurity because of it.

During the 16-bit console war, the debate over the superior JRPG series in the US also meant picking a side between Nintendo and Sega. The “Phantasy Star” series on the Sega Genesis were released to wide acclaim, and they were even declared the futures of console gaming. That is, until “Final Fantasy II” (a.k.a Final Fantasy IV) was released for the SNES, followed soon after by the timeless “Final Fantasy III” (or VI). Phantasy Star IV came out shortly after FF3, but it simply couldn’t match up. Sega’s JRPG series eventually died out after attempting to go online, while Final Fantasy ended up jumping ship to Sony and is still going strong.

The original “Quake” was the anticipated follow-up to Id Software’s “Doom,” and upon release, it became one of the best and most influential multiplayer FPS’s of all time. “Quake III Arena” perfected what the original did and presented multiplayer gameplay like we’d never seen before. And then “Counter-Strike” was released. The original release: which was originally a mod, made mainstream recognition only one year after “Quake III,” was a huge success, and “Source” and “Global Offensive” only added to the series’ popularity. It has since become one of the go-to series’ for the FPS multiplayer scene, and “Quake” was left to stew in nostalgia.

Hey, when you kill the entire video game industry, you technically kill your competition as well! “E.T.” was released in 1982 and was an instant critical and commercial failure. Its failure to sell led many unsold copies to simply sit on store shelves, which infuriated retailers and pushed Atari into debt. The Atari 2600 was already on thin ice after the crappy port of “Pac-Man,” but once “E.T.” was released, the console all but died due to the public’s massive disappointment. Revenue forecasts were significantly reduced, and Atari’s stock value plummeted. The entire industry quickly went into a downward spiral and it wouldn’t recover until the NES achieved mainstream success.