Just observing the disaster of Suicide Squad game, the calamity of the current Doctor Who and many other franchises along the way, it feels like we are on the eve of a purge in western media where a lot of franchises are going to die or at the very least, be put on a very long hiatus.
In my opinion, a lot of these survive off habit, you get used to enjoying a certain thing, you regularly consume certain thing and never think about it. Until they make something that breaks that habit it won't die so thought I'd list off some of those bits of media that killed off a franchise:
Command and Conquer= C&C4: This one singlehandedly killed the franchise, even before they used it's corpse for a mobile game. The complete removal of bases from the game itself was the dumbest decision ever made, but not the first time EA would remove a core mechanic from a major franchise..
Battlefield: Battlefield 2042: the other example by removing classes for 'operators' in the game probably damaged it more than just how much it was a buggy unplayable mess. It was such a bad decision that they put the classes back in but with talk of the next being a live service and even the return of operators, I can hear the death chimes for this franchise just like honourable mention the Medal of Honour series.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi: it's amazing how this single film started this franchise tanking that was bought for billions and even had people appreciating the prequels more. From the bad writing, stale acting and stupid plot, this killed the enthusiasm for a decades long series.
The potential new ones: AC Shadows and GTA6: these two in the future have the possibility to kill their respective franchises. We are finding more and more on AC that it's looking like every wrong move has been taken and with how lackluster Mirage was received, it ain't looking good. GTA6 however, there's a possibility it'll simply be another Cyberpunk in just not meeting expectations which IS recoverable.
Just thought this was interesting to discuss seeing franchises both established and barely formed (cough Trench Crusade) killing themselves in a single release especially around our current time.
Hopefully the failure of Starfield was enough to shake Bethesda up and realize they need to course-correct. I haven't done much analysis of why Starfield did not live up to even modest expectations (for a game that was supposed to be the company's original IP magnum opus) but a major factor seemed to be how the game was essentially made by several divisions that did not collaborate with each other and the final product crudely stitched together.
I don't have much faith, never pre-order, etc. but it would be nice if one of these goddamn AAA Western game companies would wake the fuck up before they burn everything they have to the ground.
I don't think Bethesda has the talent left to course-correct anymore. They were always behind the curve when it came to tech and talent as it is, getting by entirely by the wide scope and ambition of their games (kind of like a lot of Eurojank developers). But even they've shown significant brain drain. Starfield was the company's first real title to come out in eight years, Fallout 4 being their last one, and its state was absolutely abysmal. I don't see them digging their way out of this hole.
Expectations were the problem for Starfield. I went in without any, and I liked it.
To be honest, Bethesda is a wild card to me. The amount of back peddling they did after the show probably means they are aware they can't fuck with the NV lore but there's been lots of times their incompetence has screwed up lore like Fallout 4 and Jet.
The thing that might just kill them anyway is if they can't get better writing team, they need writers like out of NV that KNOW what they are doing then they need to just have a better method for their creation club as if it was just customisation, that might be fine but there's fucking paid quests in there!