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.
Sure, for now. But look at what Blizzard and Disney are doing by either phasing out or replacing classic media with "modern" versions, like they did with Diablo, Warcraft, Splash, etc.
Most people consume old media through new technologies, and that is the whole point. Once those technologies become thoroughly saturated on the market (and they mostly are at this point) they will begin phasing out old devices to play old media, and soon you will only be able to access old media on new devices. And from there, they will keep doing what Blizzard/Disney/Universal are doing insofar of rewriting history, overhauling the old content, or updating old media for "modern audiences".
The thing is, they're not failing, though. Sure plenty of normies will claim they "hate woke stuff", but universally, most normies have accepted interracial relationships in most media, and most romantic media these days puts interracial relationships front and centre.
Feminism is front and centre with every single female character; you cannot get damsels in distress anymore in media and the average normie is completely fine with this. In fact, ask a normie how they feel about damsel in distress tropes in movies and most will tell you that they need to go away. Why? Because they've been brainwashed to think that over the last several decades.
Most normies are okay with faggotry so long as their favourite character or ship who isn't a homosexual doesn't get turned into one. Most normies are completely fine with race-swaps so long as the "story is good".
On this forum we recoil at such things, but in normie land I'm regularly experiencing the demoralisation of reality when you enter into their spaces and listen to them talk or discuss things and how accepting they are of a lot of the woke elements pushed into media. It's only when it goes too far do they actually recoil (like Star Wars or Dr. Who), and it usually requires subverting a property or media to such a vile extent that it gets them emotional, otherwise they shrug it off.
This... this is the only saving grace about all of this nonsense. Most media out of Eastern Europe and Asia are fantastic and traditional and original. Sure there is schlop here and there, but for the most part it really sheds a light on how bad Western media is coming out of the U.K., and the Americas. I wouldn't be surprised if region locking becomes a thing again if they really feel that non-subversive media is a threat to their plans, but right now they're slowly etching away at the populace with woke propaganda.
When you look at stuff like Prey, Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate 3, or what they've done to Peach in Mario, you see how accepting normies are of woke media that is at least somewhat entertaining/engaging. They will keep using this method to further their agenda, and sadly, most people will go along with it.