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Reader Discussion: How Do You Feel About Franchise Hand-Offs?
With the announcement today of Rise of the Dark Spark, we learned Transformers has been handed off to a new developer. How do you feel about franchises being relocated in this way?
High Moon Studios did not invent Transformers, but it took a franchise with a less-than-stellar video game reputation and created something fans embraced with its War for and Fall of Cybertron titles. The same can be said for Rocksteady's Batman Arkham games. Edge of Reality is working on the new Transformers, and Batman: Arkham Origins was built by Warner Bros. Games Montréal. Gears of War: Judgment was also handed to a separate team for its development, and Nintendo has long offered its franchises to other developers. I chose to use The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap as the header for this discussion because it was developed by Capcom.
It doesn't always work out, but ideally it offers the opportunity for a new set of creative eyes to take on a franchise that has grown stale. Alternatively, it can allow a franchise to release more entries when a single developer can't keep up with fan demands, much in the way the Call of Duty franchise has been handled for years.
How do you feel about this practice? Would you rather wait longer to play new entries in a franchise from the same developer? Or do you like having multiple entries from different developers that maybe all feel a little different?
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