Topic: Why don't game series end?

It seems that video games franchises aren't allowed to simply end.

They sometimes peter out due to poor sales, but you rarely seem to get an announcement that the latest instalment of a series will be the last.

Whereas in other mediums, such as movies or books, the creator will consciously end a sequence of releases.

Why is this?

Because of corporate greed. Why else would game series like Tony Hawk just end while Fifa continues for years upon years? Sales are an important factor to a series being continued as companies feel that sales are the biggest reasons to continue/discontinue a series. Besides, I'm sure that some game series have come to an end in the traditional way before.

Even if they do want to end it after a certain installment that may not necessarily happen. Pokemon was supposed to end at gen 2. We all know what happened there.

Heh, for better or worse. If it's still sells, it will continue.

What!? Really? Oh god. That would have been a travesty, right next to not seeing Timesplitters 4.

On topic: this!

Squaresoft attempted to make Final Fantasy for NES it's final game and just look at what happened!

Businesses exist to make as long as a series sells well they will continue to make more games to make more money.

Hmm, Earthbound was a franchise and it ended at three gamess even though it was very popular

It is sad that there is so little genuinely new things. Used to get at least a few different ones on each new system.

Now the most we get is a few tech demos.

Anything Nintendo did using the amount of resources they give to Zelda or 3D Mario would be brilliant. (And definitely more enjoyable without the comparisons and same settings as previous entries).

I wouldn't say it was an attempt to make it their final game. The business was going under, and Final Fantasy was quite literally their final fantasy, until it saved them.

But the rights were shared. (By someone with some integrity).

Bungie tried to end the Halo series and look what happened there.

It is to do with the balance of power.

With a book nobody can force an author to make another (Other than if it is contracted but most it ever usually is say 3 books).

With a film the actors and the director have some power. (The well known actors anyway). If enough don't want to do it all the company can do is change all the actors with a reboot and that is harder and more expensive to do. (Have to convince people it is going to be better than last time rather than just continuing the story).

A game company can just replace everybody if they need to. Nobody who did anything substantial has any influence over it.

Videogame franchises that make money get sequels.

Videogame franchises that don't make money don't get sequels.

Simple as that.

Money. Story isn't as important.

That's one of the big problems. Often the case is the publisher will retain most of the rights to the IP rather than the developer. When the developer doesn't want to work on another game in the series the publisher hands the IP to another developer in order to make more money.

That disgusts me. If I made a series of games, I would want to own it. And if I decided I wanted it to end and see that another game was in the works without my involvement, I'd be very upset.

I've personally though of this many times.

First, the most simple reason being it's good business sense. If something's popular, It'll continue to make Money.

But there's another reasons for this that, in my opinion, make this pretty acceptable(for most cases, COD I'm looking at you). When you look at books and Movies, their sequels take the Job of continuing a story line. They get sequals because it's needed in some cases, and they end to keep it from getting old. But Video Games get sequels that take on a bigger role. In many cases, they are made to improve upon the gameplay.The Legend of Zelda series is a perfect example of this. We only get new installments every 3-4 years, and each one feels unique in it's own way. There was an article posted here I'm sure many of us read, about last year I believe it was, that highlighted an interview with Eiji Aonuma, producer for The Legend of Zelda series. He said that he often tells himself that this Zelda game will be his last one he produces, but each time he continues to go on producing the series in order to see how much better he can make the next one, or how he could switch things up. He continues to work on these games to see how close he can get to the perfect Zelda game. That's what's so great about video games, they are so awesome, but they still have so much room to grow. It's nice to ask for new IP's and gameplay every once in a while, but if we don't ever expand on the Ideas we already have we'll never be able to truly move foward.

Money and Demand from audience.
Guaranteed Revenue

That's why I like Bungie so much (well, up until recently. They'll have to provide a legitimate reason for firing Marty, first). They love the games they make, but they know when to say goodbye. When Microsoft wouldn't let them move on, they left and went to Activision. If they stuck with making games in the same series, Bungie would still be making Marathon games.