With Destiny 2 going free-to-play in order to regain its old audience it got me thinking about other attempts to revive a franchise. Sometimes slapping a fresh coat of paint to an old franchise just isn’t enough. If a franchise wants to remain relevant it needs to find a way to bring new eyes to its product. The franchises on this list have once been the talk of the town before slowly fading away, only to introduce something new that brought them back to the spotlight. So from successful spinoff to faithful remakes here are 5 Game Franchises That Revived Themselves. For this list, I will be excluding games like Call of Duty, and Assasin Creed because despite not being as popular as they once were they still get consistent releases, and also none of them really did anything too dramatic to revive themselves.
5. Pokemon GO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sj2iQyBTQs
Pokemon as a franchise is massive, with a long-running anime, a successful toy line, a card game, and a live-action movie. However, despite its success, there has always been this mentality that Pokemon outside of Japan has a very niche audience. The main series of games always sold well, but Pokemon always seemed like it needed one more ingredient to regain the audience it once lost. These led to a number of spinoff games such as Pokemon Rangers, The Mystery Dungeon Series, and the highly underappreciated Pokemon Showdown. These games vary in success, but on July 6, 2016, Pokemon GO was released on mobile devices an immediately took the world by storm. Pokemon GO allowed the player to walk outside in order to capture pokemon located in different areas of your local neighborhood. The game perfectly captures the childhood dream of going on your own pokemon adventure, while at the same time was the perfect way for older players to enjoy a healthy and safe way to exercise. Pokemon GO was so successful that it brought a new audience to the franchise. Helping the next games in the series Pokemon Sun and Moon become two of the highest-grossing games of the year.
