As a general rule of business: Loss is an eventuality. Your consumers will always grow old, die, move on to other things, throw temper tantrums and leave, etc. You cannot "coast" on only what you've already done, ever. You MUST at some point take risks and expand your audience (without necessarily alienating/boring your existing audience; see MM Universe). It's the only way a business stays alive in the longterm.
Unfortunately, failure to understand that is not something that any particular sales reception will fix. Success encourages one to keep milking whatever worked and failure will simply add one more franchise to the "dead" pile. I've posted this in the Legends3 facebook page quite often, but it is Capcom's attitude that has to change, and just because an empty wallet is the just consequence of their actions doesn't mean that they'll necessarily learn anything from it.
I want to believe that the kind of outside pressure that got SF4 going can happen to Legends 3. God knows we've been pestering them long enough, on every avenue possible, and if they have *ANY* delusions of salvaging their relationship with Mega Man's fanbase, I don't see how else they intend to do it. But again, even if by some chance that does happen, it will be a short-lived victory if their mentality does not change. We all want Legends 3; we probably don't want a Legends cash-cow.
And yeah, it's sad to see game companies discard an entire franchise after one dud. Even Nintendo's guilty of this to some extent with the whole localizing Fire Emblem thing (although they are thankfully gearing up for another shot on 3DS, but I REALLY wish we could have played Heroes of Light and Shadow, even if Shadow Dragon did blow).
i'm surprised you've all neglected to mention this little bit
not much and probably not relevant to this thread but still
That's exactly what I'm talking about with Capcom being out of options with the fanbase. Since L3's cancellation, 11 months ago, Sven's been (rightfully so) beating us over the head with how long a game turnaround time is. So now we're six months from December and they're still talking?
They waited until the last minute and now they don't have time to put together anything decent. So option one, they can bank on a special event and merchandising. Which will be seen as wholly inadequate since we really have no shortage of merchandise. Option two, they revive or repurpose an already existing game. Option three, announce a game that is clearly not ready. That's going to be a problem, because satisfaction with the audience after such an announcement banks on the audience's patience and good faith, something Capcom utterly destroyed with the Mega Man fanbase in 2011.
The optimistic solution is Capcom getting the L3 Prototype out there (although I've often stated that as a matter of timing, they blew an opportunity in the cancellation that may be impossible to recover even if it is revived). Will they? Probably not. They will probably try one of the other two options, and then scratch their heads wondering why we the ingrates are either not satisfied without actual games, or why we expect their new game to be cancelled/badly done. Such a game, BTW, likely WILL be cancelled or badly done since Capcom has lost enough faith in the franchise that they'll half-ass it in an effort to simply shut us up, and then whether the franchise dies before or after said game's release, Capcom gets to blame us again.
God, I hope I'm wrong...