They can’t even use a lot of these IPs anymore.

That’s the thing though. Gamers have a special kind of amnesia that gets triggered every time BIG_IP_OF_THEIR_LIKING releases a new sequel or edition. The communities on Lemmy and reddit are unfortunately not indicative of how the wider audience actually perceives games. We’re a fringe group, and the publishers/studios bank hard on that. The uneducated and apathetic masses are their target audience. If the gaming world listened to the likes of Lemmy and reddit users, micro/macrotransactions, early-access hell, and half-finished releases wouldn’t have become common practice. But here we are.

Fallout is now associated with 76 unless you’re thinking of Obsidian.

You may be right. Fallout 76 has however seen a record number of players since the show aired. That’s commonplace with most gaming franchises when a film or TV series comes out. See also: The Last of Us, and SWTOR when The Mandalorian came out.

(I personally think of Neverwinter Nights 2 when thinking of Obsidian. t’was peak gaming)

Blizzard is a shell of its old self, cutting interest in Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch.

I agree with you here. In reality, Blizzard still consistently has queue issues when releasing a new WoW expansion or game, even after all this time. They know it happens, and won’t scale up for launch day on WoW retail AND Classic. Their target audience eats that shit up and I’m saying this as a former player that quit during Battle for Azeroth. No comment on Starcraft as I quit when the OG Starcraft scene died down on aus-1 back in the day. Overwatch 1 was seeing incredible numbers when I played from launch until Moria was released. OW2 being a pay-to-win shit show ate into their numbers until they gave up the pay-to-win bullshit. I see more and more of my friends and streamers playing it again now that Bobby Kotick is gone. I’m quite disappointed in some of them, but it is what it is.

There’s rumors even Call of Duty is struggling to retain relevance in new releases.

Good thing they’re just rumours until the earnings report comes. Sony has poorly-redacted court documents stating that CoD is their bread and butter on the playstation. There’s no way that’s changing in the forseeable future (at least not in the billions of dollars range), even with the absolute shit-show that was MW3. When MW4 comes out, the diehard fans will forget it even happened, as they have with every single release since its inception.

I don’t know if Fallout is still associated with 76 after the show and Skyrim still is a huge thing even after Starfield.