The broader question is whether the brand is suffering fatigue - that's why the films were mentioned. It was suggested that people weren't as interested in SM because Sony made lots of bad films, the implication being all of them because the assertion was 'decades of bad films'. Data appears to show that Sony's films were a mixed bag (Meta scores in chronological order - 73, 83, 59, 66, 53, 73). The point about the films also doesn't correlate directly 1:1 with the brand value, as others have argued - super heroes can endure even through some ghastly films (Batman et al).
One could point to the box office takings of Homecoming and conclude that, factoring in inflation and increased ticket prices, SM is only half as popular now as it was in 2002. But look at the wider evidence, not least of which are the numerous polls/articles linked to that have Spider-Man as the number one favourite super hero, and it's clear that SM is still a very popular brand. If anything, the weak movie and game spell has possibly left fans with more interest in some good brand material.
I've unfortunately limited time here, so I'm going to make a low quality post on this, brain spilled out on paper.
I think ti's important to remember that the position we've taken isn't that Spider Man won't be popular, it will be, it's just whether or not it will be able to break 8 million.
I think that's an important note here, in this discussion. When we talk about brand fatigue and everything, Brit has largely been trying to support the claim that others could feel that as a reason (despite brand strength) that they will not purchase the title. That doesn't mean the title will sell poorly, or that so many others feel this way about SM that it will sell terribly; what we're trying to land on, is whether or not SM will surpass the sales of things like GOW or break other records, in which at the upper echelon where you are trying to reach for record breaking numbers, this could pose to be a problem for SM.
I want to be clear, during the time of Arkham Asylum and City, those were ground breaking video games for super heroes and did <400K and < 2 Million sold respectively on a cross platform setup. And this is during Christopher Nolan's batman. The idea that Spider Man, is something unique, is interesting, because Arkham Knight was this super duper high production video game, that broke graphics barriers too, and continue the evolve the good gameplay on the series, and if I recall correctly, did not manage to break 8 million. It got to 5 million fast, but from my quick google fu - I could not find any other record milestone numbers. And that was for a multiplatform title.
And when we look back at brands. You can look during the same time periods of Arkham Asylum to Knight and see that from a graphics novel/comics area, few of their books managed to break top 500 best sellers. Profit wise, it was absolutely dwarfed to the profits being generated by the movies and by the video games.
Video entertainment is where these superheroes have been earning their payday.
So when it comes to brand, and we talk about SM and everything about SM. These movies, at least from the revenue perspective, have largely been the biggest money makers for the spiderman vertical. Not the comics. Not the animated series. And not merchandising because from a friend who creates art work, they don't owe Marvel/DC licensing fees for selling artwork of those characters.
So when we talk about impact from the movies, the movies have largely been the biggest way, the mainstream audience has connected with Spider Man. Outside of that, where the comics and the cosplay and that, stuff, it's all hardcore, and it's reach hasn't nearly been as large as it's movies, or likely it's games.
And that should that matter, because huge success depends on hitting large groups of people. And if those mainstream people, are turned off by the movies, or whatever, fatigued by them, then perhaps they don't care to have another go at it. At least, from the perspective that it would cause people to run out and buy a playstation and buy the video game.
So once again, perspective here, we're not saying it's going to bomb. Just saying, there are probably some likely reasons why it may not break God of War numbers. And we've a cited one. I mean, it being exclusive to playstation doesn't help its chances of breaking 8 million either.
So I don't have the effort to cite all of my sources and google fu everything and paste it back here, but I would not mislead you on purpose on this. If I'm wrong, I'm okay with that, just show me where I'm wrong.
