Topic: Mega Man Legends 3 Canceled

[Luigi Dude]

How is Mega Man not one of CapCom's biggest franchises? It's been around a lot longer than Resident Evil, and they've probably released more Mega Man games than any of their other franchises.

The problem is in the last several years the sales of Megaman games hasn't been to hot.  Which is why currently, Megaman is no longer one of Capcoms biggest franchises because of low sales.  The last big Megaman series was Battle Network for the GBA, but Capcom killed that series with how badly they milked it.  That's why it's successor Star Forced wasn't anywhere close to BN in popularity, and that series seems to have died off now.

[Mop it up]

What has even been released in the past few years? I can think of Mega Man 9 and 10 which I thought were pretty successful, but that's it.

[Ian Sane]

I think of Mega Man kind of like a really old comic strip that you've seen in every newspaper your whole life but has not been relevant for a very long time.  It just kind of keeps going.  Mega Man had not really done anything groundbreaking since the SNES.  The games were still pretty good (at least until MMX went 3D) but it was nothing new and nothing you would really miss out on if you skipped it.

Resident Evil remains a big deal partially because it successfully reinvented itself with RE4 and only one new "main" RE game has been released since then.  It's not a dinosaur going through the motions yet.

Though ironically Mega Man was relevant again by being incredibly unambitious.  Mega Man 9 kicked off the fad of retro-style sequels to old franchises being released as downloadable titles.  Still that isn't enough to make it a major franchise in this day and age.

Capcom never seemed fully behind Mega Man Legends 3.  It honestly seemed like it was playing a rigged game from the start.  They didn't want to make it and were looking for an excuse to cancel it.  Don't know why, but it sure seems that way.

[TJ Spyke]

This was Inafune's pet project, and once he left I guess there was no one left to really support it. I liken it to when the head of a network green lights a TV show and then leaves the network, the new guy comes in and doesn't care for the show so he cancels it.

[Ceric]

I'm halfway surprised that Inafune didn't have a way to take Mega Man with him.