Didn't expect a waifu battle in here, but let's do it
Despite the hate Aloy gets in certain areas, her franchise has sold over 32 million copies in less than 8 years. It's probably lost on people how big that actually is.
Street Fighter since its inception has 55 million unit sales. Since 1987... Nearly 40 years ago...
Resident Evil 3 remake sold 9.6 million units. The best-selling street fighter ever (SF5) sold 7.7 million units.
Wii Fit sold like 25 million and yet the Wii Fit Trainer Girl is
not a major cultural icon. Likewise, this is correct
People didn’t buy HZD/HFW for Aloy. They bought them in spite of Aloy. Varl could have been the main character and it would have sold the same.
Aloy has borderline
zero presence as a cultural icon and never will, whether or not people played games she was in. Chun-Li does; her image is one of the most recognizable symbols in gaming, a shorthand for the world of the arcade just like a drawing of Pac Man is.
Also, get out of here with this Lara Croft nonsense. Chun-Li is still more iconic and longstanding of an icon. Take YouTube search which is where the pulse of young people is, over past 5 years, and you see it.
And she's not even in the
name or
title of any game or movie, so every search is just for the character; whereas the media franchises around Lara Croft's name are all that have sustained a very bland character who doesn't even have a recognizably consistent appearance cross eras, with at least 3 or 4 totally unrecognizable design variations that hold zero nostalgia for anyone.
Now back to the main event: