Which company has the strongest IPs?

Why are people saying that games like Mario Kart don't count as part of the Mario IP?

It uses Mario characters, variants of Mario music, Mario coins, Mario sounds, locations ripped straight from the main Mario games, uses the Mario artstyle, etc etc. It will always feature locations and characters from the latest Mario games.

It's like we continue to move goalposts every time we speak about this.

Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, Yoshi's games, Mario RPG, Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, Mario Kart, Wario games, etc etc, are all part of the Mario franchise and are treated as such.

The sales those games get just tell how strong the Mario franchise is.

Activision could make a COD racing game, a COD tennis game, and those would clearly games of the COD IP.

The fact continues to be that Mario sells more than COD, and it's pretty obvious that the Mario IP is much stronger than the COD IP.
 
In terms of quality, I would put Sony over Nintendo (for my personal tastes). Their first/second party developers have such a vast amount of titles the bulk of which are what I enjoy to play.
 
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Although they've done their best to forget about everything not named Sonic.
 
Valve's pretty strong. They don't expand their IPs beyond 2, but there's hardly a weak link in the pack.

-Half-Life
-Portal
-Left 4 dead
-Team Fortress (2)
-Counter Strike
-DOTA 2

That's more than two franchises there.

Sega. Squandered, but still the best, even if Nintendo is included.


If we are talking about sheer variety and not how strong the IP's are sales wise, then Sega as a whole has probably the most diversity in unique characters and IP's out there.

Sonic
Alex Kidd
Shinobi
Golden Axe
Streets of Rage
Space Channel 5
Super Monkey Ball
Panzer Dragoon
Virtua Fighter
Virtua Cop
Sega Rally
Daytona
Out Run
After Burner
jet Set Radio
Samba De Amigo
Eternal Champions
Crazy Taxi
Shenmue
Vectorman
Comix Zone
The House of the Dead
Fighting Vipers
Ecco The Dolphin
Puyo Pop
Columns
The Shining RPG series
Shining Force RPG series
Phantasy Star
Nights into Dreams
Skies of Arcadia
Yakuza
Rez
Chu Chu Rocket

It's hard to find another developer with that many unique IP's under their belt.


Konami And Capcom also have a lot of great IP's too, and So does EA as well. EA is a graveyard of amazing old IP's.
 
Most companies has his own strong IPs.

e.g.
EA got FIFA - Need for Speed - Battlefield
Activision got Call of Duty
Blizzard got World of Warcraft - Diablo - StarCraft
Nintendo got Mario - Pokemon
Bethesda got Elders Scroll - Fallout
Microsoft got Halo
Sony got Gran Turismo
Capcom got Monster Hunter - Resident Evil
Square Enix - Final Fantasy - Dragon Quest
2K games - NBA 2k - GTA - Bioshock

A company without a strong IP wont survive in this industry.
 
Bethesda isn't the strongest but it's worth mentioning. People who aren't enthusiasts have heard of Skyrim and Oblivion. It happened this generation for them.
 
Probably EA, they really have everything covered.

Racing: Need for Speed, Burnout
Sports: Madden, FIFA, SSX, Skate
Simulation: SimCity, The Sims
Shooters: Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Crysis
RPGs: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Old Republic
Strategy: Command & Conquer


And they also released games like Syndicate, Alice, Mirror's Edge, Dante's Inferno etc that aren't exactly huge.
 
Bethesda isn't the strongest but it's worth mentioning. People who aren't enthusiasts have heard of Skyrim and Oblivion. It happened this generation for them.

Yup, they did a great job this gen.
Off topic, I don't get it why they bought ID software, when their own games sells much more.
Fallout is also a pretty big IP for them, besides Elder Scrolls.
 
Activision, Sega, Capcom

Edit
But the ones i like are from Sony
Demon's Souls
Dead Nation
Folklore
Gran Turismo
God of War
Gravity Daze
Heavy Rain
Ico
inFamous
Jak and Daxter
Killzone
The Legend of Dragoon
LittleBigPlanet
MAG
MotorStorm
PlanetSide
Ratchet & Clank
Resistance
Shadow of the Colossus
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs [2 genreally]
Syphon Filter
Uncharted
Warhawk
Wipeout
 
-Half-Life
-Portal
-Left 4 dead
-Team Fortress (2)
-Counter Strike
-DOTA 2

That's more than two franchises there.

He means more than 2 entries per franchise. Not two franchises.

Anyway, I think its activision/Blizzard. Personally I think Capcom has the best IPs outside of Nintendo though.
 
If this thread was talking about IPs that matter to hardcore gamers, than my 5 picks would probably be:

Nintendo
Sega
EA
Square-Enix
Activision Blizzard

After those 5 would be Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take 2, and maybe Lucasarts.

Those 10 would cover a huge percentage of the most important gaming IPs (past and Present)
 
Activision, Sega, Capcom


But the ones i like are from Sony
Demon's Souls
Dead Nation
Folklore
Gran Turismo
God of War
Gravity Daze
Heavenly Sword
Heavy Rain
Hot Shots Golf
Ico
inFamous
Jak and Daxter
Killzone
The Legend of Dragoon
LittleBigPlanet
MAG
MotorStorm
PlanetSide
PlayStation Move Heroes
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale

Ratchet & Clank
Resistance
Shadow of the Colossus
Siren
Sly Cooper
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs
Sorcery
Syphon Filter
Twisted Metal
Uncharted
Warhawk
Wipeout

Really? I mean I agree with you in that I believe Sony has a better First party lineup up than anyone, but come on. Those just sound like your padding a list.
 
Really? I mean I agree with you in that I believe Sony has a better First party lineup up than anyone, but come on. Those just sound like your padding a list.

Oh thanks for mentioning,

list was big, so copy pasted from wiki and removed the ones which i dont like

It was an error. :)
 
Sega, but they don't deserve it.
They have a huge collection of amazing franchises, yet they criminally abuse them but either neglecting them or releasing awful sequels.
 
Well excluding Nintendo I guess I'd say Activision, just based on Call of Duty and Blizzard games. Sony brings it on the quality side of things, at least where enthusiast gamers are concerned.
 
I feel like Capcom has the strongest IPs, but they're just horrible at managing them.

Street Fighter
Megaman
Breath of Fire
Monster Hunter
Devil May Cry
Okami
Viewtiful Joe
Resident Evil
Dead Rising
God Hand
Ace Attorney
Ghosts and Goblins

I could go on for a while. They have so many great IPs, but just don't know what the hell to do with most of them, and their best developers have left.

SEGA, Square and Capcom all seem to have this going on. Some of the best IPs in gaming's history and they don't know what to do with the ones that they can't iterate on most often or have completely left in the annals of time. Sad.
 
I don't think anyone outside of gaming (random people on the street) knows what World of Warcraft even is. Sonic, Call of Duty and Mario, yes.

Holy SHIT!. hahahahahahahahahahahaha Really? REALLY? WoW is used by non-gamers to make jokes ABOUT gamers more often than not. Have you never stepped foot in a public high school classroom?
 
Valve, and then Sony.

Holy SHIT!. hahahahahahahahahahahaha Really? REALLY? WoW is used by non-gamers to make jokes ABOUT gamers more often than not. Have you never stepped foot in a public high school classroom?
Or even an old folks home. Everyone plays WoW.
 
Excluding Nintendo, SEGA and EA. Sony and Microsoft are miles away.
 
Sega. This isn't even close.

Sonic
Jet Set Radio
OutRun
Shenmue
Super Monkey Ball
Golden Axe
Streets of Rage
Chu Chu Rocket
Alex Kidd
Space Channel 5
Shinobi
Virtua Fighter
NiGHTS
House of the Dead
Phantasy Star
Puyo Puyo
Yakuza
Shinobi
After Burner
Space Harrier
Daytona
Altered Beast
Bayonetta
Rez


And that's not even everything.

Sure, most of these IP's aren't used to their full potential anymore, but that doesn't seem to be a factor imposed by the OP, as the same can easily be said for Nintendo, who have been excluded from this thread. I look at each IP in terms of how well-recognised they are, and how revered they were at their peak. Also, like Nintendo, the age of many of these IP's means that many people who don't play games anymore, but used to in their youth, are aware of them.

And hell, Sega are the only developer who have an advertising mascot popular enough that people want to see him in the Sega All-Stars games.
 
Maybe EA. They have a ton of IPs from the shitload of companies they bought, I think. They have everything from Bejeweled to Sims to Battlefield to Need for Speed. Some companies can match the strength of these IPs, some can match the volume, but I don't know if anyone can match EA on both.
 
It's either that or metacritic / sales. Pick your poison.
It would be a lot less depressing if I choose neither and just pick IP's that had great games and also is still supported in sequels/revivals, cross-promotions, and other methods of maintaining awareness of the IP.
 
Yeah, if we're not strictly talking sales then it's definitely Sony (well, for me at least). They have a great variety of IPs, and most of them are real quality titles.
 
If Sega and Capcom managed their series better then the gaming world would be a much better place. Sega also have two of the biggest PC ip's outside of actiblizzard (Football manager, Total War).

Outside of the big three (Nintendo, Sega and Capcom) I'd have Rockstar.

Rockstar now have GTA, Red Dead, Max Payne, Bully (sequel please) and I'm assuming La Noire.
 
In terms of amount and diversity: Sega
In terms of diveristy and quality: Square Enix
In terms of amount and quality: Sony
 
EA
Capcom
Sega
Valve

From highest to lowest. Capcom and Sega would be dead without their big IP. Valve has fewer big name IP with an insane audience, but people love them some counter strike and half life. I would also list Konami. Silent Hill, ZoE, Castlevania and Metal Gear come to mind for those guys. They seem to have their things in order in regards to non console related profits though.
 
I'd count Sony higher than Nintendo now, to be honest.

Uncharted, Starhawk, inFamous, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo, etc. That's a very impressive first-party list of .

Starhawk?? Infamous??? They are barely known ips

Killzone is not considered good really

So more like Uncharted gran turismo and god of war? Sony is just as weak as Microsoft ip-wise

Nintendo is obviously ip king.

Next probably actiblizz and then ea? Capcom has RE, sf etc but nothing really big besides that
 
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