Which company has the strongest IPs?

MrCunningham said:
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.
Click to expand...

That's what made them so unique. Few big publishers would touch something like Ecco, Nights or Jet Set Radio and certainly not invest too heavily in them, yet it was the kind of games Sega tried to sell their system's on. I think you'd be laughed out of the boardroom at Activision Blizzard for suggesting titles like that as some company's most important games.

"A dolphin? No, no, no, games need more shooting and grinding.."
 
Vinci said:
Activision / Blizzard.

How is this a question?
Click to expand...

The only way I think it could be a question is if he is asking folks to reply based on quality, which is completely subjective.

But hard numbers in sales are not. Its pretty easily Activision in terms of numbers.
 
Nintendo... Wait...

Capcom and SEGA as well. SEGA is starting to utilize theirs more... But it's mostly Sonic. :/

Valve has a strong selection too, of course.
 
jonny_boi said:
Other than Nintendo.

I'm talking about the whole company's list of IPs collective.

Is it Microsoft, with Halo and Gears? Activision Blizzard with Call of Duty and World of Warcraft? EA with all their IPs and EA Sports?

I was thinking about if Sony's All-Stars catches on, what other companies might try to make their own version as well, which led to me wondering this.
Click to expand...

Activision-Blizzard - CoD, Diablo, Starcraft, WoW, Skylanders
Rockstar - GTA, RDR, Midnight Club, Max Payne
Valve - Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal
Riot - LoL
EA - Sports titles, Sims, Battlefield
Capcom - Resident Evil, Street Fighter
Konami - MGS, Castlevania
MS - Halo
Epic - Gears
Sony - Uncharted, Gran Turismo, God of War

There's a few others, but these stick out in my mind as the strongest for sales, mindshare and quality.
 
microsoft - halo, forza, pgr, banjo kazooie, conkers, perfect dark, battletech universe, crimson universe, shadowrun universe, viva pinata, age of empires/mythology, flight/train/space simulator, fable, black and white, midtown(truck, etc) madness, crackdown, killer instinct.

my personal favorite - Phantom Dust.

And to top it all off.

For 2012, the games review aggregation site Metacritic gives the average of Microsoft games as 77.2 (out of 100); The highest score among the first-party publishers. The closest first-party publisher is Nintendo at 74.4
 
Sales-wise. Activision/Blizzard or EA. ActBliz for the few megatons vs EA ability to flood the markets and ship like no other.

Quality-wise. Whatever you're a fanboy of. I'm pretty partial to Capcom, even with their bullshit. Titles like Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Dragon's Dogma, and Resident Evil delivered for me this generation. Or Valve who keeps a pretty blemish-free record.

Or just wholesome franchise hoarding? EA has reserved army of classic IPs. Ready to be remade to ruin all precious memories.
 
kswiston said:
Wii Sports was hugely bundled (both versions) and we have yet to see how well it carries over this generation. Wii Fit+ was the last Wii _____ game to sell huge numbers. Wii Party sold well (over 6M shipped) but was not nearly as popular as Sports/Play/Fit. From what I can tell, Wii Play motion bombed in comparison to the older games.

Pokemon, 2D Mario and Mario Kart are Nintendo's strongest franchises.

Acti-blizzard has Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft which are all massive. At this point, I would imagine that WoW is the second best-selling game this generation behind Wii Sports. Ten million people still actively play after almost 8 years. There must be a gigantic number of former WoW players by this point.

I think Skylanders will be more transitory (like Guitar Hero), so I will not count it among Activision Blizzard's mega IPs.



No. Call of Duty was at 55 million units as of Nov 27, 2009. That is a couple of weeks after Modern Warfare 2 came out. That number doesn't even include all of MW2's sales, let alone Black Ops. The series is over 100M by now. Black Ops sold over 25M copies on its own.
Click to expand...

If you wanna to go this way we can.

2D-Sidescrollers

April 2012

New Super Mario Bros. Wii 26.26 million
New Super Mario Bros. DS 29.09 million

Unknown Dates

Super Mario Bros. NES 40.24m
Super Mario World SNES 20.60m
Super Mario Land GB 18.06m
Super Mario Bros. 3 NES 17.28m
Super Mario Land 2 GB 11.09m
Super Mario Bros. 2 NES 7.46m

Total-170.17m

Unsure of how up to date the data is.
 
I hate to say it but EA:

EA - Sports titles, Sims, Battlefield, Dragon Age, Crisis, Mirrors Edge, Rock Band.

I hate EA, I try not to support them, but Dragon Age gets me every time...
 
It bears repeating, but besides Nintendo...

Blizzard. They have the kind of IPs that even people who don't play games have heard about. I can't tell you how many people I heard talking about Diablo III when it launched. I even knew people who didn't play games who were buying it and retired gamers coming back for one more round.
 
It's always interesting to see how large a disparity there is between "hardcore" popularity of Sony and general popularity. As of last time I saw the figures, Microsoft and Sony sold comparable amounts of first party software, despite the fact that so many here view them as enormously disparate in terms of quality of output. In addition, Sony was barely in the top 10 largest publishers (with EA/Nintendo constantly battling out for first).

I personally also prefer Sony's output, but mostly for the small fare (Super Stardust HD, Parappa the Rappa) and do not objectively consider them remotely comparable to Nintendo/EA/Activision in terms of the strength of their IPs.
 
SEGA, but I think that company is actually ran by very smart chimpanzees.

Capcom. Nuff Said.

Square-Enix (+Eidos), I see good things in the future.
 
Opiate said:
It's always interesting to see how large a disparity there is between "hardcore" popularity of Sony and general popularity. As of last time I saw the figures, Microsoft and Sony sold comparable amounts of first party software, despite the fact that so many here view them as enormously disparate in terms of quality of output. In addition, Sony was barely in the top 10 largest publishers (with EA/Nintendo constantly battling out for first).

I personally also prefer Sony's output, but mostly for the small fare (Super Stardust HD, Parappa the Rappa) and do not objectively consider them remotely comparable to Nintendo/EA/Activision in terms of the strength of their IPs.
Click to expand...

This applies in general though. All the Sega listings are hilarious, nothing but Sonic is recognizable.

What a normal person buying games is aware of is usually pretty low for anything not on TV. Consistently.

And CoD has sold 20M+ copies for each installment over the past 3 years. Its brand is as strong as any out there.
 
Opiate said:
It's always interesting to see how large a disparity there is between "hardcore" popularity of Sony and general popularity. As of last time I saw the figures, Microsoft and Sony sold comparable amounts of first party software, despite the fact that so many here view them as enormously disparate in terms of quality of output. In addition, Sony was barely in the top 10 largest publishers (with EA/Nintendo constantly battling out for first).

I personally also prefer Sony's output, but mostly for the small fare (Super Stardust HD, Parappa the Rappa) and do not objectively consider them remotely comparable to Nintendo/EA/Activision in terms of the strength of their IPs.
Click to expand...

Definitely. Sony has nice output, but their stuff doesn't really move big units save for GT and GoW.
 
EVIL said:
ROFL, are you stating that COD sells better then mario titles?

have you ever checked the charts? Mario games decimate COD sales
Click to expand...

The most recent COD titles are hitting 20+ million per. So yes, I'm saying it's competing fairly well. Given their annual releases? I think it's fair to debate whether COD sells better than Mario does, depending of course on which Mario lineup of games you're discussing.

And no, even if you count the larger Mario lines, such as NSMB and Mario Kart, they do not 'decimate' COD. Nowhere close to that.
 
Boombloxer said:
This applies in general though. All the Sega listings are hilarious, nothing but Sonic is recognizable.
Click to expand...

This is not a dig on you by any means, but how old are you? Sega's IP catalog (or, as I called it during their existence as a 1st-party ,the Nintendo rogues gallery) holds a LOT more power than they give themselves credit for. Your suggestion that Sega's IPs aren't recognizable kinda smacks of someone with incomplete or forgotten knowledge of the Genesis era and just how strong their home and arcade IPs are for those of us who lived through it all. Their Saturn and Dreamcast sales were marginal , but what little the Saturn DID sell, it was ENTIRELY on the strength of their IPs and no one else's.

It's just a shame what Sega has done to them and to themselves in the process.
 
Terrell said:
This is not a dig on you by any means, but how old are you? Sega's IP catalog (or, as I called it during their existence as a 1st-party ,the Nintendo rogues gallery) holds a LOT more power than they give themselves credit for. Your suggestion that Sega's IPs aren't recognizable kinda smacks of someone with incomplete or forgotten knowledge of the Genesis era and just how strong their home and arcade IPs are for those of us who lived through it all. Their Saturn and Dreamcast sales were marginal , but what little the Saturn DID sell, it was ENTIRELY on the strength of their IPs and no one else's.

It's just a shame what Sega has done to them and to themselves in the process.
Click to expand...

Part of keeping a brand strong is good games, as well as transmedia stuff now. So if you don't take advantage of what you have for a long period, like Sega, people forget.

My mind isn't clouded by older experiences when it comes to present IP strength, an the bottom line is, yes, in the West, only Sonic is really recognizable to someone who simply walks into GameStop. Yakuza is Japan only.

Easiest way to tell is to put two boxes next to one another, like say Golden Axe and God of War. Doesn't matter if I loved Streets of Rage 3 or hate the fact that Panzer Dragoon Orta won't see a re-release as an hd download, or loved the CDX, or enjoyed Wonder Boy 3, etc.

Open your eyes.
 
Really there is no debate here, Nintendo is the only right answer. They are the only company who can have a successful system with their IP's alone.
 
Besides Nintendo, there are a bunch of companies with strong IPs, such as SE, Capcom, Sega and etc. The problem is that they all suck at using them.
 
Vinci said:
The most recent COD titles are hitting 20+ million per. So yes, I'm saying it's competing fairly well. Given their annual releases? I think it's fair to debate whether COD sells better than Mario does, depending of course on which Mario lineup of games you're discussing.

And no, even if you count the larger Mario lines, such as NSMB and Mario Kart, they do not 'decimate' COD. Nowhere close to that.
Click to expand...
It doesn't even matter, it's one IP.

And COD has a hardware base of 65 million PS3s + 65 million 360s + a billion PCs + Wii + NDS + Everything

If AB manages to shift 10 IPs with >10.000.000 sales, they could get closer.

And Pokemon is a whole industry on it's own.
 
I'd have to go with Sony. I wish they would keep making some of their older IPs. Would help diversify their current line-up maybe. I realize not all of them would be relevant though.
 
EA and Activision is the only right answer. All sports and FPS from them are incredibly strong.

TripOpt55 said:
I'd have to go with Sony. I wish they would keep making some of their older IPs. Would help diversify their current line-up maybe. I realize not all of them would be relevant though.
Click to expand...

They have stellar IPs just not strong ones.
 
I'd say Capcom. Unless they existed alongside Capcom in the arcade era, companies coming around after that time can't possibly compete with the stuff that was made for arcades, next to their console work.

Sega to me is becoming increasingly known for publishing Platinum's games, and part them used to be with Capcom. Their arcade IPs are comparable to Capcom's though.

Saying nothing about Nintendo of course. :P
 
If we're just talking quality then I would say Square Enix.

-Deus Ex
-Thief
-Hitman
-Tomb Raider
-Just Cause (I think they don't own it but they have some agreement with Avalanche in place)
-Sleeping Dogs/True Crime

And then there's Final Fantasy and other japanese titles. The quality of them is up in the air nowadays but some of them are still pretty strong in sales.
 
Sony? Really?

Commercially EA followed by ActivisionBlizzard. Artistically, probably Valve. They're the Pixar of the industry.
 
SpokkX said:
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
Click to expand...

Don't forget LittleBigPlanet.

And SingStar, maybe. I don't know.
 
I think Ubisoft have a fantastic library, not only is it of a high quality but there have been plenty of them produced too.

Assassin's Creed, Rayman (and by extension the Rabbid franchise), Far Cry and Brothers In Arms have produced their own great titles over the years, and the Tom Clancy games set aside a whole variety of games set on a military background. Team Based Shooter (GRAW), Stealth (Splinter Cell), Tactical Shooter (Rainbow 6), Flight Combat (HAWX) and RTS (EndWar) are all covered from the catalogue of a single author, and that is remarkable in my eyes.

In fact, does any other developer do that?
 
Capcom has a large collection of high quality IPs, but they don't revisit a lot of these titles often and a lot of their stuff will not be recognized by your average western AAA gamer. For example Ghouls n' Ghosts is a great IP but it's a niche product and Capcom hasn't done a great deal with it recently.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

which game has the most living breathing world ?
2 3 4
171
6K
Gorgon replied
  • Locked
Xbox Game Studios Head of Creative has left the company
10
1K
poppabk replied
Sony has become the second biggest company in Japan by market cap
2 3
133
6K
James Sawyer Ford replied
  • Poll
Between Microsoft and Sega as publishers, which one has the better lineup of games/IPs?
2 3
103
5K
MiguelItUp replied
Nvidia has become the world's most valuable company
Business  2
55
3K
Grildon Tundy replied
Top Bottom