Has there ever been an actual "<insert popular IP> killer"?

[Morrigan]

Seems like Call of Duty may fit the bill. Funnily enough I remembered CoD being initially an expansion of MoH, right?

Has EA been mentioned? They are the biggest IP killers in history, they not only kill almost all IPs they aquire, but also the studios they bought to get them.

Yes I know this was not the question, but it somehow fits anyway.

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It really doesn't. Only if you read the thread title and ignore everything in the OP. Thanks for trying, but your post has 0 to do with the topic at all.

I don't think anything is explicitly *marketed* as a 'killer', is it? It's more the press who give it that moniker.

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Nah it was definitely a thing in the 90's, but I think marketing has moved away from this kind of cringy shit precisely because it's a) cringy and b) never works lol

 

[Pop-O-Matic]

Seems like Call of Duty may fit the bill. Funnily enough I remembered CoD being initially an expansion of MoH, right?

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The studio was formed from a bunch of disaffected staff who worked on MoH: Allied Assault.

 

[DevilPuncher]

Uncharted as a Tomb Raider Killer.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

This new game from Naughty Dog features jungle adventures in a Pitfall-esque setting.

www.gamespot.com

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Yeah, this is a good example.

Makes me remember when people would refer to Uncharted as "dude raider" around the time it came out lol

 

[Dr.Social]

I don't think anything is explicitly *marketed* as a 'killer', is it? It's more the press who give it that moniker.

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I can't think of any marketing using the term "______ killer", but ads have gone after the competition directly.

 

[RXM027]

For people asking about why people are saying Forza, you don't get GT Sport without Forza eating GT's lunch in the 7th generation. For a time, it looked like Polyphony had lost the plot, while Turn 10 was putting out some of their best work.

Spoiler: Reviews for FM3 versus GT5

Spoiler: Reviews for FM4 versus GT6

Forza didn't kill GT, but it forced it to improve. Polyphony took a different approach after GT5 and GT6, and despite a pretty rocky start, Sport has returned the series to the top, while Motorsport has stagnated. FM5/6/7 are good, but they all feel the same, with not much innovation.
Plus, a lot of people are also including Forza Horizon, which has arguably eclipsed the main series across all metrics.

 

[TheGhost]

Remember when haze was going to be the halo killer? Lmao

when realistically COD killed....everything at once.

 

[brawndolicious]

Well I guess Halo was a Golden Eye killer but Golden Eye never got remotely as big as Halo.


My hot take is The Witcher 3 killed whatever fantasy WRPG came before lol. For some reason it feels like that genre kind of died after TW3.

Forza is not a GT killer, but it is one of the rare instances of a game that was developed "as an answer to" another platform holder's game that did not turn out to be trash.

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It's sort of like Splinter Cell vs Metal Gear Solid. Well not that divergent in core gameplay but if I remember correctly, the original Splinter Cell game came about when an Ubisoft employee first saw stories about MGS and started wondering how they would make a stealth game.

And now we got two great stealth games with completely different gameplay. Forza went pretty hard on the physics/tuning aspect of driving dims while GT is more about pokecar side of things. A driving sim fan could easily play both games for a hundred hours and not find it redundant.

 

[Joltik]

fortnite was a tower defence game until battle royale became popular with PUBG no? Seems to fit the description to me. Although COD Warzone mixed with Fortnite kind of killed PUBG ImO.

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The point of the OP is "was upcoming game x advertised/stated as game y-killer by the developers/publishers/media themselves that actually killed game y".

Like the only franchise that fits the OP's question so far is modern Call of Duty when it was labeled as a "Medal of Honor-killer" by the CoD developers themselves and it did overtake MoH popularity.

 

[giapel]

FIFA eventually killed PES but it took several decades.
Edit: In the same vein, I guess 2K killed NBA Live.

 

[cooldawn]

For people asking about why people are saying Forza, you don't get GT Sport without Forza eating GT's lunch in the 7th generation. For a time, it looked like Polyphony had lost the plot, while Turn 10 was putting out some of their best work.

Spoiler: Reviews for FM3 versus GT5

Spoiler: Reviews for FM4 versus GT6

Forza didn't kill GT, but it forced it to improve. Polyphony took a different approach after GT5 and GT6, and despite a pretty rocky start, Sport has returned the series to the top, while Motorsport has stagnated. FM5/6/7 are good, but they all feel the same, with not much innovation.
Plus, a lot of people are also including Forza Horizon, which has arguably eclipsed the main series across all metrics.

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How can anything kill anything if it's not multiplatform or at the very least made available on the same platform?

Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport can't eat in to each others market.

If anything Forza Horizon has become the premier XBOX racing game. That killed Forza Motorsport more than any Gran Turismo ever could.

 

[RXM027]

How can anything kill anything if it's not multiplatform or at the very least made available on the same platform?

Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport can't eat in to each others market.

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They are, though. Sure, they're not in direct competition, but Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport are both in the exact same part of the racing game market (semi-sim racing games with lots of cars), so there is a direct comparison. For MS and Sony, having a better racer could convince someone to buy their console over the other, especially in the 360/PS3 era where the two consoles were neck and neck in sales.

Plus, you can still rule a market segment despite being exclusive.
Mario Kart is still the gold standard for kart racers, despite stuff like Crash Team Racing and the Sonic Racing games being multiplatform.
Forza Horizon has arguably monopolized the arcade racing market, pushing out almost all other franchises.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

Seems like popular franchises usually die from self inflicted wounds more than a clone coming in and just taking all of its fans away.

 

[Graven]

I think League of Legends killed Heroes of Newerth(which was closer to DOTA at the time).

 

[D.Lo]

'X Killer' doesn't mean the game no longer exists or the franchise is gone.

It means it has been knocked off the 'genre king' perch.

Call of Duty 4 was the legit 'Halo killer' in that sense after many pretenders.

Mortal Kombat over street fighter is the best example I can think of. Street Fighter is still around, sure- but MK overtook it IMMEDIATELY as the more popular fighter and never looked back

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Lol no.

MK is more popular now but was not in Street Fighter II's league, Street Fighter and spinoffs (Vs etc) remained king the entire 90s at least.

Between all of its various editions, Street Fighter V has sold 5.2 million copies in the last five years. For comparison, Mortal Kombat 11 sold over 8 million copies in the first six months.

So, yeah, I think Mortal Kombat probably did "kill" Street Fighter. At the very least, it's easily the more popular fighting game.

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The post said immediately. Which is factually false.

 

[cooldawn]

They are, though. Sure, they're not in direct competition, but Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport are both in the exact same part of the racing game market (semi-sim racing games with lots of cars), so there is a direct comparison. For MS and Sony, having a better racer could convince someone to buy their console over the other, especially in the 360/PS3 era where the two consoles were neck and neck in sales.

Plus, you can still rule a market segment despite being exclusive.
Mario Kart is still the gold standard for kart racers, despite stuff like Crash Team Racing and the Sonic Racing games being multiplatform.
Forza Horizon has arguably monopolized the arcade racing market, pushing out almost all other franchises.

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I'll agree to disagree.

Neither Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo can cannibalise each other. Considering the point you raised Gran Turismo would be cannibalising Forza Motorsport because PS4 sold way more. That's corporate strategy for the entire platform, not the killing of an exclusive franchise by another exclusive franchise.

Additionally Gran Turismo has always sold more than Forza Motorsport, on occasion, by a very large amount and yet there's no sigh of it being killed off.
It can only kill itself if it fails to deliver to it's intended and exclusive audience. There's a really slim chance of that happening in either case right now. Maybe if Forza Horizon encroaches in to Forza Motorsport territory, but that'll never happen because the strategy is to keep them both alive and service different exclusive audiences.

Forza Horizon has monopolised XBOX's arcade racing segment. If it were to be available on other console platforms there's a very high chance it would also monopolise them too. It isn't so it can't. It's like saying Sony's 1st party single player games are killing off a lot of other 3rd party IP...but they aren't even though Sony's sell consistently more or review better than the rest. They aren't killing anything. If anything they inspire others to do better and co-exist even more.

Never the twain shall meet. One can never kill the other in a bubble.

If your remember Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was called a HALO killer by Robert Bowling at the time but that is available on all platforms while HALO on just one. Did it kill HALO? Nope. Right now HALO is killing itself.