Quick sequels look stale to players whose neurons are burning out on endless microdoses of novelty – only standout launches cut through the noise

For almost as long as the games industry has existed, the conventional wisdom around sequels has remained the same: strike while the iron is hot. If you have a hit game, ensure you get a sequel out the door before the public loses interest. If you have more than one hit in a row, that's a franchise, and those need a steady release cadence to ensure the brand's momentum doesn't falter.

No amount of eyerolling about endless sequel-itis or pining for more original games has ever made a dent in that relentless logic. Successful games got rapid sequels; really successful games spawned franchises that publishers would go to great lengths to turn out on as regular a schedule as possible. On some of the biggest franchises, publishers would even swap different development studios in and out across different iterations to ensure that when a new game launched, the next instalment was already deep in development.

My use of the past tense here is deliberate, because over the past decade or so, that approach to sequels and franchises has wavered significantly. Franchises aiming for yearly releases have largely disappeared. Outside of a few remaining sports games that have stuck to the annual release cadence, Call of Duty is essentially the last annual franchise standing. Time between sequels has grown significantly, too. It's now common to see five or six years elapse between a successful game and its follow-up.

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