How can one above average game sink an entire franchise?

Don't compare games to books. Compare them to toilet paper. I admit, my statement is meant to be provocative. But maybe it conveys the message of why this is considered an investment, a multi million dollar investment, as opposed to an author writing a book that fails to meet it's audience. Movies, well that's a different story. If they tank, there certainly won't be xxxx part 2, but another movie based on a different story entirely.

Truth is, the time of idealistic entrepreneurs developing the games they would like to play is over for at least two decades. Games are big business and there's not a shred of romanticism about their production. It's rather night shifts and weekends to meet deadlines. If the investment fails, the business moves on to greener pastures.

Don't compare games to books, but that's not quite the reason why. Books have the advantage of being cheap to make. You can even write a digital copy and publish it online and there, all you've invested is one person's time. Games and movies are expensive, which in practice means you will be seeing drastically different approaches between how big corporations and indie companies make them. AAA games aren't any more of a big business than Hollywood films, and if you are looking for more niche/artsy/innovative stuff there's always the indie scene.

If you had to choose an investment that returns 5 instead of 2, for every buck spent which would you go for? ME rep is in a bad position right now...the best thing Bioware can do is release a huge, 10/10 DLC that redeems everything from main game ... no filler/bloat, good writing, far more expanded setting ( new species...bring that sense of "wonder"), space exploration, etc.
How well your next game sells depends more on reception of it's predecessor.
But nothing seems to indicate this.

Nope DA 2 had a bad reputation and DAI sold like hot cakes, it got 4.9 millions sales and that is not even including the digital sales that are now far more numerous than they used to be.

As long as the game is good it can sell well, even if the predecessor was not received well.

Yest but my point was not how DAI was received, the problem was before DAI was released, the last memory of the public of the dragon age licence was DA 2, who was not great. It still manage to get a sequel despite that, and that sequel sold extremly well. 

For the sales, if the budget of 40 million is true, than 3 millions copies sold is more than enough to be a commercial sucess. We already know they sold 1.5 million copies physically, and digital sales are now much bigger than they used to be, bigger than the physical sales. www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/04/19/esa-video-game-sales-figures-show-74-percent-of-sales-are-digital/

Sure it was not the huge seller EA excepted but that does not mean there is huge lost.

DA2 wasn't ridiculed and made into an online laughingstock like Andromeda (and the reviews were also much better).

It's the end - for Andromeda.

Part of it was the bioware hate culture on the internet was just waiting for a mediocre ME game to come out so they could attack it non stop. The ME series has been the target of irrational ex fans going as far back as the release of ME 2. Since then these people have formed into a bit of a cult that has been trying to shut down ME ever since. All it took was one mismanaged game like MEA for them to seize the opportunity. The meme and gif posters have been around a long time as have the likes of smugboy and his sycophants. I put the blame on bioware management for not handling this mess with development of MEA better they basically gave the enemy tons of ammo with their mismanagement. The sad thing is despite everything wrong with it MEA is not even a bad game, merely a disappointing game that still has merit when played for it's own sake. Sometimes I don't know what makes me more angry the mishandling of the game by management or the internet hate mob that wanted to bring this IP down.

Quite frankly I don't think MEA deserved the reviews it got. Yes, it was raw on release, and even now not everything has been fixed. But the amount of issues seen in it 2 months after release would make it a solid B+ or maybe even an A- game. Too many people wanted payback for ME3 ending. Too many people expected that this will somehow be a continuation of the trilogy. Too many people look at OT (and especially at the writing) with rose tinted glasses.

Bottom line is that too many people had too high of expectations for MEA or expected it to be something it was not meant to be. If this does not sink the franchise, the next installment should have a much more reasonable expectations and (hopefully) do much better. I am squarely in the camp of people who thought MEA was well worth the money I paid for it (granted, I waited until the first two patches and THEN spent $20 less than people did on release).

Oh, it was bad. If you weren't on the "but I want my Warden!" boat you were in for a world of abuse from other people on the forum. It got to the point where I didn't go back to the forum until after ME3 was released.

Even after ME3 was released, the boards were still seething about DA2. If anything, ME3 aggravated those wounds. I wasn't even on the DA section of the forums back then and it was one of those topics that came up every single thread alongside "The Witcher this, The Witcher that" and "RGB lul."

Can't be compared? hah. They can be imminently compared. The same people screaming they want Shepard back, or stay in the MW, are the same kind of people who screamed they wanted their Warden back or wanted to stay in Ferelden.

Let me give you a single, confirmable number: $53 million in Premium Editions. The edition that didn't even come with a fucking game, just a case, art books and an RC Nomad. That's what EA had to move to '18 Q1 because they couldn't claim it in '17 Q4.

Head in the sand? Shit, I'm looking at this quite clearly. You just keep on thinking ME is dead.

QFT right there, man. QF-fuckin'-T.