Beyond Earth but I see your point, Civ has had several of these https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Civilization_(series)#Spinoffs
Point being that they can experiment and do something a little different, I don’t think that the quality of the spinoff indicates the quality of the main franchise.
I don’t think this means ES6 is doomed. Did anyone play the Civ space game? It was an offshoot one-off experiment that wasn’t really well recieved and they quietly moved on.
My guess is that this game pivoted during development and they ended up with something that didn’t really work and shouldn’t have shipped. The failure to find something good in this experiment may be isolated to this game.
The fact that they released it in the state they did could be more about their workflow and project pipeline/target milestones they need to hit than it is about their ability to execute.
The failure here is in design, ES6 has a tried and true design to follow.
Unpopular opinion but I think the game is in it’s best state currently. I spent $40 on 2016 and haven’t had to pay a dime since and I’m not playing this PVP game for it’s PVE so this stuff doesn’t matter to me. Blizzard is a husk of its former self and I’m still bitter about HOTS but am actually having a lot of fun playing comp this season.
Movies have been very expensive in the short term period after theatrical release, that’s why blockbuster would charge $60 if you lost the tape, it’s how much they sold to rental stores for before wide release. This higher price is absurd to me but to the studios it’s a premium for all the hype they built up, the price will come down after a few months. They are still working out the new models and testing the waters to see what floats.
Tom Cotton, whose top donors include AIPAC