Two decades later, the cross-media dream is a reality | Opinion
On the face of it, there aren't too many points of comparison between The Last of Us and Hogwarts Legacy, beyond the fact that they're both very successful at the moment.,
The critically acclaimed HBO drama adaptation of The Last of Us has boosted sales of the games, while Hogwarts Legacy has become one of the fastest-selling games in years – but they are very different franchises with very different audiences.
In a sense, though, these successes are opposite sides of the same coin. They both represent a path to success for a cross-media franchise – each with a different direction of travel (one a franchise moving from books/movies into games, another a franchise moving from games into premium TV). There are very different underpinnings to their success, but each highlights the potential for video games to be the lynchpin for cross-media properties.
For a few years in the 2000s, the industry was abuzz with the potential of cross-media, though the term has fallen out of favour in the past decade. It was a bit of a slippery term to begin with – it was sometimes abused to refer simply to successful licensed video games, which have of course existed for years, or for video game adaptations in other media.
The Last of Us and Hogwarts Legacy both highlight the potential for games to be the lynchpin for cross-media properties
The bar for quality on licensed titles in both directions has been rising in recent years, most notably in TV and movie adaptations of games – the Sonic movies, Uncharted, and Netflix' animated adaptation of Castlevania spring to mind, though there's also still a fair amount of complete dross like the Monster Hunter movie or the Netflix Resident Evil TV series. Even so, cross-media franchises are meant
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
