Naw, let's. What's everyone's main issue with Lords? It uses the CV name and doesn't entirely fit the bill. Lords by itself is a good game. You're forgetting I'm one of the few here who actually very much enjoys Lords.
It's perfectly fine to have issue with what a company releases, but demonizing them for it isn't fair. You cannot treat hundreds of employees like conniving bastards because you didn't get your way. See previous comment about employees totally waking up wondering how to piss the fans off that day.
Yeah, the execs do make the major decisions. They make decisions like, "hey, let's make a Castlevania reboot!" and then hand it off to the studios, with progress checks being a given. By your logic, we should be blaming Satoshi Sakamoto for the flaws in Lords of Shadow, and let Alvarez off the hook.
Because, after all, the execs are the one who make all those decisions, right?
But I'll use Capcom examples for accuracy.
Why are they milking Street Fighter and various other fighters for everything they're worth? Simple, they know people will buy for the name alone, and it doesn't take much extra work when you have so many engines already good to go. It's a safe path to take, even though it is one of staleness and blandness. But it's certainly not out of hostility towards the fanbase. Do you seriously believe the guys in charge have the time to sit around a table in a dark room plotting and scheming the downfall of their fans? Be realistic. Only the Koch brothers and Dick Cheney do that.
There's also various extenuating circumstances and outside influences to consider. There was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan back in 2011, which cannot have helped Capcom or their marketing and sales quota, to say nothing of employees who likely suffered varying degrees of misfortune from the disasters.
Am I saying what they're doing is sensible? No, but it's certainly nothing to condemn hundreds and thousands of employees worldwide over. I'm pretty sure the sales rep accountants and janitors don't give a shit, but they're included in your generalized bashing of the company at large (PUT THE LIST DOWN ARYA STARK). Obviously it would be great if they (meaning any gaming corporation who does this sort of thing, not just Capcom) banded together, bided their time, and made an outstanding project and drew the fanbase all back together again.
But that's unrealistic, because economic and social factors dictate a lot of this shit, and the fanbases never agree on fucking anything because everyone's right and everyone else is wrong. The companies are not at our beck and call, nice though that may be. They release, we buy, and unless a game completely fucking bombs and loses them a good chunk of money, they're gonna keep doing what they're doing.
Why? Because it's
safe and low-cost to do. A lot of the shit the fanbases foam at the mouths over are labor-intensive as hell, and clearly the overarching companies don't feel the risk is worth it. It isn't like any of us can change their minds (because after all, it's not like we're total experts on the market, more so from their perspective, so why the hell we act like it is beyond me).
And I've disliked every Resident Evil movie. Even the first one, Milia Jovovich bath scene notwithstanding.
The films spend way too much damn time cataloging the goddamn T-Virus and barely focus on anything else. I'd like to see a movie about RE4. Or an RE2 adaptation. Or an "Ada wrecking everyone else's shit as usual" film. Or anything that's not Milia and fucking Wesker that ends in yet another stalemate cliffhanger that obviously leads into another subpar sequel.
The movies don't even try and hit the horror note anymore, and IMO haven't done it well since the very first one (though to me, the horror elements of the first RE movie are more body-horror and medical-horror than the survival-horror and slower pacing seen throughout the games). They found out that HEY LET'S MAKE THIS JUST ANOTHER GENERIC ACTION SERIES WITH ZOMBIES AND HOT CHICKS sells better for exactly those reasons, and anyone who hasn't played the games won't know any better as far as how vastly different the two are goes. Not my cup of tea. My problem with the RE movies is the exact same problem people have with LoS; it uses an established name and, in my opinion, utterly fails to live up to that name's standard. Only difference, Lords (the first one at least) was actually pretty good on its own, where I still think the RE movies are shit.
But I played the games long before I saw the movies, and I'm a very avid supporter of good horror pacing and atmosphere, so I'm admittedly more than a little biased against the action flicks pretending to be horror flicks.