Brandingis a crucial aspect of every business, and video games are no exception. Any time game companies have tomarket a brand-new release, they need to come up with a unique name that will grab the attention of their audiences. And, while sometimes they get it right on the first try, many other times a change in title is required for one reason or another.
There are a good number of video game franchises that have changed their names over the years. Some of them even carried these titles for so long that some people may have no idea they were ever changed at all. Whether because of localization, rebranding, copyright issues, or something else, these are some of the interesting cases.
Dragon Questis one of themost iconic and influential role-playing franchisesin the industry. With a beautiful art style byAkira Toriyamaand amazing RPG mechanics byEnix(before they merged with Squaresoft to createSquare Enix) the name of this series is recognized everywhere, but it wasn’t always the case.
Back in 1989, the first installment was released asDragon Warriorin North America, because Enix was concerned about their copyright clashing with an existing tabletop RPG calledDragonQuest. The series continued to use theDragon Warriorname in North America until 2005, whenDragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed Kingwent back to its original title after this legal problem was finally worked out by the parties involved.
XCOMis a popular series ofsci-fi strategy video gamesthat reached newfound success with the release ofXCOM: Enemy Unknownin 2012, and all of its following sequels. But new fans may not know that this franchise had an entirely different name when it was first released in Europe.
Back in 1994, the first game in the series was calledUFO: Enemy Unknown, butMicroProsewas worried that they might have copyright issues with a name as generic as that one, so they changed to the much more recognizable,X-COM. Then, in 2012,2K Gamesdropped the hyphen, finally turning the franchise intoXCOM.
The Xbox brand is home to some of the most important game franchises, and one of the most beloved ones under their wing is the series ofviolent third-person shooterscurrently known asGears. But most people still call it by its previous name,Gears of War,to this day.
The newGearstitle has been used from the fifth installment onwards. According to Xbox’sAaron Greenberg, this new name is “cleaner” and it felt like a natural change because, according to him, most fans were ignoring the “Of Wars” part. There’s also a possibility that Microsoft went with this change because they didn’t want to have their franchise confused with Sony’sGod of War, since both of them were usually abbreviated as GOW.
Most gamers are aware ofRockstar Games’legendary western open world game series,Red Dead Redemption.But most of them may not know that the 2010 title of the same name was not the first entry in this franchise. It actually originated withRed Dead Revolver, released back in 2004.
Red Dead Revolverwas a third-person shooter that had quite a messy development, and it was originally going to be published byCapcom, who eventually canceled it. But Rockstar Games later acquired the rights to the game and released it, even though it ended up getting a mixed reception. There has not been an official explanation as to why they laterchanged “Revolver” to “Redemption,”but it’s likely they did so in order to differentiate the new games from their predecessor.
There’s been a lot of confusion in the gaming industry lately, which started whenSegabeganannouncing new video gamesabout Japanese gangsters starringKazuma Kiryu.These new games were namedLike a Dragon, instead of the previously usedYakuzaname. This is because the franchise was rebranded in its entirety. This happened outside of Japan, of course, since it was always known asLike a Dragonin its country of origin.
Starting fromLike a Dragon: Ishin!onwards, the series kept the original name. Sega explained that the reason for this rebranding was that the newer releases began telling stories that were not always focused on Yakuza organizations, but were rather celebrations of Japanese culture in general. So this change was made, so their marketing couldmore closely align with the original name.After all, it’s easier for Sega to have a successful franchise that has the same name all over the world.
