How do you feel about franchises expanding into other gaming genres?

Persona 5 Tactica was announced during Summer Game Fest for release later this year, and it’s the third spinoff from the original 2016 turn-based RPG game. Tactica is a Fire Emblem-style tactics game, joining the rhythm game P5 Dancing in Starlight and the “musou” game P5 Strikers as extensions to the popular Persona 5 franchise. Not that P5 was the first game in the franchise to go this route — both Persona 3 and Persona 4 have spinoffs in other genres as well. This made me start thinking about franchises expanding their genre base and wondering if it’s actually a good idea or not.

League of Legends is a great example. Riot is taking its MOBA franchise and attempting to turn it into a veritable behemoth of gaming by releasing content across a whole range of genres: mobile card game, rhythm, turn-based RPG, 2D action RPG, action platformers both 2D and 3D — and of course there’s the fighting game and MMO in the works. Now it’s arguable that most of the League releases so far have been on the lighter side, with none of them approaching the reach or popularity of the original game, but it’s clear that Riot is looking to expand the world of League. While so far it seems like there have been more misses than hits, when coupled with the vast popularity of the animated series Arcane you begin to see the groundwork for later success that’s being laid here.

As a counterexample there’s World of Warcraft (spun off from the RTS Warcraft series) with Hearthstone and (eventually) Arclight Rumble. Blizzard seems to be going in a different direction from Riot, with the Hearthstone team seemingly having carte blanche to do whatever they feel like with the Warcraft lore and Arclight looking like it’s not planning to expand the world of Azeroth in any meaningful way — they’re extensions not expansions of the MMO’s universe. Whether this remains true in the future is to be seen, but so far it feels like they’re content to have WoW as an influence on other genre games instead of presenting a unified vision across all genres.

So I’m curious, what do you think about popular franchises taking chances in other genres? Do you wish the Warcraft team was bolder in expanding the world of Azeroth into other games like League of Legends is attempting to do, or are you happier with Hearthstone‘s free reign to play around with it? Do you think companies risk over-exposing their properties by diversifying content, or do you appreciate the opportunity to play other games with familiar faces?