AB2012: "Poor sales" are entirely self inflicted. The whole franchise has been dumbed down throughout:-
- DX1 was (and still is) an utter masterpiece.
- DX2 (Invisible War) was a badly consolized mess where the previous game's large level sizes got slashed down to fit the original XBox's 64MB memory limit. Same thing happened to Thief 3's "blue fog" linking tiny hubs vs Thief 1-2 huge single-piece level sizes.
- DX3 (Human Revolution) was a fluke that managed to improve things from DX2 in a popular manner (despite still being dumbed down) but needed a lot of patching to cure chronic stutter problems, and came with DLC (Missing Link) that felt very obviously "cut out" from the main game rather than being added content.
- DX3a (Human Revolution: Directors Cut) cured the "DLC doesn't fit well" problem by integrating it into the base game (as it should have been from the start), but since it was released on an earlier pre-patched build, it accidentally reintroduced a lot of the previously fixed stuttering that still remains unpatched and abandoned even today.
- DX4 (The Fall) was a cheap and nasty 4hr length mobile-first cash-in that truly revealed Square Enix's attitude towards the franchise's IP.
- DX5 Part 1 (Mankind Divided) is a half-game that was released in glorified episodic format (part 1 of 2/3), ended on a cliff-hanger, didn't even feel like a proper Deus Ex game, was stuffed full of as much DRM as they could, then they wondered why many of us didn't buy it...
Personally, I'm done with the series. DX1 will remain on my PC for all eternity. Human Revolution is worth the occasional replay. The rest are 100% forgettable. Even if Square Enix does start a new "DX6" and "DX7" (DX5 Parts 2/3), I find that when a franchise hits that many sequels, that's when the whole franchise feels cheapened, watered down and starts trending towards dumbed down EA / Ubisoft style "sequel spam".
Yeah, Deus Ex is great! I don't mind IW and HR much (The Fall, however, can die a cruel painful death.), but putting Microtransactions in a single-player game? Yeah, Squeenix really are the Electronic Arts of Japan.
I'm kind of happy that Mankind Divided failed, to be honest. Squeenix can now either learn from its mistakes, or shift the blame to whatever scapegoats feel convenient for their profit obsessed owners. Although it is sad the game is falling victim to what it considers the major problem of society: rampant and unchecked greed.