Shuttershock wrote:If it means a proper evolution of characters over time and a seeing the stories of people we grow to love (and hate) go all the way to the end, then absolutely yes. But you'd almost have to stick to one medium to do that.
To me, the problem of aligned universes across multiple forms of media is that you might not get the whole story if you ONLY play games or ONLY watch the show or ONLY read the comics. And because of the different demographics and tones of each medium (not to mention development time), there will certainly be inconsistencies between the characters.
The multiple mediums thing did make it difficult to follow, which goes to show how ambitious and confident Hasbro felt in the whole thing, believing fans would be willing to play all of the games, watch all the shows, read all the books, follow all the comics, etc. Evidently, though, their expectations were too high, and ironically almost none of the people behind this whole project are even at Hasbro anymore.
But, from a business standpoint, it made sense for them to want to broaden their horizons rather than stifle themselves into just one or two mediums. It's just that not every fan was willing to goal along with their visions and goals for a multimedia world. And sadly, that unwillingness seems to fit within the same mindset as those fans who look down upon new and different ideas that steer the brand further away from its G1 roots, and that mindset can simply be summed up as this: "The Transformers fandom is resistent to 'change'."
Think about it. Every time Hasbro or Takara does something that pays homage to the past (like the G1-based Generations or Masterpieces, or the occasional Beast Wars or Unicron Trilogy nod), they get praised for it. But every time something new and strikingly different from G1 enters the scene (like Beast Wars at first, Beast Machines still, Animated, the movies, Prime, or the upcoming RID series), it receives far less praise and more ridicule than the aforementioned tributes to the past do.
Take Prime Wheeljack, for instance. When asked by the Prime creators which character they could use for a Wrecker/warrior type, Hasbro said Wheeljack. It was a new take on an older concept that was redone from the ground up, minus his visual look being a decent throwback to the original. Yet, just because he wasn't exactly like G1 Wheeljack in personality, he got bashed by a huge amount of the fandom that also wrongfully accused him of being a knockoff of G1 Drift (which is completely ludicrous since Drift was never a Wrecker nor had any real personality whatsoever at that point, unlike Wheeljack who was
oozing with personality) and wrote off the character simply for his being different.
Bottom line, a large part of the fandom is stuck in the past while Hasbro wants to keep moving forward. That's partly why Hasbro keeps showing resistance to making a new G1 cartoon or a new G1-based movie, leaving only things like comics and video games being allowed to rehash G1. Hasbro very obviously is trying to get away from G1 in their most mainstream media, though being willing enough to throw in some nods and small homages here and there, but more willing to make things look and be new and distinct on their own, without having to constantly fall back on the decades-old media.