Care to make a comprehensive list of mammoth selling Sony franchises? Because I sure as hell can't think of many high charting series. This is a consistent series that is now on its third platform, and the games have sold well in the past. Whether that will continue now remains to be seen.
How about Gran Tourismo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted with 2 now gets to join that pantheon. Probably some others I'm forgetting off the top of my head. But if you say Socom 4 is a massive franchise and one of their biggest, then so be it. We'll wait for the sales to see how mammoth it is, and if it is mammoth seller then I'll agree, hey Socom is a "big" franchise.
I am not saying that SOCOM is a "mammoth franchise." That's
your dumb interpretation, and wording. I'm saying that it's one of their biggest franchises, which it is. Which incidentally might say more about the state of Sony franchises than anything, but that's besides the point. The point is that as one of their biggest franchises, it's hardly surprising that there would be a SOCOM game coming out.
And Metal Gear isn't even a Sony game, wtf.
I think socom is still a strong series, and iirc, confrontation wasn't a failure. But it is hard to deny that socom on ps2 popularity was because it was released at a time when few other online shooters were out. I remember when Ghost Recon 2 was coming out people were saying it reminded them of SOCOM; that's how early SOCOM was in this whole online shooter game thing.
As said, I'm not going to make any assumptions about PS3 owners, given that they don't seem to be interested in
anything other than maybe Gran Turismo. SOCOM seems to have a following, but that could be all talk, fueled by nostalgia. We'll see soon enough. The sad thing is that even lukewarm consumer reception would at worst put it on level with other first party games released on the PS3.