Dead Rising 4: Thoughts? It exists.

i think demon souls and bloodborne were received better and sold more though

originals not really demon souls was a niche title (over a year to sell 500,000), and dead rising was a hit on the original xbox totaling over a million. DR3/4 basically where the series kind of lost its fundamentals. DR3 could have been M$'s blood born to some extent.

wiki to see DS sales, and some website to see total sales for DR

hm i dunno i just dont see much hype for dead rising the way fanboys hyped the hell out of bloodborne. i would bet bloodborne sold way more than demons souls did too probably at least a million.

dead rising 4 came out with no hype really and is pretty much already forgotten...ive seen people asking for a sequel to bloodborne multiple times.

Again thats because with DR2 and DR3 that the developers lost faith in the core mechanics and made it into a mindless hack and slash game.

I'm not equating dr4 to bloodborne, I'm saying that you can see where both series started out strong capcom had no faith in the strong mechanics of the first one and didn't attempt to build on them in any significant way. DR2 it was clear which way the series was going to go, the timing was far more gracious and the addition of the combo weapons while fun kind of ended the improvised weaponry. Then DR3/DR4 they went far more in the direction of mass zombie slaying instead of good core mechanics. There wasn't anything to be hyped about DR4 is a soulless version of DR1, with nothing that made it special.

edit: And this goes back to what you said about a low tier franchise, both demon souls/dead rising released and had strong mechanics and a rabid following. Why would people continue to have faith in the franchise is pretty self explainatory. DR4 being a bit on the soul less side might still be a money maker for MS but it lots its core appeal.