But now, so who knows what will happen to them if this game does not sell, just like AoM and Gat Out of Hell. This would be the third flop in a row. I have a feeling Deep Silver will just disband them and probably give the IP to someone else, just like what happen to Core Design and Tomb Raider, that among the massive list of studios that the Embracer Group holds. And if that happens we can also say goodbye to the Saints Row 2 Mega Patch... not like it was going anywhere either way, it has probably been dead for a while and we don't even knew it.
My preferred option would be : they take in what's gone wrong here and then actually listen to the fans more and take their issues more seriously, remaster SR2 like they did 3, then use any funds from there to help with trying another Saints Row from this reboot. Have these characters come back more grown up, changed as people and do a grittier more serious story (along with the SR humour of course) that says a lot more to people than this one does and works better, if they can do that of course. And maybe bring some other new characters in too to try and help that happen.
Because I think it'd suck to see this be the last ever Saints Row game. And also, like with Cyberpunk which funnily enough was also a game that I liked from the off despite all of the tons of glaring issues, I think with time this game can be made better with patches and that also at this point (again like with Cyberpunk) there's a horde of social media people and trolls that are simply piling on to this game because they think it's fun to do so and even if it was improved massively with patches they'll still troll for the sake of it. You also have the "it's not as good as GTA" people that Cyberpunk also had, that will never accept that it was never trying to be GTA in the first place and will never accept the game no matter how much it improves.
Despite saying that though I'm not one of these people that's at the other end of the extreme defending the game for the sake of it, I only started playing Saints from SR4 then went back to SR3 and have liked both of those game for several years now. I completely get that there's a big part of the fanbase that's been around a lot longer and that many of them are genuinely pissed off that this game from the perspective of story and characters is nowhere near good enough for them.
It looks like to some extent those fans have been ignored from the off, the makers of the game took the gamble of not caring as much and thinking that a newer group of fans would arrive with this game instead so it'd be ok, and that it could now be in the process of backfiring badly.
But even if that's the case I don't think it should be the end of Saints Row, I'd definitely like to see them get another chance. Then if it fails all over again and they completely miss with the story/characters, yeah maybe it's time to think about the end of Saints Row. I'd really like to see them be able to try again though in the future.