Doesn’t the first paragraph actually reinforce what I say? It was a reset for the series situation, not a if Paradise works we will get DOA5 situation.
Now I know there are people out there that like DOAD (I just didn’t like it at all personally) and that’s cool, but DOAP? lol. That game was undisputed crap.
Yeah, and a reset would naturally imply taking the series to a new direction while still continuing to exist, which a failure would result in the overall series being declared a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut down (aka, ceasing to exist, period, no matter what their plans were). That's happened before. BMX-XXX was literally a victim of what Nakamura described, given lots of crass sexualization, including a strip club mode and topless biking, all in an attempt to gear it to go a new direction, and that ended up being one of, if not THE final nail in not only BMX as a whole, but even Acclaim itself (with their prior stunt of telling parents to name their kids after Turok beforehand as a marketing campaign for their Turok games not helping matters either). A similar story existed with Lair, which was announced with Factor 5 banking on their reputation via the Rogue Squadron to have it succeed while going in a different direction, but it was so poorly developed that if anything caused Factor 5 to shut down, alongside litigation lawsuits from its North American Branch.
And I could care less about Dead or Alive Paradise (heck, some of the stuff from that and Xtreme 2 wasn't even that good, and the whole masturbating bit may have ultimately done a disservice ultimately, though I'd ultimately still take that over gutting the girls looks in DOA6), I'm just pointing out that DOAP and DOAD ultimately DID cause DOA5 to occur (obviously, if they failed, Team Ninja would have declared Chapter 11. I know I would have in their situation if DOAP bombed like you said it did. See the returns turn out badly, publicize that Team Ninja's shutting down, no more games in DOA, Ninja Gaiden, literally anything we make.).