Yea, but reading a summary years after the fact isnt the same as watching everything play out like Prime got.

But there was more to Sari than whats in the Almanac. Why was she different looking and smaller than the ones on the Nemesis. How did she get from the Moon to inside Sumdac's lab?

 

Prime was not kid friendly enough, they had to downgrade to RID to get kids.

 

Isn't that what Rescue Bots is for?

 

um the episodes were put up the thursday after they aired on hubworld.com, i would know its the only news credit ive got   so while it wasnt a truly simultaneous stream, which very few things actually are, being a week delayed was actually the norm back then

 

Perhaps but I'm fairly certain mine is the real reason.
Bad exposure (especially internationally) and the fact that the Hub was on shakey grounds from the start.

I didn't realise at the time, but it's a miracle TF: Prime got as far as it did due to the nature of it's programming and growing (Online) and falling (for cable) trends for media consumption.

 

According to ex-Hasbro employee Rik Alvarez at a cringe-worthily bitter TFCon panel, Prime ended from a combination of winding up ludicrously expensive (IIRC over $1 million per episode) and nobody actually watching it on the Hub.

The budget problems become super-obvious during the second season, when two of the characters with "name actor" VAs, Breakdown and Airachnid, were abruptly written out, and there's that big run of episodes where everybody splits up for the relic search, minimising the number of cast members in each episode.

 

I'm curious if there are any designs floating around out there for the supposed Maximals and Star Seekers that were supposed to show up in Season 3+.

 

There definitely was. The whole plan for the Maximals and Star Seekers were scrapped overnight, so I'm guessing they did.

 

"Creative conflicts"
"Too expensive"
"Low Hub viewership"
"Not kid-friendly enough"
"The story was always meant to end there once the change to Beast Hunters was decided"

These aren't conflicting, inconsistent reasons. They're likely all contributing factors that added up to the show's cancellation. There isn't always just one reason that something happens.

 

There's usually a primary reason though, low hub viewership makes the most sense in hindsight because Hasbro's share of the channel was completely bought off and it was renamed not long after prime ended.

 

This. The reason every show gets "cancelled" (not renewed) is almost always linked to toy sales.
Hasbro knows Prime was popular with adults, and adults were dutifully buying the toys (for the most part)
but I'm sure their marketing research suggested it was hard for kids to understand, hence kids probably weren't buying many toys.
The end of Prime also coincided with Brian Goldner's "simplification" campaign he touted for Age of Extinction,
so rather than betray the aesthetic/design of the toys thus far and suddenly start making Prime one-steps,
they clearly decided a clean break was better and created RID.

 

The reason cannot be low Hub viewership alone because the toyline is sold worldwide and Prime aired in bigger channels across the globe. The Hub would only be factor in America and even then Rescue Bots and My Little Pony both performed amazingly in sales even though they also suffer of being in a low viewership channel.

 

It had awful international exposure too, and I could barely find 3 Prime toys (in australia) while it was running.

 

It was poorly conceived from the beginning and generally aimless. Modern Hasbro officially has ADHD, they have absolutely no idea how to sit still long enough to figure out how to write a good story and have been cancelling properties before they were allowed to grow since they started delving into media in the 80's. I wish they could get over themselves long enough to wait for a good showrunner and animation company to make a decent television for them, but they currently seem to think that Michael Bay, RID, and the shitty online Machinima shows are somehow not as clearly intellectually insulting as they've made themselves appear to be. Dear Hasbro, Transformers+Those Last Airbender writers+Netflix=awesome. Just suck up your pride and ask somebody talented to work on your franchise.

 

Prime had a fairly decent ending, though I fell RID2015 is a pathetic excuse for a sequel series.

At least they didn't abruptly cancel any Season 4 like they did Animated.