Transformers: Prime (franchise)

Transformers: Prime is a franchise that launched in 2010. Its fiction is part of the Aligned continuity family, based on the same production bible as War for Cybertron. Its design aesthetic is somewhere between the live-action film series and Animated. The writers of the first two live-action movies, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, are executive producers on the Prime cartoon. Orci described this as a chance to do what he "couldn't do in the movies."

Franchise elements

 * A cartoon series
 * Comic books
 * A toyline
 * Online games
 * DVD releases
 * Commercials
 * Video game
 * An Ice Cream Bar

Continuity
"Big adventure!" "Tons of fun!" "A beautiful heart!" "Faithful and strong!" "Sharing kindness, it's an easy feat!" "And magic makes it all complete!"

The cartoon is the principal element of Prime fiction, and the comic is a prequel miniseries that ties into the show smoothly. But broader continuity is more contentious: While Hasbro has consistently and officially described all Prime and War for/Fall of Cybertron fiction as one single continuity, the various media have been produced by different creative teams and often contradict. I didn't authorize you to pose without proper cover. For example, the Prime cartoon features Dark Energon just like War for Cybertron, but with the previously-unseen quality of being able to reanimate corpses. And strangely, Megatron is able to create an army of such creatures by crashing Dark Energon into the dead world of Cybertron, despite the reason for the planet's demise in War for Cybertron being its complete infection with the substance. Also, the aesthetics and characterizations in the games are inspired primarily by Generation 1, while the cartoon takes many cues from the live-action film series. So while the Bumblebee of the games looks and talks like his Generation 1 self (well, until the sequel), the cartoon version looks like his movie incarnation and speaks in electronic beeps and squawks. An apocryphal short story by the author of Exodus attempts to explain this change, but the retcon occurs before the game events, so the contradiction remains.

When asked about the discrepancies, Hasbro VP of Intellectual Property Development Aaron Archer replied, "reasons for the confusion will be revealed". The show's staff added Dark Energon's nature differed due to the games and show being set in different eras, and added that while they try to keep the large continuity co-ordinated, ultimately such errors are secondary to the freedom of telling the best story.