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The computer and video games industry has seen several commercial failures since its birth in the late 1970s, some of which have drastically changed the video game market. For example, the flops of E.T. and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 were high profile games of low quality, contributing to the video game crash of 1983. Some games, despite being commercial failures, are well received by certain group of gamers and are considered cult games. Many of these games live on through emulation.
Video game hardware failures
For the sake of scope, a commercial failure for a video game hardware platform is generally defined as a system that either fails to become adopted by a significant portion of the gaming market place, or fails to win significant mindshare of the target audience. This definition should be applied internationally, and not based strictly on the success or failure of a platform in any one given market.
Co-Designed by RJ Mical and the team behind the Amiga, and marketed by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, this "multimedia machine" was marketed as a family entertainment device and not just a video game console. Few titles utilized the console's full potential, which, along with its high price (699.95 USD at release) and the inability of the console market to sustain multiple platforms, put it in an early grave. The final nail in the coffin was the scuttling of the project after the expensive development of the successor console, the M2.
Released in 1993, the decline of the Amiga product line and Commodore's poor marketing and lack of product support prevented any kind of serious traction for this product. While it was initially billed as all the power of an Amiga computer in a console, it was not priced competitively to the Amiga 500/1200 lines. Additionally, the lack of original titles meant that few gamers wanted it when they could buy the more feature-intensive A1200.
A game console designed by Apple Computer in the mid-1990s based around a PowerPC 603e processor and the Mac OS. It featured a 4x CD-ROM drive and a video output that could connect to a standard television monitor. Apple intended to license the technology to third parties. However the only Pippin licensee to release a product to market was Bandai. By the time the Bandai Pippin was released, (1995 for Japan, 1996 for the United States) the market was already dominated by the Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation, and Sega Saturn. The Bandai Pippin cost US$599 on launch, far more expensive than a PlayStation.
The succesor of the Atari 5200, initially planned to be released in 1984, it was later released in 1986. However, most of the video game market was then already dominated by the Nintendo Entertainment System, which drastically reduced the 7800's possibilities to succeed. In addition to its competitors, there were few companies supporting the console and most of the games were enhancements of old Atari 2600 games, or failed to impress gamers. By 1990, Atari quietly dropped support for the 7800.
Atari Jaguar console
Released in 1993, this 64-bit system was (in theory) much more powerful than its contemporaries, the Sega Genesis and the SNES. However, a number of crippling business practices on the part of Atari senior management, a hard to hold/manipulate controller design and lack of quality software hurt sales. The system never attained critical mass in the market before the release of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn and without strong leadership to drive it, it failed alongside the company.
Only months after the release of the Game Boy in 1989, Atari launched their first color hand-held system co-Designed by R.J. Mical. Featuring a large, backlit display, and significantly higher powered hardware compared to the Game Boy. However, due to a bulky design and an extremely low battery life, the system failed to garner any significant sales. Eventually Atari released a smaller more manageable version branded the Lynx II, but the differences were only cosmetic and it proved too little too late, appealing mostly to owners of the original system. The similar Sega Game Gear fared somewhat better due to a stronger marketing campaign and better titles but it still suffered from similar flaws that plagued the Lynx.
Commodore C64 Games System console
Released only in Europe and being Commodore International's first venture in the video game market, the C64GS was basically a Commodore 64 redesigned as a cartdrige-based console. Aside from some hardware issues, the console did not get much attention from the public, who preferred to buy the cheaper original computer, which was far more complete. Also, the console appeared during the apogee of the 16-bit era, which left no chance for it to succeed.
A handheld gaming device including GPS and a digital camera was released by Tiger Telematics in the United Kingdom on 19 March 2005. The console sold poorly, due to a lack of games, and being unable to compete with the cheaper Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. On 23 January 2006 the UK arm of Tiger Telematics went into administration.
Microvision handheld
The first attempt at a handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges. To reduce the price of the console itself, the CPU was put in the cartridges; causing manufacturing prices of the game titles to increase. Futhermore, it was plagued by other problems such as LCD screens prone to leaking, and "flimsy" buttons. The problems of the Microvision lead to discontinuation circa 1981.
Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color handhelds
SNK's cult classic pocket system, discontinued after 2 years when SNK decided to pull out of the home video game market which was then followed by the company closing operations in 2001. The system quickly disappeared from the market at that time as SNK recalled all outstanding unsold product in order to avoid costly long-term support issues. In recent years, remaining color systems have been repackaged into clamshells and sold at budget prices with a set of six relatively popular, mostly first-party titles. However, the console has recently gained a cult following.
The red monochromatic 3-D "virtual reality" system failed due to issues related to players getting eye strain and headaches when trying to play it along with the problem that the system required the player to be isolated during play thus killing any social interaction while playing. It was the first (and, so far, only) Nintendo console to flop and the fallout forced Gunpei Yokoi (who earlier developed the highly successful Game Boy) to resign from the company.
Sales were poor and many video gamers mocked the system for its design. Common complaints included the difficulty of swapping games and the fact that its cellphone feature required the user to hold the device "sideways" against their cheek. A redesigned version, the N-Gage QD, has since been released to eliminate these complaints. However, the N-Gage brand still suffered from a poor reputation and the QD did not address the popular complaint that the control layout was "too cluttered". The N-Gage has yet to reach the popularity of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS or the Sony PSP, although the N-Gage's pioneering of mobile online gaming likely influenced the DS and PSP to include that feature.
The sales were poor because this product had games which were basically clones of games which were available as Emulation ROM images. And also, the unit was cramping to hold despite its abilities to connect to the TV and its backlit LCD display, and even with a low price of $29.99 USD, it had hardware problems since the games went twice as fast when connected to the TV.
Built upon the PlayStation 2, the PSX enhanced multimedia derivative was touted to bring convergence to the living room[1]. However, it was a failure in Japan due to its high price and lack of consumer interest[2] and that cancelled plans to release it in North America and the rest of the world. Not only was it an unsuccessful attempt by Sony Computer Entertainment head Ken Kutaragi to revive the ailing consumer electronics division[3], it also hurt Sony's media convergence plans [4]. This device also lacked standard PlayStation controller ports.
The Dreamcast was initially very successful, thanks to Sega's strong launch titles, not to mention that they had a jump on the previous generation Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. Despite Sega's best efforts which including wooing developers and introducing online play, Sony countered by announcing the PlayStation 2 far in advance, causing the Dreamcast to lose critical momentum as gamers decided to wait for the PS2[5]. The Dreamcast's lack of DVD capability and the absence of Electronic Arts titles were laid bare when compared to the PS2. The Dreamcast was discontinued early in 2001, having been only in the market for under two years, although it had still sold a respectable 8-10 million units worldwide during its premature lifespan. Afterwards, Sega withdrew from the console hardware market[6]. This system is often remembered by gamers as the last "gamer's system," targeted to "hardcore" rather than casual gamers. The system still shares a large cult following.
Sega's second entry into the handheld market. At first known as Project Mercury (keeping with Sega's "planet theme" at the time), this system was much smaller than the company's previous attempt, but fans were soon disappointed to discover that the system was nothing more than a portable Genesis. Like the Game Gear it suffered from a low battery life and weak third party support as developers had already moving away from the cartridge format and had abandoned Genesis development years earlier, although it can be argued that the extensive back catalog of Genesis games available for the system gave it an extremely strong library regardless of the status of new games. Sales were limited partially due to Sega releasing the system only in the USA, and exclusively to the Toys "R" Us chain of stores. Eventually, Sega sold the manufacturing rights to a third party company who had managed to make strong sales of both Sega handheld systems in Brazil. Because of their cartridges' alternate design, the Nomad is largely incompatible with Electronic Arts titles, as well as some of those produced by Accolade (such as Star Control) and accessories such as the Sega 32X.
While the Sega Genesis was a success and competed head-to-head against the Super NES, the succeeding Saturn fell to a distant third place behind the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. Sega had harmed its reputation due to the unsuccessful Sega CD and Sega 32X upgrades for the aging Genesis, with the latter criticized as a stopgap product. The Saturn hardware itself was difficult to program 3D graphics for due to its dual CPUs. While more than able to hold its own against the PlayStation in Japan, many successful games were never imported to North America. In 1997, when the Saturn fell behind after its second holiday season, Sega's focus on the upcoming Dreamcast caused many developers (including Japanese) to abandon the system and this hastened the Saturn's demise.
Produced by Tiger Electronics, the Game.com handheld was a handheld game console that could double as a PDA. The system was intended to compete with Nintendo's Game Boy, and was targeted at the economy market. The monochrome LCD screen, which featured low-resolution touchscreen functionality, had a tendency to blur that made high-speed games like Sonic the Hedgehog practically unplayable. Due to poor game quality and selection (only 20 games were ever released for it), the system was discontinued in 2000, only 3 years after its release, although the PDA touchscreen capabilites would be duplicated 5 years later with the release of the Nintendo DS.
A console by NEC, launched in 1989, an 8-bit system with 16-bit quality graphics and the first console with a CD add-on. In Japan, under the name PC Engine, the console had outsold Nintendo's Famicom and was the Super Famicom's main competition. However, in America it was released just a few months before the Sega Genesis. Aside from the timing, the system was not marketed properly and there was not a considerable number of key titles that showed the capabilities of the system by the time the Genesis and, later, the Super Nintendo appeared. The CD add-on (which was a key of the system's success in Japan) was very expensive and few games were released. Even with the introduction of the Turbo Duo (an integrated console which could play the CDs without an add-on,) the TurboExpress (a handheld version of the console which used the same games as its predecessor,) and some aggressive marketing from the new owner TTI, it was too late for the console to put a dent on the 16-bit market. The PC Engine has a rather sizeable cult following in Europe, especially the CD titles.
Computer and video game accessory failures
Nintendo e-Reader
The e-Reader was a peripheral for the Game Boy Advance which would optically scan data printed on paper cards in the manner of a barcode reader. This functionality was implemented in several games (such as Animal Crossing, Super Mario Brothers 3 and Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire), as well as the Pokemon CCG which included mini-games encoded on the cards. The system proved to be too cumbersome for most players and failed to gain much success. The physical design of the e-Reader eventually made it incompatible with later Nintendo handheld systems, although with some modifications can be played on a Nintendo DS.
The "Dynamic Drive" expansion system for the Nintendo 64 was announced at 1995's Nintendo Shoshinkai game show event (now called Spaceworld). Using rewritable magnetic discs, it was suppose to be Nintendo's answer to the CD-ROM based PlayStation. The N64DD was heavily hyped, and many high-profile games, such as Earthbound 64 and Zelda 64 were supposed to be compliant with it. In the end, however, the N64DD was only released in Japan on December 1 1999 - after being delayed for many years. Many of the titles originally planned for it were simply shelved, or released for the normal N64 due to impatience. Nintendo, anticipating that their long planned out disc drive peripheral would become a commercial failure, sold the systems through a subscription service called RANDnet rather than selling the system directly to consumers or to retail outlets. As a result the 64DD was only supported by Nintendo for a short period of time.
In 2001, Sony announced that a hard drive add-on to the PlayStation 2 was to be released to coincide with the PS2 release of Squaresoft's popular Final Fantasy XI MMORPG. Although the hard drive was initally released in 2001 in Japan, problems with the high price of the add-on (the hard drive was first sold in Japan for $299 USD) caused Sony Of America to actually think about cancelling the American release of the hard drive. However, Sony retracted the statements and released the add-on in America in 2004, three years after the initial launch date in Japan. Despite many games in Japan supporting the hard drive's features, only six games supported them in America (the aformentioned Final Fantasy XI, SOCOM 2: US Navy Seals, EA's NHL and NFL 2K5 games and both Resident Evil Outbreak games), basically turning the expensive peripheral into a glorified memory card to house save files. Sony later redesigned the PlayStation 2 to use a slimmer, smaller design that does not support the hard drive feature, providing the death knell to the add-on. It is currently unknown whether the hard drive for the forthcoming PS3 will allow for similar functionality with existing PS2 HDD-utilizing titles.
Designed as an upgrade for the aging Sega Genesis, the 32X was criticized at the outset for reverting to the cartridge and not using the CD-ROM media like the earlier Sega CD; the cartridge would mean significantly restricted content despite the 32X's capabilities. Most of all, the 32X project was overshadowed by the true Genesis successor, the Sega Saturn, which alienated much third-party support for the 32X. The 32x is often considered as the break point at which Sega started to go downhill.
Sega CD/Sega Mega CD
This was a CD-ROM drive built for Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis system. Despite the add-on being the driving force behind what the industry would become years later, the high cost of the perceived system 'upgrade', combined with the lack of unique software for the platform prevented it from really taking off. Fearful of losing sales, Sega maintained a practice of simultaneous cartridge/CD-ROM releases of many games. Unfortunately the CD-ROM versions rarely featured more than improved audio. Another factor that impacted sales was the over reliance on Full Motion Video style content over gameplay and originality in a significant number of titles.
Computer and video game software failures
The sequel to the hugely successful game The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour spent two years in development. When Trilobyte finally brought it to market in 1995, over a year behind schedule, the technology it used was outdated. The designers created the game for DOS, which by then had been replaced with Windows 95, leaving many people unable to get the game working on their computers. Those who could get it working still had to deal with other technical issues, especially the touchy sound settings. Gamers also found the puzzles themselves disappointing; they were generally either direct lifts of T7G puzzles, or more difficult than those of The 7th Guest, many utilizing an AI opponent in the form of Stauf (particularly noteworthy is the final puzzle, which is a game of Pente and would get substantially harder with each completion of the game) and most were not nearly as much fun to solve. In the end, despite huge numbers of preorders, The 11th Hour sold well below expectations, and a planned third installment in the series was never made.
The sequel to one of the more popular MMORPGs on the market, AC2 was one of the first "next generation" MMOs. Originally published by Microsoft, developer Turbine took the game over completely shortly after its release. Low server population caused a consolidation of shards within the first year. An unwieldy chat system and a rather short leveling cycle caused many to abandon the game. Although AC2 had a core group of proponents, it never saw subscription numbers sufficient to maintain it. After an expansion pack, Legions, sold poorly and was only lukewarmly received by core players, the game was canceled at the end of 2005. AC2 was active for just over two years and did not outlive it's predecessor, Asheron's Call, which remains an active MMORPG.
One of the most notorious PC gaming failures in history, Battlecruiser 3000AD (aka BC3K) was hyped for almost a decade before its disastrous release in the US and Europe. The game was the brainchild of Derek Smart, an independent game developer with a flair for self promotion and a penchant for licentious public excoriation of his critics. The concept behind BC3K was extremely ambitious - give the player the opportunity to captain a large starship with all the requisite duties, including navigation, combat, resource management, and commanding crew members. Advertisements appeared in the gaming press in the mid-1990s hyping the game as, "The Last Thing You'll Ever Desire." Computer bulletin boards and Usenet groups were abuzz with discussion about the game. As time wore on and numerous delays were announced, excitement turned to frustration in the online community. Smart exacerbated the negative air by posting liberally on Usenet. The posts ignited one of the largest flame wars in Usenet history, as Smart and his critics launched scorching attacks over many months. During the development cycle, Smart refused to let other programmers have full access to his code and continued to change directions as new technology became available, causing the game to be in development for over seven years. Finally, in November, 1996, Take Two Interactive released Battlecruiser 3000AD in the United States (reportedly over protests from Smart). The game was buggy, even unfinished in many areas. It was written for a DOS environment, even though most gamers were running Windows 95 by that time. It employed outdated graphics, MIDI music, a cryptic interface, and contained almost no documentation - a huge problem since the commands were far from intuitive (e.g. Alt-Ctrl-E to fire weapons). It was joked that the only thing that worked properly was the introductory movie. Critics and the gaming community were merciless, panning BC3K across the board and relentlessly taunting Smart online. Smart continued to publicly battle his detractors, but kept working on the game, even in the face of harsh criticism. Eventually, a stable, playable version of the game was released as Battlecruiser 3000AD v2.0. Smart eventually released BC3K as freeware and went on to create several sequels under the Battlecruiser and Universal Combat titles, but was never able to shake the spectre of BC3K's incredible failure.
Although this game was critically acclaimed, it flopped commercially. It was commonly suggested that the release date, which conflicted with the release of the popular titles Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (both coincidentally released by the same publisher as BG&E, Ubisoft), was rather unfortunate. The game's commercial failure forced creator Michel Ancel and Ubisoft to place plans to continue the planned trilogy of BG&E on indefinite hold.
The second (and, ultimately, final) game developed by Rareware for Microsoft's Xbox system, Live and Reloaded was a remake of Rare's critically lauded and genre-breaking Nintendo 64 hit, Conker's Bad Fur Day. It was eagerly anticipated by fans of the original game; and "mature" gamers who had missed the game the first time around. However, even though reviews were generally positive, the game was not strongly marketed by the publisher (Microsoft Game Studios), and many saw the fact that Rare was remaking one of their past successes as an admission that the company was getting increasingly desperate for a return to their former position as a respected and successful games company (as their Game Boy Advance games were not selling very well, apart from arguably their ports of the Donkey Kong Country games; and Rare's recent Xbox game, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, was the biggest flop in the company's history). Rare later vowed to make a fresh start when the Xbox 360 launched.
This video game from John Romero's company Ion Storm was intensely advertised early in development, including an infamous magazine advertisement captioned, John Romero's about to make you his bitch! followed by the phrase, Suck It Down. The ad was perceived by many as hubristic and the attitude of the gaming community started to turn against Romero and Daikatana. This animosity was only exacerbated by the game's constant delays. Daikatana missed several announced deadlines and ended up taking four years to complete, including going through numerous engine upgrades/changes, as well as development team changes on a seemingly routine basis. Feeling insulted by the hype, some popular gamer websites (notably Old Man Murray and Ctrl+Alt+Del) subjected Daikatana and Romero to relentless mockery, making them the butts of jokes for several years.
The negative press contributed a major role in the game's failure similar to that of the film Heaven's Gate. The game was hated by critics and gamers alike when it was released. Several features had been cut significantly from the initial feature list that had been used for the game's promotion. The released version was so glitchy that it actually made the game impossible to complete. Despite all of this, Daikatana did sell over 200,000 copies worldwide. Normally this would be considered a financial success, but due to the high production costs the game didn't even break even and is still considered a commercial failure.
References to the game, or simply the word "Daikatana", remain as a sort of joke throughout the gamer community, and a catch-all metaphor for a spectacular failure by the video game industry.
Although not a commercial failure itself, this 2003 expansion divided the highly popular MMORPG's player community, affected the fortunes of its parent game, Dark Age of Camelot, and remains controversial. The adding of master levels (special powers obtained through the completion of lengthy, multi-part quests requiring large raid parties) and artifacts (powerful items activated through the acquisition of rare scrolls) introduced a high degree of "grinding" and "camping" to a game that had been remarkably casual-player friendly. The new powers and items also tipped the balance of the game's popular realm v. realm (RvR) feature by giving a sizable advantage to the hardcore gamer. Player criticism was harsh and a number left in protest, causing a decrease in subscriptions. Mythic Entertainment responded to the reproval by reducing the difficulty of some of the MLs and increasing the availability of some of the rare scrolls in an effort to give more players access to the TOA features. In 2005, three "classic" servers were brought online, each of which excluded the lands of Atlantis. They quickly became three of the most populous servers in the game. Trials of Atlantis has its proponents and detractors to this day, but most agree that it was a flop, particularly given the unqualified success of the game's five other expansions and Mythic's ongoing efforts to mitigate the effects of TOA.
Reputedly coded in just six weeks, this game was rushed to the market for the 1982 holiday season, and it was based (very loosely) on the popular E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial movie that was a box office hit. The game was hard to play, simplistic and took place mostly in pits that the player had to somehow levitate out of. It was expected to sell millions, and even Steven Spielberg seemed excited about the idea of having his hit movie made into a video game. Word of mouth spread fast and the video game sold extremely poorly during the holidays and beyond. Expectations were so high for this game by Atari, that warehouses were filled with cartridges for the would be rush of buyers running to get the game. It turned out that the game was such a huge disaster, that millions of unsold excess cartridges ended up buried in a landfill in a desert.[7] This game, along with just as rushed and ill-fated Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, is thought to be one of the main causes of the video game crash of 1983 and contributed to how Atari went from the US's greatest games publisher to a laughing stock. Widely considered to be one of the first big video game flops ever, it was a real wake-up call to the companies who felt that people were so video game crazy they would buy anything that had a familar name on it. This proved that this was not the case and some companies (and, to an extent, the entire market) never recovered from the damage caused by such games. This game was also the first of a trend still lamented by gamers: bad video games based on successful movies.
gamespy.com write-up for E.T. (Atari 2600) in "Dumbest Moments in Video Game History"
Soccer management games since 1999
One of the most active genres during the 8 and 16-bit computer era (80s and early 90s), the genre had a massive decline after Championship Manager 3 started to monopolize the market. EuroLeague Football (follow-up to the 97-99 lineage of Premier Manager and English version of PC Fútbol 2000), Bubball's UEFA Manager 2000 (and the follow-up 442 Touchline Passion), EA Sports' Premier League Manager and the ZOO Digital's rebirth of Premier Manager all failed in the market (except in some circles) due to the monopoly of the Sports Interactive franchise. However, even Championship Manager was not flawless: the shipped version of CM4 was deemed incomplete, some of the yearly revisions received only a lukewarm welcome, and their latest version (while mostly unrelated to the previous games in the series), CM5, was released late and bug-ridden, losing the battle to Football Manager and even TCM 2005.
Note that Football Manager 2005 onwards (the name revived from Football Manager on a variety of 8-bit consoles in the 1980s) is a product of Sports Interactive, who surrendered the Championship Manager series' name after Championship Manager 03/04, following a dispute with their then-publishers, Eidos Interactive. Championship Manager 5 and Championship Manager 6 have nothing to do with Sports Interactive, instead being developed by Beautiful Game Studios under the auspices of Eidos. SI took their expertise in creating the series (as well as their huge databases of football information) to Sega to release Football Manager 2005. Fans of Sports Interactive see the Football Manager as the inheritor of the Championship Manager tradition due to being made by the same development team. Judging by the respective sales figures, these fans are in the majority. A comparatively small number of early Championship Manager fans seem to have stuck by Eidos and the new studio who now own the name.
Funnyman Rob Schneider starred in this full motion video adventure from now defunct Any River Entertainment. Ads for the game contained the tagline, "Think FMV sucks? Think again." The game was heavily dependent on the video scenes and the star power of Schneider to carry it. Just before the game's February 1997 release, Any River closed its doors. The game did not fare well with critics and gamers passed it by. As one reviewer succinctly put it: "Think FMV sucks? You'll think it again."
The first game to be developed by Rareware for Microsoft's Xbox system was eagerly anticipated for fans of the company and the game system alike. Rare had created several innovative smash hits on previous consoles, most notably Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007, and Microsoft had acquired Rare, paying US$377 million. Microsoft hyped the game as much as they could; and even pushed for the game to be released in time for Christmas (the most lucrative period for toys and video games alike). However, the game performed extremely poorly in terms of sales, due to mixed reviews from games magazines and journalists, a highly confusing storyline and content, and highly unorthodox controls. This remains, as of 2005, the biggest flop in Rare's history.
In 1982, the President of Cinematronics arranged a one-time purchase of 5000 PCB boards from Japan. The boards were used in the manufacture of several games, but the majority of them were reserved for a new arcade game called Jack the Giantkiller, based on the classic fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. Between the purchase price of the boards and other expenses, Cinematronics invested almost two million dollars into Jack the Giantkiller. It completely flopped in the arcade and many of the boards went unsold, costing the company a huge amount of money. Insiders sometimes refer to the game as "Jack the Company Killer" for the part it played in Cinematronics' eventual bankruptcy.
A 1998 release from Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Games, Trespasser was billed as a sequel to the 1997 DreamWorks film The Lost World. The story was that of a young woman named Anne (voiced by Minnie Driver) who found herself alone on InGen's Site B and was forced to fend for herself against the numerous prehistoric predators populating the island as she attempted to escape. Originally slated as a dark, horror-themed game, budget constraints and other factors caused the game to change to an action shooter late in development. The game employed a unique but unwieldy interface in which the player controlled Anne's right arm and had to look down at a tattoo on her breast to determine her health level (not very practical in a combat situation). PC Accelerator magazine referred to the main character as a, "freakish mammary robot," that was, "merely a pair of boobs with a broken mannequin arm on one side."[1] Manipulating objects was a chore and simple tasks often required complex solutions. The highly anticipated game engine was considered by many to be revolutionary, but did not translate to good gameplay and was difficult to scale to the prevailing hardware of the time, leaving many of the nice graphics features unseen. Although a critical and commercial failure, Trespasser has a dedicated fan community which has generated mods and tools for the game and remains active almost a decade after the game's release.
While Dragon's Lair was a tremendous success for Cinematronics when it came out in 1983, the fallout from its success was a disaster for the arcade industry. Because of its complex laserdisc technology, Cinematronics sold Dragon's Lair machines to operators for $4000 each, twice as much as a normal machine. The operators passed the extra expense on to gamers, charging 50 cents to play it instead of the normal 25 cents (setting a precedent that later became standard practice for all new arcade games). Although gamers flocked to it when it was new, the replay value turned out to be very low; between the high cost of playing and because it was possible to memorize the entire game, many gamers never came back once they beat it. As a result, the cash flow into Dragon's Lair machines quickly dried up and even with the 50 cent charge many operators never recovered the money they paid for it. Finally, it ushered in the short-lived "laserdisc era" in arcades, which featured many more games styled after Dragon's Lair that attempted to cash in on its success. The vast majority of these games were expensive to produce, poorly received by gamers, and ended up being money-losers for companies and operators alike.
This 1997 computer game by Jordan Mechner, is a real-time adventure game and one of the most expensive and innovative ever made. The project took nearly four years to complete and included a month-long blue-screen filmshoot and a round-the-clock staff of up to 50 animators, artists, asset wranglers, and programmers. The game only remained in stores for a few months. Brøderbund's marketing department quit just weeks before the game was released, resulting in virtually no advertising for it. Softbank pulled out of the game market, dissolving its subsidiary GameBank and canceling several dozen titles in development, including the nearly finished PlayStation port of Express. The Last Express was out of print long before its first Christmas season and nearly a million units shy of breaking even. By dropping their support of an already completed game, Broderbund and Softbank most likely increased their losses.
The last game in the Might and Magic series produced by New World Computing suffered from outdated graphics and poor gameplay; the game and several failed spin-offs of the series were among the nails in the coffin of The 3DO Company.
Mortal Kombat (SNES version)
To comply with the "family friendly" policy enforced by Nintendo at the time, blood was recolored to resemble sweat and all fatalities that involved blood and dismemberment were toned down (burning-related fatalities, namely Scorpion's and Sonya's, were left intact). While the Sega Genesis version was graphically inferior to the SNES version, the Sega version had blood effects and original arcade fatalities (the main reason the game become popular in the first place) intact and unlockable with a cheat code. This resulted in Sega's version outselling the SNES version exponentially, even giving the Sega console a temporary edge in console sales. The losses caused by the incident led Nintendo to loosen creative control over developers in the future, and Mortal Kombat II and its sequels would arrive fully uncensored on the SNES, outselling the Genesis versions.
Mourning, an MMORPG that was developed in Romania for almost 3 1/2 years, "debuted" on February 25th 2005 and it was quickly discovered that the game had none of the features claimed in many previews of the game. When the preorder version arrived, fans say that they got only a white box containing a burned CD-RW with an old beta client and nothing else. Also discovered was that the game was hardly even considered "finished" to any extent. Also noted was the sheer number of bugs in the game, almost preventing any sort of enjoyment being had from it. Some bugs range from CTD to incredible lag to extremely long server downtimes. The game sold no more than 211 copies, and total lack of tech support from the developers prompted many to cancel their Mourning accounts. On average, no more than 10 players are online at a time, and even when the number touches 50, the server crashes due to the networking code of the game. Gamers complained of lack of animation for the characters, rather simplistic player vs. player combat, only 2 quests for the entire game, and many bugs that were apparently never fixed, though reported numerous times. Despite bad press and accusations that the developer was immoral, the developers of the game still continue development. (See full article for more information.)
This Bioware-released PC RPG, set in the Dungeons and Dragons Planescape universe, was a tremendous critical success among players and critics alike, receiving excellent reviews almost across the board, including a 93% score from PC Gamer. It must be said though that many people do consider it is to this day considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time, specifically for its incredibly deep and nuanced story line, approach to philosophical and intellectual questions and the concept of reality (a constant theme in the game is "What can change the nature of a man?"), bizarre characters, relatively innovative concept amidst a heavily-cliched and stereotypical genre, and the open-ended gameplay.
Unfortunately, its appeal was limited for various reasons, such as the afformentioned amount of dialogue. Its lack of combat or system-based gameplay in proportion to such dialogue was also considered to be a weak point. A major complaint that has arisen over the dialogue is not just the amount of it, but that in order to obtain new clues, players must regularly ask in-game characters the same sets of questions, which often leads to the repetition of massive amounts of dialogue the player has already read through (and often multiple times, no less). This led many to feel the gameplay was frustrating, tedious and unbalanced.
Many players cited problems with the slow leveling-up process. It can take days or even weeks for the player to level characters up to experience levels where they can be customized by the player. Players were irritated at this because of the tremendous amount of effort that had to be expended before they could get to the character-customization portion of the game.
Despite the game's fan-following which hails Torment to be among the greatest games ever, the game has only sold about 75,000 copies and has found a place on this list.
Despite being a critical success (It won several "special achievement awards" in GameSpot's Best of 2005[8]) and being highly innovative for a platformer, sales for the game were deplorable. The game sold less than 90,000 copies on the PC, Xbox, and PS2 and has led to the recent demise of Majesco, the publisher of the game (including the resignation of its CEO [9], which caused the company's stock to plummet and prompted a class-action lawsuit by Majesco's stockholders [10]). Many gaming experts believe that this game is the poster child for the recent failures in innovative games and symbolizes what is wrong with the state of video games today[11]. In fact, one of the awards it won in GameSpot's Best of 2005 was 'Best Game that No One Played.'
The sequel to Red Baron was released with no support for 3D graphics cards, inaccurate flight models, and bugs. A free upgrade for those who purchased the full-priced game, Red Baron 3D, was later released to solve most of these problems and, with a proliferation of unofficial patches, maintains a niche following amongst fans.
Initially highly anticipated, Republic proved to be too much of a step in a different direction for most gamers.
Revelations: Persona, the first title from the highly-popular Japanese Megami Tensei series to be released in English for the Playstation, did not receive a similar reception in the United States and Europe. While Persona received good-to-excellent reviews from critics and players alike, its lack of advertising and extremely low number of copies released by its parent company, Atlus, have resulted in it being an obscure cult game that few people are aware of, and even fewer are able to obtain.
Sonic The Hedgehog Flops
Sonic X-treme was a planned instalment in the Sonic The Hedgehog series, but was never able to make it to the market. Sonic X-treme was planned to be the first Sonic release for the Sega Saturn, and the first 3D Sonic title. Sega gave it a release date of Christmas 1996, but disputes between Sega's American and Japanese divisions and the declining health of the game's producer sent it to development hell until Sega finally shelved it in 1997. There is at least one known copy of Sonic X-treme, which was sold at an auction.
The first RTS based in the Star Wars franchise, this game used a sub-par 3D engine and its interface and game design were poorly-recieved. Of all Star Wars games, Force Commander is often thought among the worse games in the area of excessive pre-release hype and poor game value.
Expected to revive the long-stagnant Tomb Raider series, it was repeatedly delayed. When it finally shipped in mid-2003, after major cutbacks from the developers original intentions made due to Eidos rushing for a February release date, it was not well received by video game critics due to multiple bugs and outdated game playing elements. The game was even criticised by Paramount Pictures, who said that gamers' dissatisfaction with the game led to the poor commercial performance of their movie Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. [12] This was the last Tomb Raider game to be developed by its creators, Core Design. Eidos the publisher of the series, has assigned their other game studio Crystal Dynamics to develop the next Tomb Raider game (Tomb Raider: Legend) partly due to The Angel of Darkness' low sales numbers.
Was very badly received by fans due to a tremendous number of bugs in the software which created such an outcry that Origin shut down an official online help page over so many negative posts. Ultimately, because of political struggles within Electronic Arts, Richard Garriott (the designer of the series) eventually left. While EA kept the rights to the Ultima name, the bad press, poor support and user animosity forced EA to terminate the series.
A collaborative affair between Jeff Minter and Lionhead Studios, this game was planned exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube. However, it soon became apparent that Mr. Minter was having severe problems developing this game (as he was doing it basically single-handedly) and that he was constantly asking the publisher to delay the release so he could tinker with it some more. Soon realising that it would be a huge financial loss, Lionhead cancelled it (leaving them, and Mr. Minter, trying to recuperate their various losses in profit the game's development has caused them).
The official game of the Mexico '86 FIFA World Cup by US Gold, which had several problems during development, forcing the company to acquire an older game and modify it to suit the license. Buyers and the complete industry alike frowned upon the attempt to distribute a mediocre two year old game as a new one.
Wizardry 8 was the long-anticipated sequel to Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, one of the most highly-regarded and successful computer role-playing games in the history of the genre. Temporarily cancelled on more than one occasion as a result of Interplay (its parent company) suffering severe financial losses and eventually a complete bankruptcy, Wizardry 8 was released as what many players consider to be a rushed, heavily-glitched production. Many were disappointed with its visuals, which were significantly more blocky and polygonated than most games of the time, and felt they were inferior to even those of its decade-old predecessor. In addition, several advertisements appeared during gameplay (which made funding for its completion possible), which further displeased many. While Wizardry 8 has garnered some praise from a small cross-section of players, a majority of the series' long-standing fans found Wizardry 8 to be so unappealing, they wish the series had ended with Wizardry 7.
This is the third WWE game to be released for the Xbox console by THQ following its previous lackluster titles, WWF RAW and WWE RAW 2. Developer Studio Gigante promised that it would redefine the wrestling game genre with an all-new pro reversal system, motion-captured moves, and realistic graphics. Unfortunately, everything but the visuals and extensive voice acting failed to meet expectations, and the advertised online features of the game did not work until a patch was released some time later. Studio Gigante soon ceased operations.
Computer and video game service failures
Sega's Online services
Sega Meganet, Sega NetLink and SegaNet were online services for the Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, respectively. They allowed players to play against each other online, use email, and other services. Failure to attract substantial player bases and the demise of each console soon brought about the end of their respective services.
The Sega Channel was a unique online service for the Genesis, allowing users to download games through cable television service, and compare high scores with other users. Although it became reasonably popular, the eventual demise of the Genesis console led Sega to discontinue the service.