List of economic failures in video and arcade video games

As a hit-driven enterprise, the nice majority of the online game business’s software program releases have been industrial disappointments. In the early twenty first century, business commentators made these basic estimates: 10% of printed video games generated 90% of income;^[1] that round 3% of PC video games and 15% of console video games have world gross sales of greater than 100,000 items per 12 months, with even this stage inadequate to make high-budget video games worthwhile;^[2] and that about 20% of video games make any revenue.^[3] Within years after Steam relaxed limits on which video games might be digitally distributed on its service, they reported that round 80% of video games failed to achieve $5000 in income of their first two weeks of gross sales.^[4]

Some of those failure occasions have drastically modified the online game market since its origin within the late Nineteen Seventies. For instance, the failure of E.T. contributed to the online game crash of 1983. Some video games, although industrial failures, are properly acquired by sure teams of avid gamers and are thought-about cult video games.

The following record contains any online game software program on any platformwhere the industrial failure has been documented as such by the manufacture or printed, or affirmed by means of business gross sales trackers.

The following is an incomplete record of software program which have been deemed industrial failures by business sources.

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma is a third-person action-adventure online game printed by Versus Evil and developed by Redacted Studios. The sport was launched for PlayStation 4 through PlayStation Network and Windows in September 2015, with an Xbox One model deliberate for October. The sequel to 2009’s Afro Samurai, initially a manga sequence by Takashi Okazaki, the participant controls Kuma, a swordsman who seeks revenge on Afro.

The sport acquired extensively damaging critiques from critics. Originally deliberate to be launched in three volumes, Versus Evil pulled Revenge of Kuma from all platforms, issued refunds, and canceled the opposite two volumes. The Xbox One model was additionally by no means launched, whereas the PlayStation 4 model is likely one of the few titles from that platform to not be backward appropriate with the PlayStation 5.

Polygon referred to as it one of many worst video games of 2015.^[5] Giant Bomb referred to as it the worst sport of the 12 months.^[6] It was the second worst-reviewed sport of 2015 in accordance with mixture assessment web site Metacritic.^[7] In November 2015, Afro Samurai 2 was pulled from the PSN and Steam. In an interview with CGMagazine on the sport’s withdrawal, Versus Evil’s Steve Escalante referred to as the sport “a failure” and introduced the cancellation of the opposite two volumes and refunds for purchasers.^[8][9] Escalante later expanded on the choice in an interview with Gamasutra, saying, “Given the game quality was not what people were expecting, it didn’t sell like hot cakes, let’s just put it like that.”^[10]

Anthem is an motion role-playing sport developed by BioWare and printed by Electronic Arts in 2019. Its seven-year-long growth interval began after launch of Mass Effect 3, and was envisioned by BioWare to maneuver away from the standard role-playing codecs of Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and develop into a kind of live-service sport. The sport had a tough growth cycle because of shifting employees, technological difficulties in switching to the Frostbite Engine, and calls for from EA’s administration on the route of the sport. Other BioWare tasks from its different studios had been placed on maintain to finish Anthem for launch, and in accordance with one BioWare developer, it was solely the work of the final fifteen months of growth that made it into the sport.^[11] Due to this rush close to the top of the event cycle, the sport was thought-about to be missing content material at launch, contained quite a few software program bugs that plagued gameplay, and was discovered too much like different live-service video games like Destiny and World of Warcraft. BioWare and EA had said their intent to revamp the sport to fulfill expectations, however the sport struggled to keep up a playbase. Though the sport finally bought over 5 million copies in its lifetime, EA had anticipated gross sales to be a lot increased and akin to the Battlefield sequence, and in 2021, EA opted to terminate additional growth work on Anthem, with closure of the sport servers deliberate for January 12, 2026.

APB: All Points Bulletin was a multiplayer on-line sport developed by Realtime Worlds in 2010. The sport, incorporating ideas from their earlier sport Crackdown and previous work by its lead developer David Jones, who had helped create the Grand Theft Auto sequence, was set across the thought of a large-scale city battle between Enforcers and Criminals; gamers would be capable of partake in large-scale on-going missions between the 2 sides. The sport was initially set as each a Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 title and as Realtime Worlds’ flagship title for launch in 2008, however as a substitute the corporate set about growing Crackdown first, and later centered APB as a Windows-only title, probably porting the sport to the Xbox 360 later. Upon launch in June 2010, the sport acquired lukewarm critiques, hampered by the existence of a week-long assessment embargo, and didn’t appeal to the anticipated variety of subscribers to keep up its enterprise mannequin.^[12] Realtime Worlds, affected by the industrial failure of the sport, bought off a second undertaking, Project MyWorld, and subsequently decreased its operations to administration and a skeleton crew to handle the APB servers whereas they tried to discover a purchaser, together with probably Epic Games who had expressed curiosity within the title. However, with none acceptable presents, the corporate was pressured to close down APB in September 2010.^[13] Eventually, the sport was bought to K2 Network, an organization that has introduced different Asian massive-multiplayer on-line video games to the Western markets as free-to-play titles, and comparable adjustments occurred to APB when it was relaunched by K2.^[14]

Artifact is a 2018 digital collectible card sport (CCG), designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, and developed by Valve Corporation. It was designed as a by-product from Dota 2, and whereas enjoying out encounters with playing cards labored much like different CCGs like Hearthstone, the sport used the idea of a number of lanes from Dota 2, with three totally different playfields concerned always. Instead of a free to play mannequin, Artifact was launched at a premium value, and inspired gamers to purchase new booster packs and commerce and promote particular person playing cards on the Steam Marketplace.^[15] Valve envisioned Artifact to attract aggressive gamers and result in esports tournaments.^[16] At launch, the sport was discovered to be overly advanced and relied an excessive amount of on random quantity era mechanics in gameplay, and the monetization strategy was thought-about as “pay to win”, requiring gamers to spend money on new playing cards as to have the ability to compete. Within half a 12 months from launch, its participant base has considerably dropped;^[17] some customers on Twitch started utilizing channels labeled for Artifact to stream inappropriate content material on the idea of such streams having low viewerships by that time, forcing Twitch to take moderation actions.^[18] Valve said in round this time that they had been deliberate to reevaluate and redesign the sport to fulfill complaints from gamers.^[19] Artifact 2.0 was put into beta testing in March 2020, with one of many largest adjustments being the removing of the monetization choices for acquiring playing cards.^[20] By March 2021, Valve determined to finish growth of Artifact, and launched two free variations of the sport in its present state, Artifact Classic, which included the gameplay of the unique launch, and Artifact Foundry, which included the adjustments envisioned for the v2.0 launch. Both variations fully eliminated monetization choices.^[21] Valve’s CEO Gabe Newell referred to as Artifact a “giant disappointment” although thought-about its failure a studying expertise.^[22]

Babylon’s Fall was a web based motion role-playing sport developed by PlatinumGames and printed by Square Enix for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC. The sport was PlatinumGames’ first try at a stay service sport, and was described as an try to mix the fight system featured on Nier: Automata with multiplayer, though the sport is also performed solo.^[23] Originally teased at E3 2018,^[24] Babylon’s Fall would endure a large number of delays away from its preliminary deliberate 2019 launch date, with the sport being additional delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.^[25][26]

Upon its eventual launch on March 3, 2022, Babylon’s Fall was met with little fanfare and acquired typically damaging critiques from critics and gamers, many who criticised the sport’s lackluster mechanics and fight, with a number of critics calling the sport overpriced.^[27][28][29] The concurrent participant rely for Babylon’s Fall solely peaked at 1,179 on launch day,^[30] and participant numbers declined quickly afterwards; by April 13, 2022, it was reported that the sport’s participant rely had fallen to beneath 10 concurrent gamers, and on May 4, 2022, the participant rely reportedly dropped to a single participant.^[31] On September 13, 2022, Square Enix introduced that they’d be ending help for Babylon’s Fall on February 27, 2023, and suspended digital gross sales of the sport and in-game foreign money, regardless of initially promising that they had been meaning to help the sport within the long-term.^[32][33][34] Babylon’s Fall‘s industrial failure was described by Forbes as “one of the biggest mainstream misses we’ve seen in recent memories”,^[35] with TechRadar additionally naming the sport “[Square Enix]’s biggest disaster of the year”.^[36] Despite this, PlatinumGames CEO Atsushi Inaba later stated that the failure of Babylon’s Fall didn’t have an effect on any of the corporate’s plans to proceed increasing into stay service video games, and likewise attributed a few of Babylon’s Fall‘s faults to the separate developments of the core sport and the stay service components between PlatinumGames and Square Enix, respectively.^[37]

One of essentially the most infamous PC online game failures, Battlecruiser 3000AD (shortened BC3K) was hyped for nearly a decade earlier than its disastrous launch within the U.S. and Europe. The sport was the brainchild of Derek Smart, an unbiased sport developer famend for prolonged and aggressive on-line responses to perceived criticism. The idea behind BC3K was bold, giving the participant the command of a giant starship with all of the requisite duties, together with navigation, fight, useful resource administration, and commanding crew members. Advertisements appeared within the online game press within the mid-Nineties hyping the sport as, “The Last Thing You’ll Ever Desire.”^[38] Computer bulletin boards and Usenet teams had been abuzz with dialogue concerning the sport. As time wore on and quite a few delays had been introduced, pleasure turned to frustration within the on-line neighborhood. Smart exacerbated the damaging air by posting liberally on Usenet.^[38] The posts ignited one of many largest flame wars in Usenet historical past.^[39] During the event cycle, Smart refused to let different programmers have full entry to his code and continued to alter instructions as new know-how grew to become out there, inflicting the sport to be in growth for over seven years.

In November 1996, Take-Two Interactive lastly launched the sport, reportedly over protests from Smart.^[38] The sport was buggy and solely partially completed, with outdated graphics, MIDI music, a cryptic interface, and virtually no documentation. Critics and the online game neighborhood reacted poorly to the discharge. Eventually, a secure, playable model of the sport was launched as Battlecruiser 3000AD v2.0.^{[citation needed]} Smart finally launched BC3K as freeware and went on to create a number of sequels underneath the Battlecruiser and Universal Combat titles. ^{[citation needed]}

Although critically acclaimed and deliberate as the primary a part of a trilogy, Beyond Good & Evil (launched in 2003) flopped commercially. Former Ubisoft worker Owen Hughes said that it was felt that the simultaneous releases of internationally competing titles Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and in Europe, XIII (all three printed by Ubisoft and all of which had sturdy model id of their markets), made an impression on Beyond Good & Evil‘s means to realize curiosity with the general public. The sport’s industrial failure led Ubisoft to postpone plans for any subsequent titles within the sequence.^[40][41] A sequel was introduced on the finish of the Ubidays 2008 opening convention,^[42] and an HD model of the unique was launched for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 through obtain in 2011. Alain Corre, Ubisoft’s Executive Director of EMEA Territories, commented that the Xbox 360 launch “did extremely well”, however thought-about this success “too late” to make a distinction within the sport’s poor gross sales.^[43] Beyond Good & Evil 2 was introduced at Ubisoft’s press convention at E3 2017, fourteen years after the discharge of the unique sport.

Brütal Legend is Double Fine Productions’ second main sport. The sport is ready in a world based mostly on heavy steel music, features a hundred-song soundtrack throughout quite a few steel subgenres, and incorporates a celeb voice forged together with Jack Black, Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford, and Tim Curry. The sport was initially to be printed by Vivendi Games through Sierra Entertainment previous to its merger with Activision. Following the merger, Activision declined to publish Brütal Legend, and Double Fine turned to Electronic Arts as their publishing associate, delaying the sport’s launch. Activision and Double Fine counter-sued one another for breach of contract, finally settling out of courtroom. The sport was designed as an motion journey/real-time technique sport much like Herzog Zwei; as video games within the real-time technique style typically don’t carry out properly on consoles, Double Fine was informed by each Vivendi and Electronic Arts to keep away from stating this truth and emphasize different components of the sport.^[44] With some constructive critiques from critics, the sport received criticized for its real-time technique components that weren’t talked about throughout the pre-release advertising, making it a tough sport to promote to gamers.^[45] Furthermore, its late-year launch in October 2009 buried the title amongst many top-tier video games, together with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It solely bought about 215,000 items throughout the first month, making it a “retail failure”, and although Double Fine had begun work on a sequel, Electronic Arts cancelled additional growth.^[46] According to Tim Schafer, president and lead developer of Double Fine, 1.4 million copies of the sport had been bought by February 2011.^[47]

Concord was a hero shooter sport developed by Firewalk Studios and launched for the PlayStation 5 and Windows in August 2024. The sport was reported to have eight years of growth work, estimated to have value at the very least US$200 million to develop and was additional funded when Firewalk was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023, the place it was purportedly referred to as “the future of PlayStation”.^[48][49] The sport was to be a stay service title, supported by beauty microtransactions, but additionally was shipped as a premium title slightly than free-to-play.^[50] Initial vital impressions of the sport thought-about that it had lackluster character designs and supplied few improvements on present on-line shooters already available on the market.^[51] At launch, the sport noticed fewer than 700 concurrent gamers by means of Steam and round 1,300 on PlayStation, and estimates of gross sales based mostly on participant counts had been fewer than 25,000, in accordance with Simon Carless. Carless cited the dearth of promoting, the excessive value level for a stay service sport, and the saturation of hero shooters already available on the market as causes for the poor gross sales.^[52] With the poor gross sales in the course of the first two weeks of launch, Firewalk introduced they’d pull the sport from sale, supply full refunds to all patrons, terminate the servers on September 6, 2024, after which would decide what route to take the sport, if any, whereas offline.^[53] Sony closed Firewalk in October 2024, and completely shut down Concord.^[54] Sony’s COO/CFO Hiroki Totoki stated in an investor name following the closure of Concord that “with regards to new IP, of course, you don’t know the result until you actually try it”, and that “we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did.”^[55]

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a 3D platformer by Rare for the Nintendo 64. In it, the participant controls Conker, a grasping, hard-drinking squirrel, by means of ranges.^[56] While it’s visually much like Rare’s earlier video games like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, Conker’s Bad Fur Day is geared toward mature audiences and options profanity, graphic violence, and off-color humor.^[57] The sport was initially designed to be family-friendly, however was retooled after prerelease variations of the sport had been criticized for his or her similarities to Rare’s earlier video games.^[58] Though receiving vital acclaim,^[59] Conker’s Bad Fur Day carried out properly beneath expectations, with solely 55,000 copies bought by April 2001. Numerous causes have been cited for the sport’s perceived failure to attach with audiences, resembling its excessive value, commercials unique to the older viewers, and its launch in direction of the top of the Nintendo 64’s life cycle.^[60][61] Nintendo, which held a minority stake in Rare on the time, additionally didn’t actively promote the sport.^[62] It additionally ran at an abnormally low decision, decrease than some other official N64 launch.^{[citation needed]} After Microsoft purchased out Rare, it remade the sport on the Xbox as Conker: Live and Reloaded which included a web based multiplayer element based mostly on a part of the unique sport.

One of the extra notorious failures in PC video video games was Daikatana, which was drastically hyped because of creator John Romero’s fashionable standing as one of many key designers behind Doom. However, after being wrought with huge over-spending and severe delays, the sport lastly launched to poor vital response due to bugs, lackluster enemies, poor gameplay and manufacturing values, all of which had been made worse by its heavy advertising marketing campaign proclaiming it as the subsequent “big thing” in first particular person shooters.^[63][64][65]

The first title launched by Ion Storm, Dominion is an actual time technique title much like Command & Conquer and Warcraft, based mostly as a spin-off to the G-Nome canon. The sport was initially developed by seventh Level, however was bought by Ion Storm for US$1.8 million. The undertaking initially had a price range of US$50,000 and was scheduled to be completed in three months with two employees members. Due to mismanagement and Ion Storm’s inexperience, the undertaking took over a 12 months, costing lots of of hundreds of {dollars}.^[66] Dominion was launched in July 1998. It acquired dangerous critiques and bought poorly, falling far in need of recouping its buy value, not to mention the price of ending it. The sport divided staff engaged on Ion’s marquee title, Daikatana, arguably resulting in the walkout of a number of key growth staff members. It put a pressure on Ion Storm’s funds, main the as soon as well-funded startup to scramble for money as Daikatana‘s growth prolonged over a number of years.^[67]

A sequel to the profitable Wii-exclusive platformer Epic Mickey, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two was developed in 2012 by Junction Point Studios and printed by Disney Interactive Studios for the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft Windows. Though closely marketed and being launched on a number of consoles, solely 270,000 copies of Epic Mickey 2 had been bought in North America, barely 1 / 4 of the unique’s gross sales of 1.3 million.^[68] The sport’s failure led to the shutdown of Junction Point^[69] and the cancellation of future entries within the Epic Mickey sequence.^[70]

Based on Steven Spielberg’s fashionable 1982 film of the identical identify and reportedly coded in simply 5 weeks,^[71] this Atari 2600 sport was rushed to the marketplace for the 1982 vacation season.^[71]

Even with 1.5 million copies bought,^[72] the gross sales figures got here nowhere close to Atari’s expectations, because it had ordered manufacturing of 5 million copies,^[71] with most of the bought video games being returned to Atari for refunds by dissatisfied shoppers.^[71] It had develop into an city legend that Atari had buried the unsold cartridges of E.T. and different video games in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, which was confirmed in 2014 when the location was allowed to be excavated, with former Atari personnel affirming they’d dumped about 800,000 cartridges, together with E.T. and different poorly-selling video games. The monetary figures and enterprise techniques surrounding this product are emblematic of the online game crash of 1983 and contributed to Atari’s chapter. Atari paid $25 million for the license to supply the sport, which additional contributed to a debt of $536 million (equal to $1.75 billion at present). The firm was divided and bought in 1984.^[71]

Funko Fusion is a 2024 action-adventure sport developed and printed by 10:10 Games, based mostly on the Funko Pop! line of collectible collectible figurines and that includes characters from franchises together with these of Universal Pictures, in addition to Mega Man and Five Nights at Freddy’s. The sport acquired blended critiques, and 10:10 Games later confirmed that Funko Fusion failed commercially, resulting in layoffs on the studio.^[73]

Known for being the primary journey sport by LucasArts to make use of three-dimensional graphics, Grim Fandango acquired constructive critiques and received quite a few awards. It was initially thought that the sport bought properly in the course of the 1998 vacation season.^[74] However, the sport’s gross sales gave the impression to be crowded out by different titles launched in the course of the late 1998 season, together with Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.^[46] Based on knowledge offered by PC Data (now owned by NPD Group), the sport bought about 95,000 copies as much as 2003 in North America, excluding on-line gross sales.^[75] Worldwide gross sales are estimated between 100,000 and 500,000 items by 2012. Developer Tim Schafer together with others of the Grim Fandango growth staff would depart LucasArts after this undertaking to start a brand new studio (Double Fine Productions). Grim Fandango‘s comparatively modest gross sales are sometimes cited as a contributing issue to the decline of the journey sport style within the late Nineties,^[76][77] although the title’s popularity as a “flop” is to an extent a case of notion over actuality, as Schafer has identified that the sport turned a revenue, with the royalty verify he finally acquired being proof.^[78] His perspective is that the journey style didn’t a lot lose its viewers as fail to develop it whereas manufacturing prices continued to rise. This made journey video games much less engaging funding for publishers; in distinction, the success of first-person shooters brought about the console market to growth. The emergence of latest distribution channels which didn’t depend on the standard retail mannequin would finally re-empower the area of interest style. Double Fine has since remastered the sport for top definition graphics and re-released it by means of these channels.^[79]

Although critiques for Jazz Jackrabbit 2 had been constructive,^[80] gross sales had been inadequate and resulted in a loss for its writer Gathering of Developers. This prevented the builders from discovering a writer for Jazz Jackrabbit 3, thus resulting in its cancellation.^[81]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an motion RPG sport launched in 2012, developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. 38 Studios had been shaped by Curt Schilling initially in Massachusetts. After buying Big Huge Games from the failing THQ, the studio secured a US$75 million mortgage assure from the financial growth board of Rhode Island for establishing 38 Studios throughout the state and selling job development. Kingdoms was typically well-received by critics, and preliminary gross sales throughout the first three months had been round 1.3 million. Though spectacular, Rhode Island acknowledged that the title was anticipated to have hit 3 million items by this level for 38 Studios to pay again the mortgage.^[82] 38 Studios defaulted on one of many mortgage repayments, resulting in a writer to drag out of a US$35 million funding in a sequel.^[83] The studio managed to make the subsequent cost, however couldn’t make payroll or different bills, and shortly later declared chapter by May 2012.^[84] Resolving the unpaid mortgage grew to become a civil lawsuit, and finally with the state settling with Schilling and different buyers for a US$61 million cost, leaving the state round US$28 million brief on its mortgage.^[85] The rights to Kingdoms finally fell to THQ Nordic AB, the holding firm that got here to amass most of the former THQ properties after their chapter.

The Lamplighters League is a turn-based techniques sport developed by Harebrained Schemes and printed by Paradox Interactive (the mother or father firm of Harebrained Schemes) in 2023. The sport was based mostly on adventures printed in pulp magazines of the Nineteen Thirties. While the sport acquired constructive critiques, it failed to realize a industrial success. Every week after its launch, Paradox said that they meant to jot down off the sport at a price of 248 million kr (US$22 million).^[86] This adopted after Paradox had laid off 80% of Harebrained Schemes’ staff.^[87] Harebrained Schemes, which had been purchased by Paradox in 2018, introduced that they agreed to finish their partnership with Paradox, and reorganized as an unbiased firm.^[88]

Released in 1997 after 5 years in growth, this $6 million^[89] journey sport was the brainchild of Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince of Persia. The sport was famous for happening in virtually full real-time, utilizing Art Nouveau-style characters that had been rotoscoped from a 22-day live-action video shoot,^[90] and that includes clever writing and ranges of character depth that weren’t typically seen in laptop video games. Even with rave critiques,^[91][92] Broderbund, the sport’s writer, did little to advertise the sport, aside from a quick point out in a press launch^[93] and enthusiastic statements by Broderbund executives,^[94] partly as a result of whole Broderbund advertising staff quitting within the weeks earlier than its launch.^[95] Released in April, the sport was not a hit, promoting solely about 100,000 copies,^[96] 1,000,000 copies in need of breaking even.^[97]

After the discharge of the sport, Mechner’s firm Smoking Car Productions quietly folded, and Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company,^[98] who had been solely interested by Broderbund’s instructional software program, successfully placing the sport out of print which additionally brought about the PlayStation port to be cancelled after virtually being completed for a 1998 launch. Mechner was later capable of reacquire the rights to the sport, and in 2012, labored with DotEmu to launch an iOS port of the title, earlier than making it to Android as properly.^[99]

MadWorld is a beat ’em up title for the Wii developed by PlatinumGames and distributed by Sega in March 2009. The sport was purposely designed as an especially violent online game.^[100] The sport contains a distinctive black-and-white graphic fashion that borrows from each Frank Miller’s Sin City and different Japanese and Western comics.^[100][101] This monotone coloring is simply damaged by blood that comes from attacking and killing foes in quite a few, grotesque, and over-the-top manners. Though there had been violent video games out there for the Wii from the day it was launched (e.g. No More Heroes and Manhunt 2), many perceived MadWorld as one of many first mature titles for the system, inflicting some preliminary outrage from involved shoppers concerning the usually family-friendly system.^[102] MadWorld was properly acquired by critics, however this didn’t translate into industrial gross sales; solely 123,000 items of the sport bought within the United States throughout its first six months available on the market.^[103] Sega thought-about these gross sales to be “disappointing”.^[104][105] Regardless, the sport’s vital success allowed a successor, Anarchy Reigns (2012), to be produced.

After the success of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions, a remake of the primary sport within the Mario & Luigi sequence in 2017, Nintendo introduced a remake of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story in March 2018 in an analogous vein of the earlier remake with improved visuals, a remastered soundtrack, and a further story in Bowser Jr.’s Journey.^[106] Upon launch in January 2019, the sport was a vital success although it received barely worse critiques than the unique. However, the sport was a industrial failure, promoting underneath 9,500 copies in its first week in Japan. Famitsu reported that the sport had a lifetime complete of 34,523 copies, making it one of many worst-selling Mario video games because the Virtual Boy.^[107] The sport’s failure was attributed to being one of many final video games on the Nintendo 3DS, with the Nintendo Switch having already been out for practically two years. The sport has additionally been credited with ensuing within the chapter of sequence developer AlphaDream.^[108] The subsequent installment, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, was launched in 2024, with some former AlphaDream staff having labored on the title.^[109]

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is the sixth major installment in Capcom’s Marvel vs. Capcom sequence of preventing video games that pits Capcom and Marvel’s well-known characters towards one another. When the sport was proven at E3 2017, among the character designs had been poorly acquired, significantly Chun-Li from Street Fighter and Dante from Devil May Cry.^[110] The sport was additionally criticized for its lack of X-Men or Fantastic Four characters.^[111] Capcom projected that the sport would promote two million items by December 31, 2017, however the sport launched with a poor exhibiting due to the sport having a low price range, which might trigger Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite to generate solely half of the projected quantity that Capcom gave.^[112] Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite‘s failing would result in cancellation of DLC, and its exclusion from tournaments resembling Evo 2018, in addition to Capcom being quiet surrounding the title.^[113] The title’s failure was additionally partly as a result of competitors it acquired from Bandai Namco’s Dragon Ball FighterZ which together with its huge identify recognition, took affect from Infinite’s two predecessors, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.^[114]

MultiVersus was a free-to-play crossover platform preventing sport that includes varied Warner Bros. characters. The sport was developed by Player First Games and printed by Warner Bros. Games for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

It was first launched in early entry and open beta variations from July 2022 to June 2023. The sport was absolutely launched in May 2024, previous to Warner Bros. Games’ acquisition of Player First Games. In November 2024, the studio introduced that MultiVersus underperformed commercially, resulting in mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery taking a $100 million impairment cost.^[115] The sport was delisted and all on-line performance was discontinued in May 2025.^[116] The sport’s failure led to the closure of Player First Games in February 2025 and likewise partially led to a restructuring of Warner Bros. Games to deal with 4 core properties: the DC Universe, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and Mortal Kombat.^[117][118]

Ōkami was a product of Clover Studio with route by Hideki Kamiya, beforehand identified for his work on the Resident Evil and Devil May Cry sequence. The sport is favorably in comparison with a Zelda-type journey, and relies on the hunt of the goddess-wolf Amaterasu utilizing a “celestial brush” to attract in magical results on display and to revive the cursed land of historical Nippon. Released first in 2006 on the PlayStation 2, it later acquired a port to the Wii system, the place the comb controls had been reworked for the movement controls of the Wii Remote. The sport was properly acquired by critics, with Metacritic mixture scores of 93% and 90% for the PlayStation 2 and Wii variations, respectively,^[119][120] and was thought-about probably the greatest titles for 2006; IGN named it their Game of the Year.^[121] Though strongly praised by critics, fewer than 600,000 items had been bought by March 2009.^[122] These components have led for Ōkami to be referred to as the “least commercially successful winner of a game of the year award” within the 2010 model of the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition.^[122] Shortly after its launch, Capcom disbanded Clover Studio, although a lot of its staff, together with Kamiya, went on to type PlatinumGames and produce MadWorld and the extra profitable Bayonetta.^[123] Strong fan help of the sport led to a religious successor, Ōkamiden (2010), on the Nintendo DS, adopted by a high-definition remaster of Ōkami for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows launched in the course of the mid-to-late 2010s.

Kamiya had expressed curiosity in a sequel to Ōkami since shifting to PlatinumGames, stating he had been in talks with Capcom on the thought. He left PlatinumGames in mid-2023, on the time stating he was going unbiased.^[124] A sequel was introduced at The Game Awards 2024 in December 2024, with growth being led by Kamiya at a brand new studio referred to as Clovers that included a number of former members of Clover Studio.^[125]

After growing the rhythm sport Gitaroo Man, iNiS Corporation started work on a extra modern one for the Nintendo DS which was based mostly on an thought from founder Keiichi Yano, during which gamers would faucet and drag on-screen targets in time with music to assist an oendan cheer up people who find themselves in hassle in order that they will overcome their issues, which Nintendo launched as Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. The sport acquired constructive critiques, resulting in plans to develop a localized and upgraded reskin of the sport titled Elite Beat Agents, in addition to a sequel, Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2. Despite all three video games being praised by critics, none of them had been commercially profitable,^{[126][127][128]} all promoting fewer than 1,000,000 copies every. Poor gross sales, in addition to the distinctiveness of their goal platform, prevented Nintendo from contemplating additional sequels.^[129][130]

Starbreeze Studios had acquired a license in 2014 to develop a sport set in The Walking Dead franchise from Skybound Entertainment, utilizing the cooperative gameplay mechanics from Payday: The Heist developed by Starbreeze’s subsidiary Overkill Software. The sport fell into growth hell particularly because of calls for from Starbreeze to modify sport engines, first from the internally-developed Diesel Engine which had been used on the Payday video games to the newly developed Valhalla Engine, which Starbreeze had acquired at a big value, and later to the Unreal Engine after the Valhalla proved too tough to work with. Having slipped its main launch dates twice, the sport was accomplished by November 2018, however which the builders felt was underneath excessive rush and with out enough high quality assessment and testing. Overkill’s The Walking Dead had mediocre critiques on launch to Microsoft Windows, and solely 100,000 items had been bought throughout the month. Starbreeze had positioned a big quantity of gross sales expectations behind the sport, and with poor gross sales, the corporate positioned plans to launch the sport on consoles on maintain, and in December 2018 introduced that it was restructuring because of a scarcity of liquidatable belongings from the underperformance of Overkill’s The Walking Dead.^[131] In Starbreeze’s monetary report for the quarter ending December 31, 2018, which included Overkill’s The Walking Dead‘ launch, the sport introduced in solely about 34.1 million kr (about US$3.7 million), whereas Payday 2, a title launched in 2013, made 20.4 million kr in the identical quarter.^[132] By the top of February 2019, Skybound pulled its licensing settlement from Starbreeze as “ultimately ‘Overkill’s The Walking Dead’ did not meet our standards nor is it the quality that we were promised”. Starbreeze formally halted additional growth of the Windows model and cancelled the sport’s deliberate console ports, whereas Skybound later cancelled the sport totally and pulled the license from Starbreeze.^[133] The poor returns on OTWD led Starbreeze to bear a company restructuring from December 2018 to December 2019, shedding employees, promoting off publishing and mental property rights, and reimplemented paid downloadable content material for Payday 2, reneging on an early promise that each one such future content material could be free.^[134]

Though attaining notable vital success,^[135] together with GameSpot’s 2005 Best Game No One Played award,^[136] Psychonauts bought fewer than 100,000 copies throughout its preliminary launch.^[137] The sport led to troubles at writer Majesco Entertainment, together with the resignation of its CEO and the plummeting of the corporate’s inventory,^[138] prompting a class-action lawsuit by the corporate’s stockholders.^[139] At the time of its launch in 2005, the sport was thought-about the “poster child” for failures in modern video games.^[140] Its poor gross sales have additionally been blamed on a scarcity of promoting. However, at present the sport stays a well-liked title on varied digital obtain companies. The creator of Psychonauts, Tim Schafer, has a cult following because of his distinctive and eccentric fashion.^[141] Eventually, Double Fine would go on to amass the complete rights to publishing the sport, and, with funding from Dracogen, created a Mac OS X and Linux port of the sport, which was bought as a part of a Humble Bundle in 2012 with practically 600,000 bundles bought; in accordance with Schafer, “We made more on Psychonauts [in 2012] than we ever have before.”^[142] In August 2015, Steam Spy estimated roughly 1,157,000 homeowners of the sport on the digital distributor Steam.^[143] Psychonauts was re-released in 2019 for the PlayStation 4 as a Standard Edition and a Collector’s Edition, each area free, by publishing firm Limited Run Games.^[144] A sequel, Psychonauts 2, was partially crowdfunded previous to Double Fine’s acquisition by Microsoft who offered extra funding help, and was launched in August 2021. The sequel went on to develop into Double Fine’s finest promoting sport, with at the very least 1.7 million copies bought by April 1, 2022.^[145][146]

Puyo Puyo Chronicle is a 2016 puzzle online game developed and printed by Sega for the Nintendo 3DS. Released in Japan, it was meant to have fun the twenty fifth anniversary of Puyo Puyo,^[147] much like titles like Puyo Puyo! fifteenth Anniversary and Puyo Puyo!! twentieth Anniversary. The major sport is an RPG that takes place in a storybook world, the place the participant progresses although the story by battling enemies and different characters in Puyo Puyo. While critics praised the change to 3D artwork fashion and multiplayer modes, the RPG mode was criticized for being repetitive and tedious.^[148][149] Puyo Puyo Chronicle bought lower than 22,000 copies in its lifetime,^[107][150] and sequence producer Mizuki Hosoyamada confirmed that the sport had poor gross sales in a 2021 interview with Red Bull.^[151] This was the final devoted Puyo Puyo sport to coincide with an anniversary, with the sequence’ thirtieth anniversary as a substitute being commemorated with Super Puyo Quest Project, a big replace to Puyopuyo!! Quest that modified main components of the sport;^[152][153] and content material updates to Puyo Puyo Tetris 2.^[154]

Shenmue on the Dreamcast is extra infamous for its overambitious price range than its poor gross sales figures. At the time of launch in 1999, the sport had the report for the most costly manufacturing prices (over US$70 million),^[155] and its five-year manufacturing time. In comparability, the video games’ complete sale was 1.2 million copies.^[156] Shenmue, nevertheless, was a vital hit, incomes a median assessment rating of 89%.^[157] The sport was alleged to be the preliminary installment of a trilogy. The second installment was finally launched in 2001, however by this time the Dreamcast was floundering, so the sport solely noticed a launch in Japan and Europe. Sega finally launched it for North American gamers for the Xbox, however the poor efficiency of each titles mixed with restructuring have made Sega reluctant to finish the trilogy for concern of failure to return on the funding.^[158] However, a Kickstarter marketing campaign has acquired report help for a 3rd title, with a launch initially set for 2018,^[159] was finally launched on November 19, 2019.^[160] Ports of the primary two titles had been launched in 2018 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 to re-acclimate gamers in preparation for the third title’s launch.

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is a spin-off from the Sonic the Hedgehog sequence, launched in 2014 and developed by Big Red Button Entertainment and IllFonic for Sega and Sonic Team, together with its handheld counterpart Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, which was developed by Sanzaru Games. Although each video games acquired a damaging reception, Rise of Lyric for the Wii U is especially thought-about one of many worst video video games of all time because of many glitches, poor gameplay and weak writing. Both video games failed commercially, promoting solely 490,000 copies as of February 2015, making them the lowest-selling video games within the Sonic franchise.^[161] Big Red Button had thought-about shuttering within the wake of Rise of Lyric‘s underperforming gross sales alongside its poor reception.^[162]

Sonic Runners is a Sonic the Hedgehog sport for Android and iOS. A side-scrolling countless runner, it was Sonic Team’s first Sonic sport that was unique to smartphones.^[163] It was mushy launched in choose areas in February 2015^[164] and formally launched worldwide in June 2015^[165] to blended critiques.^[166] Although it was downloaded over 5 million instances,^[167] the sport’s writer, Sega, thought-about it a industrial failure as a result of it solely made between ¥30–50 million a month.^[168] As a outcome, it was discontinued in July 2016. Nintendo Life wrote its failure as proof that the recognizability of a model doesn’t assure success.^[169]

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was developed by Rocksteady Games who beforehand developed the extremely profitable Batman: Arkham sequence for Warner Bros. Games. A continuation of their work within the DC Comics universe, the sport centered on the rogue’s gallery of villains. The sport acquired lukewarm critiques, with specific criticism aimed on the sport’s stay service components, and fell beneath Warner Bros.’ gross sales expectations. In May 2024, Warner Bros. took a $200 million impairment cost, partly as a result of sport’s poor gross sales,^[170][171] and Rocksteady suffered layoffs in August 2024.^[172] In a monetary assertion in May 2025, Warner Bros. reported a 48% drop in gaming income over its prior 12 months attributed to the failure of Suicide Squad alongside participant attrition in its ongoing stay service video games.^[173]

Sunset, a first-person exploration journey sport involving a housekeeper working for a dictator of a fictional nation, was developed by two-person Belgian studio Tale of Tales, who beforehand had created a number of acclaimed arthouse fashion video games and different audio-visual tasks resembling The Path. They needed to make Sunset a “game for gamers” whereas nonetheless retaining their arthouse-style strategy, and along with planning on a industrial launch, used Kickstarter to achieve funding. Sunset solely bought about 4000 copies on its launch, together with these to Kickstarter backers. Tale of Tales opted to shut their studio after sinking the corporate’s funds into the sport, and believed that in the event that they did launch any new video games sooner or later, they’d doubtless shrink back from industrial launch.^[174]

System Shock 2 is the 1999 sequel to the 1994 immersive sim System Shock. The authentic sport was made by Looking Glass Studios and printed by Origin Systems, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts on the time. System Shock was critically praised and had modest gross sales. Irrational Games was shaped in 1997 by three former Looking Glass staff, and Looking Glass approached Irrational about co-developing a sport like System Shock, and after a number of iterations, got here to the thought of a direct sequel. System Shock 2 was equally met with vital reward at launch and was named as Game of the Year by a number of publications,^[175] however didn’t promote properly, with solely about 58,000 copies promoting inside eight months of launch.^[176][177] For Looking Glass, System Shock 2, much like Thief: The Dark Project, characterize video games that they’d developed with multi-million greenback budgets that they might not recoup, and because of mounting debt, Looking Glass closed down in May 2000.^[178] Irrational needed to proceed to develop within the System Shock sequence, however Electronic Arts, which owned the mental property, felt gross sales of System Shock 2 failed to fulfill expectations to justify a sequel. Instead, Irrational got down to develop a sport as a religious successor to the gameplay ideas of System Shock however with out utilizing the property, ensuing of their 2007 hit title BioShock.^[179]

The fourth sport within the fashionable Myst sequence, launched in 2003. It was developed by Cyan Worlds shortly after Riven was accomplished. The sport took Cyan Worlds greater than 5 years and $12 million to finish^[180] and was codenamed DIRT (“D’ni in real time”), then MUDPIE (that means “Multi-User DIRT, Persistent / Personal Interactive Entertainment / Experience / Exploration / Environment”). Though it had typically constructive reception,^[181][182] the gross sales had been disappointing.^[183] In comparability, the primary three Myst video games had bought greater than 12 million items collectively earlier than Uru‘s launch.^[184] Uru‘s poor gross sales had been additionally thought-about a think about financially burdening Cyan, contributing to the corporate’s close to closure in 2005.^[185]

The real-time technique online game Realms of Ruin relies on Warhammer Age of Sigmar. It was developed by Frontier Developments and launched on 17 November 2023. Despite the “mixed or average” critiques (Metacritic), RoR sport gross sales had been a lot decrease than anticipated.^[186][187] The RoR concurrent gamers on Steam peaked at 1,572 with simply 129 enjoying on Steam on 27 November 2023.^[187] Post-launch, Frontier adjusted their income expectations with an anticipated “loss of around £9 million”.^[188] Gaming journalists typically contemplate Realms of Ruin a flop.^[188] Stats on Video Game Insights present merely 69,330 items had been bought through Steam with 36 energetic gamers (24h peak) and 54.1% constructive critiques by 18 July 2024.^[189] This brought about Frontier Developments’ shares to say no practically 20%.^[187]

Released by Atari in 1983, I, Robot was the primary online game to make use of 3-D polygon graphics,^{[citation needed]} and the primary that allowed the participant to alter digicam angles.^[190] It additionally had gameplay that rewarded planning and stealth as a lot as reflexes and set off velocity, and included a non-game mode referred to as “Doodle City”, the place gamers might make art work utilizing the polygons. Production estimates range, however consensus is that there have been not more than 1500 items made.^[191]

In 1982, the President of Cinematronics organized a one-time buy of 5000 printed circuit boards from Japan. The boards had been used within the manufacture of a number of video games, however the majority of them had been reserved for the brand new arcade sport Jack the Giantkiller, based mostly on the traditional fairy story Jack and the Beanstalk. Between the acquisition value of the boards and different bills, Cinematronics invested virtually two million {dollars} into Jack the Giantkiller. It fully flopped within the arcade and most of the boards went unsold, costing the corporate an enormous amount of cash at a time when it was already having monetary difficulties.^[192]

Radar Scope was one of many first arcade video games launched by Nintendo. It was launched in Japan first, and a quick run of success there led Nintendo to order 3,000 items for the American market in 1980. American operators had been unimpressed, nevertheless, and Nintendo of America was caught with about 2,000 unsold Radar Scope machines sitting within the warehouse.^[193]

Facing a possible monetary catastrophe, Nintendo assigned the sport’s designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, to revamp the sport. Instead he designed a model new sport that might be run in the identical cupboards and on the identical {hardware} as Radar Scope.^[194] That new sport was the smash hit Donkey Kong, and Nintendo was capable of recoup its funding in 1981 by changing the remaining unsold Radar Scope items to Donkey Kong and promoting these.^[195]

Sundance is an arcade vector sport launched in 1979. Producer Cinematronics deliberate to fabricate about 1000 Sundance items, however gross sales suffered from a mix of poor gameplay and an abnormally excessive price of producing defects. The fallout price in manufacturing was about 50%, the vector monitor (made by an out of doors vendor) had a faulty image tube that might arc and burn out if the sport was left in sure positions throughout transport,^[196] and in accordance with programmer Tim Skelly, the circuit boards required a variety of cut-and-jumpering between mom and daughter boards that additionally made for a really fragile setup.^[197] The items that survived to achieve arcade flooring weren’t a success with avid gamers—Skelly himself reportedly felt that the gameplay lacked the “anxiety element” obligatory in an excellent sport and requested Cinematronics to not launch it, and in an April 1983 interview with Video Games Magazine he referred to Sundance as “a total dog”.^[198]