Creating a video game is no easy feat.
While there are a ton of success stories from both big devs and indie makers, in the history
of all things gaming, there have also been some major fails and disasters, on both a
content and financial level.
Some of those disasters are definitely bigger than others, so today, we’re counting down
some of our favourite f-ups with our list of the top 10 video game fails!
Let’s jump in.
10 Virtual Boy Let’s start off our list with a clunky failure
called the Virtual Boy.
This console, developed and manufactured by Nintendo, promised to be the first 3D gaming
console back in 1995.
It was almost set up to fail – lead Nintendo game designed Shigeru Miyamoto had barely
any involvement in its development, it’s technology had to be down scaled due to high
costs and the fact that it posed potential health concerns, and when it was released,
it was pushed to the market unfinished, with Nintendo’s development priorities shifting
to the N64.
But those weren’t the only reasons it bombed – the 3D it did offer was unimpressive at
best, the console price was high, it had a monochrome display, it wasn’t really all
that portable as promised and it boasted a ton of those health concerns we mentioned
earlier.
Even when Nintendo dropped the sale price, the console still didn’t pick up, making
it a total failure.
9 Sega Saturn From one console to the next, here at number
9 we have the Sega Saturn!
The successor to the Genesis came out in 1994 in Japan, releasing at the same time as Sony’s
Playstation, the original PS1, as a competitor.
Seeing how well it was doing in Japan, they wanted to compete in North America, so rushed
the release of the system, bumping it to May of 1995 instead of September, which all retailers
and third party developers had been initially anticipating.
That didn’t go over well.
There was minimal time to promote the system, and only had 6 games available.
Then, at E3, Sony decided to tear Sega a new one by announcing the price of their Playstation,
which was 100 dollars less than the Sega Saturn.
Sega would follow suit the next day with lowering their price of the Saturn, but the cost of
manufacturing the Saturn was greater than it was for Sony to manufacture the Playstation,
so they lost out significantly on the financial front.
Plus the sales in Playstation games did better than anticipated, with Tekken beating out
Sega’s VirtuaFighter.
But the Sega Saturn isn’t the only problematic decision that Sega has made over the years-
8 Sonic Boom No, we’re not talking about the original
1991 Sega classic.
Instead, we’re talking about Sonic in general.
Now, hard core Sonic fans, fret not, this isn’t going to be a point insulting the
blue blur.
Rather, I’m going after Sega once more (if you’ve seen any of the Sonic themed lists
on our channel, you know I’ve got some beef with Sega when it comes to the decline in
quality in Sonic games).
Sega in recent years has been notorious for pumping out under developed sonic games.
The rumour mill has it (and accounts from ex employees) that Sonic Team over at Sega
had, at one point, reached a, well, breaking point, and were oh so over producing more
Sonic games.
But unfortunately for them, that’s one of the crucial ways that Sega makes money.
But also unfortunately for them, pumping out terrible Sonic games can often mean a commercial
failure.
Case in point.
Sonic Boom – the 2014 spin off series.
The Shattered Crystal title is considered one of the worst video games of all time by
many critics thanks to glitches galore and poor writing.
Shattered Crystal and it’s counterpart Rise of Lyric only sold approximately 490,000 making
them the biggest failure in the Sonic franchise.
At least the cartoon isn’t too terrible.
7 Sonic Runners Oh look!
More Sonic!
Another game in the franchise also considered a financial failure?
The 2015 title Sonic Runners, the game exclusively for mobile phones, which made too little money,
and by 2016, a year after it’s release, was discontinued.
Nintendo Life wrote a scathing review of it in which they noted that it’s failure was
proof that the recognisability of a brand does not guarantee success.
Considering Sonic was literally invented to compete with Nintendo’s Mario, sounds like
they don’t mind not holding back.
Oh Sonic.
Oh Sega.
Don’t even get us started on Sonic 06.
That game is horrifically untouchable at this point.
Sorry to any of you out there who actually liked it.
You deserve better, friends.
6 Nokia N-Gage This one personally hurts my heart.
Back in 2003, Nokia decided to get in on the gaming console craze and crafted a mobile
device that also functioned as a handheld gaming console.
This was before well developed mobile games were a thing, friends.
Anywho, the system was immediately mocked (some people thought it looked like a taco)
and Nokia dropped the price by 100 bucks within a week of its release.
Essentially, the console was just trying to do too much – it was a phone, it was a gaming
system, and it was jam packed with a lot of other features that weren’t executed in
the most user friendly or efficient ways.
It also couldn’t compete with the Game boy Advance, the Sony PSP or the Nintendo DS.
But you know what?
THIS GUY HAD ONE AND I LOVED IT TO DEATH.
Haters gonna hate.
5 No Man’s Sky It’s hard to call No Man’s Sky a fail.
Currently, the developers behind the game, Hello Games, really uped their game, no pun
intended, and have updated it and added so much additional content that it’s finally
shaping up to be the game that it was initially intended to be.
But back when it was first released in August of 2016, it was considered a major disappointment.
Many of the game mechanics and features that had been promised in the game’s marketing
weren’t in the game, and it fell short big time.
People were pissed off, and for a while, it was seen as one of the biggest dev failures
in all of video game history.
Since, Hello Games has put in a solid effort, as well as a slew of apologies, and it’s
definitely a game worth going back to.
At least one of these numbers on our list has a happy ending!
4 3DO Interactive Multiplayer Ever hear of the 3DO interactive multiplayer?
Probably not.
This system, marketed by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins was a 1993 console that was supposed
to be more than a video game console; it was supposed to be a whole family entertainment
device.
And honestly, it could’ve had a shot at doing alright at the time if it weren’t
for how outrageously priced it was; it went for 699.95 US- a price point that 3DO refused
to lower.
After the console failed, the company worked as a third part developer for a few years
before finally filing for bankruptcy in 2003.
3 ET the Extra Terrestrial ET the Extra Terrestrial, the game adaptation
of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster hit has gone down in history as one of the worst
video games ever produced.
It was so bad that it actually played a big role in the eventual bankruptcy of Atari,
and the video game crash of 1983 in which almost all hope was lost for home video game
consoles until Nintendo basically resurrected the industry.
So how did it get to be so bad?
It was coded within five weeks as a means of getting it out for the holiday season in
1982.
Atari had ordered 5 million copies of the game to be produced, and only sold 1.5 million,
with many of the cartridges that were sold being returned for how awful the game turned
out to be.
But perhaps one of the best parts about this utter disaster was the fact that Atari literally
buried thousands of copies of the game in New Mexico along with other titles of theirs
that did not sell – something that was an urban legend for years until it was confirmed
in 2014, with Atari personnel confirming that 800,000 cartridges of poorly selling games
were buried at the landfill.
2 Tiger Telematics Tiger Telematics is the company behind the
worst selling video game console of all time, the Gizmondo.
It’s a Swedish company that began back in 2002 that- get this – began as a merger
between an electronics distributor and a carpet retailer in FLORDIA.
Weird eh?
Well, it gets stranger.
The company released a gaming console called the Gizmondo, which it spent a crap ton of
money on promoting, including the likes of ridiculously expensive and luxurious parties
and a ton of sponsored events.
When the system actually came out, it only sold 25,000 units, and only had one game at
the time of launch in the UK.
When it came to the US, it had eight titles, and 30 more were in development when Tiger
Telematics finally went bankrupt.
In addition to that, the head of the company was a fellow named Stefan Erikkson.
Stefan Erikkson turned out to be the head of a Swedish mafia organization and got hit
with a bunch of criminal charges, and after the company went bankrupt, he crashed his
Ferrari and got arrested.
Many people feel that Erikkson was Tiger Telematic’s downfall.
1 Star Wars Battlefront 2 We’ve talked about a whole lot of failures
on this list.
But none are as bad as the saga of complete failure that came out of EA with Star Wars
Battlefront 2 back in 2017.
My apologies if this is triggering still to some of you out there.
Thoughts and prayers friends, thoughts and prayers.
So, long story short, when Battlefront 2 was released, it got a whole lot of heat concerning
loot boxes; a tactic that had becoming increasingly more evident in EA titles leading up to Battlefront
2.
Buying loot boxes with real life money gave players a significant gameplay advantage-
it wasn’t just cosmetic.
When EA was questioned about it, their community team posted on Reddit, and their comment became
the single most down voted comment on the site at the time.
Seeing that backlash, they temporarily removed the micro transactions, but the damage was
already done.
It spawned a whole online debate about the ethics of loot boxes and micro transactions,
with politicians even likening them to gambling with the negative influence it had on younger
players.
Eventually, EA managed to revise their micro transactions, making them only cosmetic in
the game rather than for loot boxes that affected gameplay itself.
Despite the game itself offering a solid multiplayer experience, the controversy around the game
tainted it’s reputation, and hit EA real damn hard.
There we have it friends!
There’s a ton of other video game failures, from titles to consoles to commercial flip
flops that we didn’t get the chance to touch on this list, so if you’d like a part two,
make sure to give us a shout in those comments below and like this video!
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I’ll catch you all in the next video!