Topic: Video and computer game software failures

[Pugnate]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_failures_in_video_gaming

Found this quite interesting, especially the Atari E.T. bit.

Battlecruiser 3000AD

    Main article: Battlecruiser 3000AD

One of the most notorious PC gaming failures, 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 public excoriation of his critics. The concept behind BC3K was extremely ambitious, giving the player the command of 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."[24] 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.[25] The posts ignited one of the largest flame wars in Usenet history.[26] 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).[27] The game was buggy, even unfinished in many areas. It was written for a DOS environment at a time when most games used Windows 95. It employed outdated graphics, MIDI music, a cryptic interface, and contained almost no documentation - a huge problem since the commands were unintuitive (e.g. Alt-Ctrl-E to fire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. 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.

[edit] Beyond Good & Evil

    Main article: Beyond Good & Evil (video game)

Although critically acclaimed and planned as the first part of a trilogy, Beyond Good & Evil flopped commercially. Former Ubisoft employee Owen Hughes stated 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 published by Ubisoft and all of which had strong brand identity in their markets), impacted BG&E's ability to achieve interest with the public. The game's commercial failure led Ubisoft to cancel plans for any subsequent titles in the series indefinitely.[28][29]

[edit] Daikatana

    Main article: Daikatana

The brainchild of Ion Storm developer John Romero, Daikatana was a first-person shooter for the PC and Nintendo 64. The initial design had been completed in March 1997 and Romero believed the game could be finished a mere seven months later, in time for the Christmas 1997 retail season, using the Quake video game engine. However, Id software showed the Quake II engine at E3 in June 1997, so Romero decided to upgrade Daikatana for it. This switch was more difficult than first imagined and pushed the game's release schedule to 1998. Due to internal conflicts over the Dominion project, almost the entire Daikatana team (except Romero) quit and the schedule was again pushed out. A demo which only supported multiplayer deathmatch mode was released in March 1999 to lackluster reviews. At E3 1999, the game was a huge disappointment and led to the absorption of Ion Storm by publisher Eidos Interactive. In December 1999, a huge release party was held for the game which was now nearly complete, but it was not actually released until April 2000. The Nintendo 64 version fared far worse, with pared down graphics, large amounts of fog placed in levels to obscure detail, and blurriness making gameplay very difficult.

[edit] Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3

    Main article: Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3

The first title released by Ion Storm, Dominion was a real time strategy title similar to Command & Conquer and Warcraft. The game was originally developed by 7th Level, but was purchased by Ion Storm for US$1.8 million. The project originally had a budget of US$50,000 and was scheduled to be finished in three months with two staff members. Due to mismanagement and Ion Storm's inexperience, the project took over a year, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.[30] Dominion was released in July, 1998. It received bad reviews and sold poorly, falling far short of recouping its purchase price, let alone the cost of finishing it. The game divided employees working on Ion's marquee title, Daikatana, arguably leading to the walkout of several key development team members. It put a strain on Ion Storm's finances, leading the once well-funded startup to scramble for cash as Daikatana's development extended over several years.[31]

[edit] E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)

    Main article: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)

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. 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 director Steven Spielberg seemed excited about the idea of having his hit movie made into a video game. Word of mouth spread fast but 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 the New Mexico desert.[32] The game 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. It is widely considered to be one of the first big video game flops ever.

The scale of the E.T. disaster has become almost legendary and the game is still well known nearly 25 years after its publication, despite the fact that few gamers today will have played the game. E.T. was ranked in 21st place in GameSpy's "25 Dumbest Moments in Video Game History".[33] More recently, the game (and its creation process) was parodied extensively in an episode of the G4 TV show Code Monkeys.

[edit] Grabbed by the Ghoulies

    Main article: Grabbed by the Ghoulies

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, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie and GoldenEye 007, and Microsoft had acquired Rare, paying US$377 million. Microsoft hyped the game heavily, 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 and highly unorthodox controls.[34][35]

[edit] The Last Express

    Main article: The Last Express

Released in 1997 after five years in development, this 6-million-dollar[36] adventure game was the brainchild of Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince of Persia. The game was noted for taking place in almost complete real-time, using Art Nouveau-style characters that were rotoscoped from a 22-day live-action video shoot,[37] and featuring intelligent writing and levels of character depth that were not often seen in computer games. Despite rave reviews,[38][39] Brøderbund, the game's publisher, did little to promote the game, apart from a brief mention in a press release[40] and enthusiastic statements by Brøderbund executives.[41] Released in April, the game was not a success, selling only about 100,000 copies,[42] a million copies short of breaking even.[43]

After the release of the game, Mechner's company Smoking Car Productions quietly folded, and Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company,[44] who were only interested in Brøderbund's educational software, effectively putting the game out of print.

[edit] Pac-Man (Atari 2600)

    Main article: Pac-Man (Atari 2600)

Pac Man for the Atari 2600
Pac Man for the Atari 2600

The home version of the highly popular Pac-Man arcade game was eagerly anticipated, but was an incredible failure. In 1982, Atari created twelve million cartridges in hopes of the game boosting system sales. Atari did sell close to seven million cartridges, but consumers and critics alike gave it low ratings. The game was rushed to make the 1982 Christmas season. The high number of unsold units (over five million), coupled with the expense of a large marketing campaign, led to large losses for Atari. This game, along with E.T., is often blamed for sparking the video game crash of 1983. Shortly after the disappointment of Pac-Man, Atari reported a huge quarterly loss, prompting parent company Warner Communications to sell the division off in 1984. Atari never regained a prominent position in the home console market, as Nintendo and Sega, and later Sony and Microsoft, rose to become the chief players in a market that Atari once dominated.[45]
[edit] Psychonauts

    Main article: Psychonauts

Despite being a critical success and being highly innovative for a platformer,[46] the game sold less than 90,000 copies on the PC, Xbox, and PS2. The game led to troubles at publisher Majesco, including the resignation of its CEO and the plummeting of the company's stock,[47] prompting a class-action lawsuit by the company's stockholders.[48] This game has been declared the "poster child" for the recent failures in innovative games.[49] Its poor sales have also been blamed on a lack of marketing coupled with a high-end, US$50 price tag. Since this, the game has been placed onto Valve's digital distribution service, "Steam", where it is selling for a price of US$19.95, as of April 2007. Due to Valve's policy of not releasing sales statistics, it is not currently known how the game is doing in this new market. It is also available on GameTap, only playable with a 9.99$ Per month subscription. The game did however go on to sell over 400,000 after further positive buzz and a lower price tag on services such as Steam.[50]

[edit] Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

    Main article: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (video game)

In an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Terminator movie franchise, Atari released Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines to correspond with the third movie in the franchise. The game was widely panned by video game reviewers[51] and failed to catch on with gamers. A major reason for the game's failure was Atari's failure to release the game in a timely fashion. The game was only released in November 2003, several months too late to capitalize on its movie tie-in.

[edit] Shenmue (Dreamcast)

    Main article: Shenmue

Shenmue on the Dreamcast is more notorious for its overambitious budget than its poor sales figures. While it sold a respectable number of units, at the time of release, the game had the record for the most expensive production costs (over US$70 million)[52], and its production time was 5 years. Shenmue was a critical hit, earning an average review score of 89%.[53] It also sold moderately well, with 460,316 units in the US alone (according to NPD). However, these sales figures were not enough for Sega to recoup the massive production costs.

[Quemaqua]

Interesting.  I'm aware of most of those, barring the home release of Pac Man, and to be honest with you, I'm still not as enthralled with Beyond Good & Evil as everyone else was.  It was a decent game, sure, but there was a good reason that Prince of Persia totally usurped it: PoP was a way, way better game.  BG&E had some good stuff going for it, and I don't regret buying and playing it, but I never would've finished it if Julia hadn't been on me about it so she could see the end, and a lot of it was repetitive, some derivative, and some just plain boring.  I never quite understood the rave reviews.  It had great elements but just needed to break more new ground.

Psychonauts is still an utter shame.  I hope it's selling more now, I really do.  I proudly purchased the Xbox version either the day of release or very close to it, and I also bought the PC version.  I've played through the game with both copies and loved every second of it.  A lot of folks here like the game, and I've gone on and on about it before, but it still bears repeating: if you haven't played Psychonauts, GO FUCKING BUY PSYCHONAUTS.  And get me a Double Fine hoodie while you do.  I totally want one of those.

[Cobra951]

Hell yes.  I loved Psychonauts.  It even found its way into my sig.

[gpw11]

Psychonauts was great, but I can agree with you on BG&E.  It was a good game, but I never got around to finishing it.  I'd say it deserved to sell better, but I"m not going to lose sleep about the lack of a sequel.

[Pugnate]

I still haven't played it. I must though.

[MysterD]

That's a damn shame for Psychonauts.

I still ain't got BG&E on the PC.
I should find a copy of that, somewhere.

[iPPi]

Beyond Good and Evil was a great game.  I never finished it, but the gameplay elements and the story were very engaging.  It just came out at the wrong time and was dwarfed by other big releases.

[Quemaqua]

I've said it before, but... BG&E was entirely overrated.  It *was* a good game, but I'd never have finished it if my wife hadn't pushed me to do so, and it was ultimately a bit of a disappointment.  I can see why it failed.  It didn't deserve to fail quite the way it did, but I don't find it surprising.

[Ghandi]

Psychonauts is probably one of the better platformers that I've ever played. It was just released at a terrible time. And I don't think that it was marketed that well.

[MysterD]

Psychonauts is probably one of the better platformers that I've ever played. It was just released at a terrible time.

Agreed.

And I don't think that it was marketed that well.

Wait -- when did Majesco do a good job of marketing ever???