The Video Game industry is young but has had it's share of huge,embarassing failures.
(I am talking about failures in sales;let's save artistic disasters for another thread, althought the two are certainly often closely connected.)

What most lists of the top video game flops list as the biggest single disaster came early in the history of video games: 1982 and a lot of you have never heard of itL


[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game[/url])

God, from that description just about every mistake that could be made in making a video game was made on that one. The Six Month deadline was astounding.
BTW 20 to 25 Million for the game rights for a hit movie are reasonable nowdays,but in 1982 it was a massive amount to pay.

Probably the more recent failure that sticks in my mind was "Hellgate:London". It was supposed to be gigantic...particularly in on line play...the next Diablo ..but instead it turned out to be over hyped major disappointment.
In fact the word Flashtipped..a computer game industry term for game that is massively hyped but truns out not to come close to living up to the hype was coined from the company...Flagship..that made the game.

And a couple of the great failures in COmputer games are avaialbe here on GOG: I give you Daikatana. It might or might not be as bad as it's reputation, but that is was huge finiancial disaster for John Remero cannot be denied.

Still think Duke Nukem Forever was a bigger flop than ET, I know that numerically I am wrong. So guess it is me having a personal something involved.

One Man's Lie says hi...

ET is especially important because it flopped so hard it almost broke the entire gaming industry. It wasn't just a financial disaster for Atari, it was an absolute catastrophe, and at that point Atari was by far the biggest game in town. It wasn't all bad, of course, because the 1983 crash led to the development of the PC gaming market, so in a way we can thank ET for GOG even existing.

I would say that DNF is the single greatest disappointment in modern video gaming, though. After so many years, and so many half-finished builds, the final product's resounding mediocrity was just heartbreaking. So if you're looking at a hype-to-success ratio rather than a cost-to-earnings ratio, it beats ET by a mile.

Except No Man's Sky was actually a commercial success, and is probably still selling pretty well, now that the game has received some major updates.

Unless you're actually talking about a game titled One Man's Lie, in which case, never mind.

Was DNF even a commercial failure? I know that most consider it a disappointment, but how well did it sell?

Rise of the robots

It lost any chance of being a commercial success less than halfway through development.
This is coming from Pitchford, so take it with a grain of salt, but still.

There are no failures. Nowadays it doesn't matter how shit, unfinished, pre-order cut, DLC ridden, overpriced, over hyped, DRM laden, clientware only, pixalated "retro" or bandwagon jumping the aledged software is, someone will buy it, and then vigorously defend how wonderful it is.
Just look at the big popular titles, blatent re-skins of last year games and yet there are people queuing round the corner to buy it.

TBH, if someone wrote a game about watching shit steam, there would be backers on kickstarter, and calls for achievements in Greenlight/InDev before it hit the pavement.

Ah, you mean because the development dragged on forever? ( No pun intended. ) I guess that makes sense. Still, pre-orders and initial sales must have been good.

Have they done anything with the Duke license since DNF? I wonder why they won't create a much simpler sequel or reboot in the style of the old games. I'm sure there's a market for that. Games like Underrail or Stardew Valley show that you can create excellent, commercially successful games with small teams and budgets, and that many people still enjoy these old school back-to-the-roots game experiences, instead of all the fancy realistic 3D games. Oh, and then there's Strafe(?). No idea if it's going to be good, but it shows people still have an interest in these retro Shooters.

Other than take away the opportunity to buy the older titles on numerous storefronts, they have - like and [url=http://bulletstorm.com/]shoehorning in a Duke skin and voice lines by Jon St. John to the Bulletstorm remaster

*yawn*

When i read the title of this post i knew that E.T. for the Atari 2600 will be mentioned in it. :D

Battlecruiser 3000AD did not do very well, and created some controversy back then.

Many games failed. Some because of crazy claims by the developers or publishers, some because the games were buggy, some because of DRM (how did it turn out for Sim City?), some just had poor luck.

I'd say a game that "flopped big time" wouldn't get a 2, much less a 3.

I still can´t believe that the Gothic games didn`t flop, but I learned, that masochism is a big thing in the gaming community!