On this day in 1912 the Titanic, a big boat you should have heard about, hit an iceberg. To commemorate this event we’re giving you eight things in gaming that have sunk like the boat of legend. Make sure you make it to one of the life rafts before this ship sinks.
The Oculus Rift 1.0, or the Virtual Boy, was released by Nintendo in 1995 and almost immediately failed. It was known to cause players to get eye strain, stiff necks, and headeaches. It may have looked like the future but in reality it was almost immediately left in the past.
This beautiful game, Ōkami, was brought to us all in 2006. Despite being considered by many to be the game of the year it still dealt with poor sales, and only racked up 600,000 sales by 2009. Pretty sad sales for a game that is still thought of as a landmark in gaming.
The Atari Jaguar met with failure after its launch,despite being more powerful than its fellow generations consoles. It was plagued by the same issues that the Wii U has encountered, there just weren’t enough games available for the console. Atari pulled a definite Nintendo and didn’t market the Jaguar as much as they should have, which also helped the console to drop off the map for consumers.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released in 1982 and was supposed to cash in on the phenomenon that was the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Unfortunately for Atari the game didn’t meet their sales expectations and they were left with millions of unsold copies. Supposedly Atari was so disappointed with the game that they buried the remainder of the copies in the desert. Way to force your game to be a collector’s item.
Nokia’s N-Gage was released to the public in 2003, and was expected to change the face of hand-held gaming. Unfortunately for them they hadn’t taken the poor design into consideration. The phone/console was awkward for gaming and for phone usage, and by 2005 Nokia considered it a complete failure. Nokia may make indestructible phones but they’ve made a hand-held console that was anything but.
Psychonauts was released in 2005 to considerable critical acclaim, unfortunately there just weren’t the sales numbers to go along with the critical success. The sales were so poor that the publisher, Majesco, had its CEO step down and their stock taken a turn for the worse.
Brutal Legend may have been an amazing game but unfortunately the publisher of the game just didn’t see its potential. It was under-marketed and just didn’t get the attention that it deserved, it didn’t help that it was released alongside Uncharted 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
There was almost no way that Duke Nukem Forever would be a success. It was in development for over a decade, creating more buzz than it really knew what to do with. No game could meet with what was expected. It’s initial development began in the early 90’s, but it soon got dropped into game purgatory. In 2011 it left vaporware status and finally went gold, and almost immediately fell on its face. Maybe Duke just wasn’t meant to be in this era of gaming.
