Biggest Commercial Failures Of 2010

Gamersmint: Call it poor marketing, buggy release builds, publishing trouble or simply a bad game, but the following games failed to win gamers’ hearts and their money.

[Karooo]

Enslaved scored great but they didnt market it well.

[cyborg]

copies but commercial success is not always the benchmark to judge a game and Enslaved is def an exception. I really enjoyed playing it.

[Active Reload]

Yeah, that was bad for Enslaved. It even had a demo that was rated rather high, on Live at least. But nobody bought seemingly...

[GWAVE]

If any game(s) should be in this article, it should be DJ Hero 2 and Singularity.

Enslaved failed because it was hyped by many to be "a better game than even Uncharted 2!!!!" but many gamers ignored the PR hype and saw the game for what it is: an average adventure game with auto-jump mechanics.

[Croash]

"Enslaved failed because it was hyped by many to be "a better game than even Uncharted 2!!!!" "

Uh, I remember the developers saying that there were aiming for the game to have Uncharted 1's feeling. I think you're talking about the great misinterpretation coming from here : http://n4g.com/news/535150/...

And because of that amazing "News" title(that's sarcasm, look at comment #7) people started talking about Enslaved aiming for Uncharted 2's graphics and blah blah blah...But this isn't someone from Ninja Theory talking anyway (the comparison came from "CVG man Andy").

And the game itself is enjoyable, even though the fighting mechanics are kind of broken and the platforming has "auto-mode" always activated. It looks good, it is intriguing, and it has great environments. Ninja Theory really worked on the game, they could have done better when it comes to gameplay, but their game still deserved more sales.

When you see this list, 9 out of the 10 shown games were either bad or average.
Enslaved is definitely the one deserving more sales (Castlevania : Lords of Shadow as well I believe), and the Hero franchises has already sold a lot, the developers don't need more money to make sequels.
Singularity I can't know, people said it was kind of underrated, but all I see is that the game had interesting ideas poorly implemented :/

Edit: I think Hydrophobia might have a second chance with the Pure patch and price reduction.

[GSpartan777]

"Enslaved failed because it was hyped by many to be "a better game than even Uncharted 2!!!!" but many gamers ignored the PR hype and saw the game for what it is: an average adventure game with auto-jump mechanics."

Pretty much. It was a gorgeous looking game with great characters, but combat and platforming was really nothing spectacular. Story wasn't really anything interesting till the end which was really a WTF moment. It wasn't a bad game, it was good but not amazing either.

[showtimefolks]

enslaved should have been better its is a ok game with great story

ico/sotc never sold really millions but yet we have seen new games from the director and hopefully this new ico/sotc will do over a million people need to play those games masterpieces

alan wake such a good game but no support it goes back to the original argument that if its ain't a FPS it won't sell on xbox360. as a xbox360 owner i bought it and i wish more people will buy it so we can see a sequel

heavy rain did over a million within its first month but it deserves more too not sure where the sales stand right now

modnation racers is a lot better than than people give it credit for

Singularity: the promise of all the powers yet a generic shooter

and a few more but sometimes we as gamers hype it to a point of no return like with enslaved everyone thought its UC3 but it was unfair to the game

[Eyeco]

In a Way im glad Enslaved was a commercial flop Ninja Theory deserved it

[Croash]

"In a Way im glad Enslaved was a commercial flop Ninja Theory deserved it"

What...the...hell? *facepalm*
Happy about a commercial flop for a game made by developers who only released 2 games during this generation and saying that a whole team of development deserved that?
Well that's something new!
"Oh look, these guys created a great game!"
- "A great game, you said? I hope it doesn't sell."

Would you at least explain why?
Surely DmC isn't a part of the answer.

[guigsy]

Yeah it would be nice to see more and more developers loose their jobs... what a moron.

[psb]

when it released and that was the worst gaming decision I made in 2010.

[Active Reload]

Thats funny, ha! Did you not play the demo?

[pneboy]

id rather play that than gears of war, and i hate both of them PoS games

[Active Reload]

Thats because you're special ;)

[MatthewMk2]

He calls these games commercial failures, yet you don’t quote any numbers. What were the sales figures? What was each games budget? How much money did they lose? What makes them failures? Prince of Persia had nothing to do with the movie, get your facts strait. Naughty Bear is getting a sequel, seems weird to make a sequel to a failure.

Seems like hes just pulling random games out your ass here.

[VenomProject]

What about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow? I'm playing the game right now and I can't believe so many people overlooked this gem.

[gillri]

im gonna play Enslaved eventually

[dkgshiz]

They should of just created Heavenly Sword 2. Everyone wanted it to happen but they complained about the 1.5+ million copies sold from HS. So they decided to create Enslaved in the end and it only managed to sell less then 500,000 copies on all platforms...

[Achemki]

Pretty spot-on article imo. All the titles listed bombed in the truest sense.

[gypsygib]

I rented Enslaved, it was alright but I would have felt really dumb if I bought it. The gameplay is shallow, the climbing is on auto-mode and the game is short. The story was very good but it's not the type of story that you want to keep on replaying like MGS4 or U2 because it isn't that entertaining (U2) or deep (MGS4).

[Silly gameAr]

I finally got the chance to try Enslaved and I think it is a pretty good game. Top notch voice acting and pretty cool action sequences. It's easy on the eyes too.

Only problems I have with the game so far is the camera, and the combat. When things get to hectic on screen, it seems like it's hard for the cam to keep up and sometimes it just drops off completely.

On the combat side, I HATE getting swarmed by mechs because sometimes the controls can be so damn unresponsive. It's hard to block when the block button doesn't want to work until after the 3rd time you press it and by than the damage is done.

Apart from that, the game is pretty cool. Haven't tried any of the other games on the list, but I want to give SplatterHouse and Naughty Bear a run. Dark Void is like $12 + S&H on Amazon so I might take that hit and give it a go.

[prongs123]

i might add, Hydrophobia Pure turns out to be a great game. Overall, Spot on review.