And as a business failure, it's just a matter of losing money. Some works even led their own game makers into a dead end and closed down directly. More importantly, they directly had a far-reaching impact on the entire game industry at that time.
Everyone knows Apple's famous Steve Jobs, but few people know that Steve Jobs used to be a programmer in the game circle. The most famous "ET alien crash" happened in Atari, where he worked, which indirectly led to the departure of Jobs and the birth of Apple. Today, Longya will talk to you about the games that make the game company lose money.
Car God is a strange game for most players, but in fact, although the car God series has faded out of public view, it was not an unknown person in the year when the game was released. In 2004, Car God 3 was released, and two mountains in the game industry stood behind it to escort it. Ubisoft, the developer, and Atari, the publisher, originally joined forces and wanted to join the GTA series in full swing.
After the game was released, the sales reputation of "Car God 3" collapsed across the board and was directly smashed to the ground by GTA and other games. Just three or three hours of game flow, bad driving feel, bad role movements, and nothing new in the game content, this switch comes from the bad reviews of various media and the dissatisfaction of players. IGN only gave a failing score of 5.4, and the actual sales situation can be imagined.
In 2005, Atari's "Car God 3" was sold for six months, and the project loss reached $654.38+069,000. After "Car God 3", the series tried to make a sequel, but the response was mediocre and was finally forgotten by the public.
Broadsword is a shooting game released in 2000, which spans three platforms: PC, N64 and GBC. John romero, the legendary godfather of FPS who wrote Wolfenstein Castle and Doom Warrior, is the producer and developer, and now the famous Benix Idos is the publisher.
1997, Eidos announced that the broadsword was under development and would be officially released at Christmas. However, the appearance of Thor's Hammer 2 at the E3 exhibition that year changed the development of things. At that time, Romero, like everyone else, was deeply shocked by the game performance of the hammer of Raytheon 2. Romero quickly decided to overturn all the progress in the development of broadsword and switch to the hammer of Raytheon 2. However, according to the cooperation agreement, Quake2 engine can only be used after Thor Hammer 2 is officially released, so the sale of broadsword has to be postponed until 2000.
Obviously, the combination of broadsword and Quake2 engine seems a little unaccustomed, the plot is complicated and chaotic, the battle is monotonous, and the gameplay and picture performance are dull. Once released, broadsword was criticized and questioned by players, and its sales volume was also very worrying. According to the data, only 865,438+090 copies of broadsword were sold in the United States, and the income was 2,765,438+0,982 dollars.
As a member of Marvel Comics, Deadpool did not appear in the Marvel movie universe due to copyright issues. However, with the release of two personal movies, Deadpool, who was covered in garbage, also successfully gained a large number of fans. 20 13 a game called "Deadpool" has already met with players before the release of the Deadpool movie.
The game was produced and distributed by Activision Blizzard with deep pockets. It is a diffusion game with excellent fan base. The producer is skilled and experienced, so the final work is not a masterpiece of the year, but at least it is not a problem to recover the cost. However, Deadpool is not as expected by the public. The game as a whole is not bad, but it is definitely not good. Objectively speaking, it is the law of four words. From the gameplay to the level design, from the role action to the plot content, the performance of Deadpool in all aspects is normal, and there are neither too many unsatisfactory places nor admirable subtleties. The final sales volume is average. So, why didn't a word-of-mouth sales suddenly die?
The main reason is that Activision Blizzard is too rich, and the development and publicity of Dead Pool cost 100000000 dollars. Blizzard's high expectations and blind optimism led to all these tragedies.
Sammu is a masterpiece, which is the consensus of most players. Just the name of the originator of sandbox game is enough to explain Sammu's position in the game world. Sammu was released by Sega at 1999, but the development of the game project started at 1987. For Sega, a whole decade of polishing.
They put in a budget of 70 million dollars without hesitation. You know, that was $70 million of 65,438+0,999, and Miki became the most expensive game in history at that time. Sammu's final presentation effect has undoubtedly had a great impact on Sega's painstaking efforts, such as the shocking picture performance of the next era, all-3D exquisite urban scenes, passers-by, dubbing and movements of independent models.
However, Sammu, as the exclusive escort masterpiece of DC platform, has not achieved high sales results due to the influence of distribution strategy, and the high production and development costs also make it difficult for Sammu to achieve profitability. For Sega, Sammu, which was sought after by players as a masterpiece, was only a financial disaster in the end.
1982, Spielberg's "E.T. Alien" was officially released, and the film was an unprecedented success, sweeping dozens of awards in various film festivals. The word "E.T. Alien" was a hot topic at one time. At that time, Atari was still the most influential game company in the world. They decided to buy the game rights of E.T. Alien at a sky-high price of $2,654.38 million, and officially released the game before Christmas while everyone's enthusiasm has not faded.
This means that the time left for game developers is only five weeks, which seemed impossible at that time. At that time, the game development cycle was mostly six to eight months. However, driven by the interests, Atari did complete the production of the game as scheduled, and then Atari spent $5 million on the promotion of the game, and directly ordered the production of 5 million game tapes before the release.
Atari executives believe that as long as it is related to the completion of E.T. Alien, everyone will rush to buy it. 1 982 65438+February1officially released. In the end, as Atari expected, the game sold 158 boxes as soon as it came out, becoming one of the best-selling games in history at that time.
However, the hasty production cycle has greatly reduced the quality of the whole game, and the boring, boring and monotonous content of the game is more obvious. Soon, players lost their enthusiasm and pursuit of ET, which turned into dissatisfaction and anger, and game sales stagnated. The sales failure of ET made Atari fall into an unprecedented crisis, and the overproduction of 358 cassettes became a joke of the century.
The following year, Atari announced that under the influence of various factors, the company lost a total of $365,438+000,000,000, which directly led to Atari's resale and never recovered. Even the entire North American game industry was affected and fell into a trough, which led to a crushing defeat in the competition with Japanese hosts in the future.
The consequences of a game's commercial failure are undoubtedly heavy, but it does not mean that it has no value of its own. It can be said that they explored the road to success for the latecomers. These games paid a painful price in failure, but gained valuable experience and lessons, which made an indispensable contribution to the development of the whole game industry.