• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Lets decide the biggest bomb in video game history

What is the biggest bomb in video game history in your opinion?

  • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

    Votes: 102 18.5%
  • Anthem

    Votes: 16 2.9%
  • Duke Nukem Forever

    Votes: 13 2.4%
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda

    Votes: 7 1.3%
  • LawBreakers

    Votes: 4 0.7%
  • Marvel's Avengers

    Votes: 5 0.9%
  • Babylon’s Fall

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • Too Human

    Votes: 4 0.7%
  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

    Votes: 20 3.6%
  • Concord

    Votes: 360 65.3%
  • Forspoken

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • Other

    Votes: 16 2.9%

  • Total voters
    551

diffusionx

Gold Member
You got me. I hope you aren't expecting me to answer those questions. Those are questions for Sony. But it does seem to me, at least judging by the statement, that Sony does plan to reconfigure the game somehow, presumably as a F2P. I hope they make the other changes as well, but of course I have no idea what they will do.

Yea they are rhetorical questions. The statement felt like cope. It's from the lead designer of the game. All his work just went up in smoke and he released a game that people are putting alongside the biggest failures. If I was a big shot at Sony I would not trust anybody in the gaming division when they come talk to me about a live service multiplayer game.
 

Humdinger

Gold Member
Keep in mind that these are the same people that took 8 years to bring you the crap they released. A redesign going by their timetable could take another 2 years :)

lol, yeah, who knows. If I were Sony, I sure wouldn't put it back in their hands. But Sony hasn't exactly been brilliant so far...
 

GermanZepp

Member
Daikatanabox.jpg
FcNM6BB.png
 

Moonjt9

No Silksong? = Delivering the pain.
I mean yeah Concord is a MASSIVE flop. Simply unheard of in this day and age.

However, ET flopped so hard it nearly killed the entire video game industry in America. Hard to top that.
 

onQ123

Member
I didn't pay much attention to Concord but how does a game from unknown devs with a brand-new IP bomb exactly?

Most of the talk of the game was people who hated it before it even came out.

Is it because they joined PlayStation last year?
 

Lokaum D+

Member
at least Sony pulled the game back and refunded everyone, we cant say that from anyone else

my vote is for Anthem since EA took everyone's money and then gave us the middle finger.
 
Last edited:

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
I didn't pay much attention to Concord but how does a game from unknown devs with a brand-new IP bomb exactly?

Most of the talk of the game was people who hated it before it even came out.

Is it because they joined PlayStation last year?
Well take a look at Wukong and it's sales numbers then imagine what the opposite would be.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I didn't pay much attention to Concord but how does a game from unknown devs with a brand-new IP bomb exactly?

Most of the talk of the game was people who hated it before it even came out.

Is it because they joined PlayStation last year?
Because Sony bought out an entire studio to have it. 8 years dev, est costs $100M, bad reviews, abysmal sales, refunds, and servers will last two weeks. And an employee ranting online about white people. The studio was so confident in the game they didnt bother showing any gameplay or info about till a few months ago. Topped off with an apology and refund.

A game just released on Steam called Ale and Tales (a whimsical bar simulator) has peak 24 hour CCU of about 5,000 gamers. And it's the studio's first game and probably had zero marketing. That's 7x what Concord did which maxed out at 697 PC gamers. Concord gamers are so low, it's almost as low as Dustborn all week.

The number of gamers on Steam is so low that the tracker gets to a point it cant even track a game properly in the chronological lists. So it wont show even show up in sorted lists showing the top 7,500 games.
 
Last edited:

bitbydeath

Member
Starfield’s failure caused Xbox to go 3rd party.

Haze killed any chance of more Timesplitters games.

DriveClub killed any chance of more Motorstorm games.

Starhawk killed any chance of more Warhawk games.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
So, GAF finally forgot about Haze.


Haze got bad reviews and sales were so bad that Free Radical Design went bankrupt, but it could still have sold close to 1 million copies (although I have no idea where VGChartz got those figures from).

Still, 1 million copies sold is miles away from 25,000 copies sold and my guess is that Firewalk fate is hanging by a thread. There's just no coming back from such a damaging failure.
 

onQ123

Member
Because Sony bought out an entire studio to have it. 8 years dev, est costs $100M, bad reviews, abysmal sales, refunds, and servers will last two weeks. And an employee ranting online about white people. The studio was so confident in the game they didnt bother showing any gameplay or info about till a few months ago. Topped off with an apology and refund.

A game just released on Steam called Ale and Tales (a whimsical bar simulator) has peak 24 hour CCU of about 5,000 gamers. And it's the studio's first game and probably had zero marketing. That's 7x what Concord did which maxed out at 697 PC gamers. Concord gamers are so low, it's almost as low as Dustborn all week.

The number of gamers on Steam is so low that the tracker gets to a point it cant even track a game properly in the chronological lists. So it wont show even show up in sorted lists showing the top 7,500 games.
I just don't recall hearing anything about these devs or this game until a few months ago & it was always negative before any gameplay was ever shown so I'm wondering why it was expected to do well other than the fact Sony bought them?
 
I mean, ET was the lynch pin for the 1983 NA videogame crash. It wasn't the only culprit. ET was heavily marketed by Atari as a big holiday 1982 game. They spent millions on advertising. They also apparently pushed retailers into overstocking inventory, and reassuring them that the game will sell in mass droves. The game did sell really well as they projected, but there was also a lot of refunds that may have caused havoc with retail outlets. Pac-Man for the 2600 had the same effect. Pac-Man one of the top selling 2600 cartridges. But it was kinda slammed for being a bad port, it saw a lot of refunds too.

Duke Nukem Forever; as someone who use to frequent the 3Drealms forums back when the game was under development. I went to those forums to join the modding community for Max Payne 1 in 2001, and hung around. I remember being on those forums when the DNF2001 trailer hit. I remember being on the forums when George Broussard closed down 3D Realms in 2009.

The long winded development and many restarts did its toll on the company. They were trying to turn things around in 2009. But in the end the game was picked up and finished by GearBox and released in 2011. I always equated to DNF as the 'Chinese Democracy' of videogame development... I am talking about the Guns & Roses album. It was destructive for 3Drealms in its original form, but didn't really disrupt the game industry.

I want to add Shenmue I and II to the list. Because they cost Sega a lot of money and almost bankrupted the company.
 

The Stig

Banned
Starfield’s failure caused Xbox to go 3rd party.

Haze killed any chance of more Timesplitters games.

DriveClub killed any chance of more Motorstorm games.

Starhawk killed any chance of more Warhawk games.
wait, what? driveclub was good wasn't it?

also motorstorm wasn't really a racing game. the rubber banding was worse than any racing game I have ever played (i've played pretty much everything). It was literally pointless to play. take the right lines, the shortest routes and it didn't matter, the AI would surge right up behind you like some kind of blue shell from hell every few seconds or so.

looked great though
 

PeteBull

Member
wait, what? driveclub was good wasn't it?

also motorstorm wasn't really a racing game. the rubber banding was worse than any racing game I have ever played (i've played pretty much everything). It was literally pointless to play. take the right lines, the shortest routes and it didn't matter, the AI would surge right up behind you like some kind of blue shell from hell every few seconds or so.

looked great though
It sold decently too
official wiki info
Driveclub has sold over 2 million copies as of 31 July 2015.[59]
 

bitbydeath

Member
wait, what? driveclub was good wasn't it?

also motorstorm wasn't really a racing game. the rubber banding was worse than any racing game I have ever played (i've played pretty much everything). It was literally pointless to play. take the right lines, the shortest routes and it didn't matter, the AI would surge right up behind you like some kind of blue shell from hell every few seconds or so.

looked great though
Sony sold off the studio after DriveClub released.
I don’t think the reason was ever disclosed though.
 

Liljagare

Member
Derek Smart is worth a honorable mention atleast! The attack on the Coke vending machine at Take Two's office was scrubbed from the story in 2015.

After publisher Take-Two Interactive released Battlecruiser 3000AD in September 1996, it generated one of the longest and largest flame wars in the history of Usenet.[20] This flame war lasted for several years, garnered over 70,000 posts, and yielded a series of sites that documented and parodied its history.


Herer are his words on it all:

 

sainraja

Member
Without a doubt Halo Infinite was a flop but it also wasn't taken offline after 2 weeks

imo Halo wasn't a ripple in the tsunami of the belly flop of Concord
Two games that are considered a flop don't need to be equals in terms of how they failed and if the only criteria for biggest is how quickly the game was shutdown, then concord will always be that game for you lol. For people that were disappointed in Halo Infinite, it is perfectly OKAY for them to consider it their biggest, because it's Halo and they were a long time fan.

And if we have to compare every game to concord.... then I am not sure if that is good sign for the game you are comparing to it. For biggest flop, we should look at various factors. Given the number of people that bought concord and played it, I would say it disappointed less people because it was ignored by almost everyone else. I would bet majority of the casuals probably don't even know the game existed, so hard for the game to disappoint them in that sense.
 

sainraja

Member
Recency bias?
Next year; and the year after next; and the year after that, Concord will still be a massive bomb. The only way it moves down the list is if another massive bomb comes out to replace it.
I think recency bias is definitely playing a part in labeling concord the biggest and if you look at factors like: time in market, number of active players, and sales - then it will likely keep that title for a while. What everyone else is ignoring, is that it was a new IP, with no established fanbase, and given less people bought it and played it, let alone were interested in it, then how many people did the game really disappoint? That number is small in comparison to some of the other games that have been named.

So it depends on how you look at it I guess. lol
 
Last edited:

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
Two games that are considered a flop don't need to be equals in terms of how they failed and if the only criteria for biggest is how quickly the game was shutdown, then concord will always be that game for you lol. For people that were disappointed in Halo Infinite, it is perfectly OKAY for them to consider it their biggest, because it's Halo and they were a long time fan.

And if we have to compare every game to concord.... then I am not sure if that is good sign for the game you are comparing to it. For biggest flop, we should look at various factors. Given the number of people that bought concord and played it, I would say it disappointed less people because it was ignored by almost everyone else. I would bet majority of the casuals probably don't even know the game existed, so hard for the game to disappoint them in that sense.
All true but biggest disappointment and biggest flop are 2 different metrics in my opinion.

The low number of people buying Concord after 8 years, 200 million that includes Sony buying the studio indicated a colossal flop not just a disappointment

But we have different views on what is a flop
 
I think recency bias is definitely playing a part in labeling concord the biggest and if you look at factors like: time in market, number of active players, and sales - then it will likely keep that title for a while. What everyone else is ignoring, is that it was a new IP, with no established fanbase, and given less people bought it and played it, let alone were interested in it, then how many people did the game really disappoint? That number is small in comparison to some of the other games that have been named.

So it depends on how you look at it I guess. lol
Sony believed in it enough to devote a lot of time to it in their SoP, put out a customized controller, buy out the studio, have an episode about it in an Amazon series, commissioned CGI video releases, developed a 3 season roadmap and more. Took 8 years to develop and cost anywhere from ~100M-$300M to develop/market and it got pulled in less than 2 weeks with Sony refunding anyone that bought it (also unprecedented for Sony).

By any standard that is a massive flop.
 

sainraja

Member
All true but biggest disappointment and biggest flop are 2 different metrics in my opinion.
I was saying that from the perspective of a fan, who is disappointed because the game they were interested in flopped.

The low number of people buying Concord after 8 years, 200 million that includes Sony buying the studio indicated a colossal flop not just a disappointment
Yes, a colossal flop for Sony for sure. For a gamer? Well, it didn't generate enough interest to disappoint them because it flopped.

But we have different views on what is a flop
I suppose and I do think concord flopped so not disagreeing there... but you can have more than one game be labelled the biggest flop if you step away from the strict criteria of: time on market, # of sales, # of players, etc. If you don't, then concord should be the biggest flop for everyone, even if they had no interest in it.

I see your point too, don't get me wrong. Just offering a different perspective.
 
Last edited:

sainraja

Member
Sony believed in it enough to devote a lot of time to it in their SoP, put out a customized controller, buy out the studio, have an episode about it in an Amazon series, commissioned CGI video releases, developed a 3 season roadmap and more. Took 8 years to develop and cost anywhere from ~100M-$300M to develop/market and it got pulled in less than 2 weeks with Sony refunding anyone that bought it (also unprecedented for Sony).

By any standard that is a massive flop.
It certainly is for Sony since they put money into the game and the studio behind it. We know what is happening with the game... when it comes to the studio, we will see what Sony does. Anyhow, I don't remember seeing Sony marketing the game that heavily though... but as you pointed out, they did a bit more than I was thinking.

My point was more on who the game disappointed... vs who it didn't. Sony surely would have wanted it to do better and it certainly is a flop for them, big/small/massive, whichever.
 
Last edited:

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
I was saying that from the perspective of a fan, who is disappointed because the game they were interested in flopped.


Yes, a colossal flop for Sony for sure. For a gamer? Well, it didn't generate enough interest to disappointment them because it flopped.


I suppose and I do think concord flopped so not disagreeing there... but you can have more than one game be labelled the biggest flop if you step away from the strict criteria of: time on market, # of sales, # players, etc. If you don't, then concord should be the biggest flop for everyone, even if they had no interest in it.

I see your point too, don't get me wrong. Just offering a different perspective.
100% appreciate and welcome the civil conversation as its rare these days 2 people can have different opinions and not end up throwing rocks at each other :)
 
Concord winning...but not the game that literally started the biggest videogame crisis of all time that affected the entire industry, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? Okay then...
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Concord winning...but not the game that literally started the biggest videogame crisis of all time that affected the entire industry, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? Okay then...
Another post thinking ET nuked videogames. Stop believing everything you read online and make some research of your own.

edit: or at least read the thread you are posting on. It's been explained multiple times already.
 
Last edited:
Concord easily with its pathetic character designs and pronouns. Was rejected by so many and the devs radio silence was the proof of its utter failure. Good riddance and hopefully these moronic devs understand that most gamers don’t want trash like this. The whole Modern Audience shite needs to die off fast. Astrobot going nuclear with its success should be a wake up call to Sony and all their other devs trying to peddle Woke anti gamer gaas trash.
 
Last edited:
If we go by financial flop then I think Concord is very hard to beat with Sony even buying the whole studio for absolutely zero revenue ......although the numbers you hear from Suicide Squad are mind boggling, too.
If we look at it from an Image-damage perspective...then the list gets too long to be worth discussing imho.
 

Cyborg

Member
How can Concord be number one? Sure its a big fail but a new IP, that was DoA already. Halo is the real winner here, going from multi million series to something that has been forgotten by everyone.
 
Devil’s Third

6 years in development + 1 year for PC, funded mainly by THQ, then deal with Nintendo, then a deal with Nexon for PC. Rumored to sold 6k in USA in first week.
Most likely 50m+ for 50k world wide sales

50+ might be a understatement too
"The one thing that's completely different between the Eastern publisher and Western publisher is the budget. I've made more than 30 games, and if you put a little bit more [money] into the one I'm making now, Devil's Third, I could make all of the 30 games I made before. That's the big difference. The budget you use for the promotion is completely different too. Those are the biggest differences.," he told Game Informer
 
Last edited:

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
People forgetting that amazon studios also released a game called crucible who suffered the same fate as concord, but was free to play, so I don't know if was bigger bomb or not.
 
Top Bottom