And You Thought It Would Fail / Video Games

Nintendo

It’s often said on gaming message boards that expecting something made by Nintendo to fail is like asking to look like a complete fool in hindsight. Considering that we had to give this company their own folder, it's not hard to see why.

Consoles

• The Nintendo Entertainment System in North America. After The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, there was a period during which it was thought that video games were just a passing fad, or at the very least, doomed to be locked to the arcade for the foreseeable future. For this reason, many pundits were certain the NES would be a failure, skeptical that Nintendo's attempt to enter the market so soon after Atari destroyed it would pan out. Thankfully for the industry, it did; Nintendo successfully rejuvenated console gaming in the region, setting the stage for the United States to become the most profitable video game market in the world for the next three decades (and even now, only beaten by China). As for Nintendo, they gained a near-monopoly of said American market for the next five years, and still remains one of the biggest players in the industry.
• The Game Boy, with its monochromatic, non-backlit screen and circa-1979 chips, was not expected to sell well inside or outside of Nintendo. Hiroshi Yamauchi was notoriously so fearful of the Game Boy's prospects that he chewed out Gunpei Yokoi for spearheading development of the handheld. The Game Boy ended up being one of Nintendo's best selling systems of all time, selling 118 million units, eclipsing rival handelds like the Atari Lynx and Game Gear, and making Household Names out of franchises like Tetris and Pokémon.
• The Nintendo DS and Wii were both expected to be failures with terrible gimmicks by both critics and fans before release, and many thought their failures would force Nintendo to leave the console market and go third-party like former rival Sega. The former was expected to be unquestionably surpassed by the PSP, but while the PSP did well, the DS did far, far better to become the top-selling handheld video game system of all-time at over 154 million units sold, which also makes it the second best-selling game console overall, behind only the PlayStation 2. As for the Wii, its controller being a glorified TV remote with motion controls was seen as lunacy, until the console became perpetually sold out for two years straight. The Wii would become the company's best-selling home console until the Nintendo Switch, outselling the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (which would implement their own versions of motion controls in response) by a far margin as well.
• The Nintendo 3DS received much skepticism before and during its launch period. People thought that its glasses-free 3D wouldn't be appealing to consumers, and some also thought that its name was too similar to its predecessor's for consumers to realize it was a new product (the latter would end up being a factor in the failure of the later Wii U). It also didn't help that the company's last attempt at a 3D console, the Virtual Boy, was a huge failure. Analysts also predicted that Nintendo would face much greater handheld competition this time, not only from Sony with their PlayStation Vita, but also from what was now the massively popular mobile game market. The 3DS did indeed struggle during its first year, but a quick price cut and a steady release of must-have titles soon turned things around; the system would end up selling about 75 million units by the time it was discontinued. Meanwhile, the Vita ended up selling so poorly that Sony decided to abandon handheld gaming entirely, and while the mobile game market certainly became much more lucrative than the 3DS, it soon became clear that it was the home of smaller, low budget Free-to-Play experiences that never directly competed with the kinds of games typically released on the 3DS.
• After the Wii U flopped, people were skeptical about the Nintendo Switch's chances of success. While the concept was interesting, there were those that were doubtful there was a market for what was essentially a gaming tablet with TV Out. The reveal of the Joy-Con's HD Rumble function and 1-2-Switch had people wondering if Nintendo was just trying to recapture the Wii audience again with a bunch of gimmicks, the $300USD price point was seen as insane, and Nintendo higher-ups' claims it would sell as much as the Wii were written off as delusional. Even the Pokémon Company CEO at the time told Nintendo's higher-ups that he was skeptical the new console would succeed. But thanks to a steady streak of outstanding first-party releases during its first year and the allure of being able to play various AAA and indie games both new and old on-the-go, the system went on to surpass the lifetime sales of the Wii U in ten months and become the third-best selling video game system of all-time by its sixth year.

Games

• Fire Emblem:
  • Considering that sales for the Fire Emblem franchise had been on the decline for years, Intelligent Systems considered it a very real possibility that Fire Emblem: Awakening would be their last FE game ever. They even said in an interview before release that they would likely shelve the series indefinitely if it didn't sell at least a quarter of a million units. It went on to be the most successful game in the entire franchise up to that point, both critically and financially; in fact, Awakening would not only rejuvenate the series, but also manage to be exactly what it needed to develop a significant Western fanbase.
  • On paper, Fire Emblem Heroes is a game with plenty of factors stacked against it. It's a Gachapon, a genre that is not held in high regard among Western players. It is published by a company whose previous mobile offerings have struggled to maintain long-term support and relevance, something vital for the genre. The core gameplay's simplification of mainline Fire Emblem games doesn't satisfy hardcore fans, while the Fire Emblem brand isn't quite mainstream enough to pull in casual players. And yet in spite of all that, it is highly successful worldwide thanks to its careful application of Revenue-Enhancing Devices making free-to-play for budget conscious players valid, while also providing a surprising level of depth when it comes to building your team. It also won weary fans over by being a celebration of the franchise as a whole. To this day, Fire Emblem Heroes is the most successful mobile game Nintendo has released, beating out titles like Mario Kart Tour and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
• The concept of a Mario and Raving Rabbids crossover, which later became Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, was thought to be so stupid that initial leaks concerning the game were instantly disregarded as fake. When it became clear that this game was legitimate, there was instant skepticism about how good this game could possibly be, to put it lightly. Then the game's E3 2017 reveal showcased well thought-out Turn-Based Strategy gameplay similar to the XCOM games and humour on par with the Mario RPGs, putting most gripes to rest. The game received good-to-great reviews and quickly became one of the best selling third-party games on the Switch, even spawning a sequel a few years later.
• Metroid:
  • According to series director Yoshio Sakamoto, Super Metroid was nearly canned three times due to spending longer in production than most of its contemporaries. Producer Gunpei Yokoi would often angrily ask the team "Are you trying to make a goddamn masterpiece?" Super Metroid is now regarded as a goddamn masterpiece, and the quintessential game of Metroidvania genre, with overwhelming praise for everything from the gameplay and level design to its atmosphere and minimalist visual storytelling. It has been at or near the top of numerous "best games of all time" lists, and Yokoi himself eventually came to see it as an example of exactly what a good game should be. In fact, one of the main reasons a Nintendo 64 Metroid game was never made was because no one had the confidence that they could make a worthy successor.
  • Before its release, Nintendo and Retro Studios made many seemingly bewildering choices with Metroid Prime that no one, not even levelheaded fans and critics, were kind to. First off, Nintendo let Retro, an unproven American studio that had yet to ship a single game, develop the title rather than do it in-house. Second, they made it in 3D, which many expected but was still worrisome; while many series were attempting a Video Game 3D Leap at that point in history, most of them saw divisive results at best. Finally, they also made it a First-Person Shooter, which was thought to be the final nail in the coffin for the game having any hopes of being good and feeling like Metroid. When it came out, not only did everyone feel like Prime was a true Metroid game, but it was a commercial hit. Prime would create a new pillar of the Metroid franchise, and is often held in the same regard as the aforementioned Super Metroid.
  • Metroid: Samus Returns struggled with this. While the initial announcement excited many, it was soon replaced with hesitance and apprehension thanks to the reveal that MercurySteam would be developing the game and that Yoshio Sakamoto would be producing. MercurySteam had previously made the divisive Castlevania: Lords of Shadow reboot of the Castlevania series, whose second entry is viewed as a Franchise Killer, as there's been no new console entry since. Meanwhile, Yoshio Sakamoto's last Metroid game, Metroid: Other M, is regarded as the worst entry in the series and was also thought to be a Franchise Killer until this game was announced. Thankfully, Samus Returns was widely considered a return to form for the series, salvaging both the reputations of the Spanish game studio and the Japanese producer. When it was revealed years later that they'd be following the game up with Metroid Dread (which had been Vaporware for fifteen years), fans were absolutely ecstatic that MercurySteam helped make it happen.
• Pokémon:
  • Nintendo initially had no interest in what would eventually become the biggest multimedia franchise on the planet. Game Freak's Satoshi Tajiri repeatedly pitched the game to Nintendo only to get turned down each time. Luckily for Tajiri, he ended up befriending Shigeru Miyamoto in the middle of all of this, who was willing to back the project and help Taijri convince Nintendo it was worth funding. Even then, Nintendo execs were ready to write it off as a loss, and they were nearly vindicated too, as the game saw middling sales upon release. But then it just keep selling. Thanks to the Socialization Bonus nature of the games, mixed with rumors of a secret Pokémon called Mew, the pair of JRPGs managed to stay on the top of the sales charts for months during an era where even the most popular games tended to fall off a cliff after a few weeks. The rest is history: Pokémon Red and Blue ended up revitalizing the dying Game Boy and become not only a cornerstone of Nintendo's nigh-unstoppable success in portable gaming going forward (a boon in the face of Sony's sudden takeover of the home console market), but an absolute global phenomenon that quickly expanded its reach into trading cards, anime, manga, and so much more.
  • The third generation of games came out after the initial Pokémon craze had died down and the franchise suffered its first slump, with many believing the series would soon be discontinued. Some of the more vocal detractors claimed that Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire was just a desperate attempt by Nintendo and Game Freak to wring as much money as they could from a dying franchise. Junichi Masuda, the games' director, saw the decline in Pokémon's popularity and feared the games would fail so much that he actually had nightmares about it. The games went on to become the Game Boy Advance's highest-selling titles and cemented the series as being anything but a fad, even if the franchise would never reach the insane peaks of the late 1990s ever again.
  • When Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! were announced, they were derided by Pokémon fans as cheap-looking and dumbed-down remakes that would end up alienating too many people with its Pokémon GO-inspired gameplay changes. The Let's Go games ended up selling on par with past remakes in the series; that is, it sold a combined 10 million units within a month.
• Ring Fit Adventure was met with laughter and derision when it was revealed, due to being a strange mixture of fitness and RPG mechanics. The weird peripherals were also met with snickers. However, thanks to its fun factor and overall uniqueness, it managed to sell incredibly well. It also saw a huge spike in sales as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic forcing many gyms to close. For a time, it was one of the Top Ten best-selling Nintendo games on the Switch.
• Masahiro Sakurai wanted to create a casual fighting game to counter the more hardcore arcade experiences that existed at the time, and decided to put Nintendo mascots in the game to make his prototype more interesting. Executives liked the idea well-enough, but market research showed that players supposedly didn't like the idea of their favourite video game characters duking it out. As such, they greenlit it with plans of releasing the game only in Japan, hoping it wouldn't bomb too badly. Fast-forward twenty years, and Super Smash Bros. is now one of the most popular fighting game franchises of all-time.
• While the game immediately gained positive attention from its first E3 trailer, there was a lot of skepticism about the first Splatoon's chance of success. It was Lighter and Softer than every other shooter on the market, Nintendo had rarely worked on games in the shooter genre prior to Splatoon, they had never made a game where the core focus was online play, and despite being an online multiplayer game, the developers staunchly refused to support voice chat. Oh, and since it was a Nintendo game, it was being released solely on the severely under-performing Wii U. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it would be a niche title at best. But then it sold 1 million copies in a month. Cue the wall of shame. The game would spawn a franchise that would quickly become one of the company's most important (right next to Mario and Zelda), and is one of their most popular in their home country of Japan: the first entry sold well enough on release that the developer had to apologize for not shipping enough copies to Japanese retailers, and each installment inevitably becomes a mainstay on the Top 20 weekly sales charts for years at a time.

Other Companies

• When Microsoft unveiled the original Xbox, it was not expected to compete significantly with the other consoles out there. For one thing, American-made video game consoles were considered lost causes by the press, people like Hiroshi Yamauchi (Nintendo's then CEO) and almost everybody in the Western world in the aftermath of The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, with the major failure of the Atari Jaguar just a few years before heavily coloring people's expectations. Furthermore, people didn't think it was possible for the console market to sustain more than two major competitors; this was a period when Sega was starting to flounder while Nintendo held onto their market space and Sony was starting to ride high from their introduction of the Playstation brand (the fact that Microsoft had collaborated with the Sega Dreamcast didn't help matters). But very good word of mouth for Xbox launch title Halo: Combat Evolved helped push initial sales of the console, and the hardware's largely unprecedented focus on online multiplayer through Xbox Live was successful enough for Nintendo and Sony to start looking into it themselves. Now Microsoft is currently supporting the fourth iteration of the console, after the success of the previous three generations. Though none of the Xbox line have ever dominated the market, it's maintained a steady second/third-place position for over a decade, and has pioneered numerous features that other platforms have since copied.^note If they were right in one thing, it would perhaps be in the brand’s difficulty in appealing to the Japanese market, due to the lack of appealing titles to Japanese audiences and the general aversion to non-Japanese console brands in the market, among many other things. However, as of 2021, Xbox is becoming more popular in the region, so even that may eventually be proven wrong.
  • Seamus Blackley recalls that, during the development of the original Xbox, numerous video game executives told his team that it was a waste to include network connectivity in the console and to build a centralized online service for it, because "Console players don't want to play online." Other critics thought the idea had merit but that it was too ambitious since the service required a broadband Internet connection, which were still rare at the start of the Turn of the Millennium. Xbox Live went onto become the defining feature of the console and a pioneering online service in games as a whole, with future console online services such as Play Station Network and even PC services like Steam taking cues from it.
• Before Halo: Combat Evolved, the First-Person Shooter was generally seen as impossible to pull off on consoles, with any successes being few and far between. The game's underwhelming showing at E3 2001 didn't help matters either, leaving many wondering just want Microsoft was thinking with making Halo of all games one of their launch titles. No one at Microsoft expected the game to be one of its heavy hitters either, but come launch day, it became an instant classic that would turn the FPS genre from something no one in their right mind would try without a keyboard and mouse into one of the most popular genres in the medium, displacing the Platform Game.
• Combining Square and Disney's ability to pull this off, when people first heard about Kingdom Hearts, a game where a Square-ish character travels through the worlds of various Disney movies with Donald and Goofy, most people thought it was going to be a quirky kids game and that's it. Instead, it was a huge success and became Square's second-biggest series (right under Final Fantasy).
• Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series was a compilation remake of two games from a series that had never sold particularly well, got very little marketing after its initial announcement, and wasn't available to pre-order in North America. It ended up selling over 1 million copies on Steam on the day of its release.
• The first game in the Mega Man franchise didn't do so well, but the devs still wanted to make a sequel. Capcom gave them permission to do so only if they did so in their spare time. Cue Mega Man 2, and the rest is history.
• Sony didn't bother to publish Demon's Souls themselves as a first-party PS3 title in the west because they thought it wouldn't sell well. Demon's Souls wasn't just published by Sony's Japanese division; the game was co-developed by SCE Japan Studio. Luckily, publishers like Atlus and Bandai Namco Entertainment picked up the title, and the rest was history. Demon's Souls ended up as a big Sleeper Hit in 2009 and much to Sony's surprise received positive reviews from both gamers and the press. For a lightly-marketed game, it sold more than 150,000 units in its first month alone. Sony to this day regrets not publishing Demon's Souls themselves in the west and losing out on a potential first-party Killer App.
• Spyro the Dragon fans and critics alike thought Skylanders would be a bomb. Instead, it's become a Cash-Cow Franchise that has more than surpassed the original Spyro games, with over 700 million dollars in sales and several titles.
• The Ace Attorney series' creator, Shu Takumi got told his idea of a lawyer main character would fall flat on its face. Judging from the number of sequels, additional media, and fan bases, it's clear that Takumi had the last laugh.
• This happened with Will Wright's two big projects, SimCity and The Sims.
  • The first version of SimCity was finished in 1985, but publishers at the time refused to release it because it was a non-standard game without a clear goal. So Will Wright and Jeff Braun had to open their own company, Maxis, to get it out. Even then, when SimCity was first released in 1989, it sold very poorly in its first few months in retail. It wasn't until game reviewers and journalists got hold of the game that it became successful, selling over 1 million copies in 1992 and winning multiple awards, with the game receiving numerous custom versions, including a Teacher's Edition of the game for use in classrooms.
  • When The Sims was codenamed "Dollhouse" (and was originally conceived as a house-building simulator where virtual people would judge the player's houses) during its development in the '90s, focus groups who tested the game hated it and Maxis had little faith in Will Wright's next project after SimCity, thus shelving it. When Electronic Arts bought out Maxis in 1997, Wright's project was given a second chance, and after years of hard work, The Sims was released in February of 2000, selling millions of copies and becoming a Cash-Cow Franchise that spawned several sequels and expansions.
• Very few journalists and gamers were initially optimistic about Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor beating The Problem with Licensed Games. For one thing, it was announced around the time that audiences were getting sick of The Lord of the Rings, thanks to the mixed response to The Hobbit. For another, early gameplay previews made it look suspiciously similar to Assassin's Creed (complete with a Tolkien-flavored version of Eagle Sight), to the point that many gamers accused it of being an outright clone. And the developer spent so much time hyping up the Enemy Hierarchy mechanic that it made gamers roll their eyes, sure that it couldn't possibly be as open-ended as it looked in the trailers. But in the end? Though it took some clear inspiration from other games, Shadow of Mordor was roundly praised for its engaging combat and original story, and the Hierarchy system was praised as one of its best ideas; Orcs really did remember past encounters, level up after fights, advance in rank, and even challenge other Orcs in exploitable power struggles.
• Doom (2016) had all the hallmarks of a bad reboot: a generic "guy with gun" cover, a disappointing multiplayer beta showing off the undoubted weakest portion of the game, no input from creators John Carmack and John Romero, Denuvo DRM on the PC, and no mod support. A lack of advance review copies from Bethesda seemed to suggest not even the publisher had any faith in what was by now all but a confirmed flop. Yet, its single-player campaign alone carried the title to win multiple "Game of the Year" awards. The campaign was so well-received that when the later Switch port made the multiplayer mode a separate download to save on cartridge space, people didn't really mind all that much.
• Reaction to Watch_Dogs 2 was mixed, largely due to the first game, and many thought that players would largely avoid the franchise's second outing. At first, that seemed to be the case, with sales being nowhere near that of the first game. But then word of mouth got out about how much of a Surprisingly Improved Sequel it was, and the game managed to have good long-term sales that resulted in Ubisoft announcing that they were happy with the game's performance, even adding a Sequel Hook in a post-release patch.
• Hiveswap was attacked by two sides before release. On one side, you've got the people who despise the source material and its fans, and they just want the series to fade into irrelevance. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the cynical Homestuck fans who expected the game to be the next Mighty No. 9 in that it would be an ambitious yet disappointing Kickstarter game riddled with delays and Troubled Production, and that it would further tarnish the webcomic's reputation. Once it released, it turned out to be an enjoyable text-based adventure game that both Homestuck fans and non-fans could enjoy.
• Warframe: When Digital Extremes made the decision to revive their original design concept for darkSector and make the game they'd always wanted to make, every publisher they brought the idea to told them directly to their faces "this will fail". Every single one. Who eventually decided to take a chance on it? Nobody- so Digital Extremes said "screw it" and decided to self-publish Warframe themselves. Keep in mind, Warframe wasn't a small indie single-player game, it was a full-bore action-MMORPG, and DE was literally betting everything they had on their belief that people would want to play their game- Warframe would succeed, or Digital Extremes would die. And in the 5+ years since it first entered open beta, Warframe has grown to become not only one of the most popular F2P games in the world (it has a secure hold on its place in the top 5 most-played games on Steam alone, to say nothing of its release on consoles and its own independent PC client), it has also become a shining beacon of creativity, daring design, and in-depth community interaction, hailed as a role model that all F2P games should strive to emulate. Now, the same publishers who dismissed the game as having a literal 0% chance of succeeding are coming to DE with cap in hand, begging to be taught the secret to succeed in the F2P market the way Warframe has.
• When Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate was announced for the West, many fans were concerned that it would sell poorly even relative to games before it due to being released after Monster Hunter: World (unlike in Japan where it was released before), which became a blockbuster hit because of the many changes made to the series' long-standing formula to appeal to a wider audience. For what it's worth, Capcom seems to be calling GU's Western release a success, suggesting that while Generations Ultimate obviously doesn't come anywhere near the worldwide standing ovation that its immediate successor got, it sold just as well as its 3DS predecessors.
• Soulcalibur VI had an uphill battle from the start, right up to just getting made. After Soulcalibur V underperformed and was hit with a widespread backlash, Namco didn't think the series was worth keeping around. The franchise had also been out of the limelight for many years, with fans having long given up hope that Soulcalibur would return. When the game was announced, it received much fanfare, but many were worried that series would effectively die with VI when word got out that Namco didn't even want to make it, and Project Soul head Motohiro Okubo had to convince them to allow it. When the game released in 2018, VI garnered an 84 on Metacritic, making it one of the highest-rated fighting games of the eighth generations, and it quickly outpaced its predecessor in sales, selling a million in a month. By Namco's own admission, the game was successful. Then it got an easy ticket to EVO 2019, where it became one of the biggest games there, and the game remained alive and active with DLC, Guest Fighters in the form of Geralt and 2B, while also having the prospect of a second season. Soon enough, it became clear that Soulcalibur got its groove back.
• Katawa Shoujo: Until 2012, the thought that a tiny group of unpaid 4chan anons were planning on making a free dating sim about girls with physical handicaps based on a single piece of obscure Japanese concept art would've probably either been met with ridicule or followed by the assumption that the result would be the vilest of insensitive troll games. Cue a game hailed by both amateur and professional game journalists for its lovable characters, gripping storyline, and beautiful soundtrack, credited by many as having singlehandedly renvigorated the OELVN (Original English Language Visual Novel) market and introducing many of the medium's current Western fans to visual novels (many of whom thought KS was a Japanese-made game).
• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was fighting an uphill battle when it was first announced. Not only was it another Crash game distributed by Activision (whose track record with the Crash Bandicoot series have been highly controversial among fans), but it was being developed by Vicarious Visions, who prior to N. Sane did the GBA Crash games, which were seen as So Okay, It's Average at best. To add more fuel to the fire, they were HD remakes of the first 3 PS1 games by Naughty Dog. Even Activision thought the game wasn’t going to sell that well upon release. The result? It became one of the highest selling games of 2017, it got rave reviews from critics, was well received by fans of the classic games, and even Naughty Dog, known for their strict stance on Only the Creator Does It Right regarding every Crash game post Team Racing approved of the remastering job. It was so successful that it led to the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, both of which were also well regarded.
• While NieR: Automata was not exactly expected to fail, it was nonetheless expected to end up as more of a niche game, being a sequel to a low-budget, under-the-radar title and being directed by an infamous eccentric who has never had much success in the past. It was also being developed by PlatinumGames, a company that has a track-record of fantastic titles that fail to translate to financial success. The fact that Platinum was going through both financial and creative troubles at the time didn't help matters. But against all sense and reason the title ended up being a smash hit and performed well beyond what anyone expected and even saved Platinum from bankruptcy.
• OMORI had six years in development, had to move the game from RPG Maker VX to MV, canceled the Nintendo 3DS version, and had lack of communication between developers and backers. Many expected the game to be the next Mighty No. 9: another broken game and another Kickstarter failure that didn't deliver what it was promised. Thankfully this wasn't the case: the game came out on Christmas Day 2020, and it got a lot of positive reception from backers and players alike, to the point of attracting a Newbie Boom of players unfamiliar with the Troubled Production or the original webcomic.
• On the subject of Kickstarter games that initially looked like they would crash and burn, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was initially revealed at the height of the Kickstarter Spiritual Successor boom and had a lot of hype behind it at first. However, after the Troubled Production and failure of Mighty No. 9 it was put under a lot more scrutiny, not helped by it having multiple delays and a trailer showing a divisive at best art style, making fans think it will be a case of History Repeats. However, thanks to Iga's willingness to listen to fans and a big graphical overhaul, the game launched in 2019 to great acclaim, with many lauding it as a worthy successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and up there with Shovel Knight and Hollow Knight as the best Kickstarter games.
• With the financial success of Super Meat Boy, Edmund McMillen found himself in a position where he didn't need to worry about making his next game a huge success, and could focus his time on something more weird, experimental and personal. Teaming up with programmer Florian Himsl and Meat Boy composer Danny Baranowsky, the team set about working on a roguelike filled to the brim with disgusting, grotesque imagery and themed around Edmund's complicated relationship with religion, with its central plot focused on a mother attempting to kill her infant son in the name of the Lord. They were so convinced that the game was unmarketable that they didn't even think about trying to sell it at first; it was only after receiving positive early feedback that they decided to take a chance and put the game up for sale on Steam. It sold moderately well in its first few months... and then those sales numbers would double, triple, and quadruple as Let's Players such as Northernlion got their hands on it, showcasing it to a wider audience. In the decade following its original release, The Binding of Isaac would receive a sizable Expansion Pack, a full remake on a more powerful engine courtesy of Nicalis, multiple expansion packs for that remake, and ports to just about every modern system, becoming a success on par with Super Meat Boy, if not an even greater one. Not bad for a game whose own developers were expecting it to fail.
• According to its lead writer David Gaider, Dragon Age: Origins was written off by Electronic Arts even before it was released, who saw it as too old-fashioned and not "sleek and sexy" enough to succeed, especially compared to the concurrent Mass Effect releases. All they wanted was for DAO to break even, so they could shelve the series for good (which is why its Modular Epilogue cast so far into the future, it later had to be officially declared rumors and hearsay, so it wouldn't conflict with the later continuity). Then DAO came out and sold like hot pancakes, starting BioWare second big franchise (after Mass Effect) and forcing EA to eat crow and to demand that BioWare makes a sequel immediately, which... backfired.
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang clearly had an extreme uphill battle. Moonton received multiple lawsuits on the game's release multiple times by both Tencent and Riot Games, first about the character designs and also its game concept (a mobile Multiplayer Online Battle Arena with analog controls, Tencent did that first). It settled quietly and Moonton made efforts to differentiate with their products, but there's another big issue: Riot already dominated the MOBA market with League of Legends, and their international market in the West has an undying hatred towards mobile games and they're not gonna let Moonton live down their rocky, lawsuit-ridden start, and additionally, their homeland in China is basically dominated with Tencent Games, who owned Riot Games, but also dominated the gaming advertisement scene for their game Honor of Kings. Moonton then decided to give more focus to a region more receptive to mobile gaming: Southeast Asia. As a result, Mobile Legends soared highly, becoming a highly profitable IP that also attracts wild mobile e-sports in the Asian region, it's still a success for Moonton. Even when Riot was finally convinced to make a mobile League game, Moonton is already ahead of the race thanks to picking their main audience correctly.
• The well documented Troubled Production of Killer Instinct (2013) caused a great amount of caution for long time KI fans. First was the revival of a Rare property after their purchase by Microsoft, something that had seen mixed reception ever since then, especially considering Microsoft's own track record the past decade. Then there's the fact that Rare themselves were unable to develop the game, so Microsoft gave it to Double Helix Games, which had games that were less than well received in the past, including movie tie-in games. Even after the game's release, Double Helix were bought by Amazon, thus another developer (the unproven Iron Galaxy Studios, a studio more known for ports and FGC parodies than making original games) took the reins for all future DLC. Yet, in the end, not only the game was very well received, but it was also welcomed as a truly competitive game by the FGC's biggest names.
• Towards the end of 2012, the Evolution of Combat was implemented in RuneScape. This update drastically overhauled how combat worked in the game, which rubbed a vast majority of the playerbase the wrong way. In response to this, Jagex held a poll to see if people were interested in an older version (circa 2007) of the game being released. This older version, dubbed Old School RuneScape, was released in February 2013, but Jagex didn’t expect it to last more than six months. Ten years later, Old School is still thriving and sees double the amount of players than the modern version each day.
• When Sonic Frontiers was first revealed, there was a fair bit of caution and skepticism from fans and critics, given the game was the first mainline Sonic game following the deeply polarizing Sonic Forces and that it was tackling an open world-like concept for Sonic, which many were unsure Sonic Team could pull off successfully, given their prior handling of the series. Even the involvement of Ian Flynn was met with skepticism from some fans given his controversial handling of the IDW comics. The IGN preview in Summer Games Fest 2022 did not help things and only soured many on the game due to the many technical problems and lack of polish featured in the footage. However, as more footage was shown and more details about the game were revealed, many began to slowly warm up to the game (only bolstered by positive impressions from critics and fans who have played the game). When the game was released, most of these concerns have largely faded away, as while the game isn't perfect (especially on the technical side of things), it would be regarded by fans and critics as both a good game and a much-needed step forward for the hedgehog after the mixed reception of his last few games, with many praising the gameplay and the story for being some of the best Sonic has had in years. The game's success even seemed to surprise Sega itself, leading to the team getting a significant 30% pay raise, and Takeshi Iizuka being promoted to the position of Excecutive Officer within the company, after having previously risked his position in the company just to get Frontiers more production time.
• "Americans love gadgets and this is just another gadget," was said in 1977 by a senior executive of Milton Bradley Co., which was the largest and oldest game company in the world at the time, about video games. The company was bought by Hasbro seven years later.
• It's hard to imagine now, but the Sony PlayStation received this reception from many people before it released. For context, the early 1990's saw a flood of new consoles that tried and ultimately failed to make a dent in the market. Some of them were also from large and established electronics manufacturers, and so many industry commentators saw Sony as the latest of such companies trying to brute force themselves into the console market. For all these people knew, the PlayStation would suffer the same fate as the CD-i or the 3DO, proving that video games were best left to dedicated game companies like Nintendo and Sega. Not only did Sony succeed where Panasonic, Phillips, and others had failed, they managed to outsell their competition from said dedicated game companies more than twice over, and even ousted one of them (Sega) from the hardware market. The success of the PlayStation (more specifically the competition it posed to PC gaming), also inspired another large company, Microsoft, to successfully launch their own line of consoles as well, ironically leaving Nintendo as the only remaining console manufacturer to be entirely dedicated to gaming.
• The entire The Eighth Generation of Console Video Games got this when it first began in 2012 and 2013. The late Turn of the Millennium and early New Tens saw the rise of many alternatives to traditional game consoles, such as mobile gaming and gaming through social networking sites like Facebook. The accessibility and ease of use of the platforms attracted huge numbers of casual gamers to them, which led many pundits to speculate that new game consoles wouldn't stand a chance in this market. However, this generation went on to defy these predictions and become enormously successful...for one console at least. While the PlayStation 4 ignored these dire warnings and saw great success by doubling down on appealing to the core gaming market, for the Xbox One and Wii U, their attempts to heed these warnings ended up making them a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy since their moves to attract casual users (the Wii U GamePad and Kinect) failed to impress that audience and ended up alienating hardcore gamers.
• Famed video game designer Eugene Jarvis had this happen to him with his very first game, Defender. When the game made its debut at the 1980 AMOA expo, almost nobody thought that the game would do well, due to its complex control scheme. Instead, they thought that the maze game Rally-X would be huge. Nowadays, nobody remembers Rally X outside of an occasional appearance on a Namco Museum compilation, while Defender sold 50,000 arcade cabinets and is fondly remembered. Those same expo attendees also dismissed Pac-Man as too repetitive, and again cited Rally X as the best game at the show. Makes you wonder what they saw in Rally X...
• Hideo Kojima was apparently told: "Hiding from your enemies? That's not a game!" Then, well...
• Sega of Japan's CEO Hayao Nakayama was presented an idea by Sega of America that the company could jointly produce and market with a second party a videogame console that used optical discs, with the two companies splitting whatever losses were made by the system. Nakayama called it a stupid idea on the basis that the second party had no experience developing videogame-based software or hardware. The second party in question was Sony, who had formally worked with and was sidelined by Nintendo on what would have been a CD-based add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (ironically, an idea inspired by the Sega CD). Sony ultimately continued the project by themselves, which debuted onto the videogame scene as the Sony PlayStation – a disc-based videogame console that dominated The Fifth Generation of Console Video Games. Both the PS1 and successor PS2 would also be successful enough to help drive Sega out of the console business.
• Sega's CEO hoped Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games would sell 4 million (for both versions of the first game). The gaming press laughed at him. The first game sold over 12 million copies for both versions, which later games continuing to be million-sellers.
• ScrewAttack believed Sonic Colors would be a Franchise Killer after the polarizing reception to Sonic the Hedgehog 4. They were wrong. And even gave it a very high score.
• The Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console, used cartridges, but not in the way that we're used to them today; instead of having the game itself on the cartridge, it just rearranges the circuitry in the console to vary the game. Near the end of the Odyssey's run, its inventor, Ralph Baer, suggested that Magnavox should manufacture "active" cartridges with additional circuitry to vary the gameplay and create more elaborate games. His superiors dismissed the idea as "not worth the effort."
• One Italian gaming magazine wrote◊ something along the lines of "From what I've seen the game doesn't seem too bad, but I'm ready to bet this Half-Life will be forgotten in a heartbeat".
• COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventure Games, from 1984, includes a chapter that speculates about how adventure games might look in the future. Apparently, the games played by "your grandchildren" will be simply Interactive Fiction, except with better writing, a more intelligent parser and, who knows, maybe they'll even be voice-controlled! The idea that they might be mostly visual is dismissed since it would take too much memory to record that many full-motion video cutscenes for every possible action, saying that though the idea of live-rendered graphics is conceivable, it would likely be limited to stock elements pieced together and resemble the stiff appearance of cartoons. They do state near the end that "all these speculations about the future will undoubtedly be proved wrong in many details," but it's clear they're erring on the side of caution... even if many of said cautious predictions ironically didn't come to fruition until The New '10s while the ideas they dismissed as too advanced long overtook them.
• Shu Takumi, the creator of Ace Attorney (known as Gyakuten Saiban in Japan), among other series, apparently got this when he proposed the idea for the protagonist of his new detective-based, mystery-solving game being a lawyer. Fast forward over 15 years and the series has 6 main games, two spin-offs, a crossover, a cinema movie, musicals, manga, an anime, art books, and a hefty fan base both in and out of Japan.
• On the "making of" featurette found on Mega Man Anniversary Collection, Keiji Inafune claims Capcom had zero faith in his game and told him it would never catch on. He then goes on to admit that if he had been in their place, he would have said the same thing.
• Digital Illusions CE's Pinball Dreams was rejected by Bitmap Brothers (one of the biggest Amiga developers) publisher Renegade because they thought pinball games wouldn't sell. The game was published by 21st Century Entertainment and became one of the best sellers in the later period of the Amiga's popularity and was converted to several platforms of the time, such as DOS and the SNES.
• Kingdom Hearts. Just about everyone made fun of the concept and believed that such a strange collaboration (between Square Enix and Disney) just wouldn't work... until they actually played the game. Fifteen years later, the series is currently one of Square's biggest franchises, with number ten its most recent release, and earlier entries still being remastered and ported.
• In an interview with Game Informer, Infinity Ward, one of the developers of the Call of Duty series, admitted that the first Modern Warfare was deemed this by Activision in the middle of development, always being put down and told it wouldn't work because World War II shooters were still in style to a degree and that was what the franchise should stick to – in fact, what became Modern Warfare was the second game they wanted to do, and they had to agree to do another WWII-based Call of Duty beforehand to get development kits for the Xbox 360. Then the first Modern Warfare easily outsold all of its predecessors, spawned a lengthy trend of sequels, reinvigorated the genre as well as expanded the franchise's name to casual audiences, and caused a new wave of modern day military shooters.
  • It also created a sort of irony with the direct follow-up by Treyarch, World at War (made as a fallback in case Modern Warfare's shift to the present day didn't stick), being derided by critics as being just yet another World War II shooter as well as a reskin of Modern Warfare, and only even sold as well as it did primarily because of Nazi Zombies. This industry opinion turnover was so large that it happened in just one year.
  • Happened again in reverse four years later with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, this time Treyarch brought forth a wave of futuristic shooters from the 2025 sections, while Infinity Ward's Ghosts wasn't as well received for being seen as too similar to the Modern Warfare trilogy, and gave futuristic shooters their time in the market limelight (although according to everyone after Infinite Warfare's trailer, the series needs to go back to its roots, which is why everyone only bought Infinite Warfare for Modern Warfare Remastered).
• No one, not even Kensuke Tanaka, the producer of KanColle, thought the number of Admirals (players) would exceed 50,000 when the game was launched in April of 2013. In fact, he stated in several interviews that he had initially planned to launch a final event, with the enemy making an invasion and destroying everything, before folding the game on August 15th^note the anniversary of the Japanese Empire's acceptance of surrender to the Allied Nations. The number of Admirals exceeded 3 million as of May 2015, and the popularity of this game has helped models of the ships the characters were based on to find a new market.
  • Within the fandom, admirals were not excited about the fact that one of the new ships that were to be added for the Fall Event in 2015 was the 2nd ship of the Katori-class training cruiser, Kashima, due to how Katori's stats were not that great compared to other cruisers, and that the bonus XP she gave during PvP exercises were not that great. She ended up becoming so popular that she got several limited character graphics since, and her Fan Nickname has become "Queen of Ariake" after she became the subject of so many doujinshis immediately after she was added in the game.
• After the release of the first John Madden Football, EA's management was interested in developing a sequel, but they were told by market researchers and retailers that "you can't sequel sports games". Two decades later, Madden is one of the most successful video game series of all time, and annualized sports games are the rule rather than the exception.
• DONTNOD Entertainment, the makers of Remember Me and Life Is Strange, had to fight to get female protagonists into both games, as publishers felt that male gamers wouldn't want to play as a woman. In the case of Life is Strange, they went with Square Enix as a publisher simply because they were the only studio that wasn't telling them to change Max Caulfield into a boy. While Remember Me got a fairly mixed reception, Dontnod's doggedness paid off handsomely with Life is Strange, which won acclaim as one of the best games of 2015, at least partly on the strength of its story, and a not insignificant reason was because of the protagonist. Life is Strange is still seeing new releases after the original concluded, with a prequel, sequel, and second sequel on its way.
• When George Wood of Gaming in the Clinton Years reviewed GoldenEye (1997), he said at one point that he can't review the multiplayer because he only had one controller, then brushes it off by stating that "no one buys a game specifically for multiplayer options" (interestingly mirroring how the multiplayer itself was a last-minute addition thrown together in a couple of hours, and only remained in the game because anybody who'd want it gone didn't notice it until it was too late). GoldenEye ended up becoming one of the most successful console FPSes in the '90s primarily because of its multiplayer. And nowadays, damn near everyone who plays FPSes plays 'em for the multiplayer, especially after the introduction online play meant that you no longer needed to invite friends over to play multiplayer. As early as 1999, multiplayer-only FPS games such as Quake III: Arena started to come out. It eventually got to the point where it was a shock when something like Wolfenstein: The New Order came out without multiplayer.
• One of the last games released for the original PlayStation was a First-Person Shooter based on Alien: Resurrection, which featured an experimental control scheme. GameSpot's review, which ultimately gave the game a 4.7 out of 10, calls the game's control setup "its most terrifying element" – and then goes on to describe what any gamer will immediately recognize as the standard dual analog control scheme used by every single console FPS made since the turn of the millennium. For a double whammy, the review ends recommending that fans of FPSes or the Alien franchise wait for Aliens: Colonial Marines instead. That game's page can speak for itself.
• When G4TV merged with Tech TV, it introduced a lot of fans of the latter to a show called "Arena", which was just some people playing multiplayer games against each other, with commentary. Some people felt that there was no future in watching someone else play video games. As far as anyone can tell, the Let's Play was invented a few years later, and now Pewdiepie's a zillionaire, Twitch streaming is huge, and eSports are so popular that some get broadcast on TV.
• Once upon a time, a tired and discouraged developer decided to make one more game before ending his gaming career and went on Kickstarter to get it funded. It made a total of ZERO dollars. Not to mention, his previous games had gotten heavily panned. He still managed to get the game released and hoped for the best. The game in question? Five Nights at Freddy's, which has spawned an entire franchise with several games, novels, and even a movie.
• Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of The Witcher book series, sold the rights to make video games based on his books to CD Projekt RED for a lump sum of less than $10,000, believing that the games wouldn't sell well enough to justify asking for royalties based on sales. In interviews given after the success of the game series, particularly the third one which became one of the best selling games of all time, Sapkowski naturally expresses regret at this arrangement.
  Sapkowski: I was stupid enough to sell them rights to the whole bunch. They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, ‘No, there will be no profit at all — give me all my money right now! The whole amount.’ It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn’t believe in their success. But who could foresee their success? I couldn’t.
• When the PC creativity game Barbie Fashion Designer was being set for release, the creators were met with skepticism at a girls-oriented computer game doing any well. When the producer was trying to sell it to major stores, an executive at Toys R Us reportedly told her, "Girls are never going to buy this". It ended up not only becoming a surprise commercial success at release, but it also ended up outselling both Quake and Command & Conquer: Red Alert that year, and ended up influencing more publishers to look into a girls-targeted market of PC gaming.
• The developers of Elite found it difficult to sell the game to most publishers at the time, who were mostly looking for more arcade-like games as opposed to Elite's Wide-Open Sandbox. With AcornSoft and Firebird behind it, Elite became one of the most successful and influential games of The '80s.
• The director of The Idolmaster, Akihiro Ishihara, showed an early plan of Cinderella Girls to his higher-ups, who opposed to it, saying "It won't sell". He went ahead with it anyway and it's now by far the biggest money-making branch of the franchise.
• A certain team at Konami was told to create a game to compete with Resident Evil, and were basically told to make a complete copy of its tone and gameplay. Instead, the team focused the game around more mature and slow-burn horror that, rather than appealing to players' reflexes, it appealed to primal fears and genuine anxiety within the mind of those who played. As a result of this shift, Konami wasn't happy with the game's developers, but the game was released anyway. The game in question was Silent Hill, and it spawned a franchise that has had some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.
• In 2015, after seeing the success of League of Legends, Tencent Games who owned Riot Games asked them to port the game to mobile, seeing that mobile devices were gaining momentum amongst the Chinese crowd. Riot Games rejected the idea, thinking that it's implausible to do it. Tencent then decided to contact their other subsidiary, TiMi, to just make their own 'mobile League'. After awhile developing, they came up with Honor of Kings, which proceeded to dominate the local Chinese market and it grew so big that they decided to port it internationally as Arena of Valor, building up their own reputation amongst Mobile gamers and showing the world (along with the rival game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang) that mobile MOBA experience is completely viable. It's enough to finally convince Riot to port League of Legends to mobile as League of Legends: Wild Rift, better late than never.
• After the visual novel Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was released in Japan, Kotaro Uchikoshi wished for it to be released in America, but was explicitly told that it would be a horrible idea because "Americans aren't interested in visual novels". The game ended up with unexpected levels of success in America for an M-rated visual novel on a Nintendo console and became one of the Nintendo DS's sleeper-hits. This success in America helped launch a sequel turning it into a series, Zero Escape, which was released in both America and Europe. In a fate which is about as ironic as you can get, the series actually became more popular in the States and many western countries than in Japan, where it received praise for being one of the very few visual novel franchises released in America which can be enjoyed even if you don't like visual novels/Japanese tropes. Consequently, the third game in the trilogy was specifically made to be more Western-orientated by taking after games such as The Walking Dead with its cinematic cutscenes and featuring an art style which, while still noticeably Japanese in style, is less blatantly "anime" then the previous games.
• Upon considering its absolute Development Hell that dates back to 2004, a general lack of original properties made during The New '10s by Koei Tecmo, and the divisiveness of the game's mechanics via the demos that made it stand so far out of the Soulslike RPG genre which was booming at the time, one would be forgiven for not giving the 2020 game Nioh and developer Team Ninja a chance, especially when prior Action Game failures like Ninja Gaiden 3 (2012) and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z tarnished the latter's reputation. Nioh wound up becoming the best-selling game for North America in Koei Tecmo history, which neither established Long-Runners Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden ever reached. Simultaneously, Nioh became proof that Team Ninja could still be relevant in the Action Game genre on their own merits, like they were in the mid-to-late 2000s. By 2023, a Sequel was released, Square Enix hired them to do a Final Fantasy-inspired Spin-Off of the first game and Team Ninja launched a Romance of the Three Kingdoms-inspired successor.
• Like a Dragon is a franchise beloved for its intense Beat'em-Up combat, unique setting of red light district Kamurocho, and a well-established cast of likeable characters... which is why it threw fans for a loop that its eight entry is going to ditch all of it by being a turn-based JRPG with a completely new protagonist set mostly away from the iconic district. However, while direction of the series sparked a lot of debates, the resulting game has received near-universal acclaim from critics and long-time fans alike, being praised for refreshing a lot of gameplay and narrative elements while still perfectly nailing the tone and spirit of the series.
• Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 had only a run of 20,000 copies for the North American edition. That's because Sega had low confidence in its success as the gaming industry at the time was dominated by 1st and 3rd person shooters using realistic (if albeit "'roided up") depictions of people. However the game quickly sold out on strength of glowing reviews and word of mouth, leading to a then lucrative market of reselling the game on Ebay. Eventually Sega would package a bundle of the game with its DLCs for and successfully port them for the PS4 and PC.
• Many people thought Palworld was going to be a meme-tier "Pokémon with guns" Shallow Parody and nothing more, relegated to the bin of niche-dom just like Temtem. Instead, the game sold over three million copies within the first 40 or so hours◊ and reached over one million concurrent players◊ as of January 21, 2024. So far, it has has made history as one of the best-selling and most popular Steam games, without even considering Game Pass or its future Xbox release.

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