Uncertain Audience / Video Games

Consoles

• This is one of several reasons why the OUYA console failed. It was advertised as an affordable console that "put games on the television" that was easy to develop for, hack, and modify, which sounded good on paper but quickly fell between the interests of potential buyers. The issue was gamers were going to gravitate toward either whatever console had the latest hit games they wanted or use the computers they already owned to buy (or pirate) games they could afford, developers were going to gravitate toward whichever platform had the gamers to cater to, and hackers and modifiers were going to gravitate toward whichever platform had the developers, which of course encouraged less and less gamers to go OUYA and fed into a vicious cycle. Even gamers who were utterly desperate to get their PC games on the television, one of OUYA's defining features, could just as easily accomplish this by investing about $10 in an HDMI cable to connect their PC to their TV. In the end, the platform's best selling game, TowerFall, only moved 7000 units and the console was discontinued in only 2 years of life.
• The Steam Machine ended up being an oddity of video game hardware as it was unclear who exactly Valve was intending to market it to. Fully released in 2015, their very concept was of pre-built gaming PCs loaded with SteamOS (a Linux-based operating system reminiscent of and integrated with their signature Steam platform) with the accessibility found in console systems. The issue lies with how PC gamers weren't exactly up for getting a pre-built extension of a platform they're already familiar with just to be suitable for their living room, and console gamers were alienated by the many, many models to have to choose from, confused by its intended purpose, and overall distracted by the mainstream options at the time of release: the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Not helping matters was the lack of compatible games due to running Linux (with Linux compatibility not always clearly marked), as Wine (as Proton) had not been integrated into Steam yet. In 2018, they realized it was underperforming and stopped offering Steam Machines through the Steam platform, and in 2020, Valve president Gabe Newell admitted that even after their production delays, the hardware they were pushing for was still "super-incomplete" and they were too impatient to get the product out before convincing consumers why they needed it. Valve's next attempt at a Steam "console", the handheld Steam Deck, was much more successful.
• The Wii U's disappointing performance is often credited to its uncertain audience. What it attempted to do was recapture the massive casual-audiences success that was the original Wii by using the same branding and a controller-based gimmick that modified the controller to resemble a more familiar device, while recapturing traditional gamers through more advanced hardware, less emphasis on motion controls, and a launch lineup with ports of many seventh-generation games. But to casual consumers who bought Wiis back in the day, its gimmick of a large tablet-style controller with a second screen and a ton of strange features didn't have the instant draw of motion controls, with many being convinced it was a peripheral by the similar name and lack of focus on the console, and its higher price tag made it too expensive to be an impulse purchase. To mainstream gamers who'd felt burned by the Wii, it was an incredibly underpowered system that could really only play Nintendo games or inferior ports and lacked a lot of features, including a very flawed online mode, which made it a companion system at best. Even to core Nintendo fans, it lacked a lot of the usual Killer App franchises, being focused mostly on lesser lights, Updated Rereleases, and spinoffs, and had to compete with the cheaper, better-supported Nintendo 3DS carrying counterparts or outright ports of a lot of its best games. The console's successor, the Nintendo Switch, addressed all of these issues and became not just Nintendo's best-selling home console, but the third best-selling video game console of all time.

• ARMS, largely due to its very unconventional gameplay for a Fighting Game, runs into the problem of conflicted appeal. The game intended to reach casual fans with its appealing characters, variety of modes, hidden lore, wealth of unlockables, and relatively simple controls. The game also wanted to appeal to competitive players with its surprisingly deep combat and customization options. In practice, however, the two intentions came into conflict, as casual fans were overwhelmed by the surprisingly complex gameplay while fighting game fans felt the game wasn't complex enough for them. The game sold modestly well for a new and unorthodox property, but it didn't quite reach the leagues of Nintendo EPD's other big names like Mario, Splatoon, or Animal Crossing, and plans to make it an ongoing franchise were quietly shelved, though it did find a lower-key following that appreciated its unusual gameplay.
• The Atelier Series franchise attracts these claims. The series initially ran on shojo tropes, with most of the games having a flowery art style with plenty of pretty boys, and a mostly female fanbase. Yet, starting with the Arland series of games, the franchise took a 180 and much of The Merch, DLC costumes, and promotional artwork became heavily Male Gaze-y, and the games have incorporated more and more moe elements over time, though still keeping many of the shojo tropes, pretty boys and occasional Female Gaze moments involving said pretty boys that might alienate that audience anyway. The series returned to its shojo-leaning, Tamer and Chaster roots for the Dusk trilogy only to go all in on the fanservicey moe designs for the Mysterious games. A survey released in 2019 confirmed that even after these changes, the series fanbase remains mostly female, meaning these changes didn't even do a very good job at attracting a male audience to begin with, at least until Ryza increased the fanservice and caused a Newbie Boom.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance isn't likely to appeal to anyone, even before they even get to the game's other flaws like its glitches and lackluster gameplay, as soon as they experience the slapdash way it retells the show's story. Fans of the series will be annoyed by how it glosses over major story beats and outright spoils the final battle in the opening credits, while newcomers to the series will be alienated by how it dumps entire episodes worth of lore on them in single sentences.
• Back in 1995 is a Retraux Survival Horror game in the vein of the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill, so you'd presume it's meant to appeal to players with a fondness for the classic horror gameplay style they represent. Then you learn the big twist, which in a nutshell is an elaborate Take That, Audience! to exactly these people, insinuating that they're horribly out of touch, overly nostalgic, and unable to move on from outdated stuff in the past. People who dislike older survival horror games obviously won't be interested in a Genre Throwback with low-res polygons and Tank Controls, while those who do like that sort of thing likely won't be amused by the insulting message the game is built around.
• Balan Wonderworld was created with small children as its target audience, with it having incredibly simplistic controls and level design, but its advertising was aimed at attracting the older fanbases of NiGHTS into Dreams… and Sonic the Hedgehog. Likewise, despite being designed to be played by children, the game is notably lacking in gameplay tutorials and story explanations, requiring players to look up guides to understand certain features and read the game's tie-in novel to understand its plot. The game flopped critically and commercially as a result.
• The commercial failure of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, which ended the Banjo-Kazooie series, can be pinned on uncertain appeal. Established Banjo-Kazooie fans were incensed that the long-awaited third installment of the series had dropped its exploration-based platforming gameplay in favor of mission-based vehicle building, seeing it as the franchise abandoning its identity. At the same time, the game was full of call backs and continuity to the original games, with the game starting out on Grunty's disembodied skull escaping and seeking revenge eight years after Tooie; this left potential newer fans disinterested at best and confused at worst. To add to the uncertainty, the new character L.O.G. explicitly and simultaneously insults both the old style of gameplay and gamers at the time in the prologue, calling the former "painful to watch" and saying the latter "just want to shoot things." The game was fairly well-received by critics, and some players begrudgingly admit the gameplay is fun, but most admit that the game should've been marketed as a new IP at best, or at least a spinoff.
• Battleborn failed in part because it couldn't win over First-Person Shooter/MOBA fans. MOBA fans were turned off by the game's first person perspective, which they found constraining and ill-suited for executing MOBA-like strategies compared to the typical top-down perspective of a MOBA like League of Legends. Conversely, shooter fans were turned off by the MOBA mechanics, which they felt added unnecessary complexity and placed less emphasis on actual shooting.
• Battlefield V became such a divisive title in the Battlefield series because developer DICE struggled to reconcile its gameplay and aesthetics. The more tactical gameplay with reduced ammo capacity and downscaled health regeneration was supposed to appeal to hardcore gamers. At the same time, it had wacky cosmetics that were supposed to draw in mainstream audiences, specifically the Fortnite crowd. Likewise, the game had modes like Firestorm and the now-cancelled 5v5 mode, which were attempts to capitalize on the Battle Royale and eSports trends, respectively. Unfortunately, the game failed to satisfy any demographic, with casual audiences frustrated by the high difficulty curve and the grim tone that replicated the somberness of its predecessor Battlefield 1 but without the exotic Steampunk weaponry and gadgets that set BF1 apart from other generic historical shooters; hardcore gamers were alienated by the juvenile cosmetics and Politically Correct History approach that clashed with the serious World War II mood; and veteran Battlefield fans were frustrated by the developers chasing trends at the expense of the franchise's traditional gameplay and aesthetics.
• Blazing Aries: On one hand, since it's an H-Game, part of its main demographic might be interested in the risque scenes. However, the problem with that is most of them are locked after the second part of the first chapter... and the first part of the first chapter is notorious for being Early Game Hell, thus frustrating those who came for the fanservice and alienating them at worse. It only gets worse from there, since the game is surprisingly difficult for an eroge even on the easiest setting. Then there are those who came for the gameplay but were alienated by the fanservice elements (being an eroge and all), who also complained that the game is unable to decide what kind of Action RPG it is (for example, the combo-based gameplay system might be inspired by the Tales Series, but some of the bosses tend to discourage combos) and vice versa. Notably, the FANZA and Steam versions of Blazing Aries had the normal difficulty nerfed, particularly due to these complaints, and the removal of sex scenes for the international versions, not to mention a family-friendly option, which would normally attract complaints, is seen as a blessing by this crowd since it allows the game to have a more distinct identity.
• Bleeding Edge suffered from Ninja Theory not having a clear vision of what sort of game they wanted to create. Bleeding Edge started off as a fighting game, but during development, Ninja Theory decided to change it into a MOBA, then a Hero Shooter. As a result, the game incorporated gameplay elements from all three genres, none of which worked well together. The game was simply too unconventional and bloated for a fan of any one of the three genres to be interested.
• One of the problems with the original Borderlands was that it seemed unsure whether it was a straight Deconstruction of RPGs and first-person shooters, a Parody of the same, or something in-between. As such, it came off as a Shallow Parody, which limited its appeal. The sequel ratcheted the comedy and the parody up, which made it Denser and Wackier, but gave it a much clearer idea of its own identity, and it found its audience that way.
• Chibi-Robo!: Zip Lash was part of a franchise that had always been, at best, a Cult Classic — small but devoted fanbase, very little general awareness, the usual. Zip Lash was intended to save the series by attracting new fans, being released on the 3DS with a Genre Shift from an explorative 3D platformer where you go around a house and help the family living there to a sidescrolling 2D platformer with the premise of saving the world by going through fairly standard environments. Longtime fans were angered that the series had so thoroughly abandoned its aesthetic and identity, while general audiences weren't familiar with the character and just saw it as a generic 2D platformer on a handheld that already had a surfeit of well-received games of that type. Unsurprisingly, the game bombed hard.
• DayZ's considerable underperformance as a standalone game could be half-attributed to its uncertain audience (the other half being its infamously barebones launch). Making a standalone version of a beloved, if technically volatile, zombie-themed ARMA mod seemed like a straightforward path to success, but a significant hurdle came in the form of how variable the DayZ mod had become. Many different servers added their own variations for different styles of gameplay beyond the original Survival Sandbox, such as communal base-building, fighting enemy hordes, or PVP battle royales, meaning that a DayZ game meant different things to different people. The standalone version — as a partial consequence of being released too early — couldn't commit to any one of these visions, leaving newcomers disappointed while preexisting DayZ fans fell into an unholy mix of "It's the Same, Now It Sucks!" and "They Changed It, Now It Sucks!", causing the game's momentum to drop off a cliff.
• Dead or Alive 6 tried to market itself as more tournament-friendly and appealing to western sensibilities, doing so by going Tamer and Chaster and reducing the amount of Fanservice in the game, i.e. going against its core identity, and the reason the Dead or Alive series built its fame, in an aspiration to reach eSports and EVO. Then director Yohei Shimori flip-flopped between statements, stating that nothing changed, only to go back to the old, confusing a lot of people. It was controversial, to say the least, and in fact said controversy often overshadowed the game itself. Unfortunately, any attempt to reach the big leagues failed, for two reasons: The first was the infamous "Core Values" incident where DOA6 was taken off-stream in the middle of the tournament at EVO Japan 2019, because it got too sexual with the use of female models shaking their breasts and butts to mimic the game. Then, when the lineup of EVO 2019 in North America, comparable to the Super Bowl of fighters, was announced, Dead or Alive 6 wasn't there. Effectively, all the effort and controversy was for nothing, as it was effectively damned to its niche status, passed up for other niche but more respected games like Under Night In-Birth and Samurai Shodown, and its direct competitor Soulcalibur VI, a game that didn't suffer from this trope as it went its own way without confusion, incidentally a Hotter and Sexier one. The fact is, the game tried to appease everyone, but did the polar opposite instead.
• The more divided reception of Diablo III overtime can be partially attributed to uncertain appeal. Blizzard Entertainment wanted the Diablo series to return and be as successful as both World of Warcraft and StarCraft II (since the series had been quiet since 2000). To get newcomers, they made a more grandiose story with a deep and complex lore like their other titles and made the gameplay slightly simpler with more emphasis on set-pieces and boss battles, with the horror appeal dialed down compared to the past games, with a “slightly” more comical tone in the game. To get old fans back, Blizzard tried to reference as much of the past games as they could, ranging from bosses (like Leoric and the Butcher), to locations (such as Tristriam), while keeping the game’s loot system and gear progression like the last game to appeal to those who liked gear gathering, and trying to do as many Call-Back moments as they could. The result was that over time, the game became criticized for not really knowing who it wants to be for: newer fans might not want to play the third game that tries to make references so often, while long time fans wanted something closer to the previous games with a focus on horror and didn’t like how the game seemed like it was trying to be like Blizzard’s other titles instead of itself. As a result, despite being critically well received at launch, in the years that followed, it is often debated how good it is due to the unclear target audience.
• Unclear audience was a big contributor to DmC: Devil May Cry's divisive reception (more so in terms of plot, tone and characterization than gameplay). DmC has a notably Darker and Edgier tone, attempting to deal with much heavier topics than the original continuity; while the latter has some serious and dramatic moments, overall the games tend to be more campy and whimsical. Ninja Theory were specifically instructed to make a 'different' Devil May Cry game, but the end result is that DmC bears little resemblance to the rest of the franchise and either doesn't use any of the classic characters or radically changes them. Many fans of the original games weren't onboard because it was In Name Only, while the Devil May Cry title may have put off potential players who were into what DmC has to offer, resulting in DmC underselling in some markets. To this day, it's common to hear players say stuff like "It's not a bad game per se, just not a good Devil May Cry game." The game underperforming previous installments in sales prompted Capcom to Un-Reboot the series with Devil May Cry 5 in 2019, which proved to be a critical and commercial success.
• An issue that hit Epic Mickey fairly hard is that it wasn't quite sure if it wanted to be a game for little kids, or a game for older fans of animation. It was certainly that older crowd that was most interested in the possibility of a Darker and Edgier Mickey Mouse, which was the game's original pitch, but the game itself turned out to be rather easy and shallow, with most of the creepy imagery and deconstructive elements shown off in those early promotional materials now absent. The young children the game now seemed designed towards, however, wouldn't be able to appreciate the full scope of the game's goal given the age range, which hinges on fans being at least passingly familiar with very old Mickey Mouse shorts and the significance behind the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
• Fantasy Strike is a Fighting Game whose main selling point is its accessibility to newcomers thanks to simplified controls and short combos. This is reinforced by its free-to-play business model letting anyone try the game out without having to worry about wasting money. But said F2P model is unusual in that all characters are unlocked from the start, but the only modes that can be played are training and online fights against random opponents. Anything else, including the ability to play against your friends or bots, is locked behind the purchase of a "Core Pack" DLC, so any actual fighting game newcomers trying the game out have a 99% chance of fighting a seasoned veteran who will kick their ass. While FS does have a niche fandom, the innate contradictions of its business model led to rapidly-dwindling player numbers after the game became free.
• Several Final Fantasy titles have had this problem.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 attracts these claims. The fact that it centres on a trio of female characters and has a Lighter and Softer tone than its predecessor (the battle system revolves around changing clothes!) seems to turn off male gamers. However, there's also a massive heaping of Fanservice, Les Yay and Stripperiffic outfits, elements which tend to alienate female gamers. Consequently, while the game has fans who are able to look past these issues, it failed to maintain the staying power the previous game had, and was not as financially successful.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance tends to have this issue because of the changes it made to the setting and gameplay. Being a Creator-Driven Successor and loose Non-Linear Sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics, one of the most beloved Turn-Based Strategy out there, it had to deal with the expectations of returning fans who loved the original game, while trying to get newcomers into the game. Fans of the original Tactics hated how the game was more child friendly and low stakes compared to the Darker and Edgier story of Tactics, alongside seeing the gameplay as being dumbed down and suffering from Fake Difficulty thanks to the new Law system. Newcomers hoping to get in had to contend with the same L system without any experience in the game type, and the mechanics were more advanced than what newcomers to the genre expected, alongside the name making it seem like a sequel of sorts. The result was that Tactics fans hated the game for not being like the original, while new fans couldn't get in as easily as the title seemed to want to, giving it a largely negative reputation for a long time.
  • A major reason why Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015) ended up being a disappointment financially for Square Enix was that the game's console port didn't seem clear on who it was designed for; eSports fans, or Dissidia veterans. The game was clearly designed to appeal to the eSports crowd with its usage of "Classes", removal of RPG mechanics such as leveling up, the streamlined summoning system and character builds, and 3v3 matches, something Square Enix apparently wanted. At the same time, they wanted to attract fans of the previous games, so they included a story mode that acted as a follow-up to the previous game's story, included some returning characters like Kain, and announced they wanted to bring all of the previously playable characters back, plus they added new characters like Ramza and Noctis. Sadly, the game's inability to appeal to either group backfired: the game never saw any light as an eSports fixture due to its technical problems, poor gameplay balance, and limited character customization, and failed to appeal to the Fighting Game Community (where it was more likely to succeed as an esport) because it required three players per team rather than the traditional 1v1 format, which anyone remotely familiar with tournaments will realize would make it impossible for matches to happen on time even if enough people managed to find teams. Meanwhile, longtime fans hated the changes since they removed the RPG mechanics, forced those who played for the story and characters to have to grind to unlock more of it, and also hated how bare-bones the game's content was, especially the barely-there story, which was really short once you removed the forced grinding. As a result, the game was discontinued after roughly 1.5 years, and plans for a larger roster never came to pass.
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint suffered from an uncertain audience. It attempted to reinvent the Ghost Recon franchise as a loot-based shooter in the same vein as Destiny or The Division. Unfortunately, it was a massive failure. Longtime Ghost Recon fans hated the new mechanics for taking away from the realism and verisimilitude that was a major draw of the franchise for them. Meanwhile, the steps that were taken by Ubisoft to try and make those loot and RPG mechanics more palatable to the Ghost Recon fanbase made them unappealing to the players who like them. The loot system was very shallow and could be outright ignored for the majority of the game, as enemies outside of very specific areas on the map scale up or down to the player's Gearscore, and even when they don't all human enemies can be killed with one headshot (two if they're wearing a helmet). The end result was a game that was rejected by both bases and flopped hard enough that Ubisoft's stock price tanked, and they delayed all forthcoming games to reevaluate the direction that they were headed in.
• The Super Mario Bros. Fan Game (Mario) The Music Box has remained obscure within the already niche fandom of Explorer Horror, and many, even its fans, pointed out its inability to decide upon a core target audience as a key reason why: Mario fans shied away from what they perceived as a ham-fisted attempt to be Darker and Edgier than its lighthearted source material and its plot revolving around its own original mythos and characters, alongside seeing it as a cheap imitation of Luigi's Mansion (Series), explorer horror fans saw the Mario cast as shoehorned into a game that would be barely changed if they were absent and detracting from its attempts to be taken seriously, and parodists expecting the idea of the Mario Bros. starring in an outright horror game to be Played for Laughs were disappointed by the game's heavy focus on disturbing elements and drama at the expense of humor and a general inability to diverge from the clichés of its genre.
• Nintendo as a whole went through a spell of uncertainty starting in the twilight years of the Wii and ending with the release of the Nintendo Switch. During this period, the company was aware of the Wii and DS's greater success with simpler games geared towards casual players and diminished success with more complex games geared towards traditional gamers. At the same time, they were aware that casual players wouldn't become dedicated consumers the way traditional gamers were. This dual concern led to several decisions that would attempt to reconcile casual and hardcore players, mostly to mixed results. Particular highlights of this uncertainty include:
  • At least one person has theorized that indecisive appeal is the reason why The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is so divisive among fans, as it feels like it can't decide whether it was made for newer players brought in with the Wii's success or veteran players who have been following the series for a long time. The game is loaded with several mandatory hints (mainly from Fi) that clearly explain where to progress most of the time, frustrating veteran players who want to figure things out on their own. At the same time, many of the puzzles not only require considerable spatial and logical awareness as with previous games in the series, but Fi tends to give little or vague hints on what to do with them, alienating newer players who want a more accessible experience. Regarding the game's overall structure, many longtime Zelda players were opposed to the game's focus on a more linear structure, given that previous Zelda games emphasized relatively free exploration with a focus on finding hidden treasures and rewards, often allowing the player to do dungeons out of order. Unfortunately, players into linear games were against the game's vast-yet-empty Sky area, the long, mandatory quests to access the game's dungeons, and especially the high amount of Backtracking in its second half, given that fans of linear games prefer their games to have a brisker pace free of filler content. Finally, the motion-controlled swordplay didn't endear the game to veteran Zelda fans who found the button-controlled sword swings much more reliable, while newcomers presumably coming from Wii Sports Resort found much of the combat frustrating due to how enemies actively block your attacks. Tellingly, the game sold less than half as well as the previous Zelda game on the Wii, the more traditional and non-linear The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, despite releasing at a point when the Wii hardware had sold many more copies. The Updated Re-release for the Nintendo Switch addressed some of these issues, such as making most of the hints opt-in and adding a new control scheme without motion controls, but the conflict between the game's linearity and the rather slow pacing remained.
  • Star Fox Zero suffered from being indecisive on whether to appeal to established fans or newer players. The game's story seemed to aim towards winning back Star Fox fans who lost interest in the series after 64 by presenting itself as a Continuity Reboot to the series, returning to the original fight against Andross. The core gameplay, on the other hand, aimed to breathe new life into the series by heavily changing the Arwing controls, most notably requiring use of the GamePad to aim the Arwing's laser shots. As a result, the game was criticized for both changing too much and changing too little at the same time; potential newer players disliked how the game's presentation seemed to pander to older fans, while established Star Fox fans disliked the new Arwing gameplay, particularly the clumsy GamePad integration. Consequently, Zero underperformed in sales and received mixed reception from fans and critics alike, rendering it as of yet the last original game in the franchise.
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sony's Super Smash Bros. equivalent, didn't do very well because of its uncertain audience. The gameplay in particular ended up being very divisive due to the confused design: the game's focus on traditional fighting game Combos alienates the casual crowd who wants a simple party game, while the bizarre and unconventional mechanics of using Supers only as a method to kill and being the only method to score kills alienates the hardcore crowd. The roster by itself also suffers from this problem: about half the franchises involved are gritty M-rated ones, but the game itself is a cartoony Platform Fighter with tons of wacky concepts. While Smash is no stranger to representing M-rated franchises, they make up a very small portion of the roster and tend to have their seriousness toned down to compensate. PlayStation All-Stars, on the other hand, plays the seriousness of the characters in question rather straight, making it jarring to see a space Nazi slap his enemies silly with a fish. Even as a pure celebration of PlayStation history, the roster was largely reliant on Guest Fighters from non-Sony games, ironically making it seem like Sony didn't have much of their own history, while what third-parties were there were mostly promotions for upcoming games, such as Reboot Dante and Big Daddy (with most of his accompanying material coming from the then-upcoming BioShock Infinite), instead of more historically significant characters known for being on PlayStation consoles, like Crash Bandicoot and Lara Croft, making it look like Sony barely had any third-party history either. The game failed to birth an ongoing competitor to Smash as a result.
• Quake Champions ended up awkwardly sandwiched between a signature style of its beloved franchise and the new hotness it was trying to replicate, and didn't quite grab fans of either. Quake multiplayer is known for its fast-paced, highly technical Arena Shooter gameplay beloved by its fans in large part because of its steep learning curve, with Champions' inclusion of Hero Shooter elements driving some of the old guard off, with many fans seeing it as a dumbing down player expression and making the challenges less rewarding. Meanwhile, expected newcomers were reluctant to join due to Champions still being more mechanically daunting when compared to more-accessible contemporaries like Overwatch and Paladins, as well as having an identity largely based around Quake and other id Software properties, which doesn't carry as much star power to modern audiences.
• RAID: World War II: The game had one from conception as it was a 4 player co-op game made some of the same people who worked on PAYDAY: The Heist... and was appealing to that same crowd, it even had a tie-in with PAYDAY 2 to give it a canonical connection with it^note one of the rooms in the safe house is designed with World War II-themed paraphernalia, and John Cleese portrays both Control in this game, and Aldstone. However, it was clear that after the demo released, it just didn't tickle much interest with that userbase. Players of PAYDAY 2 saw it as a mild reskin, citing that RAID didn't bring much new to the table to differentiate itself, so there wasn't much interest in playing RAID at the time when PAYDAY 2 was still going strong, and actively benefitted from the crossover more than its parent game did, and the rest is history, really. Not helping matters was that the game was criticised for also using the same 13 year old Diesel engine PAYDAY 2 does, and all the issues that entails, with the only real upgrade to the aging engine was the move to a 64-bit platform (which isn't even much of a selling point either, as PAYDAY 2 on Linux is 64-bit anyway). Safe to say, there is a reason why PAYDAY 3 is not made in the Diesel engine.
• Roblox is a platform intended for younger audiences, but it also has a massive Periphery Demographic in no thanks to the potential to "Be Anything, Build Anything!", with major successes like Phantom Forces, Jailbreak (Roblox), etc. However, there are times where Multiple Demographic Appeal or appealing to an certain audience fails:
  • The remake of Defend the Statue is one of the most notorious cases, as a cautionary tale of what happens when veteran users are completely unable to agree with new users. The veteran Roblox users hate the remake for changing almost everything about the original game and thus making it too complex for them. The new users, on the other hand, hate the game for its mechanics that are incredibly punishing for them, such as items being unable to save upon leaving the game or the notorious Anti-Greed system which booted players out if they hogged a certain amount of a boss's HP too many times. The massive controversy over this, combined with the game's creator xKenis suffering a Creator Breakdown, caused all plans for additional games based on the remake to go into a grinding halt. While the game is still active, it suffers from very low player counts as a result.
  • The first two games that Archeximus made, Survival of the Fittest and Untitled Melee Game are based on The Culling, an obscure Battle Royale Game with an emphasis on melee combat. However, unlike The Culling, since it was hosted on a platform geared towards younger audiences, the games get harder flak because they tend to be gravitated towards the more popular Battle Royale Game like Fortnite, and the older members find the melee combat way too complex as the lack of an tutorial on how to fight means that they are likely to go up against players who will devastate them and finding the guns to be incredibly underpowered, not to mention that teaming is absolutely encouraged, in contrast with other games who downright forbade it or limit it to two players at best. To add insult to injury, the game that it's based on, is controversial due to the negative reception of its sequel and statements from its developers met with backlash. As a result, both games have an incredibly low playercounts, with Untitled Melee Game holding a rare 49% like-to-dislike ratio, which is only likely to be obtained by games that are considered scams at best, and it was only through Decaying Winter with some tweaks towards its melee and ranged combat system that it finally became a breakthrough hit for her.
  • Risk of Roadblocks: The game tries to be a Reference Overdosed Video Game Randomizer in the vein of item asylum and Allusions while having hardcore mechanics similar to Deepwoken. However, casual players find the game way too complex for them to have fun, while the more competitive players are unable to take the game seriously due to being meme-based. The self-contradiction of this meant that it appealed to no one and saw rapidly-plummeting playercounts not long after launch.
• RWBY: Grimm Eclipse is already a game that is considered okay at best, awful at worst, but the one issue everyone brings up is the multitude of conflicting gameplay styles haphazardly tossed together under the misguided belief that "more means better", having MOBA, team-based co-op, Dynasty Warriors, Devil May Cry, and Arkham-styled elements under one game that fails to understand what made them individually good and why mixing them all together at once is a bad idea.
• Rumbleverse failed because it couldn't sell its Fighting Game/Battle Royale Game premise to an audience. The battle royale mode alienated fighting game fans, who saw it as too distracting and unbalanced. The fighting game-inspired combat turned off many battle royale fans who prefer the more accessible and intuitive shooting combat in other battle royale titles. It also didn't help that the cartoony art style was seen as too goofy and similar to that of Fortnite.
• Saints Row (2022) was presented as a Continuity Reboot of the Saints Row series, with one of its goals being to strike balance between the more down-to-earth nature of the first two games and the Denser and Wackier tone of the third and fourth ones. Fans who preferred the tone of the first two games criticized the reboot for still largely retaining the zanier tone taken by the later games while still arguably having even fewer serious moments. On the other hand, the side of the fanbase that liked the third and fourth games felt that the reboot toned down the cartoonish aspects so much that it came off as bland in comparison. Then, of course, both sides loathed the game for not having any returning characters in favor of a new cast that caught the hearts of a few in the fanbase.
• Shantae (2002) sold badly on initial release because it was missing a clear target demographic, embodying What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? and What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? at the same time. The creator himself once said that it's "too sexy for a kids' game and too girly for a male gamer game." It's got a cute art style with a bright, primary-color palette, mostly-lighthearted stories, an occasional Black Comedy Burst or dead-serious moment, sexy character designs, and a level of Parental Bonus and raunchy humor that would raise a few eyebrows with parents. As the series has gone on, it's moved to a T-rating, and it has come to target older gamers who'd be the Periphery Demographic for a more "kiddie" series, but the difficulty of the gameplay has stayed low, leaving it underwhelming for adults. That said, the series would go on to become a flagship franchise for its developer and now boasts a passionate fanbase despite this.
• Shingata Medarot, a Game Boy Advance remake of the original Medarot, was advertised as Revisiting the Roots with a bold new feel. In practice, it ended up being too similar and too different from previous games at the same time. The game was a fairly iterative entry in a series that was already criticized for releasing too many similar sequels too fast, and not only did Medarot already have a remake (Medarot: Perfect Edition) on the WonderSwan, the previous mainline game was also a remake of Medarot 2. And it couldn't even play to nostalgia because the game's colorful Super-Deformed art style was wildly different from the rest of the franchise and it featured an entirely new set of Medabots different from those in the original game, which soured existing fans. While it's usually considered a competent game on its own merits, it was a massive sales failure that took the franchise down with it for five years.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE suffered this on account of trying to appease both the Shin Megami Tensei fans, and Fire Emblem fans, on top of alienating those who found themselves in the middle. It attempted to be a blend of the two series by having SMT like gameplay using Fire Emblem characters, all dressed up in an idol-themed RPG. Shin Megami Tensei fans were turned off by the heavily Persona-like characters, gameplay, and story, and the game was seen as a waste of the core mechanics of the SMT series thanks to none of the story or gameplay elements that make the SMT franchise beloved being present. Fire Emblem fans were put off by the lack of Turn-Based Strategy and usage of characters from only two games in the series as the Mirages, alongside finding the story and characters too "anime" for their tastes. The result was that SMT fans felt it was a dumbed down SMT game and didn't want to get it, while FE fans felt it was too radically different to be worth playing. Worse, the idol theme of the game caused this again, because the idol elements are mostly used for Excuse Plot reasons, making it effectively downplayed and not very interesting for people who enjoy idol stuff compared to other games, but is also still a present and major part of the game's presentation, meaning people who aren't into idol themed content were immediately put off by it being focused are idols. While the game was critically well received, it was a major flop sales wise, with many citing the fact the game had no target audience in mind. Its Switch rerelease did better, but still unperformed, only selling a mere 40k copies in its launch month in Japan.
  • Soul Hackers 2 suffers from trying to mix the wildly different approaches of Shin Megami Tensei and its More Popular Spin Off Persona to gameplay and narrative, offering watered-down versions of its inspirations as a result. Even as a sequel to Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, it doesn't reference the first game in any meaningful way, thus not appealing to that game's fans either.
• Silent Hill: Book of Memories failed in part because it was uncertain of who it wanted to appeal to, and in part thanks to a good dose of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, as it was a dungeon crawler in a franchise known for its Survival Horror and puzzle-solving aspects. According to WayForward Technologies who developed it, they sought to simplify the aspects of both the new genre it had entered as well as the old genre it came in a hope of attracting fans of both genres, which ultimately pleased nobody: fans of dungeon crawlers weren't interested in it as the gameplay was far too simplistic and grindy as compared to the other entries in the genre they were used to, while fans of the Silent Hill franchise weren't interested in it as the puzzles were far too simplified and it lacked the deeper horror or psychological aspects they were used to.
• The Snack World, another Level-5 property, also ran into this problem in the west: the series featured a lot of cute visuals and gags that wouldn't be out of place in Adventure Time (one of the leads is even a Captain Ersatz of Finn); but the dungeon crawler gameplay loop and other jokes (such as the more risqué humor and poking fun at role-playing game conventions) would appeal more to older players. The fact the game was given an all-ages rating in Japan while getting slapped with older age ratings elsewhere has furthered this uncertainty.
• This has become a huge point of contention for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise after its third game. Fans can be generally divided into two camps: those who grew up pre-Dreamcast on the 2D games, and those who grew up post-Dreamcast with the 3D games. Fans of the former accuse the 3D games of relying on gimmicky features and spectacle to make up for their lack of substantial gameplay compared to the 2D titles as well as increasingly tonally dissonant plotlines. Fans of the latter accuse the 2D games of relying too much on Trial-and-Error Gameplay, as well having nothing but an Excuse Plot to serve as narrative motivation. Sega trying to reconcile these two camps, especially since The New '10s, has led to some of the games being accused of being uncertain who their target audiences are and serves as a huge contribution to the franchise's notorious Broken Base.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog marketed itself heavily as a Darker and Edgier entry in the series, with characters using mild swears, Shadow being able to drive vehicles and wield firearms, and the primary enemies having a more "demonic" appearance. On the other hand, it retains the cartoony graphics, cheesy dialogue, and child-friendly characters of the rest of the franchise. Fans who enjoyed the darker aesthetic thought it wasn't dark enough, while fans who enjoyed the rest of the series thought its attempts at being dark came across as edgy and juvenile. In the end, it's regarded as an overall mediocre entry in the franchise, and even its fanbase admit they love it because of its tone-deaf attempt to mash serious and cartoony together rather than in spite of it.
  • The first episode of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 particularly suffered from a misguided attempt to cater to opposing groups. To appeal to older fans, Sonic Team and Dimps made the level aesthetics faithful recreations of popular levels from the Sega Genesis games — but the core gameplay tries to cater to new players by having movement physics reminiscent of Sonic Rush, involving very little downhill momentum and with a focus on the Homing Attack. Because of this, potential new players were put off by the aesthetics while established Sonic fans heavily criticized the gameplay for being too different from the Genesis games and not very good in its own right. The second episode managed to resolve both issues by having more original level themes and improved physics, but the first episode's reputation caused Sonic 4 as a whole to underperform, leading it to be Cut Short. The next attempt at a retro-styled game with modern elements, Sonic Mania, not only fared significantly better, but effectively acts as a direct sequel to the original games in the Alternate Timeline for Classic Sonic that would be established in Sonic Forces.
  • The growing criticism towards Gameplay Roulette in the series caused Sonic Unleashed to be accused of having an uncertain audience. The game consisted of two diametrically oppposed gameplay styles: the speedy, combat-light daytime gameplay and the slower, combat-heavy Werehog gameplay. Due to the opposing appeal, the game was criticized for not knowing who it was made for on release. While the two gameplay styles are well-done individually, many fans tended to prefer only one of the playstyles while disliking the other as an obstacle to playing the part they liked. In response, Sonic Team has either downplayed the Gameplay Roulette in future mainline Sonic games or eliminated it altogether. The next game, Sonic Colors focused more on the gameplay style of daytime stages in Unleashed and ended up faring much better.
• Spore was notorious for its uncertain audience, especially when it was first released. The original trailer made it out to be a realistic, scientifically grounded, complex evolution simulator, but the end result was significantly simplified and cartoonish, seemingly to cater to children and more artistic, creative players. This naturally pissed off hardcore gamers and the more scientifically-minded fans. While the artistic-minded players were not as vitriolic, the end result still contained a lot of Scrappy Mechanics, most of all the notorious biodisasters, that impeded players' ability to simply wander around freely for the sake of having more traditional video game challenges (one of the more common mod requests is to remove biodisasters and similarly annoying events). This has calmed down over the years as the original trailer became a distant memory to the younger players who grew up with the game, but the bitter divide still remains in some circles.
• Starlink: Battle for Atlas's uncertain audience is ultimately what led to it having less than satisfactory sales for Ubisoft. The game's gameplay depth, scope and detailed lore seemed tailor-made for older gamers, but the focus on its toys-to-life spaceship controller gimmick felt more aimed at kids. It didn't help that, by the time the game released, the three biggest games focusing on toys-to-life (Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and LEGO Dimensions) had all died out and taken the genre with them. Not even a guest appearance by the Star Fox cast in the Switch version helped to boost the game's appeal, though this did result in the game selling the best on the Nintendo Switch. However, it didn't sell well enough, and the second wave of toys was cancelled.
• While well received and still popular, the lack of main-stream popularity for Star Wars: The Old Republic is often attributed to being designed around being two different games at once. It is a heavy story focused game that has a lot of cutscenes and story arcs that make it seem like it is aimed at story focused players, especially those who liked the prior games, but it also is an MMO trying to appeal to those who want that style of gameplay and interaction, complete with two main factions that the player choses from. As a result, once the initial hype died down, the game wasn't able to maintain a large playerbase compared to other games in the genre, as MMO fans felt it was too much of a single player experience to feel like an MMO, especially compared to the previous Star Wars MMO game, while story focused players felt the MMO elements were alienating (such as the subscription and handling of the previous games), or made the story weaker than it could have been. While there is a decently sized playerbase still, most tend to be those who either embraced both sides of the game from the start, or are simply hardcore Star Wars fans. It quickly went free to play as a result.
• Street Fighter X Tekken kind of gets this from the title, as given the two games are quite different, fans knew immediately somebody was going to get favoritism. Sure enough, the game turned out to be borrowing Street Fighter IV's artstyle, 2.5-D gameplay, and general design^note granted, a game called Tekken X Street Fighter was supposed to be released in order to cater to the Tekken crowd, but it ended up going nowhere after SFxT bombed. If you liked Tekken, it didn't come across as a crossover so much as a Street Fighter game guest-starring the Tekken cast, but if you liked Street Fighter, you probably already owned at least three different versions of IV and didn't see a reason to pick up something so similar when there would probably be yet another version on the horizon to learn. And then there was the gem system, which let you modify fighters with gems found from buyable packs or random drops — the designers claimed the idea was to lure in fans of CCG-style games. But fans of card games want games that favor strategy over complex inputs and tight reactions, so weren't interested in jumping over the barrier for entry, while fighting game fans dislike anything that removes focus on player skill, especially Bribing Your Way to Victory or randomized elements.
• According to an interview in Nintendo Power Issue 269, this is what Hiroshi Matsuyama believes to be a killing blow against Tail Concerto's sales expectations. On one hand, it's a colorful platformer taking place in a fantasy sky world populated by anthropomorphic cats and dogs piloting all different kinds of mechas, so a lot of the older playerbase couldn't take it seriously. On the other hand, it preaches the dangers of blind faith and misguided racism on top of having a rather complicated control scheme, so a lot of younger players had a hard time getting into the game at all.
• A Total War Saga: TROY had to deal with two very different expectations from the Total War fandom as to what the game should be. One faction wanted the game to be a simulation of Mycenaean Greek warfare, living out the battles of an iconic yet relatively undepicted era as if one were there, and the other wanted the game to be a showcase of the miracles and monsters of Classical Mythology in all its splendor. The game tried to split the difference by going for a "truth behind the myth" approach, depicting many of the characters and monsters of mythology but in a more realistic form that could plausibly inspire their stories: for instance, the minotaur exists, but is depicted as a buff man with a skull helmet. Unfortunately, this failed to marry the two groups: the former group didn't want a minotaur unit in the game at all, and the latter group wanted the real minotaur, not a guy poorly dressed up as him. And for people who liked the Demythification conceit, there was also the presence of god powers and hero units, leading to the situation where Achilles slaughtering a phalanx singlehandedly before magically healing his wounds through divine intercession was considered perfectly sensible, but a man with a bull head was too far. The first major DLC for the game realized this, and decided to essentially split up the game in accordance to the fandom; while "truth behind the myth" remained a mode, two extra modes were added, with one cutting out the mythically-inspired units completely and significantly changing the mechanics of heroes and divine powers, and the other remodeling all the mythical units into actual monsters and adding some truly fantastical beasts into the mix.
• Viva Piñata had the teens and adults turned off as it looked too kiddy, while many kids were turned off because the micromanagement was too complicated. Thus, while it got moderate success and an animated series, it failed Microsoft's intent of becoming their equivalent to Pokémon.
• This is one of the reasons The Wonderful 101 became an Acclaimed Flop. The bright, colorful, big headed toy figure-esque art style and the surface premise about color-themed superheroes who form giant weapons to fight aliens seems like something aimed for a younger audience. Yet it covers mature themes of revenge and loss, has a steep learning curve, and to Avoid the Dreaded G Rating there's a small handful of swears and sexual jokes sprinkled in. Older players were turned off by the visual presentation, while children likely wouldn't be allowed to play or would be turned off by the complexity of the combat.
• A major reason for why YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG earned such an infamous reputation can partially be attributed to its uncertain audience; half of it being designed as an old school RPG like EarthBound, while also trying to be a deep analysis of the RPG genre with a modern angle (hence the "Post Modern"). This attempt to be a modern analysis of the genre using both an older artistic style and gameplay meant few players enjoyed it, as the gameplay was not particularly deep or interesting enough to satisfy fans, on top of being cartoony in design, while people interested in the story were frustrated with how overly complex and confusing the story ended up being, on top of how unlikeable the main cast was. This failed attempt at mixing the two ended causing it to be universally disliked among consumers.
• This is among the reasons why the Yo-kai Watch series was a Cash-Cow Franchise in Japan but didn't catch on in the west: it tried to target both the casual audience of Pokémon and hardcore fans of Japanese culture. The latter group was put off by the Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change made to appease the former group, who wouldn't be interested regardless due to youkai being an intrinsically Japanese concept. Within the series, content released after the third game has also faced this problem; Yo-kai Watch 4 has a completely different action-oriented gameplay style and shifted its tone to be Darker and Edgier, with tie-ins such as Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside and Yo-kai Watch: Forever Friends following suit. Existing fans were split on the shift away from the established tone and gameplay, while potential new ones still weren't interested and didn't find the new elements compelling enough.

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