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One cannot help but wonder sometimes what some of the large gaming publishers are thinking sometimes. Certainly they have a business to run and things would be fantastic if every game could be a mega-blockbuster likeCall of Duty,but the reality is that achieving those sorts of sales is an exception among exceptions no matter how much money a company pours into its project.
In reality, any game that sells over a million copies should be a rousing success that any developer should be proud of. Yet, publishers still seem to be routinely disappointed by how their games perform on the market, sometimes enough to permanently shelve an IP. Not all of the following games ended their series (thankfully), but they are all games that aside from “disappointing” sales are great successes that’d make great additions to any gamer’s library.
Titanfall 2
Titanfall is a great example of a series that had potential, but had everything else working against it. The initial game launched in 2014 as a PC/Xbox exclusive and was meant to be one of the first games that could really show-off the power off the then-new Xbox One. It eventually went on to sell 11 million units, more than justifying its eventual sequel: Titanfall 2.
Titanfall 2 is sort of where things went wrong, though. Despite the game launching to a positive reception from both fans and critics, it ultimately wound up being a disappointment for publisher EA. It did manage to move over four million units in four months, but that apparently wasn’t enough. At the time, most blamed EA for sandwiching the game’s launch between those ofBattlefield 1andCall of Duty: Infinite Warfare,and history seems to have born that theory out.
It’s too bad becauseRespawn did a lot to improve upon the first game,making Titanfall 2’s multiplayer end even more fast-paced with a high skill-ceiling and giving both players and spectators an enjoyable experience. The solo campaign is what wound up taking the spotlight though, as it offered players a surprisingly emotional story set in a universe that they’d only gotten a small glimpse of in the first game. That and some of its set-piece moments were impressive for the time.
As most now know, Titanfall 3 was still going to happen despite Titanfall 2’s “disappointing” sales, butRespawn abandoned it in favor of Apex Legends.The developer played their cards right and got the massive hit that both it and EA wanted, but it’s still kind of a shame that Titanfall never got its chance to take off. Titanfall 2 still holds up as a solid shooter today, so those that haven’t played it yet may want to give it a try.
Prey (2017)
Another odd disappointment, Prey (2017) has sold around a million copies in its lifetime so far. One might be tempted to think of that as a success, but that’s just not the case in the world of AAA gaming. Like Titanfall 2 though, this didn’t necessarily have to be the case. Prey (2017) received all manner of praise from both critics and players and has gone on to become something of a cult-classic among immersive sim fans. It offers a great sci-fi mystery tone, a world that allows players to dig as deeply into it as they desire and gameplay that allows for an incredible amount of freedom in how one goes about completing their objectives. In other words, Prey (2017) had the gameplay chops to be a hit.
Unfortunately,Prey (2017)had two things working against it: its name and its marketing. The name was a problem because it elicited a lot of sour feelings from fans of Prey (2006). Up until 2014, fans thought they were going to get Prey 2 eventually, butBethesda chose to cancel the project that yearand then announced a new “Prey” game two years later that had nothing at all to do with the original. This likely undermined online sentiment from the beginning.
As for the marketing, there just wasn’t much of it, and what was there did a poor job of informing people of what the game actually was. Looking atthe launch trailer,one would think that it’s another sci-fi action game with some Dead Space-ish horror elements thrown in. That might attract some, but not all that many considering just how many generic (and often disappointing) sci-fi action games have been released over the years. Prey (2017) might have been a sales disappointment, but it didn’t have to be.
Final Fantasy XVI
The most recent game on this list, Final Fantasy XVI was initiallyhailed as a massive success by critics,fans and Square Enix, but it seems that the publisher has since changed its mind. Now,Square Enix is expressing disappointment in Final Fantasy XVI’s sales,noting that it’s failed to hit the company’s “high-end” expectations.
To date, the game has managed to move over three million units, so that’s nothing to sneeze at. The problem, it seems, is that most of those sales came in during the first couple of weeks post-launch. Still three million is a lot, and one wonders how Square Enix could realistically expect more considering what kinds of games typically sell over five million copies, Final Fantasy XVI’s departure from perceived series norms and theproblems that houndedit post-launch.
For one, it’s somewhat unusual to see something that isn’t a big-budget FPS sell millions upon millions of copies. Certainly it happens; Final Fantasy VII Remake has sold over five million copies to date, but it has the distinction of being a remake of one of the most celebrated RPGs of all time. Final Fantasy XVI on the other hand is an action-RPG in a series known for a slower style of combat, which hasn’t gone down well with a lot of fans.
Further, Square Enix’s handling ofFinal Fantasy XVdidn’t exactly help the series’ brand. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that many were hesitant to buy the next game after all the trouble and disappointment surrounding FFXV. This is all to say that Square Enix is probably rather fortunate that FFXVI has sold as well as it has and that it was rather unrealistic to expect much more.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Despite debuting at the top of UK sales charts back in 2016, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided had apparently failed to achieve the same level of immediate success as its predecessor, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Sales estimates from 2018 put the game’s Steam sales at around one million copies sold, but that apparently wasn’t nearly enough. Supposedly, Square Enix needed it to shift around three million units in order to break even at the time. As for why it failed to hit the mark, it seems to have come down to a few controversies surrounding its launch and not because the game itself was bad.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, like all the games listed here, received positive critical reception from most at launch. Some were disappointed that it was a smaller game than its predecessor and many didn’t like the hard, sequel-bait ending, but it was and is considered a decent game nonetheless. What hamstrung it was a combination of a buggy launch and controversies surrounding single-use pre-order items, DLC that didn’t justify its price tag and microtransactions for upgrade points and the like.
All of this together may have been enough to prevent the game from meeting expectations. Sadly, this caused Square Enix to put the series on ice to this day. Ironically enough though, the series' combined sales have actually gone on to exceed over twelve million units in the years since, so maybe there’s still hope here yet.
Tomb Raider (2013)
This is the one that had a large portion of the internet roasting Square Enix for a good long while. Just like everything else here, Tomb Raider (2013) launched tomuch praise and applausefrom the gaming populace. Crystal Dynamics had managed to make Tomb Raider not just relevant again, but actually fun and exciting too. The studios’ new take on Lara Croft made her into someone fans could empathize with, and her adventure on the fictional island of Yamatai was one many were excited to see her through. Subsequently, Tomb Raider (2013) sold 3.4 million copies in its first four weeks…which utterly disappointed its publisher.
Square Enix never said what kind of numbers it was actually expecting from Tomb Raider (2013), butEurogamer reportedthat the publisher had been hoping for somewhere in the neighborhood of 14.9 total combined retail game sales from Europe and North America in the six-month period following the previous September. This is total sales for all its games, which included Tomb Raider (2013), Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs (its only major releases in that period).
Also according to the Eurogamer article, the three games together moved around 8.75 million units worldwide during that period, so it seems that Square Enix was massively overestimating how much each game could move (some things never change, eh?). Thankfully, the publisher didn’t opt to shelve Tomb Raider after that, allowing fans to enjoy two more games. Still, it’s now been five years sinceShadow of the Tomb Raiderreleased. Could it be that the series wound up on ice after all?
It’s come out recently that manybig publishers only consider a game profitable if it manages to move over ten million units.That’s a staggering number that, again, perhaps only super-giants like Call of Duty can hope to achieve. Many of the games on this list, even though they were (and are) considered popular, achieved only a fraction of that.
If delivering a good product that’s enjoyed by literal millions isn’t enough anymore, then perhaps AAA gaming is doomed to collapse sooner rather than later. It’d be a shame if it happens, but at least gamers will have plenty of classics like those listed above (and lots of quality indie games) to enjoy while the AAA industry figures itself out.
