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What games were (huge) commercial failures despite critical praise ?

FarSight XR-20

FarSight XR-20

Member
Jan 4, 2018
8,654
These come to my mind. Others notorious commercial failures ?

Conkersbfdbox.jpg

Conker's Bad Fur Day
MC (92)
Sold only 55k within its first month in the US

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Eternal Darkness
MC (92)
Sold less than half a million worldwide

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Okami
MC (93)​
Roughly 300k on PS2 and 300k on Wii I believe​
​
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Spec Ops: The Line​
MC (77)​
"It didn't sell" according to the writer​
​
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Beyond Good & Evil​
MC (87)
Seems like it sold over a million in total on PS2, GC, Xbox and PC after big price drops
 
Desma

Desma

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,236
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne sold really bad back when it first came out.

Persona 3 also sold like 100k on release, which wasn't great
 
Weiss

Weiss

User requested ban
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
64,265
PanzerDragoonSagaBox.jpg


Released on the Saturn in 1998 when the system was on its way out the door. Intended by Sega to be their answer to Final Fantasy VII and reviewed extremely well, but by the time it came out the Western release was severely hamstrung and only a few thousand copies were produced.
 
Ragnar Blackmane

Ragnar Blackmane

Member
Feb 19, 2018
1,650
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The game quickly reached considerable critical acclaim and more or less became the poster child for anti-war videogames (it also got cult status because of it). But the game was a commercial failure, particularly for 2K (they were hoping for their very own successful CoD-style shooter franchise). The 77 MC score (from reviews from the game's launch) that OP mentioned probably didn't help.

SI_Wii_ProjectZero2WiiEdition_image1600w.jpg

Fatal Frame/Project Zero Series

You know that Japanese Survival-Horror series that is widely considered to be one of the best horror game series and one of the scariest too? That got plenty of excellent critical reception and that frequently makes it into the top spots of any horror game rankings? That is often quoted by game developers and academics when they want to talk about scary and/or Japanese horror games ?

"Since its debut in 2001, the Fatal Frame series has sold 1.3 million copies worldwide". That's right, despite FIVE mainline entries (on multiple plattforms in the case of the first three games to boot), a (bad) 3DS spin-off game and a solid Wii Remake of the second game, the entire series only managed to sell 1.3 million copies total.

The series' critical acclaim might be the reason it got so many entries despite low sales numbers (the games being lower budget AA titles probably helped as well. Not to mention Nintendo partially buying the IP and moneyhatting the last 3 entries, even if they horribly missmanaged the western releases of all three of them), thankfully.
 
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SirNinja

SirNinja

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 17, 2017
8,229
Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States
PanzerDragoonSagaBox.jpg


Panzer Dragoon Saga.

An incredible RPG spinoff of an otherwise-rail shooter series, it's the crown jewel of the Sega Saturn — and only around 20,000 copies were made in North America (and only ~1,000 in Europe) due to the Saturn getting both trounced by the PS1 and Sega deciding to focus on the upcoming Dreamcast instead.

Saga absolutely needs a remake, more than any other game I can think of. 23 years later, the game still wows and packs an emotional punch. There's still absolutely nothing else like it out there.
 
BadWolf

BadWolf

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
12,148
Castlevania Symphony of the Night: apprently it under-performed to the point that Konami had the team make a 3D CV on Nintendo 64 as their next game.

Silent Hill 2: everyone's favorite game in the genre. Under-performance at launch almost made Konami turn Silent Hill 3 into an arcade on rail shooter.
 
zoltek

zoltek

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,917
BadWolf said:
Castlevania Symphony of the Night: apprently it under-performed to the point that Konami had the team make a 3D CV on Nintendo 64 as their next game.

Silent Hill 2: everyone's favorite game in the genre. Under-performance at launch almost made Konami turn Silent Hill 3 into an arcade on rail shooter.
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Wasn't SOTN a greatest hits title? I don't think they do that for poorly selling games.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,115
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine didn't review that well in the end, but it did get a large amount of press attention and awards from festivals between 2015 and it's release, people were attracted to it's art style and interesting premise. It was kind of a big deal in the press. It then was a total commercial flop. This was a release that got publisher backing, extensive QA, voice acting and all that jazz but just faceplanted. As of today, years later and on multiple heavy sales, it's sitting somwhere around 20-40,000 copies sold on Steam. The postmortem of the game got a whole lot of attention in 2018.
 
NinjaScooter

NinjaScooter

Member
Oct 25, 2017
54,179
BadWolf said:
Castlevania Symphony of the Night: apprently it under-performed to the point that Konami had the team make a 3D CV on Nintendo 64 as their next game.

Silent Hill 2: everyone's favorite game in the genre. Under-performance at launch almost made Konami turn Silent Hill 3 into an arcade on rail shooter.
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SOTN and CV64 were different teams. SOTN was the Tokyo studio with Iga and 64 was made by the Kobe studio (who I think went on to make the first GBA CV and the first followup to SOTN, Circle of the Moon). I don't know how SOTN performed but I don't think 64 was necessarily a response to it.
 
Sinatar

Sinatar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,684
XxjTgwp.jpg


One of the greatest space sims ever, massive critical praise from everyone who played it, lots of marketing. Sold so poorly that it made everyone else in the industry gunshy to try the genre again. I mean if Freespace2 bombed, what chance could their game have?
 
BadWolf

BadWolf

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
12,148
NinjaScooter said:
SOTN and CV64 were different teams. SOTN was the Tokyo studio with Iga and 64 was made by the Kobe studio (who I think went on to make the first GBA CV and the first followup to SOTN, Circle of the Moon). I don't know how SOTN performed but I don't think 64 was necessarily a response to it.
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The CV64 vid that Matt McMuscles made touched on this as well iirc.
 
2Blackcats

2Blackcats

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,081
SirNinja said:
PanzerDragoonSagaBox.jpg


Panzer Dragoon Saga.

An incredible RPG spinoff of an otherwise-rail shooter series, it's the crown jewel of the Sega Saturn — and only around 20,000 copies were made in North America (and only ~1,000 in Europe) due to the Saturn getting both trounced by the PS1 and Sega deciding to focus on the upcoming Dreamcast instead.

Saga absolutely needs a remake, more than any other game I can think of. 23 years later, the game still wows and packs an emotional punch. There's still absolutely nothing else like it out there.
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1,000 in Europe? That's crazy. I have\had this. When I was going through a box recently I could only find one of the 2 boxes. Must have another look.
 
OP
OP
FarSight XR-20

FarSight XR-20

Member
Jan 4, 2018
8,654
Forgot Baten Kaitos Origins.
Debuted at No.15 in Japan with roughly 14k sold, didn't even release in Europe. Seems like it just did around 100k worldwide.

Ragnar Blackmane said:
SI_Wii_ProjectZero2WiiEdition_image1600w.jpg

Fatal Frame/Project Zero Series

You know that Japanese Survival-Horror series that is widely considered to be one of the best horror game series and one of the scariest too? That got plenty of excellent critical reception and that frequently makes it into the top spots of any horror game rankings? That is often quoted by game developers and academics when they want to talk about scary and/or Japanese horror games ?

"Since its debut in 2001, the Fatal Frame series has sold 1.3 million copies worldwide". That's right, despite FIVE mainline entries (on multiple plattforms in the case of the first three games to boot), a (bad) 3DS spin-off game and a solid Wii Remake of the second game, the entire series only managed to ship 1.3 million copies total.

The series' critical acclaim might be the reason it got so many entries despite low sales numbers (the games being lower budget AA titles probably helped as well. Not to mention Nintendo partially buying the IP and moneyhatting the last 3 entries, even if they horribly missmanaged the western releases of all three of them), thankfully.
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Didn't know that Project Zero games sold so poorly. Sad.
 

dippa

Member
Oct 29, 2017
87
Looking Glass's Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri. Brutal requirements at launch, not having MP didn't help either. But was a fun tac shooter if you loved Ghost Recon, Starsiege, OG Heavy Gear, etc.
 
Pancoar

Pancoar

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
1,551
Sinatar said:
XxjTgwp.jpg


One of the greatest space sims ever, massive critical praise from everyone who played it, lots of marketing. Sold so poorly that it made everyone else in the industry gunshy to try the genre again. I mean if Freespace2 bombed, what chance could their game have?
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This one hurts my soul... :(
 
Freshmaker

Freshmaker

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,928
Weiss said:
PanzerDragoonSagaBox.jpg


Released on the Saturn in 1998 when the system was on its way out the door. Intended by Sega to be their answer to Final Fantasy VII and reviewed extremely well, but by the time it came out the Western release was severely hamstrung and only a few thousand copies were produced.
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Not sure if that counts as a commercial failure when they made deliberately like 20k total copies for the rest of the world.
 
Pankratous

Pankratous

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,267
Evolve?

I seem to remember it reviewing fairly well overall, and I'm sure the media hype for it was very high prior to reviews as well.

Then it came out and just immediately bombed.
 
G_Shumi

G_Shumi

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,166
Cleveland, OH
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Skies of Arcadia (Sega Dreamcast) and its' update, Skies of Arcadia: Legends (Nintendo GameCube).

I think it sold okay, not great, on the Dreamcast but when it was ported to the GameCube, it bombed.

Both games have high Metacritic scores too. (93 on Dreamcast; 84 on GameCube)
 
Rainer516

Rainer516

Member
Oct 29, 2017
983
Lost Odyssey on Xbox 360. Brilliant game, reviewed well, was held back by bad load times. But it should have done really well.

if you haven't played it, you owe it to yourself. I recently picked it up for series x and am having a blast, I got around to reading the reception and it's a shame things went down the way they did for Mist Walker.
 
DeckardWintermute

DeckardWintermute

Member
Aug 27, 2018
2,779
Rainer516 said:
Lost Odyssey on Xbox 360. Brilliant game, reviewed well, was held back by bad load times. But it should have done really well.

if you haven't played it, you owe it to yourself. I recently picked it up for series x and am having a blast, I got around to reading the reception and it's a shame things went down the way they did for Mist Walker.
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Lost Odyssey is the *real* Final Fantasy XIII (to me). Loved that game.
 
MrWindUpBird

MrWindUpBird

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,686
FZed said:
Was about to say Lost Odyssey but will mention another JRPG (serie) well received that could have become a power-house (I am sure it was the intent)

Shadow Hearts

ShadowHearts.jpg

MC 73
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MC 85

Too bad is didn't sell well plus IP now in limbo..

(and no there is no thrid episode)

To be fair, first entry would be Koudelka on ps1
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While I love the games, I wouldn't say the MC of 73 for the first game is anywhere near critical praise. The only decent scoring game in the series is the 2nd one.
 
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