

The annoying thing about video games, or indeed, most forms of consumable media, is that “quality” and “profitability” are not mutually inclusive. In a sensible world, a really fun, novel game should make all the fat stacks it deserves.
Unfortunately, there have been more than a few instances over the years of games that, despite being very well-liked by those who play them, just couldn’t seem to bring home the bacon.
There’s no single culprit for this; maybe the marketing was insufficient, maybe the game’s core gameplay loop couldn’t really be explained without actually playing it, or maybe something about the game’s presentation seemed weird or off-putting.
Whatever the cause, these games live on in our hearts as cult classics, and even still get sequels or remakes on occasion, albeit usually very late-stage ones after a lot of proverbial teeth-pulling. If only every game that does something special for us could get the recognition they deserve. If only…
8 Shenmue
Blame The Budget
Profitability in game development and publishing is much like profitability in making movies; it’s all about making back the money you invested, plus profit on top. If you can’t make back the budget, the whole thing’s a wash.
Much like a movie that’s gone way too far over budget to ever become truly profitable, Shenmue is a good example of a cult classic game that broke the bank in the wrong direction.
Sales-wise, Shenmue actually did just fine for itself. During its lifespan, it sold around 1.2 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling games in the entire Dreamcast library.
It was a very respectable performance overall, but the problem was that those respectable sales didn’t recoup the game’s bloated budget. Shenmue’s development cost around $70 million USD (not accounting for inflation), an absolutely terrifying price tag by any metric.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, due to the game’s ambitious scope and systems, Shenmue was pretty much set up to fail. There was absolutely no way it was going to recoup that budget, even though the sales were fine. Frankly, it’s a miracle Shenmue II even got made after that first performance, and an even bigger miracle Shenmue III happened 20 years later.
7 System Shock 2
Surprising, Considering How Many Games It Inspired
The funny thing about gaming history is that you can never really understand why a game was successful or not unless you were there for it. Hindsight is 20/20, as the old saying goes.
For example, those of us in the present day know System Shock 2 as one of the most influential games in the PC sphere, having paved the way for some of the most popular immersive sims over the years. However, in its time? It didn’t do that hot.
System Shock 2 was an absolute critical darling when it came out, earning multiple awards and Game of the Year proclamations from gaming publications at the time. For some reason, though, this prestige did not translate into sales.
Within a year of the game’s release, it only moved about 58,000 copies and change, falling well short of sales expectations set forth by its publisher, EA.
As far as I can discern, there was no particular reason for the game’s underwhelming sales, beyond perhaps players being intimidated by its in-depth immersive sim mechanics. Whatever the cause, it resulted in EA dropping the franchise like a hot potato. On the bright side, Irrational Games would go on to create its first spiritual successor, BioShock.
6 Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
A Pioneer Of Sanity Effects
In the last decade or so, a popular trope of horror and psychological games has been sanity systems, wherein you need to keep a character’s nerves in check to keep them from flying off the deep end. Arguably, one of the games that helped popularize this concept, if not profit from it, was 2002’s Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
Eternal Darkness was developed by a small Canadian studio called Silicon Knights and published by Nintendo exclusively on the GameCube.
The game’s sanity system was its biggest draw, with Eldritch horrors weakening your characters’ minds and causing weird stuff to happen, like blood dripping out of the walls or fake bugs crawling around on your screen. It was a very novel concept, and is still very fondly regarded to this day.
Despite critical acclaim and even awards, the game only shifted around 500,000 copies worldwide in its entire lifespan. Silicon Knights wanted to try for a sequel, but couldn’t make it happen before going bankrupt in 2013. Nintendo patented the Sanity Effects concept for some dumb reason, though that patent lapsed in 2021, so games can technically start using it again.
5 Grim Fandango
Picked A Bad Release Time
Releasing a game, much like telling a good joke, is all about timing. Gaming is and always has been a very competitive industry, with hot titles always climbing over each other to get your coveted cash. If a game releases with poor timing, it’ll get absolutely smothered by higher-profile releases. This is exactly what happened to the second-to-last game released by LucasArts, Grim Fandango.
Grim Fandango was the very first of LucasArts’ point-and-click adventure games to be rendered in 3D, and thanks to a combination of that and a downright fascinating story and cast of characters, it’s regularly made appearances on lists of the greatest adventure games of all time. Rather than any problem with its budget or overall profitability, Grim Fandango’s fatal mistake was its timing.
The 1998 fall release season was, in a word, stacked. We’re talking games like Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
With an all-star release lineup like that, Grim Fandango could’ve been made of solid diamond, and it still wouldn’t have been able to move the needle. Only around 58,000 copies were sold by the end of 1998, simply because there were too many other big releases in the running.
4 Beyond Good & Evil
Still Waiting, Ubisoft
I’ve heard it said that it’s generally a bad idea to end any movie, book, show, or game on a cliffhanger, not just because it’s rather obnoxious, but because it’s making assumptions that it’ll actually get a sequel. Case in point, Beyond Good & Evil ended on a cliffhanger in 2003, but because of its iffy performance, we haven’t gotten any sequels over 20 years later.
Beyond Good & Evil was a big hit with the critics, mostly for its art, story, and voice acting, and even scored some Game of the Year nominations. In a similar vein to Grim Fandango, though, the problem with Beyond Good & Evil’s performance was its release timing.
The difference is that, rather than competing with other publishers, Beyond Good & Evil was sandwiched by its own publisher, Ubisoft, who had also released big games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time around the same time.
I don’t have any hard numbers on sales, but apparently, it was bad enough that retailers started slashing prices on their own just to try to move inventory. This performance caused Ubisoft to shelve sequel plans indefinitely. Technically, Beyond Good & Evil 2 was announced in 2017, though whether we’re ever actually getting it is another story.
3 Conker’s Bad Fur Day
An Outlier Among Cuddly Mascot Platformers
The late 90s and early 2000s were the prime age of 3D collect-a-thon platformers, most of which had a cute, cuddly, family-friendly vibe. Games like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64 had made good impressions, but when Rare was working on its next game, a sequel to Conker’s Pocket Tales, the devs realized they may have been overplaying the classics a bit.
To that end, that made Conker’s Bad Fur Day which, while a beloved cult classic, might have pushed things a little too far in the opposite direction.
In contrast to Rare’s previous works, Conker’s Bad Fur Day was an M-rated affair. It was still a mascot platformer, but it was full of profanity, drinking, dirty jokes, and all that other fun stuff your mom and dad didn’t want you to know about. It was a really great subversion of the template at the time, but the industry wasn’t quite ready for it.
Nintendo, preferring its family-friendly identity, did little to nothing to advertise the game, and those used to cute mascots found the subversive take a bit hard to get on board with. Couple all that with a mildly bloated budget, and the game fell well short of expectations, only moving about 50,000 copies within its first month.
2 Psychonauts
Took 16 Years To Get A Proper Sequel
It saddens me a little that Tim Schafer’s works keep showing up on this list, because I generally admire him as a creative. Goodness knows, Psychonauts is still one of my most favorite games of all time thanks to its creative and clever gameplay and memorable characters and setting. I guess it was just a little too weird for the wider gaming public.
It’s difficult to pin down what, exactly, went wrong with Psychonauts, but it seems like the lion’s share of it revolves around troubles with its publisher, the now-defunct Majesco Entertainment.
The game was projected to be a big hit for Majesco, but when it was released, the numbers fell dramatically short, barely shipping 100,000 copies by the end of 2005. Majesco’s CEO announced his resignation, and the company’s stock went into freefall, culminating in its slow, inglorious death.
TIm Schafer and Double Fine bought the rights to the game and started selling copies digitally, which helped circulate the proverbial tapes, but it wouldn’t be until 2017 that the game would receive a follow-up in Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, followed by a proper crowdfunded sequel in 2021.
1 Okami
Took 18 Years To Get A Sequel Announced
I think if there were any ironclad proof of this industry’s volatility, it would be the underwhelming performance of Okami in 2006. By all accounts, this game should’ve been a textbook slam dunk, being developed by Capcom’s Clover Studio and headed by legendary developer Hideki Kamiya.
Even putting the pedigree aside, it’s an absolutely beautiful game with a distinctive art style reminiscent of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e artwork, plus action gameplay that’s been likened to the best Legend of Zelda games.
In its release year, Okami only sold a little over 200,000 copies in North America. For the life of me, I cannot determine the cause of this. Everyone loved it, all the reviews were positive, but the wires just… didn’t connect. Maybe the marketing was insufficient, but at least from my perspective, word of mouth alone was pretty strong, so I couldn’t say.
Clover Studios would dissolve following Okami’s release as its chief devs moved on to form PlatinumGames. Capcom rereleased it a few times, first as a port on the Wii and as a remaster on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and there was a DS spinoff titled Okamiden. In 2024, Kamiya, having reformed Clover as Clovers, announced that the game would finally be getting a proper sequel.
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Author: 360 Technology Group