No sale: 2010's most disappointing games

[crimsonshrouds]

Big game titles of 2010 have not done so well. according to this article http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/no-sale-2010-s-most-disappointing-games/1406982

Alan Wake
Blur
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Green Day Rock Band
Split/Second
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11

Were the games just released at bad timess? Has the economy caused gamers not to buy games as quickly? Has the gamer gotten smarter and realized not to go on just big name titles when looking to buy a game?

I seriously doubt the last one is the reason as much as i hope it were true.

In all honesty, I know nothing about these games because none of them look interesting to me.

Thoughts?
Has your economic situation affected your purchase of games?

 

[Applejack]

Horror titles never do as well so I guess that's Alan Wake's excuse. Or maybe because of a recession idk.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

Really? Blur?

I quite liked that game... and Split/Second

Whoever wrote that doesn't like racers.

 

[manythings]

I'm also calling recession. If I can only buy 6 games this year (I don't know if that is the case, just an example) then I'm not paying for something I am not certain about.

A fair amount of the fault is on developers aswell though. Stupidly large amounts of money just seem to get thrown into any old garbage.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

In all honesty, I know nothing about these games because none of them look interesting to me.

I think that is actually a pretty good answer. Big hype and then... nothing... they kind of fizzled out with only a Zero Punctuation episode to reference them.

My economic condition never seems to alter my gaming purchases... somehow when I want something I always end up with the money to get them...

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Blur was marketed poorly in my opinion. A negative ad against Mario Kart? Really?

Tiger Woods has obvious problems.

Plastic Guitar genre has been seriously over-saturated for a while now.

Alan Wake was always a stupid title for a game.

 

[Sronpop]

Alan Wake - Bad timing, I buy lots of games and had no money left to buy this one. Pretty niche genre too.

Blur - Released within a week of another arcadey racing game, the demo basically gave the game away, no one really knew about it either.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Was a pretty obvious movie tie in, it didn't look up to stratch for POP standards and as a big POP fan myself, I had no reason to buy it.

Green Day Rock Band - Shit band, enough said, who the hell wants a game of just green day songs.

Split/Second - Bad timing sharing the spotlight with blur, the fact that no one knew about it.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 - Come on, it has Tiger woods on it and is a yearly franchise cash in. This wouldn't do great even if the scandal never came to light.


The thing is, we have been flooded with quality games all year. Personally by the time Alan Wake came out, I was catching up on Darksiders and Bayonetta. When you have sooo many quality games coming out in a short time, of course they aren't going to sell as well. Hell I game almost every day and still have tones on unfinished games. Do people think we are just buckets of money or something.

The thing is, a few of these game could do with being released now. The only games coming out at the moment are arcade game(not complaining, I love the summer of arcade). Bad timing releases for a good few of them.

 

[pyrokitsune777]

Well it depends on how you judge games as good or bad. In economic terms, there are going to be some that do extremely well and others that fail miserably. Personally I've never bought racing games and Alen Wake didn't seem worth $50+. If I'd had Starcraft II reserved I'd have got it when it came out but lacking both motivation and spending money I've not been able to purchase a copy.

 

[Serving UpSmiles]

Most games fail today due to the big leugue games such as mass effect, halo ,call of duty, any new game that comes to the market there's always a chance that they will get smushed because of the other games high budget value and script writers.

 

[Airsoftslayer93]

blur and split second were released at basically the same time alongside modnation racers, of course they would all perform poorly

 

[Thunderhorse31]

Almost all of those games are in niche genres or were unecessary. We didn't need ANOTHER PoP overhaul, we didn't need ANOTHER music game, let alone one with such a small target audience, we didn't need ANOTHER sports game update with 2 new features for full price.

All the unique and well-done games to come out this year have sold like mad. Execs need to make excuses, so they blame the economy.

EDIT: Yahoo Games is about the dumbest source on the internet for gaming-related news. I check it out whenever a story is on the main page, but my God, an illiterate 12-year-old could do a better job.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Alan Wake- Probably deserved better, but was released at a bad time (along Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and others.)
Blur and Split Second were released at the same bloody time.
Prince of Persia- I'm assuming most people thought it was just another movie game (which it kinda was) and avoided.
Green Day Rock Band- I, and many others, are tiring of the far too familiar music game formula. This was just the same game Harmonix and Activision have been releasing for years now, only just with Green Day songs.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11- There was a Tiger Woods PGA 11? I don't care anyway, and neither did most people, it seems.

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/no-sale-2010-s-most-disappointing-games/1406982

Notice where that article is from.

Seriously, when it comes to video game news from Yahoo, take it with a grain of salt. From past experience, they either blow things out of proportion or are extremely late when it comes to video gaming news.

 

[Zaik]

everything up there is "another one of those xxx games" except for alan wake, and that was just silly.

 

[SimuLord]

I'm gonna say in general, recession. The big sellers will still sell, but it's because gamers don't slash their budgets to zero---they just buy the big titles and stand pat.

That said:

Alan Wake - Outside of enthusiast forums like this one, did anyone even know this game existed? This one had Psychonauts-level marketing problems.
Blur - Too many people thought "yippee, another racing game. Already got one, thanks."
Prince of Persia - The movie sucked, dragging the sales of the game down.
Green Day Rock Band - C'mon, Green Day? Really? If ever there were a poster child for "franchise over, no really, move along now" this would be it.
Tiger Woods PGA 11 - Besides the same-formula, new-year problem, Mr. Woods himself has some...let's say...marketability issues.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

It saddens me that Alan Wake has sold poorly, because that is an absolutelty brilliant game (shits all over Red Dead in my opinion), Green Day rockband shows that we are out growing the genre and all guitarists where aware that there was never going to be any real challenge in this game, leaving it only to the diehard rb/green day fans to purchase.

Blur was probably just released at a bad time and as for the rest I don't know, though I wouldn't expect PGA to get ground breaking figures anyway.

 

[ShakesZX]

I wasn't really understanding where they got their information. What sales figures were people expecting and how did the actual figures compare? It's surprising that information is lacking without even a link...

 

[Flying-Emu]

Split/Second was awesome.