20 Great Video Games That Didn’t Sell Well at Launch

Immortals of Aveum (2023)

Magic-first shooters are a tough sell when players are already drowning in big-budget releases, and this one hit shelves in a brutally crowded window. The hook – spell-combos in place of guns, a flashy fantasy war, and a protagonist caught between armies – was solid, but the launch didn’t catch fire commercially. Reviews were mixed and the marketing never quite communicated why it was different, so a lot of people seemed to file it under “another action game” and move on. Immortals of Aveum also arrived at a premium price, which didn’t help a brand-new IP asking for trust. The clearest sign of the slow start was what followed: layoffs at Ascendant Studios not long after release, the kind of news that screams “this didn’t hit its numbers.” | © Ascendant Studios

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)

Coming off the sour taste many players had with recent Marvel games, this one walked into launch week with skepticism it didn’t fully deserve. It’s a single-player, story-driven ride built around banter, character chemistry, and a surprisingly heartfelt arc for the team, but public perception was slow to catch up. Square Enix publicly acknowledged that the game’s early sales fell short of internal expectations, even as reviews were strong and word of mouth was kinder than the initial buzz. Part of the problem was messaging: a lot of people assumed it was another live-service grind, or just didn’t believe the tone could land. Once players actually tried Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, the reputation improved – but the early hesitation clearly hurt the launch momentum. | © Eidos-Montréal

Alien: Isolation (2014)

The smartest choice it made was also the riskiest: instead of power fantasy action, it doubled down on dread and asked you to hide, listen, and panic quietly. That commitment to slow-burn survival horror earned Alien: Isolation a passionate fanbase, but it wasn’t the kind of pitch that guaranteed big day-one numbers in an era dominated by louder shooters. Sega later reported the game passed one million copies worldwide within a few months, yet the company still signaled it underperformed expectations – translation: it didn’t explode at launch the way a licensed title might hope. Part of the issue was that some players wanted a guns-blazing follow-up to older Alien games and bounced off the stealth-heavy pacing. Over time, the craft won people over: the atmosphere, the AI-driven threat, the retro-future tech. | © Creative Assembly

Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013)

Stealth games live and die on momentum, and releasing late in a console generation can make even a strong entry feel easy to postpone. Ubisoft later said Splinter Cell: Blacklist missed sales expectations, with reported sales around two million copies within its first months – respectable on paper, disappointing for a flagship brand. The game itself tried to balance two audiences at once: classic stealth purists and players who preferred louder action, which made its identity harder to summarize in a single sentence. It also had to compete in a busy season, and the broader market was leaning hard toward open-world everything. The tragedy is that it’s a genuinely polished stealth-action game, with flexible approaches and tight mission design, but the launch reception never matched the quality. | © Ubisoft Toronto

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (2012)

It launched with the kind of RPG confidence that screams “franchise starter” – bright high fantasy, punchy combat, and enough quests to eat a month of your life. The problem was that ambition came with a brutal financial reality: despite selling hundreds of thousands of copies in its early window and eventually reaching around 1.3 million worldwide within months, it still wasn’t enough to cover what the project needed to break even. That gap is why the story around Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning became inseparable from 38 Studios’ collapse, even though the game itself played like a polished, content-rich alternative to the darker RPGs of the era. Players who did jump in found a satisfying loop – build crafting, flexible classes, and a world that felt designed to keep rewarding curiosity. It was a solid game that arrived carrying business expectations no new IP could realistically shoulder. | © 38 Studios

Spec Ops: The Line (2012)

It looked like a generic military shooter in screenshots, and that misread may have doomed it before anyone reached the parts that mattered. The early hours play like familiar cover-based action, then the story starts twisting into something darker – guilt, moral collapse, and a deliberate attack on the power fantasy the genre usually sells. Take-Two described the sales as lower than anticipated, and the game’s reputation didn’t really bloom until later, when more players discovered what it was actually trying to do. Spec Ops: The Line also arrived in a crowded shooter landscape, where “thoughtful, upsetting narrative” wasn’t exactly the marketing bullet point of the moment. Over time it became a cult pick, praised for taking a big swing, but the launch window treated it like just another war game and moved on fast. | © Yager Development

Enslaved: Odyssey Into The West (2010)

A gorgeous action-adventure with strong performances should’ve had an easier time, yet it got swallowed by a crowded release window and a marketing push that never fully explained what made it special. Namco expected it to clear a million, but the sales story that followed was far smaller – figures later corrected to around 460,000 worldwide in its earlier reporting period, which is rough for a game with this much polish. The tragic part is how much it nails: a reimagined Journey to the West setup, a compelling partnership between Monkey and Trip, and traversal that makes ruined cities feel like playgrounds with danger baked in. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West also had that “single-player blockbuster” tone before it became the default, mixing platforming, melee, and set pieces with real character chemistry. It didn’t have the loudest hook on the shelf, but it deserved more than the shrug it got at launch. | © Ninja Theory

Alpha Protocol (2010)

Espionage RPG is a great idea until players realize they’re also signing up for jank, and this one had plenty of rough edges at release. Sega disclosed it moved about 700,000 copies across the U.S. and Europe in its early stretch, yet it was still treated as a disappointment for a big, multi-platform push – especially given the mixed critical reception and chatter about bugs and uneven combat. The irony is that the game’s strongest feature was also its hardest sell: choices that actually mattered, factions that remembered what you did, and conversations that could reshape entire missions. Alpha Protocol earned a cult reputation because the role-playing systems and branching narrative were ambitious in a way most shooters never attempted. It didn’t win people instantly, but the folks who clicked with it still talk about it like a blueprint someone should’ve polished, not buried. | © Obsidian Entertainment

Alan Wake (2010)

The marketing promised a horror thriller, but the game’s real strength was its slow, novel-like pacing – chapters, cliffhangers, and a creeping sense that the woods were watching you back. It didn’t explode out of the gate in the U.S.; early sales numbers reported for the first month were widely viewed as soft for a big first-party-style release, and it didn’t help that it landed in a season stacked with louder hits. A new IP that asks you to enjoy mood, flashlight management, and eerie restraint is always going to be a tougher pitch than a straightforward shooter. What saved it long-term was the craft: Remedy’s commitment to atmosphere, the satisfying rhythm of light-then-bullets, and a story weird enough to stick in your head. Alan Wake became one of those “found later” classics – praised loudly after the launch window had already moved on. | © Remedy Entertainment

Bayonetta (2009)

Style is the point, and the game goes so hard on it that you can practically hear the dev team daring you to keep up. Critics largely got what it was doing – fast, technical combat and shameless spectacle – but sales were more complicated: it cleared the one-million mark relatively early in Sega’s reporting, yet still didn’t meet expectations for the kind of breakout hit that would make a new action icon feel “safe.” Part of the initial hesitation was that it arrived in a crowded action landscape, and the console versions weren’t received equally, which muddied the word of mouth. What endured wasn’t launch momentum, it was reputation – players slowly realizing Bayonetta had depth under the camp, with a combat system that rewards mastery like a sport. It’s the classic case of a cult favorite that grew into its legacy after the first wave passed. | © PlatinumGames

Okami (2006)

Ink-brush beauty isn’t always what shoppers grab first off a shelf, especially in a year when louder blockbusters were eating all the oxygen. Capcom’s mythic action-adventure arrived to critical love, but its early sales were famously soft – one widely cited example is how it moved only around the mid–five figures in Japan during its first year, a rough start for a prestige release. Part of the issue was timing, too: the industry was already buzzing about new hardware, and that kind of chatter can bury a quieter, art-driven game. Once people actually played Ōkami, the combat, puzzles, and folklore vibe became the selling point, but it took years and re-releases for the audience to catch up. | © Clover Studio

Psychonauts (2005)

Launching a weird, funny, brain-bending platformer in the middle of a market that wanted “safe” was always going to be a gamble. Despite strong reviews, the game shipped fewer than 100,000 copies in North America by the end of its first year, which tells you how quickly it got lost in the noise. The cult status makes sense once you’re inside it: inventive levels built from twisted mental landscapes, sharp writing, and a tone that’s somehow heartfelt and unhinged at the same time. Psychonauts also suffered from the kind of marketing problem that kills originals – hard to explain in a quick ad, easy to ignore next to bigger brands. It eventually found its people through word of mouth and digital re-releases, but the launch window didn’t treat it kindly. | © Double Fine Productions

Skies of Arcadia: Legends (2003)

Being a beloved JRPG isn’t the same as being a best-seller, and a GameCube port of a Dreamcast cult favorite was never going to be the easiest pitch in a crowded market. Sega’s sky-pirate adventure is warm, optimistic, and stuffed with exploration – airship travel, discoveries, and that old-school sense of journey that makes you want to chart every corner of the map. But the audience for long-form turn-based RPGs on that platform was relatively narrow, and Skies of Arcadia: Legends didn’t have the marketing force of bigger franchises to push it into the mainstream. Public, precise launch sales figures are hard to pin down, yet its later reputation as a hard-to-find gem says a lot about how modest the initial run felt. It’s the kind of game people swear by once they’ve played it, just not one that blew up on day one. | © Overworks

Beyond Good and Evil (2003)

Holiday season can be brutal if you’re not a sequel, and this one walked into an oversaturated release period with an “odd” pitch that didn’t fit into a neat genre box. Ubisoft’s sci-fi adventure mixed stealth, photography, investigation, and conspiracy drama, which sounds exciting now, but it confused the market then – and retailers reportedly slashed prices quickly when it didn’t move. The game’s reputation grew because the world is so distinct: Jade feels like a real person, the setting has texture, and the story has that slow-building dread of a truth nobody wants to face. What makes Beyond Good & Evil a classic “didn’t sell at launch” story is that the quality wasn’t the problem; visibility and timing were. | © Ubisoft Montpellier

Cropped Eternal Darkness Sanitys Requiem

Eternal Darkness (2002)

GameCube owners who stumbled onto it usually remember the same moment: the game starts messing with your senses, your screen, and your confidence, like it’s daring you to trust anything. The “sanity effects” weren’t just a gimmick – they were a design philosophy, turning psychological horror into mechanics that made exploration feel risky even when no monster was nearby. What held it back at launch was simpler: survival horror was already a niche, and a slower, story-heavy cosmic-horror game was an even narrower pitch on a console better known for bright, accessible hits. Eternal Darkness also didn’t have a franchise name to do the selling, which meant most people discovered it through word of mouth – usually too late to help its early numbers. Today it’s remembered as a cult classic because it tried ideas other horror games wouldn’t touch, and it committed hard to atmosphere over instant gratification. | © Silicon Knights

Shantae (2002)

Releasing a brand-new character platformer right as the Game Boy Color was being replaced was like throwing a paper plane into a wind tunnel. The cartridge was expensive to produce, the audience was already migrating to newer hardware, and the result was a small physical footprint that didn’t translate into big mainstream sales. The original Shantae earned praise for its animation, music, and clever “abilities as dances” progression, but it reportedly had only a single production run in the neighborhood of 20–25,000 copies, with no second print – meaning it could sell out and still be a commercial disappointment. It’s also a tough sell in 2002 terms: a fresh IP, a female lead, and a tone that didn’t fit the era’s blunt marketing buckets. The irony is that the game’s quality is exactly what kept it alive long enough to become a franchise later. | © WayForward Technologies

Shenmue (1999)

Open-world games weren’t a default expectation yet, so the idea of spending time buying snacks, asking strangers for directions, and waiting for the right hour of the day felt alien to a lot of players. The ambition is obvious – detailed neighborhoods, a daily schedule, mini-games, fights, and a slow-burn revenge story – but Shenmue asked for patience at a moment when “cinematic” often meant “faster.” It also launched on the Dreamcast, which meant the ceiling was always limited by the console’s install base, no matter how much attention the game got. Add the famously huge development costs, and you get the classic story: a landmark game that sold decently but still struggled to justify its scale in business terms. Over time, the oddities became the appeal – its sincerity, its slice-of-life rhythm, the feeling of inhabiting a place rather than sprinting through content. | © SEGA

System Shock 2 (1999)

A lot of players bounced off it early because it didn’t fit cleanly into one box: it’s part shooter, part RPG, part survival horror, and it expects you to learn systems instead of just react. Ammo is scarce, hacking matters, choices in build actually change how you survive, and the ship’s corridors feel oppressive because you’re never sure you’re prepared for what’s next. That complexity is exactly why it became legendary, but at launch it made the game harder to market and easier for casual buyers to skip. System Shock 2 also arrived in an era packed with louder, simpler action titles, and immersive sims were still a niche taste rather than a mainstream category. People who did stick with it found one of the best sci-fi nightmares in games – especially once the story and audio logs start turning the station into a crime scene you’re living inside. | © Looking Glass Studios

Grim Fandango (1998)

It’s a comedy noir set in the Land of the Dead, and that alone should’ve been enough – except the adventure game market was already shrinking, and point-and-click design was starting to look “old” to a mainstream audience chasing 3D everything. The humor is sharp, the art direction is timeless, and Manny Calavera remains one of those leads who can carry a scene just by being tired and charming at the same time. But Grim Fandango launched into a moment where the genre’s commercial momentum had stalled, and the game’s control scheme and puzzle pacing were never going to pull in people looking for immediate action. It became a slow-burn classic because the writing and atmosphere age incredibly well, yet its initial reception was shaped by timing more than quality. Years later, the remaster essentially served as the victory lap the original launch didn’t get. | © LucasArts

Earthbound (1994)

Selling a quirky RPG to a U.S. audience that still pictured role-playing games as medieval sword-and-sorcery was always going to be an uphill climb. Instead of dragons and kings, you’re fighting possessed traffic signs and other surreal nonsense, and the tone is so earnest and strange that it can confuse people who expect “serious” fantasy tropes. Nintendo’s marketing famously leaned into gross-out humor and an oversized boxed release, which made it memorable but didn’t necessarily communicate why the game was special – or why its emotional beats hit so hard. EarthBound also arrived late in the SNES life cycle, competing with bigger names and a market already looking ahead, which didn’t help its early sales momentum. The irony is that the exact things that made it a tough sell – its humor, modern setting, and off-kilter charm – are why it became beloved later, passed around like a secret handshake among RPG fans. | © Nintendo