Xboxist

Biggest Flops of the Holiday Season

This is a list of high profile games (spanning the entire year) that failed to capture the public's wallets. Some of these games were titles retailers and game publishers were banking on for the Holiday blitz. Others were highly reviewed games that never found an audience. Unfortunately, the former were doomed by lackluster gameplay, ill-conceived pack-on peripherals, or anemic game modes; while the latter were handicapped by bad marketing and low brand appeal.

DJ Hero

With these types of games, it really is all about the fun factor. If a game is too complicated, the fun is sucked right out -- especially if the stupid slider doesn't flick to where you think it'd be, and it messes up your chain. Peripherals will sell a game if they mimic well enough their real life counterparts. The magic is in retaining the fun factor. Plastic guitars with whammy bars -- Great! A cheap DJ set with flimsy plastic nobs and sliders -- not so good. And please, please include more songs. A 90-song playlist doesn't cut it when we're talking 3-4 remixes of each song.

DJ Fluffy bringing it to you raw. He scratches like a pro so you don't have to."

Tony Hawk Ride

Whichever schlock executive thought up this skateboard peripheral surely had dollar signs popping out of his head. It's all about selling kids overpriced game bundles: yep, those $199 and $250 Guitar Hero and Beatles Rockband bundles helped shoot the retail prices sky high. Too bad the exec didn't have the foresight to include a playable game with this hunk of plastic. And for the pricey tag of $120, you'd think they would have invested some money into prettying up the fugly graphics. For their next project, I suggest packing in a plastic tombstone with their game -- Tony Hawk: RIP.

Tony Hawk turns to game exec and says, "You really think this is gonna sell? Looks kinda stupid."

Gran Turismo PSP

Maybe it was a case of overhype. Maybe it stewed in the pot too long. Whatever the reasons, the lack of a career mode was the tipping point that had fans scratching their heads over how Gran Turismo ever became such an enduring franchise. It certainly doesn't show with the downloadable PSP version. Has GT run outta gas? Can Polyphony publish anything other than demo-level games a la GT5: Prologue and GT PSP? Hot upstarts like Forza and the unfathomably good Need for Speed: Shift certainly has GT on the run? Votes are tallied by sales figures and it seems NFS has left GT in the dust.

Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic

Mario & Sonic at the Olympics was a surprise hit, garnering a broad following ranging from seasoned gamers to families to young hipster casual gamers. A sequel seemed a sure bet, but gamers gave the winter setting the cold shoulder, selling poorly even in Japan where the mascots rule.

Mario and Sonic... extreme!"

Madworld

Oh the artistry. Oh the violence. Oh the use of violence to speak out against violence. Too heady? Maybe not. I just like cutting people in half with a chainsaw and seeing the purty red blood spurt everywhere. What doesn't take a philosophy degree to figure out is that the black and white aesthetic and high concept simply left consumers in the dark. The beat 'em up gameplay was aces, but the social commentary flew over everyone's heads. Worse yet, Madworld may have found an audience on more mature oriented consoles like the PS3 or Xbox 360, but having made its home on the family friendly Wii, the developers were only setting themselves up for failure. Maybe that's the point though. It's reminiscent of the lives of famous artists. Their work is too beautiful, too artsy. A game like this wasn't meant to be successful. Most artists die poor, misunderstand and unappreciated by the people of their time. Or maybe it's just bad marketing.

It's a mad, mad world!

Brutal Legend

I said in my Brutal Legend: One-Word Review and I'll say it again here... Tim Schafer is a genius! At design and at comedy. Too bad not so much at marketing. His games just don't sell. Let's go over what he did and didn't do right. Including big time movie star Jack Black in your game? Brilliant! Not having said big time movie star pimping the hell out of it on talk shows and TV commercials? D'oh!! Having famous Metal acts make in-game cameos? Brilliant? Not mentioning the cameos in promos? D'oh!! Putting hard to figure out RTS segments into a game made for Metal fans notorious for their love of the doobie? D'oh!! Oh well, at least we bought a copy. Better luck next time, Tim. Maybe you can get Johnny Depp to star in your next game, but in an uncredited voice-over role.

I wonder why my game doesn't sell. Doth the Metal gods hate me?"

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