9 Video Games That Failed To Get Public After Expensive Budget

Creating video games nowadays can take a lot of time and money, which will in turn provide entertainment to its users and profit to the developers. But that doesn't seem to be the case for these ten games that failed to impress after an expensive investment:

9. The Original Shenmue

The game was just spectacular. When it was initially released, there was no video game like this one. It consisted of appealing quests and characters. In the game, you could just go around exploring life and also beating people up every once or twice; it was just pure gold. I used to call it Chinese Sims.
 
In 2001, it was the most expensive game ever made. There is word about this game; production and marketing costs are estimated to be around $47–$70 million, which apparently also covered Shenmue 2. It's not totally clear, but we do know that Shenmue, the original game, sold 1.2 million copies and apparently didn't recoup its development costs. This technically means that the game wasn't a massive win for the company. 

 
8. Too Human 

This is one of the most talked-about games. It was notorious for being an expensive disaster. It was created in 2008 by Silicon knights. This was supposed to be the company's next big thing. A lot of people had lots of hope of this game turning into a franchise. I found it very unique because it was kind of a combination of Norse mythology and sci-fi (it kind of gives you an imagination of Thor using Tiktok 😏😏. It could have been awesome. Unfortunately, when released, it wasn't very memorable and didn't have muca staying power.
 
It had an estimated budget of around $60–$100 million. Apart from the money spent on the game, it also took nine years to develop it (i.e., 1999–2008). 

 Another thing that affected Silicon Knights was that the company sued Epic Games based on the capabilities of the Unreal Engine at the time. This required expensive lawyers and lots of money, which in turn led to their downfall.

7. A.P.B. (All Points Bulletin)

I often saw this game as a big multiplayer version of Grand Theft Auto before Rockstar got around to it. It was so hyped up and also a massive production. It had an estimated budget of $100 million, according to Wikipedia.
 
When the game was released, it didn't really take off as they were hoping. It still has some die-hard fans to this day, but compared to the cost of production, it's nothing. With competitors like Rockstar dominating GTA Online, it just made matters worse for A.P.B.
 
Another thing that made this game a financial disaster was when K2 Network decided to buy the game for 1.5 million pounds in 2010.

 
6. UDraw

THQ was one of the best publishers and developers for a long time. When they had a miss, it was a massive miss. The uDraw tablet started out as a peripheral device for the Wii and also for the Xbox and PlayStation in 2011. 
 
Let's be honest, I don't even need to say why this is a failure. I have always loved and played all types of video games for a long time, and I have never heard of this one, and I'm guessing you probably don't either. Looking at it, it's just stupid. This expanded release was already seen as a disaster because it caused a revenue shortfall of about $100 million. The developers even admitted it. They even stated that they had over 1.4 million unsold tablets sitting in a warehouse. This was one of the mistakes that led to THQ's demise.
 

5. Immortals of Aveum

This game was great because it's something that is liked by a lot  of people, me especially. It's not a remake, it's not a sequel; it's its own completely new adventure, a new world, a new character, and it is a single-player, fairly linear, first-person shooter adventure game. It wasn't the best, but it was a lot of fun.
 
According to sources, the game development cost about $125 million, and Electronic Arts (EA, spent $40 million on marketing and distribution. In 2023, the game had competitors who were more favorites than the Immortals of Aveum. This game was a tough one. The studio ended up shutting down after this. After poor sales and laying off 40% of the staff. The game was great, but I guess it didn't just work out for them.

 
4. Final Fantasy: The Spirit within

This isn't a mainline final fantasy game; it is actually a feature film. A computer-animated full-length film from 2001 that I'm going to admit that I absolutely love. It's actually goofy and doesn't really carry the philosophy of all the other final fantasy games.
 
According to sources, it cost $137 million to make, which is equal to $214 million in today's money, and only grossed $85 million at the box office. It was even blamed for the end of Square Pictures.

3. Marvel's Avengers 

Then there's Marvel's Avengers, which was the big, expensive live-action Avengers game. It was the first big Marvel game that would unite these heroes and give us fun new versions of them, and it was designed to keep us playing endlessly. It was one of those games. It actually had an exciting campaign with a great story. 
 
Even with its small, dedicated audience, it didn't quiet land. It was estimated to cost $170 to $200 million to create the video game. Square Enix estimated a $63 million loss the year the game came out. Square Enix always seems to have higher expectations for their game, which seems to later flop, but Avengers felt like it would hit differently. There was a lot of press and backlash to this one from a lot of people. It was pretty clear that not enough people were playing the game. Before the game shutdown, the publishers gave away nearly all the in-game items for free. 

 
2. Skulls and bones 

It's a ubisoft open-world multiplayer pirate game that has been in the works for almost a decade that alone leads to a ballooning cost. 
 
If you have multiple studios and tons of people working on this thing for years, that cost is just going to keep going up, and the project reportedly cost Ubisoft $200 million. Just weeks after its launch, the game reportedly sold less than a million copies, making it a massive financial flop for Ubisoft. For skulls and bones, it seemed like a lot of people did not care.

1. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League 

This is one of the biggest live service failures yet, with Warner Brothers stating recently that they took a $200 million loss on this game, and that's not something that's going to slowly recoup either, right? Because the player counts are low, the interest in the game really came and went, and it doesn't really seem like they're releasing too much exciting content for it.
 
With it being a live service game, the idea is that as new stuff gets added, the game gets better, more interesting, or it keeps players coming back for more. None of that seems to be happening.