http://gameist.com/articles/4-most-expensive-mistakes-in-the-gaming-industry/
In an industry that's always evolving it can be easy to let your ambitions get away from you. Perhaps you lose sight of your goal, maybe the project simply becomes to big. Or maybe, just maybe, you greatly under-calculate the value of white gold. With the spirit that there's no mistake quite like a big one, we present to you, our dear reader, four of the most expensive mistakes in the industry we love and loathe so much.
4) Shenmue
By the time Sega had released the Dreamcast they were in a bad position. Their last string of consoles and add-ons ranged from “terrible” to “oh my God the Sega Saturn killed my grandmother.” In order to counter this negative image they needed a game for their new system that would have no equal. They put all their hopes on Shenmue, an adventure RPG that had originally been designed for the Saturn. The rest, as they say, is history. Shenmue sold 1.2 million copies worldwide making it one of the few Sega Dreamcast titles to top 1 million. It sold especially well during Christmas and it seemed as though Sega was back on track after years of seemingly going out of their way to suck it hard for almost a decade. The success can be attributed to the game's grand environment with realistic weather effects, voice acting for every character and a true-life representation of one man's quest for sailors.
Naturally one would first look for sailors at "Funny Bear Burgers."
The Mistake: Quite a bit went into the production of Shenmue. Not including the final version and the near perfect Saturn version there were several different projects made and subsequently scrapped. In what experts call “getting way ahead of yourself” sequels were planned before the game was even finished and depending on who you ask they were planning two to ten of those. According to the economists at IGN.com the game's final production cost was over $70,000,000. In order to make any profit from this at all every Dreamcast owner would have had to buy the game twice and unless that second copy came with a bucket full of naked ladies that just wasn't going to happen. Despite this they went on to release Shenmue 2, proving that we should really stop giving Sega our money.
3) Intellivision Keyboard
When introducing the Intellivision Mattel knew they would need something major to compete with Atari. Their plan was to advertise the Intellevision as more than a video game console and to sell add-on hardware that would make the Intellevision a home computer as well. The focus on this would be a keyboard component. But because the system was developed and manufactured before the keyboard Mattel advertised it as "Coming soon!" with the promise of an eventual release date in 1981. The keyboard would turn the Intellivision into a crude humming electric box with just enough features to pass as a computer. Believe it or not this was a big deal and the Intellivision soon sold 3 million units.
The Mistake: As it turns out magic transforming keyboards are a bit too expensive to make available for a reasonable price and still make a profit. In this sense Mattel was a step above Sega in that they saw their mistake. But rather than cancel the keyboard altogether they started to delay the release date while they redesigned it, no doubt puffing cigars and waxing their monocles at the same time. The Scrooge McDuck lifestyle stopped when the Federal Trade Commission began collecting complaints from consumers who had purchased the Intellivision specifically for the promise of the home computer add-on and were in the early stages of planning a people's revolution. The FTC leveled a fine of $10,000 for each day the keyboard was unreleased, forcing Mattel to release an inferior model and cancel the project.
Not as good as promised.
This sparked many more lawsuits coming out of the woodwork, ending with Mattel paying out over $10,000,000. After realizing how many computers could be bought with such a sum Mattel kicked themselves in the ass before closing down their electronics division.
2) Swordquest
By 1982 Atari was well aware of who made up their customer base: lots of shameless nerds. But with the competing systems being released the nerds had become divided. If Atari didn't win them all back they feared the nerds would meet in battle, equipped with their best twenty-sided dice, and slap each other until only one system remained as their champion. In order to win them back the company designed the first (and quite possibly only) action adventure puzzle RPG fantasy comic book video game series, Swordquest. The four intended games in the series told the story of two twins who travel from world to world, trying to find their way back home and possibly avenging the deaths of their parents. Oh, and one of them rides a Pegasus at some point.
The Mistake: Swordquest ended up getting canceled before the forth game, leaving much of the plot in the air. A series getting canceled isn't that big of a deal though, at least on it's own. In order to draw in more players Atari held a series of tournaments for each game with the ultimate winner getting an elaborate prize, like a $25,000 dollar 18k gold talisman encrusted with twelve diamonds and the twelve stones of the Zodiac. You know, whatever they had kicking around in the office. Each contest had a grand prize just as extravagant as it was ridiculous, with each item being valued at $25,000.
Behold, the gamer goblet.
Atari had each item made for the game it would be associated with before the game was completed, so when they canceled the third tournament they made it up to the participants by handing out over $30,000 and keeping their $25,000 crown to themselves. The fourth game was flat out canceled so that tournament was never held either. In the end they spent over $1,000,000 in prizes, most of which never saw the light of day. While this is a colossal fuck-up by most standards of business these are the people that released E.T., so try to keep that in perspective.
1) Pac-Man
In the eighties we had a certain fever.
Forgive us. It was the eighties.
Pac-Man was inescapable. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting him in his non-face and we were cool with it. We loved the Pac-Attack.
Atari loved it too. So much so that they had gotten the rights to do a home port. The game had the potential to be a blockbuster and Atari went mad promoting the release, going so far as to label April 3 "Atari National Pac-Man Day." The next time you over hear someone complaining that President's Day is a bullshit holiday, feel free to bring it up.
The Mistake: Atari was eager to make the game available for Christmas in 1981 and left the game in the hands of programmer Tod Frye. With a strict time-table to work with and limited resources Frye knew he couldn't make a true port of the game. Faced with a dillema he did the noble thing: programmed an inferior version but not before securing the first royalties deal for a programmer in history and making out like a bandit as a result.
The game made it to the shelves in time for Christmas and the response was less than stellar. For reference, here's the game:
This looks like Pac-Man but only if you squint while punching yourself in the genitals.
The game's graphics, sound and AI were terrible by comparison but no one buying it knew that until it was too late. Because it was one of the most anticipated releases for the 2600 Atari printed 12 million copies, 2 million more than the number of people who owned Ataris. They managed to sell 7 million, leaving them with 5 million carts no one would buy before the returns started coming back. If you can process that equation then you already know that the remainder is a huge pile of disappointment. Pac-Man, paired with Atari's second pivotal release E.T., are widely accepted to have sparked the Video Game Crash of 1983. If you can somehow manage to take the two most recent pop culture power-houses of your time and use them to ruin an industry it should go without saying that you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
