Gaming is a fickle business, one with the potential for enormous financial prosperity and also cataclysmic failure, as these 10 misguided and unfortunate gaming ventures prove.

Though at present the gaming market seems to be relatively stable – the so-called “big three” are all making money, and there seemingly aren’t any nascent competitors coming out of the woodwork – these immense gaming failures, easily the most ruinous in the history of the medium, prove that even some of the world’s biggest companies are not averse to a flop.

Even if most of these failures seem obvious in hindsight, there are a few which are genuinely unfortunate – the most pronounced of which is surely pictured above – given that they sought to innovate the gaming landscape but simply could not find a market. The rest, as you’ll see, quite rightly wound up on the pyre of gaming history, to forever be ridiculed for the inept design choices they opted for.

Here are the 10 worst gaming failures of all time…

 

 

10. Sega 32X

In theory, the Sega 32X was definitely something that appealed to gamers; it deviated from the model that you’d need a whole new console every time you wanted to play better looking games, and instead involved plugging a device into your Mega Drive that would increase its longevity by at least a few more years.

However, Sega, like most companies on this list, basically ended up shooting themselves in the foot by failing to go all in, due to the prior failure of the Mega-CD, and the preparation for the impending disc-based Sega Saturn, as well as the much-criticised Neptune, which was to be a more practical combo of the Mega Drive and the 32X (though never made it to stores).

The 32X was saddled with a limited library of sub-par games, and so quickly faded into obscurity as Sega tried to wage war against the PlayStation with their Sega Saturn, a war they decisively, even humiliatingly lost as history dictates. Unfortunately, that’s not the only embarrassment Sega have to their name…

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