10 "Next Big Thing" Video Games Nobody Is Playing

6. Project Spark

Poor Project Spark. The success of Super Mario Maker and to a greater extent, the unmascotted Dreams, proves that it really could have been the next big thing.

Project Spark was a design game exclusive to the Xbox One, which released in 2014 and was killed off two years later. The funeral was sparsely attended and poorly catered.

It was supposed to dig deeper than LittleBigPlanet or Minecraft, letting creation truly run wild. The Kinect could be used for it too, and the general idea was to either build a world from scratch or customise a pre-designed one.

The problem was it was far too fiddly and the actual gameplay of created levels felt like a rush job. There were simply too many barriers to it, and the lasting creation is Linkin Park’s Guilty All The Same video, which was made through the engine.

What remains the worst thing about it though was how it bastardised and sanitised Conker into a squeaky clean mascot to help promote it. Not only did it completely fail, it added even more insult to the once great Conker.