10 Disastrous Video Games That Lost Their Creators Millions

7. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Now this one is super-special, and in all probability needs no introduction. E.T. was released for the Atari in 1982, and its development was hurried through in five and a half weeks so it made it out in time for Christmas (at the same time as the movie). Even back in those days, that was an incredibly short turnaround time. The result was one of the worst and commercially disastrous games of all time. Atari ordered five million cartridges, but only 1.5 million copies were sold. That may not sound bad, but it was still such an extreme overproduction that Atari ended up burying hundreds of thousands of copies in the desert because no one wanted to buy them. The collapse of the video game industry in 1983 was attributed to the game's failure. In reality, there were many other factors that played a part in the games console crash; among these were the rise of PC gaming, and another, slightly less infamous game that ruined peoples' faith in the Atari...