10 "Next Big Thing" Video Games That Disappeared Overnight
The Ubisoft player count curse is real.
For all of the negativity within the video game community, there's nothing quite like allowing yourself to get swiped up in the excitement for a release and all of it's potential.
The hype train, however, is a cursed thing. Once it gets up to speed, very few things can slow it down. Because of this, if a game doesn't pass with flying colours it might ultimately prove to crash and burn in the most damning ways.
Sure, your game might've gotten decent sales numbers but it can reflect pretty poorly on a company if none of the people who bought your game are playing it mere months or even weeks later.
Because of the nature of the internet and the constant stream of information we all have access to, it's very easy for trends to come and go fast. One minute a game might be the most talked about title in the industry and then, as if by magic, it's suddenly yesterday's news.
This list looks at games that could've been the next big thing if they hadn't have vanished in the blink of an eye.
10. Marvel’s Avengers
Off the double-bill of Infinity War and Endgame, two films that are both in the top five highest grossing of all time, the promise of Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel title was huge. An action RPG with co-operative elements that allowed friends to pick their favourite members of the Avengers and team up to fight evil? It almost felt like a “can’t miss” situation.
The characters all avoided their MCU likenesses which, in concept, wasn’t a bad move but the designs themselves felt underwhelming, in that ‘cheap dollar store knock-off action figure’ kind of way. Despite this, and understandable concerns about the game’s depth, Marvel’s Avengers sales made it the second best-selling superhero game of all time.
And then it’s PC player base suddenly infamously dropped by a whopping 96% just months after it’s release.
The game wasn’t a trainwreck but something simply “fine” was not the hope for a franchise that had dominated pop culture for so long. Repetitive, grindy gameplay loops and a lack of content at launch were the most damning elements. It was also releasing at the start of the new console generation but it’s upgrades were delayed by six months which didn’t ingratiate it to players either.
Like the Thanos snap itself, Marvel’s Avengers went from being hotly anticipated to being a title gamers moved on from in one swift move.