10 Terrible Decisions That Doomed Popular Video Game Companies

2. Trying To Create A Halo Killer - Free Radical

When you come at the king, you better not miss. No bigger words of warning could have been said to both developers Free Radical and publisher Ubisoft when they got to work on creating Haze, a first-person shooter which was pitched as being a "Halo killer" pretty much since its first day of production.

At the time, Bungie's franchise was still the biggest name in the FPS scene (though it would soon come to be succeeded by Call of Duty), and every developer was wanting to dethrone them and reap the rewards. If there was any studio that could potentially challenge their reign, it was Free Radical, who were pitched as gaming's best underdogs after delivering the stellar Timesplitters games.

The problem was, while Free Radical did indeed have an ambitious title on their hands, Ubisoft were more concerned with telling journalists how it was absolutely going to make Halo look like a little baby, rather than, you know, solving the problems the studio was bringing up during development. As a result, the game shipped as a complete mess, taking extra flack for being so brazen before launch and contributing heavily to Free Radical going under a little while later.

[JB]