10 Terrible Decisions That Doomed Popular Video Game Companies

6. Thinking Peripherals Were The Future - Neversoft

Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, Neversoft were the coolest developers around. From their sick, spike-through-the-eye logo to the games they created, the studio rode the cultural zeitgeist in a way others only dreamed of.

It was the Tony Hawk series that was their bread and butter though, with the team overseeing the amazing Pro Skater titles into the edgier era of Underground and American Wasteland. As skateboarding in general lost its cultural standing and franchise fatigue started to set in, Activision roped in the studio to create Guitar Hero games instead.

For the most part, the titles Neversoft produced were decent, but their talents were wasted, as Activision simply tried to shift as many expensive plastic guitars as possible. In a three year period, the devs produced no less than eight Guitar Hero related games, before Activision made the company defunct and shifted the employees over to Infinity Ward to work on Call of Duty.

Ironically, peripheral-based games wouldn't only go on to kill Neversoft, but eventually tanked their Tony Hawk's franchise as well.

[JB]