10 Video Games Cancelled Before Their Time
Sleeping Dogs, we hardly knew ye.
While there are plenty of fantastic video games that do see the light of day, there are a few wildly promising looking titles that slip through the cracks. Those cracks being financial issues, studio acquisitions, executives believing the audience just isn’t interested and everything in between.
Whatever the case, it’s gamers, and those dedicated developers and creators who hoped to see their dream realised, who end up paying the price when for whatever reason an anticipated game doesn’t eventuate.
Even though the world never gave these games the chance to hit shelves, we’re giving them a moment in the spotlight now. Obviously there are way more games that deserve to be here which we couldn’t fit on this list so please do use that comment section to mention other games that were unceremoniously cancelled that none of us can quite can over.
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10. Silent Hills
If we’re discussing wildly disappointing teasers that never eventuated into a full game we’d be remiss not to include one of the most fantastic horror experiences ever made, 2014’s P.T., which was initially intended to become Hideo Kojima’s survival horror Silent Hills.
Not only was iconic ex-Konami employee Hideo Kojima on board, the game was set to be the ninth main entry into the celebrated Silent Hill series starring Norman Reedus and co-directed by award-winning director Guillermo Del Toro. Entertainingly, Kojima described himself as a bit of a scaredy-cat when it comes to horror games but given his pedigree, and the popularity of the franchise, it generated a lot of understandable hype. The game began production in 2012 and was ultimately cancelled in 2015 due to the breakdown between Kojima and Konami.
A small happy ending was that come 2019, Kojima, del Toro, and Reedus reunited for the fantastic albeit divisive action adventure, Death Stranding.
At the initial time of its cancellation, del Toro was not delicate in his response to Konami’s decision, saying “it was not a gentle and ambiguous collaboration”, claiming the studio had taken the game down with a, quote, “scorched earth approach”. In the years since there have been plenty of rumours suggesting Silent Hills might not be dead after all for what is completely reasonable wishful thinking, but unfortunately nothing concrete has eventuated in the years since.