10 Video Games That Ignored The Industry (And Became TIMELESS)
7. Prey
The immersive sim genre has always been firmly niche, and by the 2010s it was dangerously close to being genuinely dead.
It didn't make much sense, then, for Arkane Austin to release a new immersive sim, Prey, in 2017.
Given that large swaths of players don't even know what an immersive sim is, and developers have to waste precious marketing real estate explaining it, it just doesn't seem like a particularly sensible decision in the modern gaming era.
And while Prey did admittedly disappoint sales-wise, its reputation has only gone from strength to strength over the past eight years, many even deeming it one of the greatest immersive sims ever made, standing toe-to-toe with the likes of Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock, and so on.
In light of the genre's commercial struggles, some analysts believe that publishers will stop using the term immersive sim altogether to market their games in the future, instead deferring to adjacent terms players are more familiar with, like RPG.