20 Biggest Video Game BOMBS That Deserved Better

These days Psychonauts is considered a classic franchise, and its sequel is one of Double Fine Productions’ best-selling titles.

However, despite its long-term success, those who followed the news about the game during its release would know that it actually faced a lot of hardships and ended up being a huge commercial flop.

The story here is quite complicated, but the gist of it is this. Despite Psychonauts’ unique premise of a platformer about entering other people’s minds, the game’s focus groups gave mixed feedback to Microsoft, as they found the game’s story to be too confusing but also too childish at the same time.

As paradoxical as this criticism sounds, it convinced Microsoft to drop the project entirely, and Double Fine’s development team had to look for another publisher, Majesco.

The new funding helped finish the game, however, another issue arose during the marketing phase, as despite the game already sending out review copies and receiving high scores, the team had to opt to not release it for another half a year for financial reasons, leading to next to no publicity during its actual month of release.

The game barely managed to sell 100,000 copies back in 2005. Thankfully, its charm and creativity were eventually recognized, resulting in its current acclaim.