20 Disastrous Gaming Launches Everyone Saw Coming
1. No Man's Sky
And finally we have No Man's Sky - one of gaming's all-time great examples of a developer wildly over-promising what they could deliver at launch, getting absolutely roasted for it, but then knuckling down and finally vindicating themselves by over-delivering.
In the lead up to the release of the procedurally generated open world sci-fi game, many questioned whether Hello Games, a small dev team relative to the scope of their project, truly had the capability to deliver a massively explorable universe with multiplayer functionality.
As it turns out, they didn't, at least not at that time.
On launch, No Man's Sky was widely criticised for the repetition of its open world and tediousness of the activities on offer, while the total absence of promised multiplayer elements left many especially angry.
In hindsight it was clear that the game's incredible marketing wasn't aligned with its more modest initial scope, and some of the more vague, cagey remarks made by studio head Sean Murray pre-release should've tipped players off that the game might launch shy of expectations.
But in a neat turnaround, Hello Games worked incredibly hard to rehabilitate No Man's Sky's reputation in the years that followed, with a mind-boggling number of free updates delivering all the promised content and so much more.
As redemption stories go, they went above and beyond, even though the calamitous launch remains a massive cautionary tale of a developer failing to manage hype and expectations.