20 Disastrous Gaming Launches Everyone Saw Coming

Much as just about everyone wanted Mass Effect: Andromeda to be a smash hit, there were just so, so many warning signs during development that this wouldn't be the case.

For one, various key creative team members - including the original director, lead writer, senior editor, and O.G. trilogy director Casey Hudson - all left BioWare in the middle of Andromeda's development.

Elsewhere it was reported that the decision to switch to DICE's Frostbite 3 engine, requiring all assets to be built from scratch, was proving problematic for an understaffed team.

And this definitely showed in early gameplay footage, where many pointed out how stiff the character animations looked. 

This was further confirmed when EA ill-advisedly made a 10-hour preview of Andromeda available a week before release, where the game's janky facial animations were widely ridiculed and went viral, helping obliterate the game's momentum days before launch.

While certainly not a failure on the level of many games on this list, Andromeda was received considerably less warmly than its predecessors, and only after a number of substantial patches did it finally begin to feel more polished.