8 Video Games That "Couldn't Fail" (That Still Failed)

There was much pre-release excitement for 2013's SimCity reboot, given the general popularity of the city simulation series as well as the fact that fans had been waiting an entire decade for a follow-up to SimCity 4.

There was simply no reason to believe that developer Maxis wouldn't drop another stone cold banger, and releasing in early 2013 with no direct competition whatsoever, why wouldn't it also be a commercial smash hit?

Despite SimCity's mechanics being generally well received by critics, Maxis' hard work was undone by greedy initiatives implemented presumably at the behest of publisher EA, who infamously won back-to-back "Worst Company in America" awards in 2012 and 2013.

Because SimCity could only be played with a persistent Internet connection, server issues on launch left players unable to actually play the game they'd paid for and, worse still, some players even lost save data.

The launch was an abject disaster, made worse by the fact that Maxis initially refused to release an offline patch and ultimately only did so a year later, long after many frustrated fans had abandoned the game.

The calamitous release caused SimCity to fall short commercially, effectively killing the franchise and resulting in the closure of Maxis Emeryville.

A decade later, SimCity's place has been quite ably filled by a spiritual successor from Paradox Interactive, Cities: Skylines, which had the good sense to allow offline play.