Worst Game Launch?

[Karo]

Oh, does anyone remember Battleborn? I remember Cricket started streaming just to show me that game, and that game was destroyed by Overwatch. Poor Battleborn. It actually looked pretty good...

[Maniakkid25]

At this point, I don't think anyone remembers Battleborn Yuri. T.=.T

[Mr EliteL]

I do remember Battleborn, but never took interest in the game myself, although did read your (Maniak's) blog post about it, and watched you play it. Don't remember much about the game except it was seen similar to Overwatch, thus becoming quite obsolete pretty much because of that unfortunately.

There's probably a game or two I should know (don't think I own them), but have forgotten about because of how bad they did. Knew of Star Wars and No Man's Sky.

[Moonface]

Oh, does anyone remember Battleborn? I remember Cricket started streaming just to show me that game, and that game was destroyed by Overwatch. Poor Battleborn. It actually looked pretty good...

I'd call that more a victim of circumstance rather than the game itself having a poor launch. Similar to MotorStorm Apocalypse having its launch affected by the earthquake in Japan right as it was about to launch, forcing it to be delayed and then releasing quietly due to the advertising budget already being used for the original launch.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, Battleborn doesn't qualify. The game itself was fine at launch, from everything that I've heard. It just released at a really terrible time (near the same time as Overwatch, if I remember correctly).

Terrible timing for sure, but not a bad launch itself.

[Moonface]

Battleborn is basically what I feel could have happened if PUBG and Fortnite released close together. Neither are necessarily bad, one just has a lot more marketing and popularity behind it to make people overlook the other one.

[Metallix]

Socom 4 was pretty bad. It released and immediately after PSN was hacked and down for a month. Socom was always an online game first, that’s where you it’s userbase mainly played and once PSN was back it pretty much killed that franchise.

[Moonface]

Huge bump but having seen the justified outrage at it, I feel like Halo Infinite might be one of the most recent AAA games to have a really rough launch. First it got delayed, then when it launched it was missing features that are franchise staples, and since then the updates and communication by 343i has apparently been really, really bad. I'm used to seeing games fail to deliver on promises at launch that were made beforehand, but I can't easily think of another game that managed to take that further and continue to have the developers make promises and timelines that have been consistently missed, to the point that Infinite's multiplayer seasons have lasted almost 10 months each, and features promised back before the original launch have now been cancelled entirely.

Usually a launch is rough and nothing more comes of it, or you get things like NMS that turn everything around in such a massive way that it's hard to believe the state they launched in.

[Dragon Lord]

I find the whole situation with Halo: Infinite to be absolutely hilarious because Xbots talked so much shit to PlayStation and Nintendo fans about how that game alone was going to be better than any exclusive that PS/Nintendo could ever put out, and the game couldn't even make it one year before dying and becoming one of the absolute biggest jokes in the history of gaming. It was the game that was supposed to hard-carry Xbox for over a year and it flopped so fucking hard.

You just love to see it.

[Moonface]

I find the whole situation with Halo: Infinite to be absolutely hilarious because Xbots talked so much shit to PlayStation and Nintendo fans about how that game alone was going to be better than any exclusive that PS/Nintendo could ever put out, and the game couldn't even make it one year before dying and becoming one of the absolute biggest jokes in the history of gaming. It was the game that was supposed to hard-carry Xbox for over a year and it flopped so fucking hard.

You just love to see it.

Eh, you find that sort of stupid shit from people on any major release that's exclusive to a particular system and they're either children or trolls who aren't worth taking seriously.

I can understand how people were hopeful for Infinite to be good, since the past few haven't managed to hit the heights of the Bungie era and there were signs Infinite was going to try and address that stuff. Regardless though, how the final product turned out at launch wouldn't really change how it has been handled since then when it comes to updating the multiplayer. It doesn't matter what the features are being added, any developer constantly making promises and failing to deliver on the same promises multiple times is bad practice. Infinite seems to just be one of the few instances where promises continue to be made and broken post-launch, whereas most other games in my experience tend to break those promises for launch and either fulfill them later, or just don't fulfill them at all, which would have been the better approach for 343i at this point compared to how they've been doing things because it just brings their shortcomings back to the surface over and over again versus letting it fade from the public eye.
Being unable to put faith in a developer to put together a good entry in a series is one thing, but being unable to put faith in any word a developer has to say is another. Bethesda isn't known for putting out games that are bad entries on a repeated basis, with Fallout 76 really being one of the only notably bad releases they've done, but the way they behaved with that game up front and in the immediate launch aftermath was likely enough to make a number of people doubt anything Todd Howard has to say about future games like Starfield as being as good as he makes it sound. It just plays into the whole issue of hype trains where if a company hypes their game up and fails to deliver, it's far more damning than just showing your stuff, saying nothing beyond reiterating what we're seeing, and just releasing the game. Correct me if I'm wrong but you don't tend to see Nintendo making claims about their games that aren't being made alongside footage that exists to back up their word and so Nintendo themselves aren't often criticized for promising things that they don't actually deliver.