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[shinobi602]

edit-
After some reading I still don't "get" Doritosgate, seems like a random overreaction to videogame media business as usual.

Same here. Don't get what the fuss is about...

 

[Funchameleon]

...but it was an epic fail.

 

[Durante]

Oh my god, I forgot what is clearly the most significant failure of 2012 -- let me change my vote to:

Atlus region locking Persona 4 Arena on PS3 as the first game in the many years since the systems' release.

 

[gutterboy44]

Vita

Which makes me sad because I own one and am reminded of its wasted potential every time I use it. The fact there still isn't a 1:1 FIFA game where you can take your career mode on the go from the PS3 version is pathetic. "Console experience on an handheld" my ass, unless the console experience the were referring to was a botched launch and a few years of half assed ports.

 

[Derrick01]

I'll have to say PSVita. It's not the quality of the device that is in question, but the sales, the lack of marketing, etc. It seems that Sony has abandoned the device already.

The majority of the key games coming next year, so far at least, are from Sony.

Sly 4
MLB
Killzone
Tearaway

And then there's whatever Bend is working on which most seem to believe is uncharted golden abyss 2.

Vita

Which makes me sad because I own one and am reminded of its wasted potential every time I use it. The fact there still isn't a 1:1 FIFA game where you can take your career mode on the go from the PS3 version is pathetic. "Console experience on an handheld" my ass, unless the console experience the were referring to was a botched launch and a few years of half assed ports.

Blame EA's lazy ass for that. Sony was able to get a proper MLB game on Vita that lets you take your PS3 progress on the go less than a month after the system came out, and next year's will at least look better too.

 

[kodt]

DoritoGate

WarZ

Diablo 3

 

[Omega]

mass effect 3 og ending by a landslide. i mean, he got his inspiration from matrix revolutions.

who gets inspired by something that fails beyond words?

 

[IrishNinja]

doritosgate? really? maybe if you umbrella it to include every bit of failure that followed, such as journalists like n'gai/etc outright dismissing it, then moving the goalpost just as fast they could

i mean, the square gal was clearly the meat of it though. also 38 studios/rhode island votes are pretty legit

Denis Dyack. Its been years in the making, but not only did he destroy his company - he destroyed it in a way that set a new standard of failure. He fell further than anyone else, from Nintendo's partner to beneath rock bottom. He owes millions, and has to destroy all of his company's games. He has been exposed by various previous staff members as being an absurd tyrant whose own wife was the company HR coordinator.

He's a games visionary unable to make games, and forced to destroy ten years of work. No one has failed as much as Dyack has.

damn, this is a good one. i gotta rethink my vote now.

The Wii U.

that's a mighty weird way to spell fez

It has to be the Vita. Nothing else even comes close in terms of the actual definition of failure.

i'd say the early stretch, yeah - i like to give these things more time. like, saying WU right now feels silly because much like the 3DS, nintendo can make a few moves next year & turn things right around, people will largely forget the launch troubles with patching & such. not that it'll magically become the wii but the doom & gloom would potentially look as silly as the early 3DS stuff did.

sony, of course, doesn't really have that option, but a price cut and some big titles could at least make it viable. i don't see it as dead yet personally, but another round of E3/TGS etc with little to no showing and ill admittedly be worried.

For me it's 3ds region lock

does that even count as this year? i mean, it's a timeless failure, granted

Sega's Youtube copyright attacks.

Going after 15+ year old games, sending notices to people not even using footage of their games.

totally forgot this one - it prolly wouldn't make my top 5 but it's still horrendously stupid, especially seeing them continue it for other games recently

Spoiler

My vote goes to the Bayonetta 2 announcement thread nonetheless

oh my god, that thread will be studied for comedic value in future generations

Silent Hill HD Collection

Way to fuck up SH2, one of the greatest games ever made.

this one really stung. i sold my originals and got so hyped, too.
if/when we do a failure of the gen thread, Konami is my # 1

Nominating a system as failed when it's still going is stupid. As low as the chance of a Vita resurgence is you run the risk of looking like a moron by picking it now in case it does.

well said

 

[Sintoid]

WiiUseless

 

[Mileena]

Wii U OS/hardware/network



Just all around shitty and underwhelming for a "next gen" console. Was gonna say Vita but the only fail there is its sales.


Honorable mention: Blops 2 netcode. It's so bad I'd expect better from an iOS game. What a joke.

 

[H3xum]

Four clear cut choices

• 
  Mass Effect 3's "ending"

• 
  Doritos Gate

• 
  PS3's complete neglect by developers (i.e. Skyrim)

• 
  E3 being awful, again. (Wii U being laughable, no presence from others)

 

[pants]

WiiU Marekting + Hardware fail.
Doritosgate
Fez guy talking all sorts of smack
Region Locking
WarZ Stuff
ocean m-markketing (Spilled over into Jan iirc)

 

[Meccanical]

Can I vote for the Lightning Returns Debut Trailer or should that be moved to 2013?

 

[Poohblaster]

38 studios bankruptcy and subsequent liquidation followed by the implosion of Silicon Knights.

I fee bad for Schilling he loved games but was a terrible businessman. Dennis Dyack on the other hand is crazy and I only feel bad for his former employees.

 

[Pakkidis]

38 studios is really the only correct answer. Millions owed in taxes that will have to be covered by the tax payer, a clusterfuck of mismanagement of a game company, hundreds of jobs lost and lives ruined.

 

[Grieves]

Sony closing Studio Liverpool.

Honourable mentions: Square Enix for not releasing anything anyone remotly wants to play on consoles and Team Ico for not releasing anything at all.

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

Okay, lets sort this out:

1. Update took 30 minutes. I didn't like it at all, but lets not go overboard.

2. Missing features? Like achievements? You can keep them.

3. Region coding does suck, but that's going to be par for the course moving forward.

4. NSMBU is possibly the best 2D Mario ever.

Everything about the WiiU is a disappointment. Everything. It was revealed in E3 2011 and Nintendo kept their mouth shut for a year just to show almost nothing at E3 2012. To add salt to injury there someone one GAF who hyped up the WiiU conference by saying there will be a lot of games and announcements and whatnot, just for him to say that oh, about that, they must have pulled their content on the last minute. As if E3 does not take month preparations in advance just so that Nintendo pull a lot of content at E3 and replace it with shit.

The machine is vastly under-powered. It has shitty ports. Very little to almost no third party support, and shitty and very slow OS.

2- How about that there´s no account system instead of account for a console, and if one´s WiiU got broken one would lose of of one´s content.

3- False and delusional. The Vita released this year and it has no region locking on physical games.

4- I don´t know about Mario.

 

[LkPr]

I am going to have to go with Diablo 3 ... soo much hype, so many problems on release.. and now, who even cares?

 

[Andrew.]

This thread. The word "fail" as anything but a verb. Poll threads. All threads. The world. You.

Me.

The "-gate" suffix in the hands of this generation.

Journalism in scarequotes.

"Dat"

This industry.

Any industry.

Everything.

Which one are you?

 

[pants]

I am going to have to go with Diablo 3 ... soo much hype, so many problems on release.. and now, who even cares?

I max leveled and bailed on this game so fast (not before I made my money back through selling items though). I even forgot I have it :/

 

[Figboy79]

I've never voted in anything like this before,

but my top vote would be the whole Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco. Bioware alienated and disappointed a lot of fans who had sunk countless hours into the series.

Full disclosure, I have yet to beat ME3, but my wife has beaten it 3 or 4 times, once after the DLC, and I got to hear, on a daily basis, how shit and terrible both the pre-dlc ending, and the dlc ending were.

My second vote would be this whole WarZ deal. I haven't been following it much, but I think anything that actually affects consumers enjoyment of a product is a big fail, and their handling of it thus far has been pretty poor also.

 

[AgentP]

The hard core savior of Kinct showed us once again Kinect is not ready for real games, just arm waving casual stuff.

 

[alstein]

SFxTK

They've tried, but damn that was a fail.

 

[bunbun777]

At first I thought this was which thread failed the most, and then I remembered the 8/10 Uncharted review thread.

But anyways- gonna go with the failure that affected me the most and of course risk the scorn and ire of most of you...

WiiU not selling out so that I could make a profit off of resale. I ended up cancelling my layaway for 2 units and am pretty bummed that I did not make some extra monies. Life will go on.

 

[Odrion]

The ending of Mass Effect 3 by a fucking football field. Nobody would stop talking about it this whole year.

 

[Ragus]

Vita
Doritos

 

[canedaddy]

Doritosgate (meaning all the "games journalism" failure of 2012)

Can't give it to Vita since it's a great piece of hardware despite its poor sales, or 38 Studios since they brought us a great game this year despite their terrible corporate management.

 

[Interfectum]

Wii U
Diablo 3
Mass Effect 3 ending

 

[Uncle AJ]

The hard core savior of Kinct showed us once again Kinect is not ready for real games, just arm waving casual stuff.

THANK YOU

 

[Blue Submarine No. 6]

Blacks Ops Declassiffied and its 6 months development.

This... Actually, maybe I'd go for Nihilistic themselves, for dropping the ball on two Vita titles, each of which could well have been a GAME CHANGER™ for handheld games, both of which were cruelly disappointing (but only one of which - the aforementioned CoDeclassified - was a complete abortion of a game)...

 

[televator]

mass effect 3 og ending by a landslide. i mean, he got his inspiration from matrix revolutions.

who gets inspired by something that fails beyond words?

That was the inspiration for it? Really? Well now it makes sense as to why people kept insisting it was arbitrarily more deep and meaningful than a "happy ending." I always thought the Matrix films were action films that made dumb people feel smart and deep.

 

[aaaaaa]

Capcom on-disc DLC disasters, including their promise not to do that shit any more, then repeatedly breaking that promise.

 

[Alcoholikaust]

dark souls' initial PC release (thanks Durante)

SSX wing suits

WiiU advertising (or lack thereof)

WarZ debacle

 

[hayguyz]

Phil Fish telling us all to suck his dick

Jay Wilson referring to old Diablo dev and his critique of Diablo3: "fuck that loser"

 

[UberTag]

Can I vote for the Lightning Returns Debut Trailer or should that be moved to 2013?

Save that for next year.

There will be much Square Enix implosion chatter... not just from the fail that is Toriyama and Final Fantasy but Western efforts like Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider underperforming at retail.

My votes:
1) Doritosgate
2) Mass Effect 3 Ending
3) WarZ Debacle

 

[Sir Garbageman]

Mass Effect 3 ending.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Wii U

In fact, this is the most obvious answer, I don't even know how anything else is up for contention.

Successor to the fastest selling console of all time, releasing during the busiest shopping season with ample supply, and sales are absolutely ATROCIOUS in Europe and America, with plenty of units just sitting on store shelves. This was a company that only a few years ago used to push millions of product in December alone in one territory.

Nintendo is likely in a worse situation with Wii U than they were (and still are) with the 3DS, and that spells doom for the company's financial future. Software like NSBM that used to do ridiculous numbers isn't pushing systems, is getting outsold by games that people on this forum call flops like LBP:Karting and CoD: Declassified.

This system is in BIG trouble.

 

[Grisby]

38 studios deal for me. Freaking got the state involved didn't it? Crazy.

Shame too because KOA wasn't too bad of a game, would have liked to seen a sequel.

 

[Zyrusticae]

Nothing can match the sheer level of fail that is Diablo 3.

They completely shit on the aesthetic and style of the original games, going for something that is considerably more comedic, like a saturday morning cartoon. They launched with absolutely horrible balance, with a huge number of useless skills and runes and some monster types that were just outright absurdly overpowered. Of course there were also the connection issues (LOL SINGLE PLAYER ONLINE), the RMAH, everything about Inferno...

This game is horrible enough on its own. But when you compare it to the first and second games? It's not just horrifying. It's outright destructive. I can't even talk about the game without being FILLED WITH RAGE. They KILLED the franchise! KILLED IT DEAD! ARRRGH!

Fuck you, Blizzard. Fuck you.

 

[metalslimer]

Wii U

In fact, this is the most obvious answer, I don't even know how anything else is up for contention.

Successor to the fastest selling console of all time, releasing during the busiest shopping season with ample supply, and sales are absolutely ATROCIOUS in Europe and America, with plenty of units just sitting on store shelves. This was a company that only a few years ago used to push millions of product in December alone.

Nintendo is likely in a worse situation with Wii U than they were (and still are) with the 3DS, and that spells doom for the company's financial future. Software like NSBM that used to do ridiculous numbers isn't pushing systems, is getting outsold by games that people on this forum call flops like LBP:Karting and CoD: Declassified.

This system is in BIG trouble.

Ok...

 

[King of the Potato People]

I got over the Mass Effect 3 ending ages ago.

I vote for Doritogate too, especially because most of the press chose to ignore it because they were scared.

 

[Funchameleon]

Which one are you?

This post = for the win

 

[flamingotripod]

Mass effect 3 ending

 

[Peter Bazooka]

Mass Effect 3's endings were so fucking stupid that people are still talking about them, but all that did was tarnish a franchise and ruin Bioware's rep a little more. The whole Curt Schilling debacle should probably win.

 

[Skyzard]

Sony closing Studio Liverpool.

Honourable mentions: Square Enix for not releasing anything anyone remotly wants to play on consoles and Team Ico for not releasing anything at all.

That makes (only) 2 of us I think

Wipeout was more than sales. It was a symbol.

 

[Chittagong]

This year was so full of fail it's incredible, hard to know where to start really. Here are my nominees:

- CoD Vita
- WarZ / Steam fiasco
- Wii U, for crazy weak technology, boneheaded policies, confused branding, poor 3rd party support, weak 1st party
- THQ bankrupcy
- Diablo 3 failing to capture the fanbase
- Dyack business death sprial
- Kinect hype and support all but disappearing after people became disillusioned
- Medal of Honor utter and complete bombing of the franchise
- Resident Evil 6 massive tanking in reviews
- Dark Souls PC port quality with poor locked resolution and framerate

Overall fail of the year has to go to Dyack. It's almost incomprehensible how completely one can wreck everything he has ever worked on in such a short timeframe.

Runner up: Vita management overall is a borderline case, however it also has the most turnaround potential seeing games like Persona 4 Golden and Soul Sacrifice appear.

2013 predictions: WoW and CoD have real potential for 2013 bombs, like Guitar Hero did a few years back. Both big releases seem to indicate the userbase is slipping away.

 

[Zissou]

Mass. Effect. 3. Ending.

It was like the Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions of Mass Effect, but instead of the shit being spread over two entire series' entries, they managed to cram it into the last 15 minutes of a single game. It was an ending so bad, it retroactively damaged the fun I thought I had had up until that point with the series.

 

[torta_smasher]

38 studios debacle. Nothing will top this story this year

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

#1. Doritosgate

It's for two reasons: the circle the wagons mentality that too many media types swung into when the shit hit the fan as if those doing so were immune to criticism, and the continued erosion of both the trust of the core audience and the relevancy to the generalist audience.

#2. 38 Studios

The sheer amount of money lost and on such a boondoggle of a subgenre (WoW Wanna-be) is staggeringly tragic and stupid.

#3. Anti-Japanese Gaming Mouth Diarrhea As Cheap Heat

Stating the obvious is boring, it's best when done so in the most personal, pig-ignorant way. It doesn't matter if it's during a PR interview about your own game involving seriously-told time-traveling assassin conciences and Ancient Aliens All-Stories or to the face of a man whose career is orders of magnitude longer than yours and who is launching a business in a growing venue in the precense of your peers, attacking Japan's offering with invectives and hyperbole is the new way to add a little spice to your PR campaign that your livelihood depends on.

#4. Mass Effect 3's Ending's Fallout

Rule #1 of devs: Listen to your fans. Do not obey, or even give off that you're supposed to obey them. What do we have here? Them doing just that, to the apparent aftermath. It isn't even about how busted the ending was (despite the planned nature of the trilogy, it felt as if it was written on a cocktail napkin late in February), or even the naked theft of what passed for agency in this series, it was the swerving deperation to appease fans and all the backlash and hightened selective expectations that go along with it.

#5. IndexHoldings/Atlus_JP Region Locking on the PS3

Lost them sales from Europe, the importation from NA to Japan was minute at best, and they go down in history as having had put out a RLed game on one of the last few consoles to avoid doing this. Special note to people tut-tutting boycotters, as if the vast throngs of gamers who don't buy Atlus games out of apathy are beyond similar criticism or that Atlus is beholden to their sales for this one title just because the boycotters are the Faithful.

 

[stonedwal]

Games Media's reaction to the Rab Florence expose. Wainwright is only one of many.

Dyack's failure is a years long saga. There was a time when I was genuinely excited about Silicon Knights' projects. I'd say a lifetime achievement award would be due if his studios didn't deliver Blood Omen, Eternal Darkness and Twin Snakes (fuck you I like it).