and okamiden is incredible

You can have the greatest game of all time...if no one buys it then it's a flop. Maybe it was a critical success, maybe and artistic masterpiece - but generally a flop is considered a flop if the production and marketing greatly outweigh the revenue.

It's a business thing, and Shenmue and Okami were flops. Great games, but flops. And that's the danger of video game development today. With games that cost so much money to develop, it's a risky business. You could create a masterpiece like Okami, that ruins your company. That's why there's hope with digital downloads. Developers increasingly are turning to smaller, downloadable games because the risks just aren't there like the big, AAA titles. You can afford to make a great game that doesn't sell and it won't necessarily put you and your staff out of work - and thusly you're more willing to take some creative risks.

I was sorry to see Grim Fandango on this list. That's one of my favorite games of all time and while I knew Tim left Lucas Arts after that - I didn't realize that Grim Fandango did so poorly in sales. I think everyone owes it to themselves to play through Grim Fandango at least once. That game was the pinnacle of the point and click adventure genre.

Edit below: Regarding Haze. Haze, despite the hype and the disappointment (being merely mediocre instead of AAA) didn't sell all that badly. It managed almost a million copies which is something 80% of games never achieve in their lifetime. Free Radical was struggling even before Haze's release and losing their Star Wars Battlefield didn't bode well for the company's long term hopes. Haze didn't do badly, but they needed to hit it out of the park and that didn't happen. Hardly a flop though. Just a note - the Haze team then were bought by Crytek and became Crytek UK. They had a lot to do with Crysis 2's development.

I think it's mostly about sales. I didn't bother reading the entire article because I hate sites that use that reload the page 10x trick to see the entire list for hits.

But everything I did read was about sales of said game, I can't see anyone in there right mind calling Shenmue a bad game.

But from a sales standpoint it flopped badly.

yeah that kinda shocked me loool
should of been on there not just for sales but for quality wise as well

Sequel is on DS atm. Cant see it going to Move when HD development has killed enough companies and PS3 gamers are not exactly known for supporting games like this. After all it was the PS2 copy that completely bombed. Wii version outsold it with a much smaller install base.

The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.

Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.

15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.

Let me be clear. This is sarcasm