Sadly not every great game can be a stonking commercial success too, and we’re all familiar with the likes of Grim Fandango, Shenmue and Psychonauts – cult classic games that, despite receiving strong critical acclaim upon release, failed to break out where it mattered most.
But what about those games whose commercial difficulties were a little more low-key? These 10 games, each of them praised by critics, nevertheless released to quietly soft sales, all while many fans didn’t even notice.
In many instances this is a case of the publisher either intentionally not reporting poor sales, or more daringly deciding to roll the dice on a sequel regardless of the mediocre sales, seeming to suggest that it actually sold just fine.
While few would erroneously hold these games up as storming sales hits, each nevertheless managed to (mostly) avoid the bad press associated with a poor launch, and so to all but the most eagle-eyed players, they seemed to be profitable. Oh, how wrong we all were…
