Vaporware: Difference between revisions

* ''[[League of Legends]]'' champions Evelynn and Twitch were severely nerfed by Riot in late 2010. By Riot's own admission, this was to get people to stop playing them - they intentionally broke the characters beyond all reasonable viability. This was so they could retool the characters' mechanics, and an overall stealth mechanic for the whole game. It was said that the rework would arrive very soon. [[Lampshade Hanging|After all, they wouldn't intentionally destroy two characters for over a year, right?]] Almost 2012, place your bets.

** As of June 2012, this still hasn't happened yet.

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]]'' for the Gamecube came close to being called Vaporware and even picked up one of Wired's Vaporware Awards, but eventually hit the shelves... as a launch title for the ''Wii'' with added motion sensing controls, and a bit after for the console it was originally made for. While the official announcement was "only" three years prior, only Nintendo knows for how long the title had been in development.

** As of 2008, Nintendo announced they won't talk about new games until they are far enough in development it's clear they will be released to stores. This is done mostly to prevent Vaporware and [[Hype Backlash]] (but [[Rule of Perception]] means the [[Fan Dumb]] thinks games aren't being developed at all).

* The recent ''[[Gran Turismo]]'' games, particularly ''Gran Turismo'' for the PSP, have their experience in this field. The PSP iteration was announced at E3 2004 as ''Gran Turismo 4 Mobile'', and was scheduled for release in 2005. However, due to the frankly astonishing amount of content that will apparently be in ''[[GT 5]]'' (close to 1000 cars and around 70 variations of 20 tracks), the bigger project demanded most of Polyphony Digital's 100+ development staff, causing the PSP game to be stuck in development until its eventual release over ''5 years after its announcement''. An interesting case of one game being stuck in a long development phase directly causing ''another'' game to also get stuck in development.

* ''[[Robotech]]: Crystal Dreams'' for the N64 slipped into vaporware oblivion when its developer, Gametek, went belly-up. Only a ROM of the demo version exists.

* ''[[GURPS|GURPS Online]]''. It's still advertised in the text for ''GURPS 4th Edition.''

** For that matter, many of the online tools for Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition (Especially the online game table app) have still not been released, despite advertising that they would be bundled with 4th edition on release in 2008.

* Another classic that promised a never-to-appear sequel was [[Infocom]]'s take on ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'', potentially called ''Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe''. Delays, including the development of ''Bureaucracy'' (also written by Douglas Adams), meant the game was delayed, with Infocom eventually going bankrupt before the sequel could be made. All that is left to show for it are some of Douglas Adams' notes and a very, ''very'' small amount of code with nothing more than a few locations on the surface of Magrathea, only two of which have any description whatsoever. All of the code, what little there is, is playable online [http://waxy.org/random/software/milliways/milliways_release15.html here]. A complete history (as complete as anyone can make it, anyway) can be found [http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ here].

* A couple of years after ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' was given its release Square turned to a Western PC game company to oversee a PC release of ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'', but due to communication breakdowns between the company and Squaresoft Japan (and the company pretty much not caring about video games at all in the first place) that project was scrapped too. A remnant of their work exists: They are the source of the [[Blind Idiot Translation]] that ''V'' got in the ''Final Fantasy Anthology'' for the [[Play Station]], released in 1999.

* Freeware space exploration simulator ''[http://www.anywherebb.com/ Noctis IV]'' saw a good (and justified, given how an entire galaxy was squeezed in 700 kilobytes of data) popularity in the early 2000s; the author announced ''Noctis V'', a version with native Windows support, a renewed engine and many more new features and adjustments, around that time. For a while, it completely fell off the radar, and contributions to the NIV starmap weren't even included in the game anymore. Then, support to NIV resumed and its source code was released, but as of July 2009 (when the author once again assured that he hasn't given up on the project), NV ''still'' hasn't come out, while the older iteration shows more and more the signs of its age (like complete lack of sound and very cumbersome interface).

** Note that Noctis V is taking awhile primarily because its sole developer (who works on it without pay) is currently focusing on writing an entirely new ''programming language'' on which to build the game.

* The now-defunct ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'', an MMO by gaming legend Richard "[[Ultima|Lord British]]" Garriott, spent ten years in [[Development Hell]], cost $100 million, and, according to the hype, was going to do to MMOs what ''Ultima'' did to RPGs. The game was canned about a year after release. Ultimately, Garriott sued the publisher, with each claiming the other was responsible for one of the game industry's most spectacular failures to date. It turns out it was NCSoft's fault, through what can only be called a real life example of [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] behavior -- they cancelled the healthy MMO and forged a resignation letter from Richard Garriott to keep him from getting a stock windfall.

* ''[[Maple Story]] DS'' was an example of this for a while. It was announced at E3 2006, and received multiple previews and release dates. The date got pushed from September 2007, to 2009, to January 2010, and was finally released in South Korea on April 15, 2010.

* ''Metroid: Dread'' was hinted at in the ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' series, and since then, every ''[[Metroid]]'' fan has been demanding to know its status or quick to assume any upcoming title will be ''Dread''. With the announcement of ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'', the first thing Nintendo did was state that it was not, in fact, ''Dread'' under another name, and were coy that such a game was ever even under development. Later, they claimed that it definitely existed, but had been "shelved indefinitely" during work on ''Other M''. More recent interviews have stated that ''Dread'' exists, without a doubt, but no further details about which studio will work on it, where in the timeline it will fit, or when work on it will resume have been released.

** ''[[Metroid Prime]] Hunters'' came dangerously close to becoming vaporware, having been promised to be released on the Nintendo DS' release date, and maybe even included. However, numerous push backs finally brought the game to release several years after intended release date.