List of commercial failures in video and arcade games is a former featured list candidate. Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination was archived. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status.
Article milestones Date Process Result August 2, 2005 Featured list candidate Not promoted August 15, 2006 Articles for deletion Kept April 24, 2009 WikiProject peer review Reviewed
Current status: Former featured list candidate

This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Lists Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Lists, an attempt to structure and organize all list pages on Wikipedia. If you wish to help, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.ListsWikipedia:WikiProject ListsTemplate:WikiProject ListsList Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Video games: Nintendo / Sega Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of video games on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Video gamesWikipedia:WikiProject Video gamesTemplate:WikiProject Video gamesvideo game Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by the Nintendo task force. This article is supported by the Sega task force. This article was a past project collaboration. Summary of Video games WikiProject open tasks: Popular culture (inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Popular culture, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.Popular cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Popular cultureTemplate:WikiProject Popular culturePopular culture Culture Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Culture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CultureWikipedia:WikiProject CultureTemplate:WikiProject Cultureculture Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Business Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Business, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of business articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BusinessWikipedia:WikiProject BusinessTemplate:WikiProject BusinessWikiProject Business Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Industrial design Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Industrial design, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Industrial design on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Industrial designWikipedia:WikiProject Industrial designTemplate:WikiProject Industrial designIndustrial design Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Companies Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Companies, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of companies on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CompaniesWikipedia:WikiProject CompaniesTemplate:WikiProject Companiescompany Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. WikiProject Companies To-do: Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies Assess : Category:Unassessed company articles Copyedit : Category:Company articles needing attention Infobox : Category:Company articles needing infoboxes Maintain : Portal:Companies Stubs : Help expand stub articles located at Category:Company stubs Other : Tag company articles with the {{portal|Companies}} template Tag company talk pages with the {{WikiProject Companies}} project banner Answer requests for comments

On 6 April 2011, List of commercial failures in video and arcade games was linked from Reddit, a high-traffic website. (Traffic) All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history.

I have temporarily taken off the Undawn entry that was added. It likely does belong, but it used poor sourcing and didn't get to the impact it had, which is what this Reuters article covers. I'd like to see more before adding it back though on being a failure that doesn't just rely back to this Reuters source. Masem (t) 01:06, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why was the article moved? I'm not contesting the split, to be clear. I just think that List of commercial failures in video games is an accurate and concise title. We don't generally separate out arcade games, and the lede can make clear that this is talking about specifically games, not the gaming industry in general. SnowFire (talk) 05:03, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SnowFire It might be good to ping editor who moved it recently, @SomeoneDreaming. And undiscussed moves can be speedily reverted anyway, per WP:RM, so you can move it back, and if anyone thinks this needs renaming, they can start RM from the old title. On the subject matter, Category:Games by type distinguishes arcade games and video games as entities at the same level, so it does not seem correct to consider arcade games a subtype of video games (since ther are non-video arcade games; we have a Venn diagram case here, likely). All that said, I'd suggest splitting this into a List of commercial failures in video games and List of commercial failures in arcade games. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:21, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pinging SomeoneDreaming. That said, I don't think the category argument is a strong one - we routinely subdivide topics precisely in categories but also use overarching terms that can apply to larger topics. We used to use "computer and video games" everywhere (hence WP:CVG) but eventually changed it to just "video games" since more and more games were multiplatform. The same argument applies to arcade games as well - many / most arcade games, even "back in the day", were ported to other platforms. SnowFire (talk) 13:08, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Someone Dreaming split off the hardware failures to a separate list and renamed this to be more accurate. Given that arcade games are more hardware than software they should probably go over there, and this renamed to just video games. We don't need a separate list for like four entire. Masem (t) 13:14, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, exactly, thank you. I wasn't entirely sure how to deal with the remaining article and so I have no problem with you all moving it to somewhere more accurate! Thanks for the thoughtful discussion! :) SomeoneDreaming (talk) 14:47, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why? The section doesn't explain. It states that just 1,500 units were made, but that doen't mean anything. Is 1,500 way below average? How's the reader supposed to know? And even if it is below the avarage, that doesn't make it a failure - maybe that was intended? This needs to be clarified, or this section should go. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:23, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]