We get so many games released every day, it’s hard to miss quite a lot of them. Seriously, Steam alone gets around 50 games every single day. One or two missing isn’t that big a deal. Except the higher profile a game is, the more noticeable its absence is. No game is easy to mae, but it’s very easy to think a game simply isn’t real when years pass with no news.
But sometimes, you just can’t afford to let a game fail by not releasing it. Sometimes, these games are even good after years of waiting! It was easy for so many of these games to have been classed as nothing but vapourware while awaiting them, so it was just as shocking when, finally, they really did come out.
Let’s get the most infamous example of all out of the way. Originally announced back in 1997, Duke Nukem Forever did not finally cross the finish line until 2011, when it was completed by a wholly different studio than had started it. It was a mediocre game in many regards, hobbled by development hell and changing teams, as well as a lack of clarity as to what the game should actually be.
The sunk cost fallacy on full display, Duke Nukem had to be finished so that all the time wasted on it wasn’t, well, actually wasted. It came out, and so it is done. It didn’t get the gradn return it deserved like Wolfenstein and Doom got, but at least it came out. Now Duke can finally rest in peace.
Kingdom Hearts has always been a prolific series. From the launch of the very first game in the series, it was impossible to go more than a year or two without some brand-new Kingdom Hearts game. Maybe it was a recap entry or a spin-off, but you were always getting something new. Then came Dream Drop Distance in 2012, and the long wait for Kingdom Hearts 3.
Even after its 2013 E3 reveal, director Tetsuya Nomura stated that the game was revealed early. A bizarre but accurate admission, with the game not finally releasing until 2019, five and a half years from its formal reveal. With Kingdom Hearts 4 announced in 2022 and only a small update in 2025 to commemorate the cancellation of Missing Link, it seems we’re in for another long wait here, too.
There is Prey, and then there is Prey. There was also, briefly, a Prey 2 in development, which was the sequel to Prey, not Prey. Does that sound stupid and a bit convoluted? That’s because it is. Back in 2006, Human Head Studios released the original Prey after a protracted development. Shortly after, they announced Prey 2, which was intended to be asci-fi bounty hunter experience.
It was quiet after that despite a very brief amount of gameplay being shown, especially after their acquisition by Bethesda. Then then Human Head Studios were taken off the game, and it was handed to Arkane Studios instead, who rebooted the game entirely to be something that wasn’t really connected to either version of Prey. So in a way, Prey 2 was vapourware. It was just officially turned into a different game altogether.
Prey (2017) director Raphaël Colantonio also stated that Arkane hated working on the game, as they felt it was disrespectful to both his team and the original to take the name and put it onto something completely separate.
Fextralife Wiki
Technically, Final Fantasy 15 was never vapourware. It was formally revealed in 2013, and then released in 2016. Three years is completely reasonable. It’s the fact that, in reality, Final Fantasy 15 was announced much earlier, all the way back in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII. While FFXV was built from the bones of Versus XIII, the latter exists in the limbo of both existing and not.
FFXV is not really what Versus XIII was, though Versus XIII was also not really ever a completed project. It had its original reveal, and then the odd showcase where snippets of gameplay were shown, though it was never quite sure how much of it was real. So in a literal sense, what actually was made of Versus XIII did release, characters and all. It just wasn’t quite the game that was originall shown off.
Do you recall when Cyberpunk 2077 was originally revealed? January 2013, just a few months after CD Projekt Red announced they were making a game in the series. And after all of its delays, do you know when Cyberpunk 2077 released? December 2020, almost eight years later, and it could be argued that it wasn’t quite ready then, either.
After that initial reveal in 2013, Cyberpunk 2077 went silent for around 5 years until the marketing machine started whirring up. It was a long time coming but now, finally, the game is out, and it’s fair to say it’s completed too. Even if for quite a while it did seem like it was always going to just bea very fancy trailer.
After the release of Dragon Age Inquisition in 2014 and its Trespasser DLC in 2015, it was very obvious that a new Dragon Age would be coming. And in 2018, it was formally announced. Without a title. Then it was silent for two years until they featured a brief narration from Varric and little else. It was another two years until it was announced as being called Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2022. And then, bizarrely, another almost two years of silence.
In 2024, just months before release, the game finally began being marketed, and with a brand-new name: The Veilguard. On top of being odd, it seemed to indicate a dramatic shift in what the game would be. And sure enough, after years of reports, it was clear that The Veilguard went through many different versions, and it’s hard to tell how much of the game that exists now is what was initially planned back when it was revealed in 2018.
Bayonetta has always had years between entries. After the original in 2009, it was five years until Bayonetta 2 launched in 2014 despite being a fairly similar game. Bayonetta 3 really takes the cake though, with there beingeight years between entries. Released in 2022, five years on from its reveal, Bayonetta 3 was a degree of vapourware the industry hadn’t seen in quite a while.
After its announcement in 2017, there was literally nothing about Bayonetta 3 for four years until it showed gameplay during the 2021 Nintendo Direct. Constant statements of ‘it’s going well, don’t worry’ didn’t really assuage the feelings that, maybe, Bayonetta 3 had faded into the background, never to be seen again. It did come out though, and even if it wasn’t what everyone wanted, at least it could finally be put to rest.
After the relatively smooth development of both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, it was seen that Fumito Ueda’s next project would go just as well. The Last Guardian was announced in 2009, a few years into development, with the goal to have it released in 2011. As we well know, it missed that launch window by quite a few years.
After that initial reveal in 2009, there was nothing shown on the game until 2015. Consistent updates were given to say it was being made still, but nothing ever concrete until that 2015 reintroduction. And after a brief stint in letting the trademark expire, it was believed that thet game was well and truly dead. Until, finally, it really did come out. At least now the team gets to move onto something brand-new, free from Sony’s shackles.
