I suppose this isn’t exactly breaking news, but I still find it interesting because of just how much Sony and Square Enix were banking on Forspoken’s success. It was supposed to be one of the PlayStation 5’s killer apps, with all kinds of resources thrown into its development and promotion, and somehow this is still the result. All one can ask at this point is “what were they thinking?”

According to GameRant, it seems that a large number of SteelBook cases were recently discovered abandoned in a dumpster, apparently enough that it looks like some store’s stock of them. There was no indication of the exact number or location, but it’s still kind of crazy that this could be found at all considering that the game is still “new.”

For those who don’t know, Forspoken is an action-fantasy game from Square Enix made by the same team responsible for Final Fantasy XV. It suffered from heavy criticism due to very cringy trailers, a very boring demo and very lackluster presentation, and…the same has been true post-release too. Forspoken has spent the weeks since its launch as the butt of many internet jokes and memes, with its very unlikable and ridiculously-written main character serving as their focal point. Beyond that, it seems that the game is just plain bland and boring; even the much-touted visuals look bland and even dated. So yeah, the game’s doing poorly to say the least.

I’m not exactly to see it fail, but I am hoping this will caution publishers against buying into the idea that gamers will buy anything so long as you shove it in their face enough with commercials. I’d very much like to get back to games selling themselves due to just being that good rather than just aggressively pushing garbage (now quite literally in this case).

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Have you played Forspoken? What did you think of it? What’s your take away from all this?

Image from the Forspoken website