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00:00Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're taking a look at the 10 worst performing, and the
00:1410 best performing games of 2024.
00:17Do note that we are speaking purely from a financial standpoint, so even if you're
00:22enjoying the game, that doesn't mean they're selling like hotcakes.
00:32Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to Mojo
00:36Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:40Success, PAL World.
00:51With Game Freak floundering and making decent Pokemon games, there have been a wealth of
00:55indie games jumping to make the Pokemon games they've dreamed of and evolve the RPG sub-genre.
01:02Although none saw as big of a boom as PAL World did at the very start of 2024.
01:09Having only launched on Xbox and PC initially, PAL World managed to amass 25 million players
01:15within its first month, 15 million of those players having paid for the game on PC.
01:21This monumental success would allow developer Pocket Pair to develop an entire expansion
01:26and even bring the game to PlayStation 5.
01:29However, its success has also attracted undesired attention from both the Pokemon company and
01:34Nintendo, but not due to copyright infringement, rather patent infringement, supposedly.
01:52Suicide Squad killed the Justice League.
02:02From its very first reveal, many were dismayed to learn that once-acclaimed developer Rocksteady
02:07Studios was making a live-service game.
02:10After a one-year delay, Suicide Squad Killed the Justice League made it across the finish
02:14line only to be greeted by very, very few players.
02:19Between the awful UI and the totally uninspired mission structure, this was simply a game
02:23that nobody wanted, especially from a studio as revered as Rocksteady.
02:28Shortly after its launch, Warner Bros. stated that the company had suffered a loss of $200
02:33million, Suicide Squad being one of the major contributing factors to that loss.
02:39While the game has seen updates with new characters and story elements being added, Rocksteady
02:44is now just a skeleton crew trying to finish promised updates while working on a new version
02:50of Hogwarts Legacy.
02:51Success!
02:59Animal Well
03:08Despite its resounding success, Animal Well has had a rather weird existence since it
03:13launched in May 2024.
03:15While sales have not been revealed at the time of this video, many folks online were
03:19stating how they were buying the game for the mere fact that video game Dunkey was publishing
03:24it.
03:25And while many gaming outlets have history in scrutinizing Dunkey for using his money
03:31to publish only good games, Animal Well was still awarded high scores from those same
03:38outlets during the review process.
03:41According to Steam Charts, Animal Well saw 8,000 players at launch.
03:45PSN Profiles shows that more than 17,000 PS5 players own Animal Well, and while we
03:51don't have numbers for Switch, it's safe to assume that both Dunkey and one-man developer
03:57Billy Basso have made bank.
04:00Animal Well is a pretty cool game, though.
04:02All of you who bought it should really go play it.
04:13Foam Stars
04:22February was a double bunker buster for both AAA publishers and their live service failures.
04:28While WB was scrambling to get Suicide Squad to sell, Square Enix was making their own
04:33questionable decisions for Foam Stars.
04:36Even though the game was receiving positive word of mouth from those who gave it the time
04:39of day, there was simply no room in the conversation for it.
04:43Foam Stars launched the same week as Helldivers 2, another online shooter that was exclusive
04:48to PlayStation.
04:49While PSN Profiles shows that more than 30,000 players own Foam Stars between PS5 and PS4,
04:56those numbers can mostly be attributed to the game being $3.99 to PlayStation Plus members.
05:03Since then, player count has dropped substantially to the point that the few who genuinely enjoy
05:08the game can't even find matches.
05:10Foam Stars has recently made the switch to free-to-play, but we're not so sure that
05:15this move is going to give the game a second wind given how bloated the 2024 holiday season
05:20is already with new games.
05:28Success, Zenless Zone Zero
05:43Ever since its explosive success with Genshin Impact in 2020, it seems as if miHoYo's
05:48train of success will never stop.
05:51Less than a year after the launch of their second game, Honkai Star Rail, miHoYo has
05:55found yet another money printer in Zenless Zone Zero.
06:00Players immediately fell in love with the wonderfully animated characters and thrilling
06:04blend of retro dungeon-crawling and modern-action RPG combat.
06:08Since launching in July 2024, Zenless Zone Zero has already generated roughly half a
06:14billion dollars in revenue.
06:16Like them or hate them, miHoYo's games are clearly wanted by the general public.
06:29Multiverses
06:37Given the beta was somewhat of a success in 2022, it was pretty odd for Player First Games
06:42and Warner Bros. to just mysteriously pull Multiverses off of the market.
06:47After a whole year of being MIA, the online platform fighter made its return in May 2024,
06:55and it- wait, what changed here?
06:59Well, the online connectivity was more unstable than it was during the beta, the monetization
07:04got even worse as characters now cost roughly 10 bucks a pop, even the game's speed was
07:09drastically slower, with many characters seeing fewer moves in their kits.
07:14In short, Multiverses spent a whole year back in development just to return in a more hackneyed
07:20state?
07:21Yeah, many players were confused and dumbfounded at the decisions made here, so much so that
07:26Multiverses is now hemorrhaging players more profusely than it did before.
07:38Success!
07:39Bellatro
07:47Did anyone else expect a roguelike modeled entirely around Texas Hold'em?
07:52Neither did we, and even when Bellatro launched, we never anticipated it to sell as many copies
07:58as it has.
07:59The game of Infinite Jokers captured so many folks that the game achieved multiple milestones
08:05that most companies would be jealous of.
08:08First, it was half a million copies sold within the first ten days.
08:12Then, it cracked one million copies sold after a month.
08:16Six months after launch, Bellatro reached two million copies sold, and with the game
08:21finally making its way to mobile, well, developer Local Thunk has a money printer on their hands.
08:36Floop!
08:37Star Wars Hunters
08:48This year has not been a kind year to the Star Wars IP, not financially anyways.
08:53Star Wars Hunters was already seen as an underwhelming title when Zynga teased it back in February
08:582021.
08:59A Star Wars hero shooter?
09:02Look, we already have the Heroes vs. Villains mode in Battlefront II, and we don't even
09:07play as any of our favorite characters in Hunters?
09:10And we can only play it on Switch?
09:12Yeah, free game or not, this is awful, and the comically empty servers show just how
09:18little interest there is.
09:20Sure, you can get into matches, but it's mostly bots.
09:25It's almost all bots.
09:32Success!
09:37Sea of Thieves
09:48Even though it released way back in 2018, Sea of Thieves is undoubtedly one of the biggest
09:53financial successes of 2024, and it stems from a move we never anticipated Xbox would
10:00make.
10:01In February 2024, Xbox announced it was bringing four of its own games to other consoles, Sea
10:06of Thieves specifically making its way to PlayStation 5.
10:10Since that announcement, Rare's online pirate game was consistently among the most pre-ordered
10:15games on PlayStation Store.
10:17Having launched on PS5 as of April 30th, Sea of Thieves managed to sell more than 1 million
10:22copies from that platform alone, and was one of the best-selling titles on PlayStation
10:27Store for quite some time.
10:30Needless to say, this port was a massive success for Xbox, and it has only encouraged them
10:35to bring more of their games over to Sony's side of the fence.
10:46X Defiant
10:47Wouldn't you know it, we have yet another monumental failure in the live service market.
10:59Unlike most of the previous entries, X Defiant did have some positive word of mouth when
11:04discussing gunplay and concept.
11:06Alas, the level design and technical performance left many unimpressed and prompted players
11:11to quickly abandon the game.
11:13The numbers continued to drop, and a round of layoffs conducted at Ubisoft San Francisco
11:18conjured rumors that the game would be shut down soon.
11:22The studio has claimed otherwise, but in the brutally competitive scene of online gaming,
11:26it's hard to say if X Defiant will make a decent comeback in the future.
11:37Success!
11:38Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth
11:47Since Yakuza 0 brought the acclaimed action-adventure franchise into the mainstream, Sega has seen
11:52a continuous stream of success with the Like a Dragon franchise.
11:58Never before had anyone anticipated Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth to be the blockbuster
12:02hit.
12:03After seeing incredibly high scores across the board from outlets, the fervor was unstoppable,
12:09as Infinite Wealth wound up selling more than 1 million copies within its launch week.
12:14Developer Ryu Gagotaku Studio was striking gold from a niche fanbase for years, and now
12:20they've struck diamonds and will be bringing players back to Hawaii with new locations
12:25in tow for a pirate-themed spinoff in 2025.
12:36Flop!
12:37Dustborn
12:38I didn't think you'd agree to it, Theo.
12:41If you told me it was because of family, I would have.
12:45Hey, none of us have been home in ages.
12:48What makes you so special?
12:49As the so-called modern audience becomes more and more fatigued from games becoming overtly
12:55political, games like Dustborn have become targets of unnecessary vitriol from terminally
13:01online people.
13:02But what makes Dustborn such a strange case is that it's almost like it wants to be
13:07hated.
13:08Like, it deliberately sets itself up for failure.
13:12The writing and music are so bad that you cannot tell if the game was made as a parody
13:17of these slice-of-life games or if it truly is relishing in its own soapbox messaging
13:23in awful garage band music.
13:26No matter what the purpose is, Dustborn only saw 83 players on Steam, despite PC Gamer
13:33claiming the game sold, quote, apparently modest, end quote.
13:37Not even the few gaming outlets that reviewed it could care for this game.
13:41We're entering the American Republic.
13:44Welcome to Mordor, fellow hobbits.
13:47Success!
13:49TEKKEN 8!
13:58There was so much hype surrounding Tekken 8, and rightfully so.
14:02This was the first major fighting game to be fully utilizing every ounce of power it
14:06could pull from Unreal Engine 5.
14:09Not only that, this was to be the end of the feud between Kazuya Mishima and Jin Kazama
14:14for good while also being the beginning of a new, much more aggressive era for Tekken's
14:20gameplay.
14:21Within its first month, Tekken 8 amassed a total of 2 million units sold.
14:26One can easily point towards the boom fighting games have seen over the years as the reason
14:31behind this massive success.
14:40Flop!
14:41Senua's Saga Hellblade 2.
14:53The first Hellblade truly was something special.
14:56It wasn't perfect, but developer Ninja Theory had so many great ideas in place with its
15:02combat, story, and minimalist UI.
15:05So 7 years later, how did Hellblade 2 turn out the way it did?
15:12While the game does look impressive in visual detail, I guess, everything else about the
15:18game had us foaming at the mouth.
15:20Why was the combat dumbed down and made so easy with the slow motion effect?
15:26Why did the entire game have to be in widescreen?
15:29Why in the hell are there so many walking corridors?
15:33In addition to frustrating so many fans who had been waiting for a game that evolved upon
15:37the original's ideas, Hellblade 2 sparked much discussion over game developers prioritizing
15:43experience over gameplay.
15:46And for the record, it's rather odd how Xbox hasn't said a word about sales nor
15:51player count, isn't it?
15:55Success, Stellar Blade.
16:07The conversation surrounding Stellar Blade and its sexy protagonist was very, very weird
16:13as pundits and basement dwellers took part in the ever-toxic culture war.
16:19Alas, no matter which side said what, the so-called modern audience did not care about
16:24Eve being attractive, nor did they care about outfits supposedly being censored.
16:30Stellar Blade was not on the market for long in the month of April, launching on April
16:3426, 2024.
16:36Despite this, the game managed to be the best-selling game in North America across the entire market.
16:42By the end of June, Stellar Blade had crossed one million copies sold.
16:48You can almost guarantee we will see a sequel in the near future.
17:00Floop, Star Wars Outlaws.
17:03Unlike the other floops on our list, Star Wars Outlaws is genuinely a solid game.
17:17Unfortunately, the Star Wars IP as a whole has been floundering for so long that most
17:23folks have clearly grown tired of it.
17:25This game might be considered the second biggest flop for Ubisoft this year, as the game has
17:31failed to push units out the door.
17:33On top of causing Ubisoft's share prices to tank, the abysmal commercial reception
17:37for Outlaws has caused such a disturbance that one stakeholder wrote a letter condemning
17:43Ubisoft for its performance in demanding the removal of Ubisoft's founders, the Guillemot
17:48family.
17:51Success!
17:52Dragon's Dogma 2.
18:01The sheer excitement around Dragon's Dogma 2 was sort of bewildering to witness.
18:06The original Dragon's Dogma wasn't exactly a gangbuster success back in 2012, so it was
18:11interesting to see so many people get amped about the sequel.
18:15What was even more surprising was seeing just how quickly people were grabbing the game.
18:20By the time it was two weeks old, Dragon's Dogma 2 managed to sell two and a half million
18:25copies.
18:27Two months after launch, that number had grown to more than three million.
18:31Capcom amassed so much revenue that the company actually paid out more money to its shareholders
18:36following a financial earnings report in April 2024.
18:47Flop!
18:48Skull & Bones
18:57And here we are with Ubisoft's third and final appearance on this list.
19:02You can probably guess what the biggest flop of 2024 is, but before we get to that, Skull
19:07& Bones has a lot to answer for.
19:10Ubisoft spent an entire decade working on this game, having the whole project restarted
19:15once while using funds from the Singapore government, and consistently delaying the
19:20game.
19:21But what did we finally get from this supposed quadruple-A game?
19:25An online open world reminiscent of Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag, with dumbed-down combat,
19:31crafting mechanics, and a story about as obnoxious as GTA Online.
19:36We waited a decade for this?
19:40To give you an idea of how badly this bombed, Sea of Thieves sold quadruple the number of
19:45copies when it first launched in 2018.
19:48Yikes.
19:52Success!
19:55Black Myth Wukong
20:07The success of Black Myth Wukong is a bit of an anomaly.
20:11For a game that a lot of people seemed hype about, the critical reception seemed fairly
20:16lukewarm.
20:17And yet, no small amount of gamers are throwing money at it just to experience Wukong's
20:22second coming.
20:23Of course, one of its largest contributing factors to its monetary domination is that
20:291 billion people live in China, and until 2015, video games were banned in China.
20:35In that case, is it really that big of a surprise that the first Chinese triple-A game is selling
20:41like hotcakes worldwide, including in a country where gaming is still a very new medium to
20:47more than 1 billion people?
20:49Just food for thought.
20:51And upon the return of the relics to Mount Tuaguo, he may yet rise again.
20:59In the moment you've probably been waiting for, Flo-Concord.
21:05That?
21:06Sorry.
21:07Oh, come on.
21:08We crushed that last job.
21:09Were they even watching?
21:10Well, let's hope Black Myth Wukong fills up Sony's pockets because Concord left behind
21:15a mighty, massive hole in their pockets.
21:19After suffering through a middling beta, Concord was already shaping up to be a dud, but no
21:24one, absolutely no one, expected such a catastrophe when it launched in August 2024.
21:31The game had failed, both critically and commercially, bad enough that Sony removed the game from
21:37sale with no warning.
21:39Concord didn't even make it past two weeks, and it wasn't long until people started talking.
21:44According to various sources, Concord had cost roughly $400 million, half of that money
21:50coming from Sony and none of it counting as part of their acquisition of Firewalk Studios.
21:55So much for the future of PlayStation, as they put it internally.
22:00It's every crew for themselves.
22:01Oh my, how dramatic.
22:03Did you play any of these games for yourself?
22:06Let us know down in the comments and be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays for more great
22:10videos every day.
22:12You do not stand a chance.
22:13And your name does not intimidate us!
22:20Thanks for watching.
22:21If you enjoyed the video, there's more where that came from.
22:35See you next time.