List of vaporware

Vaporware is a product which is never released but never cancelled. The term "vaporware" can also refer to products that are released far behind schedule, or heavily-promoted products that do not actually exist. This list documents products which have been labelled as "vaporware".

Hardware

• Phantom was a console gaming system developed by Infinium Labs. A prototype was demonstrated in 2004, but its release was continually delayed and the company never announced that the product was cancelled. The company was accused of a pump and dump scam. It received the first place in "Vaporwares 2004" in Wired News.^[1]
• Lockitron was a device to allow a door deadbolt to be remotely controlled via Bluetooth or over the Internet. After a successful crowdfunding effort that raised over $1.5 million worth of pre-orders, Apigy has (as of February 2014) failed to deliver a product in substantial numbers.^[2]

Software

• Ovation was a highly promoted office suite. After demonstrations that were well received, it was later revealed that the product never existed. It is "widely considered the mother of all vaporware," according to Laurie Flynn of The New York Times.^[3]
• Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually superseded it with SCO UNIX (now known as SCO OpenServer). After the breakup of the Bell System AT&T started selling Unix. Microsoft, believing that it could not compete with Unix's developer, decided to abandon Xenix. The decision was not immediately transparent, and so Xenix gave birth to the term vaporware.^[3] An agreement was signed with IBM to develop OS/2, and the Xenix team (together with the best MS DOS developers) was assigned to that project. In 1987 Microsoft transferred ownership of Xenix to SCO in an agreement that left Microsoft owning 25% of SCO. When Microsoft eventually lost interest in OS/2 as well, it based its further high-end strategy on Windows NT.

Video games

• Half-Life 2: Episode Three - The trilogy of episodes following Half-Life 2 was intended to be concluded by the end of 2007. Although the first two episodes were released in a relatively timely fashion, the final installment never surfaced. Despite sporadic assurances from developer Valve Corporation that the sequel is in development, there has been no information about the game or when it may see a release, and many rumors regarding it state that it won't be an episodic sequel but rather a full-on sequel. As of 2016, there was no official announcement, with only 3 released promotional images. The game is currently the most infamous case of gaming vaporware, spawning a number of memes regarding it, and despite massive fan demands about the game's development, Gabe Newell, Valve's director, has provided no commentary on the game.^[4]
• Commander Keen: The Universe Is Toast! was supposed to be the third trilogy in the series, with the story picking up after the events at the end of the sixth episode, but it never actually progressed beyond the early stages of development, due to id Software moving on to Wolfenstein 3D and then Doom. However, the author of the game often has commented that he would automatically make a new game if he ever gains back the intellectual property.^[5]
• Star Fox (arcade) was originally announced alongside Star Fox: Assault as an arcade counterpart. However, while Assault was released in 2005, Arcade was never mentioned again in public beyond its initial announcement.^[6]
• Stars! Supernova Genesis was feature complete in August 2000,^[7] but the developers were unable to find a publisher.^[8]

Surfaced vaporware

Products which once were considered to be vaporware which eventually surfaced after a prolonged time:

• 3G^[9]
• Bluetooth^[10]
• IBM Watson a revolutionary health care system preceded by 2 years of marketing videos
• Duke Nukem Forever^[10] - Initial game development was announced in April 1997 with a scheduled launch of 1998, with a trailer of the game shown at E3 1998. It was delayed however, and another promotional trailer was released with new graphics with a release date set for November 2001. However, more delays forced the game to be pushed back to unknown date. The game was unheard off until it was officially again announced in late 2010, and was finally released on June 10, 2011, 15 years after initial development. However, the game was met with mixed to negative reviews and was regarded as a failure. See also Development of Duke Nukem Forever.
• Daikatana^[11]
• Windows Vista (then, "Windows Code Name 'Longhorn'")^[11]
• Mac OS X, the long-awaited "next generation Mac OS" that finally shipped replacing the announced and later abandoned Copland, Gershwin and Taligent operating system attempts.^[12]
• Warcraft III^[10][13]
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl – Originally announced in 2001, the game experienced numerous delays.^[14] Beta builds of the final product have been distributed to numerous game review sites.^[15] On 3 March 2007, THQ announced that the game had gone gold and was released on 20 March 2007, though it was leaked three days earlier.
• Team Fortress 2^[11] was announced in 1999 and took 8 years to be released. With a complete change in gameplay and art direction, the North American release took place on 9 October 2007.
• Black Mesa was announced as a full remake of Half-Life in 2004. The first release date given by the developers was 2009, but development continued until 2012, when the first fourteen chapters were released on modding website Mod DB. It was greenlit for distribution on Steam on September 11 of the same year, before being released as an early access product on May 5, 2015, with numerous features from the mod improved upon in the Steam release. This remake was designed so as to become a better alternative for Half-Life: Source since it lacked new features other than the fact that it used the newer, revamped source engine. Due to its long development time (eleven years), the modification became notable for its delays, and dwindling updates on the status of its completion. The delays led to Wired awarding Black Mesa high spots on their "Vaporware Of The Year" lists in 2009 and 2010.^[16][17]
• Doom began development in May 2008,^[18] but was completely restarted in 2011 and later considered vaporware.^[19] It was finally showcased at E3 2015, and was released on May 13, 2016.^[20]
• The Last Guardian began development in 2007,^[21] and was formally announced at E3 2009.^[22] Very little information was released after this, before it was reintroduced at E3 2015; it is scheduled for release in 2016.^[23]

See also

• Vaporware
• Development Hell
• List of failed and overbudget custom software projects

References