List of vaporware

Wired magazine has an annual "Vaporware Award" with a list of software it considers vaporware. cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware: Better Late Than Never |url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70143?currentPage=all |quote=Ladies and gents, welcome to the 2005 Vaporware Awards -- the prize that celebrates the tech products that were promised last year but never delivered. |publisher=Wired |date=February 6, 2006 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ] This page is an incomplete list of known examples of vaporware, in alphabetical order by product name:

List of vaporware

Hardware

* Action Gamemaster - a handheld device designed by Active Enterprises [http://wayofthegeek.org/2007/10/gotta-love-vaporware/]
* Glaze3D - a graphics card designed by BitBoys Oy.
* L600 - a Linux-based game console/computer produced by Indrema
* Phantom - a console gaming system developed by Infinium Labs
* SNES Nintendo Disk a.k.a. Philips CD-ROM XA-a system developed in 1992 to compete with the Playstation prototype, which was designed in 1991. [ [http://www.nintendoland.com/snes/snescdr.htm SNES CD-ROM extension] . Nintendoland.com]
* Radeon-PhysX by www.NGOHQ.com - Physic-software for ATI Radeon graphic cards (based on nvidia- PhysX for nVidia graphic cards)

Games

* The Nintendo Entertainment System port of "Deja Vu II", which was completed but never released, though a Game Boy Color port was released.
* "Duke Nukem Forever", a five-time winner of Wired's Vaporware Award and Lifetime Vaporware Achievement.
* "Elite 4" - a video game produced by Frontier Developments specifically by David Braben.
* "Mario 128" - a video game in development by Nintendo, which apparently evolved into "Pikmin". The project later evolved into "Super Mario Galaxy".
* "Metroid Dread" - A Nintendo DS Game and speculated successor to "Metroid Fusion", which was first "unveiled" by Game Informer in their list of First Party Nintendo Games to be seen at E3'05. Every single game and announcement on the list was seen in some form or shown to be true by Nintendo in the following days of E3'05, except for Metroid Dread, which was never, and still has yet to be spoken of by Nintendo. Most believed the game was canceled, granted it was ever in development at all, and only speculation of its existence is the only evidence for it to not have been.
* "Psyclapse" - a hyped 8-bit "mega-game" which never made off paper.
* "" - a third-person shooter based on the "StarCraft" universe by Blizzard has been "postponed indefinitely" after five years of development. [http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/starcraft-ghost/698419p1.html Blizzard Postpones "StarCraft: Ghost" Indefinitely] , GameSpy March 24, 2006 (retrieved March 25, 2006)]
* - A direct sequel to the successful , it was a cancelled shortly before Origin Systems was disbanded.

oftware

* Fresco - a replacement for the X Window System, formerly known as the Berlin Project.
* Ovation - An integrated software package for DOS that was announced by Ovation Technologies in 1983. Written about in many computer magazines at the time, Ovation was never released. cite news |title=Famous Vaporware Products |url=http://www.byte.com/art/9509/sec7/art26.htm |publisher=BYTE |date= |accessdate=2007-10-31]

tandards and specifications

* CSS Level 3 - Level 1 was released in 1996, Level 2 in 1998. Level 3 have been delayed several times and is still not released.
* Secure Digital Music Initiative [http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2002/04/52163]

Other

* Vantive's Lawsuit in the late 90s [ [http://www.law.com/regionals/ca/opinions/mar/0016136.shtml Vantine Corporation securities litigation] ]
* Fallen Angel flash movie project (Episode One) [ [http://www.fallenangelseries.com Official Website] ] [ [http://www.newgrounds.com Sponser] ]
* Fallen Angel flash movie project (Episode Two)

urfaced vaporware

Products which once were considered to be Vaporware which eventually surfaced after a prolonged time:
* 3G [http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2002/03/50855]
* Arc - A dialect of Lisp being developed by Paul Graham.
* Bluetooth
* Daikatana
* Diablo II cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware '99: The 'Winners' |url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2000/01/33142 |quote=The last year of the last decade before 2000 has come and gone, but the Vaporware 1999 "winners" are still a dream to some, and a nightmare to others. |publisher=Wired |date=2000 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ]
* Internet Explorer 7
* Joomla 1.5 - The CMS had been announced in 2001 and was released in spring 2008.
* Microsoft Windows Vista (then, "Windows Code Name 'Longhorn'")cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware '99: The 'Winners' |url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2000/01/33142 |quote=The last year of the last decade before 2000 has come and gone, but the Vaporware 1999 "winners" are still a dream to some, and a nightmare to others. |publisher=Wired |date=2000 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ]
* Return to Dark Castle - a game for the Apple Macintosh "under development" since 1996, released in 2008 after several changes in ownership.
* Windows 2000 cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware 2002: Tech up in Smoke?|url=http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2003/01/57023 |quote=As 2002 ends, there is a lot of unfinished business in various corners of the tech world. We are referring, of course, to vaporware: hot, must-have products promised but never delivered.|publisher=Wired |date=2003 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ] cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware 1998: Windows NT Wins |url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/12/16974 |quote=Each December, Wired News petitions its readers for the year's most egregious examples of vaporware. This time last year, our research team was busily running down broken promises, empty hype, and slipping ship-dates all over the technology kingdom.|publisher=Wired |date=1999 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ]
* Warcraft III cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware 2001: Empty Promises |url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/01/49326 |quote=Whatever you like to call it -- the New Economy, the Dot-Com Economy, the Clinton Years -- one thing is now clear about the period of prosperity that began in the mid-'90s and was snuffed out early last year. |publisher=Wired |date=2002 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ] cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Vaporware 2000: Missing Inaction |url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2000/12/40484 |quote=The bona fide beginning of the new millennium is almost upon us, but some things never change: The tech industry continues to whip up excitement by promising amazing new technologies, only to crush our spirits by delaying, postponing, pushing back or otherwise derailing the arrival of said goods -- sometimes indefinitely. |publisher=Wired |date= 2001 |accessdate=2007-10-31 ]
* Team Fortress 2 was announced in 1999, and took 8 years to be released.
*
* "Prey" - originally announced in 1995, the project was halted in 1998. After Human Head Studios began working on the project in 2001, with its ultimate release on June 22, 2006.
* "" - originally announced in 2001, the game experienced numerous delays. Beta builds of the final product have been distributed to numerous game review sites [ [http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=72636 First impressions - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl] . Eurogamer] . On March 3, 2007, THQ announced that the game had gone gold and was released on March 20, 2007, though it was leaked three days earlier.
*"Stonekeep" began development in late-1990 with a projected development of nine months. The development continued to drag on until it was release in November 1995. "Stonekeep" was ranked in the top ten vaporware titles by "GameSpot" prior to the game's release. After the game's release, it was awarded Editor's Choice Award for Best RPG of 1996 ("PC Entertainment"), Best RPG of 1995 ("Computer Player"), and Reader's Choice Role Playing Game Of the Year 1996 ("Computer Gaming World").
* Dark Sector - Announced on February 11, 2000 and shipped 8 years later. At first the game was a scifi MMO, then it became a stealth game and finally it turned into a third person shooter. [http://web.archive.org/web/20000815065308/http://www.digitalextremes.com]
* Too Human- which was released August 19th, 2008.
* Project Xanadu - a hypertext content delivery system, postulated prior to the advent of the World Wide Web [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html] , source code was released in 1999 and eventually XanaduSpace 1.0 released in 2007 [http://www.pcworld.com/article/145351-5/the_top_15_vaporware_products_of_all_time.html]

References