Choosing the "wrong" genre is definitely a thing tho. Take an example: Pyre, from the developers who made Transistor and Hades.
Transistor was quite a big success among indies[1]. Hades was the indie game of the year[2]. Then why Pyre, the game between these two big boys, flopped[3]?
In my opinion it's mostly the genre. "Fantasy" + "Sport" didn't work so well, cause the main audience of sport games are mostly also fans of real-life sport teams.
[3]: https://steamdb.info/app/462770 says 251.3k ~ 628.2k. It's not bad, but considering its astonishing quality and the track record of the devs, I'll say it's an disppointing number.
Transistor was quite a big success among indies[1]. Hades was the indie game of the year[2]. Then why Pyre, the game between these two big boys, flopped[3]?
In my opinion it's mostly the genre. "Fantasy" + "Sport" didn't work so well, cause the main audience of sport games are mostly also fans of real-life sport teams.
[1]: https://steamdb.info/app/237930 says 1.08M ~ 2.66M owners.
[2]: https://steamdb.info/app/1145360 says 4.63M ~ 12.73M.
[3]: https://steamdb.info/app/462770 says 251.3k ~ 628.2k. It's not bad, but considering its astonishing quality and the track record of the devs, I'll say it's an disppointing number.