Vaporware is a product, usually software, which has been announced and is long in development, but has not yet been released nor officially cancelled. The lack of a substantial release has led these products being referred to as "vaporware". This list documents products which have been labelled as "vaporware".
Hardware and 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. Phantom was a console gaming system developed by Infinium Labs. A supposed prototype was demonstrated in 2004, but its release was continually delayed and was quietly put on hold in 2006 due to a lack of funds and eventually cancelled. The company was accused of a pump and dump scam. It received the first place in "Vaporwares 2004" in Wired News. The Intellivision Amico was a video games console announced in May 2018 by Intellivision Entertainment which was initially intended to have a release date of October 2020. Prototypes were demonstrated at road shows, but failure to secure a supply chain, stable finances, and investors have left the Amico continually delayed. T1 Phone was a gold-colored smartphone introduced in June 2025 by Trump Mobile, a licensed brand under The Trump Organization. Originally slated for a September 2025 launch, the release was later postponed to late 2025. Ultimately, it missed its scheduled release and did not come out even after the end of 2025.
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 while the first two episodes were released in a relatively timely fashion (in 2006 and 2007), the final installment never surfaced. It was being described as vaporware by 2010, and has since been quietly cancelled. Commander Keen: The Universe Is Toast! was intended to be a continuation of the Commander Keen series, with the story picking up after the events at the end of the sixth episode, but it never progressed beyond the early stages of development, due to id Software moving on to Wolfenstein 3D and then Doom. However, Tom Hall, the series' creator, has stated that he can continue it if he ever regains its intellectual property. A Star Fox arcade game was originally announced to accompany the release of Star Fox: Assault. However, while Assault was released in 2005, its tie-in arcade game was never mentioned again in public beyond its initial announcement. Stars! Supernova Genesis was feature complete in August 2000, but the developers were unable to find a publisher. The Grinder, a first-person shooter that was to be released on the Wii and ported to Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the fall of 2011, was announced by High Voltage Software around the time it released The Conduit and Conduit 2, two graphically advanced first-person shooters for the Wii. However, The Grinder failed to meet this scheduled due date, and High Voltage Software has remained relatively silent about what had happened to it.IGN Years later, it was discovered that the game had been quietly abandoned, though not officially cancelled, after the developers had trouble trying to make the game appealing enough as a new intellectual property. Ghostwire: Link to the Paranormal, an augmented reality horror video game, was being developed by A Different Game and was due to be released in late 2010 by Majesco for the Nintendo DSi and intended to leverage its camera system. However, Majesco inexplicably backed out from the game, which was then put on indefinite hold. No further information has been given about the game's fate. Beyond Good and Evil 2 – Following the release of the critically acclaimed, yet commercially unsuccessful game Beyond Good and Evil, Ubisoft announced a sequel to the game in 2008 that would also be a narrative prequel to it. Rumors of the release actually happening were fed by a few trailers and concept art as well as statements made by Michel Ancel and Ubisoft. In 2016 the magazine Wired presented the game with their vaporware award. The game was re-revealed in 2017 but has largely been quiet since, with many considering the project to once again be vaporware. As of 2026, the title holds the record for the longest development period of a AAA video game at 18 years, having broke the record held by Duke Nukem Forever (2011) in 2022 (15 years). Star Citizen – initially announced and funded via Kickstarter in 2012, neither the game nor its spinoff Squadron 42 have been released outside a (playable) alpha In May 2019 it was the largest crowdfunded project to date, having raised $288 million in backing. It has raised over $1 billion . It also received US$63.25 million via external investments . Deep Down – Initial teaser was shown in 2013 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive by Capcom. Agent – Originally announced for the PlayStation 3, the title's trademarks were abandoned in November 2018 by Take-Two Interactive.
Surfaced vaporware Products which once were considered to be vaporware which eventually surfaced after a prolonged time:
3G – the telecommunications technology was widely considered vaporware in the early 2000s. However, by 2007 it overtook predecessors in market share. Bluetooth – Initially conceived in 1994, but only gained widespread adoption in the early 2000s. As late as 2000, it made Wired magazine's yearly vaporware rankings. Windows Vista – Suffered several development delays under its initial code name "Longhorn", finally being released in 2006 without many of the initial features promised. Mac OS X – Apple's replacement to Classic Mac OS that finally shipped in 2001, replacing multiple abandoned operating system attempts, including Copland and Taligent. Lockitron – 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 experienced significant delays delivering a product in substantial numbers. Apigy eventually delivered thousands of the devices before ceasing production and introducing a new model of Lockitron. Spotify Lossless Audio – Spotify announced in February 2021 that high fidelity audio would be introduced to the service as the primary feature for a new subscription tier called "Spotify HiFi". However, this feature (along with the subscription tier) was put on hold indefinitely on January 10, 2022. High fidelity was ultimately introduced as a new feature called Lossless for Spotify Premium users on September 10, 2025.
Video games
Duke Nukem Forever – 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, and another promotional trailer was released with new graphics with a release date set for "When it's done in 2001".The most famous "When It's Done". whenitsdone.org (April 5, 2011).3D Realms 2000 Christmas card. duke4ever.altervista.org (December 22, 2000). More delays forced the game to be pushed back to unknown date. The game was not heard of again until it was officially announced in late 2010, and was finally released on June 10, 2011, 15 years after initial development. The game was met with mixed reviews and was regarded as a failure. Daikatana – Daikatana was first announced at E3 1997, and it was shown with promotional images and software, and was planned to be released on that year, with the game already being finished. However, the tagline of the game: "John Romero's about to make you his bitch!", generated a lot of controversy, and John Romero's incredulous behavior and lavish lifestyle caused much of the original Ion Storm's team to jump ship and form Gathering of Developers. Further unrest was when the game was delayed again to switch from the original Quake engine to Quake II engine in November 1997, and the game was rescheduled for release in March 1998. It took over a year for the game to be fully switched in a new engine, and the release date was pushed back to February 1999, a deadline that was missed again. A demo was released in March 1999, which was considered to be of poor quality. The game was again shown at E3 1999, but the now outdated Quake II engine and the inability to show more than 12 frames a second (at a time when 30 frames were industry standard) caused a disaster for Ion Storm development team. Eidos, Ion Storm's parent company, which already invested $44 million in the development of Daikatana, had enough and took majority ownership of the company. The game was finally released in 2000. It is considered to be one of the worst games of the 2000s in general, and one of the worst cases of vaporware due to the hype generated by Romero. ZuPaPa! – a platform video game announced and previewed by Face for the Neo Geo at the 1994 AOU Show. It experienced delays and languished in development hell for six years until Face went bankrupt in 2000 and sold the prototype to SNK. SNK redeveloped the game and published it in September 2001, ironically also going bankrupt a month later. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl – Originally announced in 2001, the game experienced numerous delays.Top 10 Tuesday: Modern Vaporware. Pc.ign.com (April 11, 2006). Beta builds of the final product have been distributed to numerous game review sites.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. Team Fortress 2 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 October 9, 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, and with the blessing of Valve, owners of the Half-Life franchise, to sell the product; something quite unique among fan-made remakes. The final chapters of the game were released in 2019, meaning that the project only fully exited its vaporware state a full 15 years after its initial announcement. This remake was designed so as to become a better alternative for Half-Life: Source since Source lacked new features beyond 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. Rodea the Sky Soldier was planned to be released on the Wii and Nintendo 3DS, with the Wii version ready to be released in 2011. The game remained unreleased for a few years with no significant word on its official status. Finally, in 2014, Kadokawa Games, a candidate publisher for the game, confirmed that NIS America will release the game the following year, although it would only be available on Nintendo's eighth-generation systems, the Wii U and the 3DS, as the Wii was partially discontinued and already falling into disuse around that time. Consequently, the original Wii version would not be available for individual purchase and was instead included with early shipments of the Wii U version. The game was released in Japan on April 2, 2015, then became available to the rest of the world on November 10.