It Will Never Catch On/Video Games

Examples of It Will Never Catch On in Video Games include:

In Assassin's Creed II, Antonio talks to Ezio about a drink that he brought back from Turkey called "caffe". Ezio tries it, says that he should consider adding milk or sugar. Antonio scoffs and says it's an acquired taste.
In World of Warcraft, one of the silly jokes for gnomes: "I had an idea for a device that you could put small pieces of bread in to cook, but in the end I really didn't think there'd be much of a market for it."
In Mafia 2, in one of the missions you can overhear one guard talking about how he bought a television set and the other guard demeaning television as "just a fad"
In one of her radio calls in Metal Gear Solid 3 Para-Medic pitches the idea that the future will have "movies where you control the characters yourself." Snake is astonished at the concept. Earlier in the conversation he had scoffed at Para-Medic's description of an early VCR.
- Funnily enough, critics of the Metal Gear series often derisively compare the games to movies due to their unusually long cutscenes—Para-Medic thus also predicted one of the more common complaints about the game she's in right now.
- Another radio conversation in the game has Snake and Sigint speculating the potential success of a walking, nuclear-equipped battle machine... specifically, the titular Metal Gear, whose designer Snake just met in conversation. Sigint thinks it's just about the stupidest thing he's ever heard, and hopes the designer was joking.
  - Peachi lampshades this in her comic adaptation of MGS3 by having Snake grin at the audience and a Rimshot play after this conversation.
- And another: Before the events of the game, Snake had no idea smoking was unhealthy.
- Inverted when calling Sigint about the XM16E1 rifle, Snake seems to think replacing the full auto functionality with a three-round burst fire is a rather stupid idea. While it would be adopted and mass produced, three round burst functionality didn't work out as planned and even later models dropped the idea. Burst mechanisms only ever took off on firearms that can switch between both burst and full auto instead of including one or the other.
In The Witcher, while Kalkstein is consider crazy by many people (and he might very well be), he has a theory (among others) that is the basic idea of the atom.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion when you ask a guard about the Thieves' Guild the response "Some people say there's a thieves' guild, can you imagine? A guild of thieves?"
Destroy All Humans: Path of The Furon has main character Crypto considering starting a high-stakes poker tournament filmed for television a few decades before it actually happened: his companion Pox dismisses the idea, outright saying that televised no-limit Texas Hold 'Em will 'never catch on'.
- Done again in the very same game, in which Pox and Crypto discuss the future possibilities of video games. Crypto pitches ideas for the very successful franchises of Mario, Sonic, and Halo. Pox quickly throws each pitch to the waste bin, and thus pitches the idea for movie-based video games, many of which are considered horrible.
- In the first game, one thought from a German Scientist can be:

Scientist: I'm working on something called the Internet, but I'm worried it'll never catch on.

- And in the second game, Crypto gives one after a conversation with Dr. Orlov:

Dr. Orlov: You are having excellent hand-eye coordination. You should trying computer game I am being developing.
Crypto: Games? On a computer? You're wastin' your time doc, it'll never catch on.

- Which is ironic given that pretty much the whole cast knows they are in a game, and lampshade this at every possibility.
In Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, judging by the gossip, Larzuk the barbarian smith appears to be on the verge of discovering (and using against Baal's hordes) hot-air balloons and powder weapons, but all the other village inhabitants consider these ideas silly or even slightly insane.
- Nihlathak even suspects him of dark magic because he was the only one in town not to catch some generic illness. The real reason? He washed his hands before meals. Given Nihlathak winds up being evil and using spells from the Necromancer's tree when you fight him...
Suikoden features a brilliant inventor adding an engine to a boat. Flik's response? "A machine that runs on oil? Sounds ridiculous."
In RuneScape, in the Meeting History quest, you go back in time, and talk to a boy/man named Jack. He mentions that some druids have started calling themselves "wizards" and are constantly locked away in their studies, figuring out new uses for runes. He laughs, and tells the player that they've also started wearing robes and pointy hats.

Jack: It will never catch on. It's a stupid look.

In the BioShock (series) 2 Minerva's Den DLC, you can find an Asteroids-esque game called Spitfire, created by Rapture Central Computing's engineers. Next to it is an Audio Diary where the lead designer claims their boss called it "a waste of time" (a rather odd sentiment considering Rapture's ultra capitalistic and entrepreneurial society).
The L.A. Noire DLC "The Consul's Car" has Cole and his partner discuss how the Navy is making 3D movies. His partner insists it will never catch on, but in a twist on this trope, Cole thinks it will, pointing out that people said the same thing about talking pictures and color.
Tank Dempsey, when acquiring a sniper rifle in the Moon map, wonders aloud if anybody would ever make a a fully automatic sniper rifle. A few people did just that.
In Red Dead Redemption, John isn't impressed by the bureau's automobile:

Marston: So much for this automobile of yours. If this is the future, God help us all...I can walk faster than this piece of shit! Give me a horse anyday!

- Applied to the game as well: Rockstar San Diego were apparently told that they were crazy to make a game set in the Wild West. They revealed this tidbit upon being awarded the Game of the Year.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, when Mario signs up to fight in the Glitz Pit, Grubba, the manager, decides that 'Mario' is a terrible name for a fighter, and gives him the stage name of 'The Great Gonzales'.

Back to It Will Never Catch On