Gaming is now a major part of the entertainment industry, I can remember GTA IV not just being the best selling game of all time, but the best selling entertainment product too. Gamers are aging and maturing, people in their thirties and forties are still actively playing, people with careers and families. We’re not all pubescent teenagers any more so why do hardware manufacturers think we are? I don’t want to have to go into a shop to buy a piece of computer equipment and feel embarrassed when I reach the checkout holding a box with some scantily-clad dragon-lady on the front. They seem to believe that on the shop shelf, the box with the most metallic space hippos is the one customers will go for. In fact most of them are probably sold online now, unless you feel like paying PC World tax.

For me, I’d always be attracted to a more simple functional design. It’s one front that I think Apple has got so right it hurts. Although they brand themselves as more of a separate boutique style computing experience, the increasing popularity and increasing 3D capability of Macs means they are taking more of a slice of the gaming market, so they’re not entirely dissimilar. Their packaging design however is always drop-dead gorgeous. Admittedly the asthetics of Apple hardware play a large part in it, and I admit that as a PC user, no fanboyism here. Few other manufacturers can claim as many packaging and unboxing photos on Flickr as Apple does.

Anyway, here’s some particularly sadly average horrid packaging designs I’ve found all too easily:

An indian angel woman poking an exploding skeleton in the back.

An angry dragon man.

Generic knight monster thing.

Robot Space Frog.

Robot boobs.

You the man now dog!

Jesus wept.