Ehhh, the Atari 7800 was never going to amount to anything once the Tramiels pulled the plug on it in 1984. I doubt it was going to sell in 1984 anyway. Nothing like having a next gen console with sound effects straight outta 1979.
Ehhh, the Atari 7800 was never going to amount to anything once the Tramiels pulled the plug on it in 1984. I doubt it was going to sell in 1984 anyway. Nothing like having a next gen console with sound effects straight outta 1979.
The Tramiels never pulled the plug.Originally Posted by ConsoleAddict
Can something that never exsisted be considered a failure?
Chalk up another vote for the virtual boy and the jaguar.
If any of you seriously think the dreamcast is a failure.......I will be more than happy to take it off your hands. Please, send it to me. Another man's trash is more than likely my treasure.
the virtual boy. it ruined its creators career.
I see. Looks like for 25 years we thought wrong. I thought that the console was ready to market since they sold it in New York and L.A. The Tramiels didn't have the rights to the 7800 until 1986 then?
Alright, without starting a flame-war (please?), but speaking purely from a *business* sense....
the 360. It's cost Microsoft an estimated 4-5 billion dollar revenue loss. I'll go out on a limb and suspect that if you add every console we've listed here as failures costs together, they all combined didn't lose that much money.
But we do seem to be bouncing back and forth between business failure and just failure. You can have an extremely popular and successful thing still lose the company money. In the end, this is a business. Business is about money. If Nintendo had made the 360 they probably would've bankrupted themselves already. I doubt they have pockets anywhere near deep enough to eat that kind of loss.
But like most things I think we need a few more years to put the 360 thing in perspective because way too many people will jump to it's defense because they have one, they like it, and it's still going. But as far as money goes, ouch.
the 360 is definately a failure. i ont even want to buy one until i kno it'll last a few years.
I wonder how one of the most powerful companies in the world (Microsoft) does such a half-assed job in designing a console. The Xbox had a few issues but it was way more durable than the Xbox 360. They just rushed it out the door in order to be first this generation.
easy, they are software people, not hardware people.
They dunno how to do consoles for shit. Even if the 360s a huge success, its failure rate is still awful, and both xbox and xbox 360 are giant ugly POS's
Aetherbyte: PC-Engine and more homebrew
I thought about going this route, but it's hard to call the 360 a failure when, even though they've left money on the table because of their hardware problems, they've *got* to be very financially sound. Games on 360 sell like hotcakes (mmm, hotcakes), so in the end I disagreed with this idea.
I thought about and dismissed the N64 too. It's commonly known that Nintendo didn't lose any money with the N64, but their stubbornness sticking with the cartridge platform opened the door for Sony and Microsoft and two generations of hardware that didn't sell the way NES and SNES sold. But it still made money and it sure hasn't hurt them anymore now, so I disagree with this too.
The Dreamcast argument presented is flawed, because I think it was the Saturn that killed Sega's hardware ambitions. Which brings me back to the 360: If I posit that the Saturn killed the Dreamcast, I wonder if the 360's well known hardware problems could spell similar problems for the next generation Xbox. Time will tell.
My vote would go to the 3DO. Way too pricey. FMV was an interesting idea that just totally failed to work. And no real game support (though I did love FIFA and Road Rash back in the day)
Time will be when the broadest river dries
And the great cities wane and last descend
Into the dust, for all things have an end
Probably '85.
The 5200 (1 million) and the 7800 (3.3 million) probably sold more than the rest of the systems you mentioned.
Konix Multisystem (forerunner of the Jaguar)
Phillips CDi for gushing financial losses...
Would you like to know more about collecting video games? Check out my extensive Youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/user/swlovinist
The Amiga CD32 - wasn't the console's fault that Commodore went bust due to some copyright issues, the console only sold a few hundred thousand units I believe and was only sold for about 8 months; so the company behind it was the reason the console failed.
I just got delivered a CD32 and masses of games for it - the CD drive is painfully slow, but the games are very good!!
How about this one - Amstrad GX4000. I have one of these too. System failed as only had a small number of game carts (about 52 I think it was in total) and the large majority of those were charged £25 for a game cart with exactly the same game as their cassette version that cost £3.99. That is why it failed. Many GX4000 consoles were given away as "bum prizes" in gaming console magazines. Actually, it has about half a dozen excellent titles.
I'm just selling my CD32 collection
The Entex Adventure Vision may be highly revered as the holy grail but there must be a reason why only 50,000 units were sold. The thing is not durable and that there can be a failure. Besides, only 4 games for it which are already available on every other home console of the time? Not very attractive to consumers. Plus it was all red like virtual boy. The only title of the three that doesn't pop up on many systems is Turtles, but Odyssey 2 had it. The fourth one is just Asteroids with a different name.
[quote name='Shidou Mariya' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:05 PM' post='4889940']
I'm a collector, but only to a certain extent.
Not as extreme as Rickstilwell though.[/quote]
I'm reminded of all these facts every time I'm tempted to drop a small fortune on a working Adventurevision. Saved me from doing something stupid on numerous occasions.
There's something I've never quite understood about the whole virtual boy fiasco. Virtual Boy came out in August of 95 and was discontinued in less than a year. The N64 came out in 96 so both consoles must have at one point been in development simultaneously. Snes was doing fine and all the magazines were touting the N64 as the next big Nintendo console. Where was Virtual Boy supposed to fit in? Was it ever meant to be Nintendo's future?
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