Most outdated console while it was still being sold new?

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

https://www.huguesjohnson.com/features/timeline/

What was the most outdated console while it was still being produced?

First off "outdated" does not mean "not fun", we at DP know that even games that are 40+ years old can still be fun. All you need to enjoy a video game is a "ball", a "net", and two "paddles".

The obvious answer may be the Sega Master System because it is 33 years old, consequentially having 8-bit era technical specs, and is still being produced in Brazil. But that's just one country that makes up a fairly small percentage of the worldwide video game market.

For the USA, I would say the Atari 2600 is a strong contender. The timeline linked has its production ended in 1988, but there were games coming out for the system (as in, retail games, not homebrew) up to 1990. Super Mario Bros. 3 is the game that epitomizes 1990 in my opinion, being by far the best-selling game that year and a good representative of the state of "typical" video game graphics and sound then - an NES game, but a "high-end" one on graphics, sound, and advanced gameplay where the programmers had harnessed almost all of the capabilities of the system. The 2600's most advanced games came out between the immediate pre-Crash years (c. 1983) and 1990, with such games as Pitfall II and Solaris being the high watermark of what was available for the system during its retail life, but looked massively outdated compared to Super Mario Bros. 3, or even the first-generation "black box" NES titles. The most advanced 2600 games couldn't even match the ColecoVision technically. There was a HUGE jump in the look and feel of Atari 2600 games to the late 8-bit/early 16-bit games coming out around 1990. The 2600 was a great system between 1977 and 1984, though it was showing its age after 1982. I often wonder if Atari should have even kept producing the 2600 after the 7800 came out, because the 7800 was backward compatible.

The Sony PlayStation is another one, I witnessed this one personally. Sony ended production on the PlayStation on March 23, 2006. By this point the Xbox 360 was out, and I was playing it. The 360's graphics looked nearly photo-realistic (at the time) while the PlayStation's are much simpler. Even the handheld consoles of the time, the Nintendo DS and PSP, out-powered the PlayStation significantly. Even some of the PS2/Xbox/GCN games coming out by 2005-2006 were a major leap from what those consoles were doing circa 2001.

The NES comes close, but it was discontinued BEFORE the PlayStation came out. As such, the 16-bit era was still "mainstream". The gap between NES and 3DO is probably just as big as Atari 2600 to NES, but the 3DO was only a small portion of the market.

The Neo Geo is another one. Sorry Neo Geo fans, I think it's a great system, but games came out for it in 2004, by which point the system itself was "retro". SNK and other developers milked 101% of the power out of that system with its later games, but the fact remains that a year off from the Xbox 360's release, the games looked nothing like what was coming out on PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. Of course, it wasn't competing head-on with those systems by that point, but releasing games for a console that had been out of production for 7 years to a dedicated fanbase who knew what they were getting into and enjoyed it.

[AdamAnt316]

The Bentley Compu-Vision. Had it been released in 1976, it would've been state-of-the-art, albeit in with a sea of other Pong clones, getting ready to trigger the first video game crash. However, Bentley (whoever the hell they were; apparently no connection whatsoever to the car company) decided to release it in 1983, just as the video game market was getting ready to crash again. According to this page, it sold for $25 new (equivalent to $64 today), which probably made it the cheapest console on the market, though I reckon it was still overpriced..........
-Adam

[Aussie2B]

Pretty much every highly successful system lasted long enough to get games after the next gen took over. I mean, the SNES got Frogger the same year Ocarina of Time came out. If you count Japan, the Super Famicom was still getting releases in 2000, after the Dreamcast was already out.

I think systems that are outdated straight out the gate are more interesting. The PC-FX is one such example. NEC started development on a PC Engine successor too early, then put off its release due to the continuing success of the PC Engine, and inaccurately predicted the future of gaming in the same sort of way as Sega with the Sega CD by placing a huge focus on FMV. The PC-FX can do some impressive stuff, some things even better than the PlayStation, Saturn, and N64, but with practically nothing in the way of 3D, it just couldn't compete.

[Tanooki]

Japan actually stopped doing games for the NES (Famicom) in fall 2003, and they stopped actually still peddling left overs and doing repairs in 2007. That's well into the long life of the PS1 and on their own to the death of the Gamecube and the Gameboy line do with DS replacing the GB Advance. That thing hung in there a LONG time. The SNES (Super Famicom) was put to bed the same year, would not be surprised if they lined up the support side too in 2007 in Japan. They knew they had a good thing going and kept it up.

You're also right about the Neo-Geo. It arrived in 1990, and died in 2004 with Samurai Shodown 5 Special. Tell me you can't see a huge difference in quality from NAM 1975 (game #1) to the last and the sliding scale of increased quality year by year in that 14 year stretch. It too may have lasted longer than anyone would have ever figured but it did and still does age like a fine wine as the games still stand out fantastically for effectively what was at the time an overkill 2D console hiding in an arcade cabinet. I should know, I own one.


I think though on a handheld side the Gameboy wins hands down. You've got mid-late 80s tech brought out in 1989, and in 1998 it only gets a modern boost in existing parts and color added which had it last into 2003. That like Neo Geo had a 14 year life span of which the last 2 shared space with a 32bit replacement. Even in its life you could see how non-advanced that was against the battery sucking color try hards that came along and got taken out one by one. Lynx, Turbo Express, Game Gear, NGP, NGPC, Wonderswam and WS Color, other earlier junk like the Supervision too. That thing just took all sorts of stuff down and stayed alive well beyond a reasonable expiration date with old old hardware.

[Niku-Sama]

i'd have to say the 2600 as well

it stopped ion the early 90's but lingered in stores for a few years after that, i remember seeing them in k-mart around '93/'94 still thats well after the SNES and Genesis came out

[retroman]

Don't forget about the Atari XEGS. I know it came out in 1987, but it was already 10 year old hardware from the Atari 8bit line, and lasted until 1992.

[buzz_n64]

Japan actually stopped doing games for the NES (Famicom) in fall 2003, and they stopped actually still peddling left overs and doing repairs in 2007.

I thought that Adventure Island IV released in 1994 was the last game made for the Famicom. Famicoms may have still been produced until 2003, but no games were.

[Steve W]

I would say the Philips CD-i. They designed the console with a slower clocked 68000 processor, had to put the machine on the backburner for a bit of time, then brought it to market with that slower processor even though newer, faster versions were being produced. If I recall, a lot of people at Philips were against that, thinking they needed up-to-date hardware to compete. Which turned out to be true. And they only focused on games closer to the end of its commercial life, which put them deeper in a hole since the hardware was painfully underpowered compared to the competition.

[gbpxl]

Im younger than most here so the first one that came to mind was the PSone which I believe released shortly before the PS2. Im not sure when they stopped producing them but I imagine it was in 2001. 6 year old technology doesnt seem like much but compared to Xbox and Gamecube, the PS1 was in the Stone Age.

Many of the consoles mentioned I have never heard of

[pacman000]

I don't know about the XEGS. It was based on late 5+ year old hardware, but its main competition was also running on an 8-bit processor, had similar graphics/sound capabilities, & less RAM, if memory serves.