Biggest console failure ever?

[NorrinRadd]

I gotta say, my gut reaction is to say the Jaguar. When you actually play some of these games now a days, you can really see how much of an objective failure it was. Hindsight helps though. At the time, the digitized graphics seemed like a huge deal, but when you look at the file size of the roms, peaking behind the curtain a little, you can see how they were really selling you a polished turd. Thank goodness I didn't have the money to blow on it when I was a kid.

It's weird too, to see how all the console makers were trying to stand on their own two legs. Atari was a huge name, and they were out of the game for quite a while. To come bursting back with that, and think they had a shot... Man, it's just weird to think about.

[Rando1975]

Just wanted to and another interesting thing about the M2. According to Ultra Game Players #99 (July 1997), there were around 80 games in development for the M2! Which of course was not released. I wonder how much money was wasted developing those games? I wonder how many M2 consoles actually exist? I've certainly seen pictures, but I wonder how many machines are out there?

[Sivilius]

On 8/25/2020 at 4:16 PM, Rando1975 said:

Just wanted to and another interesting thing about the M2. According to Ultra Game Players #99 (July 1997), there were around 80 games in development for the M2! Which of course was not released. I wonder how much money was wasted developing those games? I wonder how many M2 consoles actually exist? I've certainly seen pictures, but I wonder how many machines are out there?

Indeed the 3DO M2 is perhaps the biggest "What if...?" console technology of the 1990s. All sources indicate it was considerably more powerful than the Nintendo 64 and had support from developers right up to the very end. But 3DO Company didn't have the financial strength to claw back market share from Sony with the M2. The N64's massive success in North America post-launch didn't help matters either. By mid-1997 the Sega Katana/Dural was on the horizon, the launch window for the 3DO M2 had past, and that was that. 

[Blake00]

On 3/21/2019 at 11:41 AM, kitsunebi said:

But then so was the Wonderswan, and I've heard of that one, right? 

Yeah I wish the Wonderswan had done better.. not because I wanted one but because they were remaking the original 3 NES Final fantasy games on them in a SNES style but because the console did so badly they abandoned the remake of FF3 and converted the FF1 & FF2 remakes to the Playstation one for the Originas collection and left out FF3. That really ticked me for like 20+ friggin years lol!

However of course yesterday the new pixel remasters of the first 6 FF games series started coming out including FF3 so finally it got that 2D love bringing it up to the same quality of the other 5 classic FF games. Something I never thought would happen after 20 years so am very happy. Although sadly they don't have the special FMV sequences they did for the PS1 remakes so a part of me still thinks 'what if' the Wonderswan had done better and they'd made that FF3 remake and ported it to Ps1 with some cool videos.. but meh after 20+ years I'll take what I can get haha!

But if I'm going to name a console failure purely for the sake of me loving that console then it's gotta be the Mega CD / Sega CD. I often wonder how it would have sold if instead of marketing it for its FMV capabilities they'd marketed it on it's extra processing power or moreso it's 3D/mode 7 like capabilities (eg Sonic CD special stages, Batman Returns driving stages, Thunderhawk, Soul Star, F1 Beyond the Limit, Adventures of Batman & Robin etc) it might have done better as once all the bad reviews on FMV games playability started pouring in and spread via word of mouth it just killed interest. To this day there's still people out there who think the Sega CD is just a Genesis with a CD drive attachment lol. They had no idea about it's extra capabilities that were barely used.

If people had seen this kind of stuff below on their TVs instead of just the FMV stuff maybe things would have been different, or at least gone a bit better. As even now I still remember the amazing Starfox adverts on TV and everyone talking about how amazing they were. Little did anyone know sega was doing 3D stuff around the time time on the Sega CD that looked more advanced but was not being marketed much at all.
https://youtu.be/FcyIVFQDIl0?t=132
https://youtu.be/fwVuYfr5fw0?t=30

On 3/21/2019 at 11:41 AM, kitsunebi said:

No, the real reason I'd never heard of it is because there were only 5 games ever produced for it.  Five.  Man, I feel sorry for anyone who bought that thing

As for the SuperGrafx I never even heard of that until a few years ago when I started getting Retro Gamer magazines delivered and they'd do specials on it lol! 5 games is terrible.. So yeah.. definitely failed big time!