Slashdot Mirror
Dismal Console Failures
Anonymous Howard writes "Shacknews' jason bergman has written an article that looks at some of the biggest failures in console gaming. It's a great read, and spotlights stuff like the Halcyon, a $2500 (!) laserdisc system with only two games and Nintendo's Virtual Boy, a stereoptic system that had red-on-black simulated 3D graphics."
Perhaps I'm just showing my age, but perhaps a paragraph or two on the the Magnavox Odyssey and it's betaMax-like demise may be just the history we need so later failures learn the lesson before trying and dying on the lonely shelves of stores and warehouses.
--- have you healed your church website?
Impressive NEC managed avoided a mention here (except indirectly, within the Pioneer LaserActive. I guess the PC-FX was excluded because it never made it to our shores, but what about the SuperGrafx? There was also that PC Engine laptop which I believe weighed 20 pounds and sold for $15,000.
--
est modus in rebus
So anyone trying to sell a really innovative platform is going to end up charging way more than the market will bear.
BTW $2K is not too much in principle for a games system. I know plenty of people with MUCH more expensive systems. Mine cost $5K, only they are called PCs, not consoles. Mind you these days it would take a lot of dedication to go above $2K for a desktop machine. It took some doing to spend $5K two years ago. I paid $400 for the upgrade to my Son's machine a few months ago and he basically got a new machine with almost the same spec as mine.
When is Lara Croft comming out, thats what I want to know.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
first of all 'cause it sucked major ass, and secondly because Atari **COULD** have had sales rights to the Nintendo Entertainment System instead.
Probably one of the biggest f-ups in the history of the electronic entertainment industry.
\/\/oobie
There is no way the Master System was a failure. When they came out everyone had one and there were more than 200 games for it. The Megadrive was no failure either and Sega still make good games for the arcade and other consoles.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
You'd be right, except for the fact that there were actually quite a few REALLY GOOD GAMES that came out for the Mega CD / Sega CD system. These include Lunar, Lunar 2, Shining Force CD, Sonic CD, and a few others.
It could have been a force to reckon with in the US if Sega had stayed away from the crappy FMV games, and Sony hadn't sabotoged it with the crappy "Make My Video" (or something like that) series. Sony used the Sega CD as an "experimental" platform. Sony was developing the Playstation at the same time they were releasing HORRIBLE titles for the Sega CD. They learned that "FMV games" were not the way to go as far as software was concerned, and did so at Sega's expense.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I also seem to remember a C64-based console
Indeed you do, and it was called the C64GS. You can read about it (and a whole host of other old consoles and computers) here.
There was essentially no point in buying a C64GS since it did nothing that an ordinary C64 couldn't do, and the GS didn't have a datasette port either, which cut out the vast amount of cassette-based games already available.
Atari Jaguar - Why wasn't this on the list? I rented this thing too, and it sucked. First of all, if you think that the X-Box's origional controller was big (which it wasn't that bad) try this thing.
Well I have both sitting right in front of me and the Xbox's is bigger and significantly heavier. If anything that tells you how big the Xbox's original controller is - the fact that a controller with a keypad on it could actually be smaller than the XB controller is pretty amazing (though pretty much all the keypad controllers I can think of - Intellivision, Colecovision, 5200, Jaguar to name a few - are smaller than the XB controller). It also tells you how we don't always remember things as they really were. Hindsight is not always 20/20 (though it's usually closer to that than foresight is).
CDI - To tell you the truth, I remember hearing of this, and seeing games in magazines. But I never saw a single one for sale, that I can remember. That's a great recipe for success. I also remember hearing it was expensive.
The CD-i was not specifically intended as a game system. I don't actually recall if the CD-i came before or after the 3DO, but it's possible Philips was trying to learn the lessons of 3DO. CD-i was marketed as a full entertainment set-top box capable of playing CD's, movies and of course games. The gaming capability of the system was not very good, though - not up to the standards of the systems it was "competing" with (though again, they were trying to go for the more casual gaming/home entertainment market). The CD-i is probably the main reason why gamers these days cringe whenever anyone uses the word "set-top box" or starts talking about doing things like adding movie playing or other functionality to game consoles.
Saturn - Two games I wanted to play. I wanted to play Nights (still waiting for a rerelease of that) and Panzer Dragoon (that game looked so amazing at the time.) Plus, the Saturn had all those cool "Theater of the Eye" commercials. Very cool. But of course, it was expensive as hell, the analog controller (when it finally came out for Nights) was weird (and fixed (somewhat) in the Dreamcast). Part of it's problem what that it was supposed to be terrible to develop for because of it's dual CPU nature.
Yes, the Saturn has a complicated architecture, but then so does the PS2 and it doesn't seem to have mattered in its case. Developers will develop for a system no matter how hard it is if they believe it's viable. In fact, the Saturn was viable for a while, and was actually quite successful in Japan (like the TG-16) - which is why it doesn't belong on this list. Sega and other developers continued supporting the Saturn in Japan until after the Dreamcast's release.
There are so many misconceptions about the Saturn it's hard to even count. One of the biggest is that it was designed as a 2D system, with 3D added at the last minute in response to Sony's PSX announcement. This is refuted in section 15.2 of the Saturn hardware FAQ (which you can find at GameFAQs - sorry, they don't allow direct linking). The Saturn was always a 3D system, designed as a sort of home version of the Model 2 arcade board, but had its texture capabilities enhanced in response to Sony's PSX.
The Saturn does remain one of the best 2D systems ever, though (perhaps only the Neo Geo - with its processing power and unlimited, cartridge-based RAM beats it) and in fact had more VRAM and greater raw 3D polygon-pushing power than the PSX (>500,000 vs. ~360,000, by the published specs in the respective manuals). But as MS is trying to do this generation to Sony, Sony basically bought the market out from under Sega last generation. Only Sega ended up thinking it really worthwhile to learn how to program their own system, and games like Virtua Fighter 2 still look better than most anything ever released on the PSX. The Saturn really did have some great games - though most of them were first-party Sega titles.
Lynx - I never played one (it was supposed to be quite good) but I had a friend who thought it was amazing. I don't remember anything about it. I don't know why it failed.
Several reasons - though it was a great system for its time. Big, backlit screen, excellent sound, great graphics for the day. But it was too big, ate batteries like nobody's business (the original version would get you 2 hours on 4 AA's if you were lucky), and was poorly marketed by Atari - who couldn't really do anything right by that point. It also didn't have a killer app like the competing GameBoy did (Tetris). In fact, there aren't that many good games for the Lynx in general, though the few that there are really make you wish the system would have stuck around for a while. Plus, for adult hands, the Lynx II (the version most people have) is really comfortable - even if it is still pretty big.