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Dismal Console Failures

Posted by michael on from the flameout dept.

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."

2 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid business model by Zeinfeld · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The really big problem in this space is the stupid business model of razor and blades. People won't pay an economic price for the console so they are sold below cost but tricked out so the vendor can recoup their costs selling overpriced games.

    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.

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  2. Re:A couple of omissions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.