Worst console flop ever?

[techbeast34]

What console do you think had the worst flop? I think that the Apple Bandai Pippin (AKA the @WORLD) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin) was one of the worst flops ever. Not enough games, the controller was probably really bad, and compared to the PS1, which was released 2 years earlier, and the N64, which was released at the same time, it probably couldn't compete at all with either of the companies. I honestly wonder what today's Apple Pippin would be if it didn't fail horribly.

 

[joshposh]

Wow!!!! I had no idea that this even came out. If I did hear about it, it was once and never heard from it again. I had other consoles in mind, but this takes the cake. I had consoles like the 3D0 and Atari Jaguar. But I have to give you mad props for remembering this one.

 

[TheViper]

The pippin literally had no good games for it. To be honest I don't know of any major console flops that came out. I would say that some never lived up to its potential. The dreamcast would have been that big major player against the PS2. Though, it went under and yet you still have some people raving about it.

 

[CosmicOdyssey]

What about that Nokia handheld system? Did that even last 3 months?

 

[GamerPerson]

You'd be surprised at some of the bad game consoles that came out. Anyone remember the Virtual Boy? Not really? Good, because you'd be walking around the room with a brick on your face, if you ever used this console. (I'm not making this up. It was the size of a brick that you put on your face. That was early virtual reality, as you could get!)

 

[Ramo]

I think the PSP was the biggest flop. They were really popular for awhile but now you never hear about those consoles. I use to see people have PSP's all the time on the bus but now they are off to better things.

 

[Krisi]

I reckon that the biggest flop was arguably the Virtual Boy from Nintendo. They released it in 1995 and It was marketed as the first "portable" video game console capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box. Well that didn't really work out to well. They attemped to save costs in a bunch of hilarious ways, such as using only red LEDs for the display as they were the cheapest and a colour display would cost too much.

It ended up looking like this:

Wheres the number for my optometrist?

This is how the headset looked:

The Virtual Boy system uses a pair of 1×224 linear arrays (one per eye) and rapidly scans the array across the eye's field of view using flat oscillating mirrors. These mirrors vibrate back and forth at a very high speed, thus the mechanical humming noise from inside the unit. Each Virtual Boy game cartridge has a yes/no option to automatically pause every 15–30 minutes so that the player may take a break before any injuries to the eyes. One speaker per ear provides the player with audio.

Powell, Doug. "A Virtual Backlash." Computing Canada Dec 21 1994: 1,1,4. ABI/INFORM Global. Web. 24 May 2012.

I'm pretty sure this would give most people headaches too, but that's just speculation on my part.

And last but not least, here is a picture of the controller (which you couldn't actually see while playing mind you).

All in all this ended up costing around US$180, which was a pretty hefty price back in 1995. It was slightly less expensive than a home console, but cost considerably more than the handheld Game Boy.

 

[Squigly]

What about that Nokia handheld system? Did that even last 3 months?

Yeah, if I vaguely remember it was called the n-gage or something, and was really heavily advertised. It didn't last a year where I lived.

 

[Jojo83]

I reckon that the biggest flop was arguably the Virtual Boy from Nintendo. They released it in 1995 and It was marketed as the first "portable" video game console capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box. Well that didn't really work out to well. They attemped to save costs in a bunch of hilarious ways, such as using only red LEDs for the display as they were the cheapest and a colour display would cost too much.

It ended up looking like this:

Wheres the number for my optometrist?

This is how the headset looked:

I'm pretty sure this would give most people headaches too, but that's just speculation on my part.

And last but not least, here is a picture of the controller (which you couldn't actually see while playing mind you).

All in all this ended up costing around US$180, which was a pretty hefty price back in 1995. It was slightly less expensive than a home console, but cost considerably more than the handheld Game Boy.

Playing with that looks painful. Seeing those red LED's all the time would basically kill your eyes. The time was not right for virtual reality games during those times. They just lacked the necessary technology to make it practical and feasible.

 

[utneqo7d]

Playing with that looks painful. Seeing those red LED's all the time would basically kill your eyes. The time was not right for virtual reality games during those times. They just lacked the necessary technology to make it practical and feasible.

Exactly, it's not a miracle a lot of people have never even heard of it until now. It was pretty expensive for such a 'worthless' console, especially since they only used red LEDs, which just made it impossible for the console to have success.

I've also heard of a console called the N64DD which was a regular N64 with some better specs, though it failed badly, and it didn't even made it out of Japan.

 

[ducklord]

The GameGear by SEGA ended being a dissapointment. The Jaguar. The 3DO. All consoles that COULD have been better, but a combination of some tragic hardware choices and a pale library compared to the competition made them what we, today, call "flops".

It's a shame... GG had some nice games going for it and was actually "a portable Sega Master System", Jaguar COULD have good games (many of its former owners still tell me Aliens VS Predator ruled), 3DO... Well, it was best for interactive videos and FMVs, and if supported properly, they COULD be a different kind of game today (think about interactive Iron-Man - wouldn't it be cool? No? Ah, well...).

 

[LitoLawless]

The Virtual Boy for sure. That thing was giving people seizures left and right. It's one of those things I always wondered why it was never checked out or fixed in some way. I don't know if the DreamCast would be considered a failure or not (being that I loved that thing) but it's life span was not as long as most systems. I think the Neo Geo CD was also a flop, at least it was in the States.

 

[Atlas_Hope]

I'd say either the Virtual Boy with its horrid red and black graphics, or the "metallic-taco" the Nokia N-Gage. Holding a phone to your ear sideways....taking out the battery to put games in....what person thought that was a good idea.

 

[Jojo83]

The Virtual Boy for sure. That thing was giving people seizures left and right. It's one of those things I always wondered why it was never checked out or fixed in some way. I don't know if the DreamCast would be considered a failure or not (being that I loved that thing) but it's life span was not as long as most systems. I think the Neo Geo CD was also a flop, at least it was in the States.

I would say that the Dreamcast is not a flop. It had a lot of great games like Sonic, Shenmue, Soul calibur, etc. The tech specs were also impressive during the time of its release, producing photo realistic graphics that were never seen before. Although it didn't sell well globally, it sold decently in some countries especially the US. Yeah it had a short lifespan because basically, it was just defeated by the PS2 plain and simple.

 

[ducklord]

@Jojo83 Well, "commercially" it was considered a flop. Maybe we should have split the whole conversation in two categories: "market" flops and "total" flops!

For example, since it was... er... virtually unplayable (ha-ha), the GameboyVR was a total flop: it didn't sell AND you couldn't actually enjoy what you bought. 3DO was a similar semi-flop, since it didn't sell AND you couldn't get any "real" games for it.

Dreamcast and Wii U (up to now) are market flops, but not "total" flops, since although they didn't (aren't in the case of Wii U) sell, if you had one, you could have some (or lots of) fun with them.

 

[Jojo83]

At least the Dreamcast wasn't a total flop, because a lot of sega fans like me at the didn't want sega to leave the hardware market altogether. I mean, Sega should have at least tried to hang on for 2 years or so and gave the dreamcast a chance. Maybe sega may have sold a respectable number of dreamcasts and games. They've got a great machine and some awesome games, Sega just gave up too soon.

 

[CosmicOdyssey]

I had that I loved it had a robot boxing game that real steel was based on

 

[weepforsweep]

I'm gonna go with the Virtual Boy. You would get headaches playing that thing for at least 30 minutes. The color scheme in that was god awful. I believe that is Nintendo's first major flop.

 

[joshposh]

At least the Dreamcast wasn't a total flop, because a lot of sega fans like me at the didn't want sega to leave the hardware market altogether. I mean, Sega should have at least tried to hang on for 2 years or so and gave the dreamcast a chance. Maybe sega may have sold a respectable number of dreamcasts and games. They've got a great machine and some awesome games, Sega just gave up too soon.

The demise of the Dreamcast was due in part of the pending PS2 release. Everyone was buzzing about the DVD media that the ps2 had. Now the Dreamcast games were eventually pirated with the cd ripping technology that was rising at the time. With those 2 factors alone sega and the dreamcast was done.

In no way was the dreamcast a flop. But sega being sega wanted to get out of the competition and rush their product. Getting out first doesn't mean you will finish first. Sony took their time to develop their product and released something that was pushed the boundries even further. In Japan the dvd market was dissmal. But after the release of the PS2, dvd was popular.

 

[joshposh]

I reckon that the biggest flop was arguably the Virtual Boy from Nintendo. They released it in 1995 and It was marketed as the first "portable" video game console capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box. Well that didn't really work out to well. They attemped to save costs in a bunch of hilarious ways, such as using only red LEDs for the display as they were the cheapest and a colour display would cost too much.

It ended up looking like this:

Wheres the number for my optometrist?

This is how the headset looked:

I'm pretty sure this would give most people headaches too, but that's just speculation on my part.

And last but not least, here is a picture of the controller (which you couldn't actually see while playing mind you).

All in all this ended up costing around US$180, which was a pretty hefty price back in 1995. It was slightly less expensive than a home console, but cost considerably more than the handheld Game Boy.

I watched a youtube doc on the virtual boy. Coming from a big name like Nintendo you would never expect a piece of crap like this. To ahead of its time, and they tried to make it cheap for the public by making it viewable in red? WTF?!

I have to say it did look promising when it was first talked about back then. but it never delivered like the developers had hoped or forseen.