Failed consoles of the past... What about present day?

[Flesh Warlord]

It's funny to look at all the failed consoles back in the day, there was so many of them... Virtual boy, Rzone, Jaguar, Enage etc.

Now look at the more recent days, from the N64 to the PS3. Every single system has been a huge success:

Play station 1, 2 & 3. Also the PSP
X box 1 & X box 360
Nintendo Wii, Game cube, GBA & DS

All the above being hugely successful. Maybe they have learned from their last mistake? Or maybe gaming has a much larger crowed.

[Kazimierz]

Dreamcast failed didn't it? nGage was after n64. Was the Wonderswan and Wonderswan color a success? I'm not sure.

[emoisgay]

great questions indeed, the thing you have to realize is a lot of times we read magazines that inform us about these systems to come out and they over hype it big time. yet, we never really see them... Usually because japan keeps it for them self and leave the american gamer in the cold. As far as a system failing is for no one to decide really. The tv shows and magazines give their own personnel opinion and nothing more, honestly i wouldn't consider them experts... There only edge over us basic gamers is their job and they communicate with the companies that produce these games giving them minor edge over us and thats it really. I hated dream cast, and traded mine for tekken 4, given the chance to re think that option i'd have my cast stocked up with a lot of classic games.

The systems that usually we never play get bad reviews cause they aren't given much a chance example the neo geo, if you loved the snk fighting gamer series and classic arcade games, this was the system to have. Appearetnly others didn't think so. Another thing to look at was in our days graphics weren't the big issue. Developers focused on what really matter the fun factor, the story, and originality. Now don't get me wrong we have great games like grand theft auto to resident evil to armor core. But in our younger days they did more with less. Final Fight Chronotrigger mario kart etc where all great games that pave the way for future games. Somewhere though developers lost composure and brought new idea's that really weren't tested.

Relate it to holly wood and movies, occasionally a great movie comes out. But usually crappy ones are released on a fairly regularly. Possibly why one of the reasons pc's are taking over so much is because they have what we loved in those classic consoles we had.

[waterbottl]

Was the Wonderswan and Wonderswan color a success? I'm not sure.

I've never heard of it so I'm gonna say no.

[IGneois]

i like videogames, seemingly people are making better systems for me.

[Glitteris]

Gizmondo, Dreamcast, N-Gage, Phantom, ...

it still happens.

However it doesn't happen as often as it used to. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have a kind of equilibrium at the moment.