Best Failed Consoles

While many look in expectation as the Nintendo Switch 2 seems like it might break all sales records previously set by Sony’s biggest-selling consoles, many tend to forget consoles that failed sales-wise despite having deserved much better. Consoles with superior hardware can lose a war, and even consoles with great games can fail to meet sales expectations.

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The most important element to guarantee a console’s success should be a healthy library of excellent titles that’ll pull both the mainstream and niche audiences. Still, even consoles with vast libraries have failed to sell enough as their creators had hoped. Let’s look at some of the consoles that failed to reach anywhere near the levels of success that they deserved.

8

Sega Genesis Nomad

The Perfect Mix Between The Genesis And The Game Gear

• Flying too close to the sun

The Sega Nomad was a hybrid sequel to both the portable Sega Game Gear as well as to the massively successful Sega Genesis. The concept was simple: making a portable console capable of running the same games that the Genesis could. And it did. Now, instead of having to contend with the Game Gear’s smaller library, players could access the Genesis’ (by the standards of the time) huge library of over 500 games.

Sadly, the Nomad ran into two different issues. First off, it came out mostly alongside the Sega Saturn, which hindered the sales of both consoles. Also, the Nomad was even more battery-hungry than the Game Gear, which made it a much more expensive product than its original price tag would’ve led consumers to believe. With a rechargeable battery, however, the Nomad would be a total blast.

7

Nintendo Wii U

A Disappointing Sequel

The Wii U had two big problems. First off, it wasn’t more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, and it should have been, considering it came out a few years after its competitors. Secondly, Nintendo had no idea how to promote it. The name Wii U was just too confusing, leading the families who’d recently fallen in love with games because of the original Wii to wonder if this was a true sequel, and where were the cool nunchucks?

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Still, the Wii U featured a small but great library of exclusives, and also paved the way to what would become the massively successful Nintendo Switch. In the world of today, where every single streaming service and new tech product has a bizarrely dumb name, perhaps the Wii U would have greatly succeeded.

6

Sony PSX

The Original PlayStation Plus

• The most immediately forgotten console of all time

The PSX had one of the greatest video game libraries of all time because it was basically a PS2. That’s an enormous point in its favor, and yet the images above will strike many as those fake renders that plague the Internet whenever there are rumors of a hot new console coming out. That’s because most people never even knew about the PSX, Sony’s attempt at making a version of the PS2 that was even more of a media center.

Unfortunately, despite being a great piece of tech, only very few ended up being made because they came out at too high a price and failed to ever take off. It still does have a much cooler design than the original PS2, though.

5

Sony Vita

Left For Dead

• Stellar tech, cool games, but Sony seemingly forgot to like it

As far as technological prowess at the time of a console’s release goes, it’s hard to beat the PSVITA. It featured fantastic graphics, extremely comfortable controls, marvelous high-tech gimmicks, and it even had some pretty good – and very impressive-looking – games. Sadly, however, Sony seemingly discarded it just as soon as it was done releasing it, which marks one of the company’s most baffling decisions to date.

Funnily enough, the Vita is way more powerful than the more recent and more successful PSPortal, because the portal is basically just a mirror for one’s PS5, whereas the Vita was (and is) an absolute powerhouse, as far as portable consoles go.

4

Sega Saturn

No Planetary Alignment Here

• Bravely went to war with Sony
• Stupidly went to war with retailers
• Lost to both

There’s this notion that the Sega Saturn lost to the PlayStation because it failed to invest properly in hardware that would run 3D games, but the story is way more complicated than that. While it’s true that the PlayStation ultimately produced better 3D games than Sega, it was Sega that actually sparked everyone’s attention to the potential of 3D games with its arcades. The Saturn’s downfall stemmed from a surprise release date that caused a shortage that divided consumers and angered many retailers, some of which ended up refusing to sell Sega’s console altogether.

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It also didn’t help that Sega of Japan and Sega of America behaved like two more warring parties instead of the same company. Still, the Saturn was able to catapult Tomb Raider into the mainstream – yes, Lara’s original adventure was meant as a Sega exclusive – as well as some absolute masterpieces like Panzer Dragoon Saga. There’s no doubt that the Saturn would’ve been responsible for a bunch more spectacular titles had it had the chance to shine.

3

PlayStation Classic

What Could Have Been

• There’s a spectacular console hiding inside this shell

This entry is naturally not about the original Sony PlayStation, as that one did pretty well both in terms of sales and game library. This is about the PlayStation Classic, the celebratory mini console Sony released in response to the success of both the NES and SNES mini. Sadly, whereas Nintendo’s mini consoles were pretty great, the PlayStation Classic not only offered a less-than-stellar closed library of games, but even offered many of those games in their inferior PAL versions.

This console was a massive flop, up until the moment fans realized how easy it was to fill it with great homebrew software. When used correctly, the PlayStation Classic is actually an excellent machine.

2

Dreamcast

Cast Out

• Superior to the PlayStation 2 in many ways (that nobody cared much for)

The Sega Dreamcast is easily the poster child of failed consoles that deserved better. Not only did it have a great library of titles that included stuff ranging from revolutionary with Shenmue, to great RPGs like Skies Of Arcadia, to just straight-up great fun titles like Powerstone. It also had features that the PlayStation would only get much later, like native Internet play capabilities.

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Also, anyone outside of Japan and America wouldn’t have realized, but the Dreamcast offered native 60Hz support for every single game, which prevented people from PAL regions from having to play greatly downgraded versions of its games. Only a very limited number of PS2 titles feature 60Hz support, and that was an absolute bummer.

1

Nintendo GameCube

Nintendo’s Dark Horse

• Nintendo goes dark
• And nobody gives it the credit it deserves

Though it was not a catastrophe, the GameCube failed to measure up to the PlayStation 2 in terms of sales, despite a fantastic game library. One thing holding Nintendo back against Sony, Microsoft, and even Sega way back when was its seeming lack of will to produce and publish darker, less family-oriented titles. Not so with the GameCube.

This was the house of exclusives like the fantastic Resident Evil remake, the original instant classic that’s Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, and, among many others, Resident Evil 4. Yes, one of the most important action/horror games of all time was made as a GameCube exclusive, but Capcom decided to bring it to pretty much all other systems in existence in an attempt to make the profit the company deserved after the GameCube’s lackluster sales. On top of that, the GameCube is also home to a wide variety of family-friendly games that one should expect from a Nintendo console, as well as two excellent Zelda titles. Twilight Princess was also going to be a GameCube exclusive, but Nintendo had to branch out to maximize sales as well. Mario, however, not so much, but that shouldn’t be the reason for such a great system to fail.

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