10 Video Game Consoles That Failed Miserably

Gamers all remember the successful game consoles that have come and gone, but these massive failures slipped through the cracks.

[Jimboms]

I don't get why the Dreamcast was a fail. We all loved it here in the UK

[Prince-Ali]

We REALLLYYYYY diiiid!!!!! Sega really ruined that consoles chances!!

[Minute Man 721]

No western 3rd party dev support + PS2 hype killed the Dreamcast, not SEGA

[mcstorm]

@Minute Man 721 Sega did kill the DC with the Saturn and it had a big impact on 3rd party games. For me the PlayStation lost its spark with the ps2 and onwards. I don't think any were bad consoles but for me the psx seems something special and I perfered what Microsoft and Nintendo had to offer the gens after the psx.

For me though the ps2, gc, DC and xboz gen I felt more impressed and spent more time gaming on my DC than the others.

[Tech5]

duplicate

[darthv72]

Sega failed it before it could fail itself. I believe they should have weathered the storm, they could have come out the other side.

[ProjectVulcan]

Lots of factors. Lots and lots. Cost of the hardware was steep for Sega so they lost a lot on it, and didn't recoup enough on software sales.

This could partly be attributed to the fact you could run copied games incredibly easily once pirates had learned how to defeat the simple software measure that had been put in place. Other machines needed a mod chip, the Dreamcast would just run the correctly packed titles off cheap CD ROMs.

If you were really determined to pirate early on say a PS2, you would rip the machine apart and mod chip it. That put off casual users, having risky surgery on their new $300 machine. But any pirated disc would just run on Dreamcast only a year after launch lol.

Then you have the whole wind of change at that time. Gamers were waiting for the PS2. Most people at that time had a PS1, and so they were not jumping on a machine until they had seen PS2. PS2 hype really killed Dreamcast in the West.

Then other smaller things like how Sega were associated with arcade style games when the trend was towards deeper RPG elements (even in racing games like Gran Turismo) and plot driven games. The lack of a DVD player, when that was something Sony marketed hard for PS2.

[Necr0philiac]

The Sega Saturn should be lower on that list then the Dreamcast. It sold more units then the dreamcast at twice the price. It probably sold more games in total over the Dreamcast. The Saturn was popular in Japan and had years of support and new games after they gave up in the USA. A lot of Saturn games were not released in the USA.

The saturn was even easier to pirate games then the dreamcast. All you had to do was swap a burned game with the real game after the Saturn title screen

[FlyingFoxy]

Sonic Adventure 2 was the first game i admittedly downloaded after getting 128k or 256k broadband in 2002/2003.. I did have quite a few legitimate games at the time, i was surprised it ran without a boot disc/ mod chip after burning it to CD.

Needless to say it was a buggy version, I'm assuming some troll messed with the pirated copy because i could only get so far at the end, passed Final Rush and one of the stages starts with you falling through the floor, repeatedly until game over. I only finished it once i got it on Steam.. I still have that buggy burnt to CD version by (i think) Echelon or whatever the groups name was.

[SinkingSage]

SEGA ran out of money.

[SegaGamer]

SEGA had plenty of money, they still do, they were just really bad at marketing in those days.....actually, they aren't much better at it now. It's taken years for the Yakuza games to gain attention, and even then, I think those games could be doing much better than they are. Nobody has a bad word to say about the Yakuza series, but it's still not selling like many other AAA games. If SEGA marketed them better, then they would be even bigger than they already are.

[Tech5]

" don't get why the Dreamcast was a fail."

an interesting mystery. the console had plenty of exclusives and new IPs.
my thoughts gathered, too many consoles on the market became a factor.
eventually there would be 4 consoles by the time DC would be 2 years.
DC appeared dated to late adopters.

[DerfDerf]

There were a ton of reasons why it failed. The main reason was the simple fact that the PS2 played DVD players. Many videogame stores in Japan at the time actually shifted heavily towards DVD sales and were advertising the PS2 as simply a DVD player, With the PS2 being sold as the cheapest DVD player on the market that also happened to play games it really put a damper on the Dreamcast (after it broke sales records at launch). Then there was the fact that the GD-Roms could be ripped easily and copied. That was the final nail in what was an incredible console. Sega was at it's peak during that time and to this day the Dreamcast still has some of the best, most innovative games ever created.

[KazHLooksRetarded]

PS Vita and PS VR should be tied for #1

[ApocalypseShadow]

PSVR is still selling monthly, is compatible with next gen and will get a new version for PS5.

Nice try.

[KazHLooksRetarded]

Lol nice avatar. Downvoted

[PhoenixUp]

Dreamcast was the console that marked Sega’s exit from the industry

It was a failure

[sevilha82]

it´s a mistery really....it was a great console,bad timing i guess,with the brutal rise of the Playstation and xbox at the time.

[Exvalos]

You forgot the xbox one

[Tross]

😂

[YodaCracker]

The Xbox One sold three times more units than even the best performing console on this list.

[Thundercat77]

Still a failure compared to its competitors.

[XtaZ]

@Thundercat77

Xbox One's competitors are PS4 and WiiU. WiiU flopped and died at 14 million consoles sold which forced Nintendo to jump start 9th gen while the PS4 is just inferior in every aspect.

[thexmanone]

Yea ok, what ever makes you sleep better.

[darthv72]

It isnt on the list because its currently the 2nd best selling xbox system.

[DazaMc]

@Thundercat77

"Xbox One's competitors are PS4 and WiiU. WiiU flopped and died at 14 million consoles sold which forced Nintendo to jump start 9th gen while the PS4 is just inferior in every aspect. "

Except sales figures.

[StormLegend]

I feel bad for SEGA they really did try to compete with Nintendo, but ended up losing to even the new kid on the block which was PlayStation. The sonic franchise has gone downhill since the early 2000's

[Einhander1971]

Dreamcast was an amazing system which never saw it’s true potential. Why because most fell for the ps2 hype that Sony was selling us. Granted the ps2 was better, but not nearly as much as we were led to believe. Obviously developers were holding off waiting for ps2, by that point Dreamcast was in a limbo state which unfortunately became to late. There was definitely room for both to coexist it just wasn’t meant to be:(

[bloop]

I think the PS2 having a DVD drive played a huge factor, but it also had arguably the greatest library of games ever released for any console even to this day. There was a time that one or even two must have games were releasing almost every week for the PS2 and I don't think any console released could have competed with it.

[Necr0philiac]

A huge reason the Dreamcast failed also was Becuase of the hype for GTA 3. That Sony bought exclusivity

[AsunaYuukiTheFlash]

Where is the Xbox One lol

[darthv72]

Its the 2nd best selling xbox so it doesnt belong on the list. But thanks for commenting.

[RizBiz]

So then shouldn't both xboxes be on the list?

[XtaZ]

XOne is the most successful Xbox console so far generating more money for MS than ever before. Why would it be on the list?

[PhoenixUp]

No Vita on that list

[l33t_haxx0r]

I Like my wii U ! how Dare you, you Foul swine!

[Benjaminkno]

WiiU actually made money as opposed to the 360 and ps3 costing their companies billions.

You would think profit would dictate success.

If I wanted to sell a console and it was popular, but never gained any profit that would be a failure

[Knushwood Butt]

Yeah, so profitable that Nintendo killed it off as fast as they could.

[CR7JUVE1897]

Dreamcast is on this list, but the 3DO isn't?? What kind of nonsense is this. And I loved my 3DO.

[frostypants]

This is poorly researched. The Atari Jaguar came out a couple of years after the SNES, not before. Also having WiiU and Saturn on the list without mentioning the likes of the Atari 5200, TurboGrafx/PC Engine, 3DO, etc.

[darthv72]

PCE was insanely popular in JP. The TG16... not so much.

[Soy]

I'd say TG16 was more successful than the Saturn, if barely. At least it lived longer.

[Benjaminkno]

WiiU #2?
It made lots of money

PS3 and 360 destroyed their respective companies profit margins.
Popularity is dictating success?
I can’t take this list seriously.

[Dom_Estos]

So, the N64, a console that had some of the greatest titles ever to have been made, and even to this day, was a failure? LOL wise up. The Dreamcast, likewise. Sure, it might not have sold well, but it was ahead of its time and had amazing games. Hardly a failure.

[godashram]

Totally an opinion piece with almost no research.... Some consoles do not deserve to be on this list compared to other failures.... As mentioned by others, consoles like the Atari 5200, 7200 and lynx, CD-I, 3DO, nuon (remember that?, wasn't there like like less than 10 games released), the Pippin, and the TG-16 (and I freaking LOVE this system) These are just consoles that even made it to the US, and I'm sure I missed a few. Now add Europe and Japan and almost none of the systems on this list deserve to be on it, except the virtual boy, that was so bad that my young eyes were set ablaze with a demo unit. Add to that that the saturn hit it's stride late in it's life and some fantastic games never made it stateside....

Looking over the article writer's past articles, they are all top 5 or 10 lists.

[darthv72]

I think 8 games for Nuon and I have 4 of them lol. Its a pricey obscurity nowadays.

[Spikeantestor]

The N64 was the only major system still using carts when the Dreamcast came out. And if you wanna get REALLY nit picky, the DC didn't even USE CDs; it ran GD-Roms.

[AK91]

I honestly had no idea about the 64 DD

[Imortus_san]

You missed PS Vita.