the biggest console flop

[videogameexperiment]

I would say the gizmodo because of the mafia ties and especially if you are in marketing you could talk about how the device shoved advertisements down your throat while you played

[ParameterBreach]

lol @ the n gauge... thanks for the vid, mod man

As a marketing consultant, I'd love to know what class you are taking, what school you're at, and exactly what the assignment is. Would also like for you to post your paper.

lol damn, now I'm gonna have to make this baby shine. Once the assignment gets uploaded, I will send you a link... It hasn't even been officially "assigned" yet

I would say the gizmodo because of the mafia ties and especially if you are in marketing you could talk about how the device shoved advertisements down your throat while you played

I didn't know that part about the advertisements, but that is an interesting point-thanks!

[skyknight]

Well, I am curious on how long is your report going to be. If this is a high academic level paper, you may want to look at several attributes that contribute to the failure.

Apple(+ Bandai!!!) Pippin and Gizmodo are both good example of companies failing to understanding the market and unable to control funding - Apple went overboard, and the boss of Gizmodo was engaged with criminal activities.

Atari consoles after the 2600 - 5200, 7800, and Jaguar, can be attribute for failing to match up with the competition in terms of hardware and games.

Virtual Boy, Gunpei Yokoi notorious failure (and only one!), well I think the behind-the-scenes was NEVER revealed, unless someone here has the full story. But you gotta acknowledge that even great companies can come out with crappy products that you want to toss out the window.

Sega Dreamcast, ahh, what to say about this? A great system that didn't last long, and to this day, I do hear conflicting reports on what went on during the development - from choosing the graphics card to game licensing to internal conflicts within the SEGA company, which some would argue did lead to its demise. Another worth discussing is the reputation or consumer trust of the company, to this day, I still hear stories about JP Saturn owners being pissed when DC would not have any backward compatibility with Saturn. Heck, some say SEGA had the bad luck of having polarized sales in both Saturn (good in JP, bad in the world) and DC (just the opposite).

Well, I don't have any first-hand materials on this, but you should find plenty of good stories around.

[eSPy]

another good list of some of the worst (matter of opinion) consoles
http://www.gamespot.com/users/Blueguy93 ... 0-25747041

[Curlypaul]

The Jaguar could be interesting as it was the demise of the once mighty Atari, but the Dreamcast would give you more to write about particulary from a marketing perspective. It was a quality product, at a good price but it was all the other factors that you mentioned that led it to failure.

[lordofduct]

To make a point on semantics here....

the choice is biggest "flop". And flop tends to me turn around for the worst. Something destined to fail really isn't a flop, it was a failure to begin with. The pipin was a failure to begin with... the Jaguar was a flop. (think of it this way, the word is originally an onomatopoeia for the sound of something plopping onto the ground... if something never got off the ground, how could it flop back onto it? So flop insinuates an idea that it went up before coming back down....)

But with that said I'd call the Dreamcast the biggest flop, and it's rather obvious why. It shined like no other for a short period of time, it's release date showed the highest first day sales EVER for a console to that day (it has since been beaten, but still). The first year of its life it showed great promise and a huge library and all kinds of great stuff.

Then it just, almost like over night with the dawn of PS2 on the horizon, flopped. It failed. Huge wearhouses were full of brand new consoles that wouldn't move (be purchased).

That's a flop... that's the epitome of flop.



Another thing I'd call a flop is something that looked like it was gonna go somewhere and didn't. Let's take a hypothetical, Sony had some huge console on the horizon that appeared to be the greatest thing since sliced bread (oh please), and then on release date of said console, everyone who bought it was pissed about it and the console proceeded to fail. Oh wait... maybe that wasn't a hypothetical...

The virtual boy was like this... at the time Nintendo looked like everything they made was gold. Then this thing oozed out their rear end and plopped right onto the ground like a big stinky pile of Nintendo excrement.

[noiseredux]

(here's how you troll at the racketboy forums...) The Dreamcast didn't fail because of marketing or PR. It was because of its controller.

[puke_face]

I'd probably go with the 3D0, simply because it was meant to be more of a multi-media home computer entertainment system than just a video game system, but flopped because of its poorly marketed price. In a marketing class, the point you would want to make would be that advertising can have a serious impact on the way a product is portrayed to the public.

Just my two cents.

[crux]

One of my issues with Dreamcast being the focus is that the system had a plethora of reasons why it could never succeed - marketing was just one of a laundry list of problems, many of which were inherited by previous mistakes Sega had made with their consoles. Then again, a benefit of talking about the Dreamcast is that you can bring up Sega's previous mistakes (Sega CD, lack of communication between U.S. and Japan leading to the 32x, poor marketing for Saturn in America) to explain why the Dreamcast was destined to flop as hard as it did.

I say do AND don't go with Dreamcast. How about that?!

[crux]

Virtual Boy, Gunpei Yokoi notorious failure (and only one!)...

I don't entirely disagree with you here, but WonderSwan wasn't exactly a resounding success either. Not entirely his fault, as the Gameboy he created became too much of a behemoth even with its successors for the WonderSwan to compete. It's a shame he didn't live to see it, nonetheless.