Biggest failure of a console

[SparTonberry]

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was a million-seller, not really a failure. Not bad for video game written in a short time. But, it was a difficult game.

And now, due to the documentary Atari Game Over, E.T. is the most famous video game in history and in museums all over the world. Not bad really.

Only really a failure if it didn't meet Atari's, perhaps unrealistically, high sales expectations. (I've heard the figure of millions of copies of E.T. and Pac-Man thrown in the dump may have been exaggeration. But if they did expect Pac-Man to sell to 120% of console owners, that would have been just insane.

And yet after dumping E.T.s in 1983... apparently they still made more after that. As I've seen on another forum, a guy collecting E.T.s for whatever reason, and he has some copies dated 1986.)

[tom]

Well, yes, you're right, there were never millions of ET carts dumped, it was just a part of Atari stock, incl. hardware and software. Apparently, it's common practise for companies to 'just bury things'.
But, of course, this was nice folklore.

As for ETs stock under Tramiel, he was just selling off old Atari Inc. software (and hardware) at the cheapest price. It was just new labeling.

[Niku-Sama]

yea I never understood that, well the whole thing really.
folk lore? there were eye witness accounts as well as news and newspaper runs of the story so they knew it was in there.

as for dumping it vs relabeling I figure if you sold it, even if it was pennies on the dollar it would have been less of a loss than just literally dumping it

[tom]

Folklore was the millions of ET carts, maybe a few thousand, but never millions.

[tom]

Back to failures, this one:

[SparTonberry]

Definitely Nintendo's worst selling product that can be classified as a console.
Probably because it was way overpriced for what it was. If I recall, prices weren't that far off from the GBA (which was out at the same time), and yet the games were like TI calculator quality.

[BlastProcessing402]

Lost potential is a worse failure than something like the Virtual Boy that was DOA, IMO.

So I'd say the Dreamcast. Good system, good launch, terrible far too premature end due to terrible company management. It could have, SHOULD HAVE, been so much more.