1.) Atari turning down Nintendo's offer to market the NES in North America.
2.) TTI's (Turbo Technologies) handling of the Turbographix-16. The US branch of NEC completely mismanaged the system. While it handily beat the Genesis/Mega Drive in Japan, TTI failed to bring top notch titles to the US. The Genesis crushed the TG-16 in the US in spite of having a weaker Japanese game lineup to bring over.
3.)Sega of Japan forcing Sega of America to release the 32X. Tom Kalinske, president of Sega of America, had great success with the Genesis and new that releasing the 32X so closely to the Saturn was a mistake. He had lead Sega to a 50/50 split of the North American market. Sega of Japan had been steamrolled by the SNES in Japan. So why they thought they should be telling him what works in his home market is beyond me.
4. Sega of Japan turning down ArtX's 64 bit chipset to go with their own 9 processor nightmare for the Sega Saturn. ArtX offered the chipset to Nintendo and it became the N64.
5. Sega giving the Saturn a surprise launch. Sega launched the system in May, six months ahead of schedule, in North America and only at select retailers. This had three major effects. It pissed off retailers that didn't get the system early resulting in them refusing to carry Sega products. It pissed of third party developers who had all of their launch titles on track for completion by the September launch date. It also resulted in all of Sega's first party titles being rushed. Daytona and Virtua Fighter looked horrible, although the played well and despite Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2 showing how truly capable the Saturn was it left a horrible impression with consumers as far the different in power between the Saturn and Playstation.
6. Sega canning the Saturn in the US in 1998. Because of this ill concieved decision, they had to pull the plug on the Saturn in Japan far too soon. The system was a strong second and with no system in the US Sega had to push the Dreamcast's launch up by year. Not only that, the decision angered retailers and third parties. This gave the Dreamcast no chance to succeed. Now Sega had angry Japanese retailers and third party developers to go along with the angry retailers and third parties of North America.
7. Nintendo not thoroughly reading the SNES CD/Playstation contract with Sony. Sony wanted a licensing fee for each game sold. Yamauchi was furious that Sony expected Nintendo as well as third parties to pay them licensing fees for each of their CD titles. The resulting full out lead to Kutaragi developing a stand alone Playstation to compete against Nintendo.
8. Nintendo sticking with cartridges. This cost them Square and Enix. Which ultimately cost them Japan.
9. Nokia creating the N-Gage.
10. Nintendo making the Gamecube's default color purple.
11. Sammy buying Sega and then dismantling all of the top notch development teams outside of AM2. They are the reason for the fall of Sega's software quality.
12. Sony promoting Kutaragi to President of SCE. This lead to the PS3's overzealous design and subsequent $599 price point. Kutaragi is a much better engineer than a leader and his handling of both the PSP and PS3 shows this fact.
