Dumbest Business Decisions ever made

[Legend11]

patjuan32 said:
Nintendo sticking with cartridges with the N64.

Guys, look back at the time. Two CD console came out and failed. One was by Sega and I can not remember the name of the other company. It could be SNK with the NeoGeo CD but I'm not sure. Because of this Reps at Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges. Remember, Square showed the Final Fantasy N64 SGI Demo giving the impression that they were supporting the N64.

No one knew that the Playstation would be successful. It launched a year before the N64 yet the N64 was the fasting selling system when it launched it broke the previous launch records. However Square launched Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation because the expense of cartridges. 3D RPGs became a popular genre and helped the Playstation become the dominate Platform. What if Square would have supported the N64 with all their RPGs. Would we all still think that sticking with cartridges was a bad idea?

How does their thinking at the time matter when we're looking at these decisions in hindsight?  I mean I'm sure most of the decisions people are pointing here probably looked like good ones to the people making them at the time otherwise they wouldn't have made them.