Sales Point Of No Return for Platforms

[Wman1996]

I had a thought the other day of when failed and underperforming platforms hit their point of no return. I will give some of my thoughts in this initial post so that you all can discuss what you think after seeing some examples.

Saturn: E3 1995. Saturn killed itself in the global market after rushing to market in North America and costing $100 more than PS1.

N64: Holiday 1997. The double-whammy of Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo in 1997 (and their sequels in the future) were simply too much for Nintendo 64 to deal with for the rest of its life. N64 may have gotten LOZ: Ocarina of Time for Holiday 1998, but it wasn't enough. N64's droughts and high software prices were simply too much to come close to the sales of PS1.

GCN: September 2003. Most of the GameCube's heavy hitters released by this point and even a new aggressive low price of $99.99 (down from $149.99 and the launch price of $199.99) was not enough. Even the new kid, Xbox, sold about 3 million more globally despite being a nonfactor in Japan. 

PS3: Launch. Yup, PS3 sealed its fate of selling under 100 million and a lot less than its predecessor right at launch. The high price and bizarre architecture for devs and the lack of enthusiasm were palpable. 

PS Vita: Launch. 3DS was already saving itself and Vita had a high price for memory cards and a lack of interesting software. 

Wii U: April 2013. Could the Wii U with some changes at this point have matched or exceeded GameCube's sales? Sure. But it didn't happen in real life. Wii U had a successful Holiday 2012 launch and then squandered the first half of 2013 with severe software droughts. The hardware units sold were dire in early 2013 and Wii U never really sold except for holiday seasons for the first few years.

Xbox One: Unveiling. My goodness was the unveiling a disaster. Microsoft had to fix itself after this big time to hit the lifetime total of about 58 million. The gen was lost before Xbox One and PS4 even launched.