Mention any mistake you think a company made. Try to keep the answers to ones you've felt prior to the fall out of the mistake, on other words don't play monday morning quarterback. With that said you can even mention mistakes you thought of for personal reason not so much ones that had a fallout.

these are in no particular order.

Name the company then the mistake:

Sony - ps2 only had 2 controller ports. I couldn't believe they stayed with 2 after four person split screen gameplay became huge in the last gen.

Nintendo-I'll get these to out of the way now: Virtual Boy and N64 being cart based. 

Microsoft-to few game franchises owned prior to releasing the x-box, when they got into the console business, they were the makers of Age of Empires and flight Simulator. I was like if your working on a console for years, why didn't you invest into more startup studios and such that were console friendly, every franchise they had wasn't even a descent concept for console use.

Nintendo-lack of HD support another easily implemented option that Nintendo simply left out. In all honesty because of the annoying friend code thing I'd rather there have been HD support instead of built in wifi.

Sony&Microsoft-This gen these two companies will have system on the market longer then a year without a single first party big sequal. (I'm not counting Project Gotham Racing)Nintendo knows it needs Mario at the front gate, this time it was Zelda. and within a year smash bros. and Metroid and Mario Galaxy. Sony opted for new franchises, I seriously think they should have moved God of War 2's production to the ps3. Microsoft also needed Halo earlier I know it should be perfect at launch, but lacking sure bets the first year is a bad move. I say this because 3rd party big sequals will never be launched this early on a system unless it's a multiplatform port, so the first/second party has to bring the big guns to sell the system.

 Nintendo- the tiny onboard memory for the purchase of VC games. It's like they either expected people to not buy many things, or weren't thinking it through. they had to know they'd eventually want to use the VC for bigger titles, and even new content, that requires more space. Although in the long run this could help them if it results in them selling volumes of usb based hardrives.

I'll stop there and let others add-on. AND PLEASE BE BALANCED AND RATIONAL IN YOUR ARGUEMENT!!!!! I know this subject is prone to a fanboy war. So please avoid it.

Only major disagreement I have with the above is Virtua Boy sticking with carts.  Remember, it was released in '95.  And it was a more-or-less "portable" system.  And, most importantly, you held it to your face.  Too many moving parts, too fragile a concept, and too much heat generated.

The mistake they made with Virtua Boy was in not waiting a year for LCD tech to get good/cheap enough so that the whole console wasn't merely "repeatedly scan a red laser across your eye."  A more-than-one-color Virtua Boy, with non-headache-inducing LCDs could have possibly saved late-90's Nintendo.




Sega: waiting until 1999 to release the DreamCast.  They knew Sony was a juggernaut, and they knew Saturn was ready to be cannibalized.  If they'd had a 2-year head start instead of just the one, they may have had enough momentum to get over the "zOMG EMOTION ENGINE!" hype, even with a machine that really *was* inferior to the PS2.

Nintendo: waiting until 2001 to release GameCube.  The last two years of N64's life were agonizing.  I think Nintendo played their cards well with GameCube, maintaining market presence and positioning themselves so that Wii's success would be possible, but they could have stopped the bloodletting that was happening on N64, similar to how Microsoft would later do with the original X-box.

Nintendo:  Not figuring out a way to get into the European market with the NES.  Seriously, if it weren't for Nintendo's lack of presence in Europe, Sega may have never gained foothold with the Master System, and would have had a much harder time marketing the Genesis.  I know there were legal problems with Atari, but Atari was dead by this point, and I imagine *some* settlement could have been reached.  Nintendo has historically done poorly in Europe (Wii seems to be changing that), and almost every prospective competition has used this fact as a trojan horse.

Microsoft: Buying Rareware.  Rare is the kind of development studio that is only useful if you're already dominating.  They'll give you an assured smash hit every two years or so, but basically their games will only be attractive to people who already purchased the console (with the exception of maybe Goldeneye).  Nobody bought an SNES for DKC.  They had an SNES already, and DKC was a kick-ass game they could brag about to their Genesis friends.  Nobody bought an N64 because of Banjo-Kazooie, but it was one of N64's top-selling games.  Likewise, the people who bought Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Perfect Dark Zero were already X-box fans.  If X-box had been a stronger platform, Grabbed by the Ghoulies would have been a much more important game than it was, and Perfect Dark was simply overshadowed by Halo.

Sony: E3, 2006.  No explanation needed.

Sony: Half-assing the PS2 hard-drive almost as badly as Nintendo half-assed GameCube's online functionality.  If they'd added $10 to the price and made it more like what the 64DD was supposed to be, then supported and advertised it decently, it could have seen success on par with Eye Toy.

Sony: 599 USD, nuff said. (had it been 400 at least I think Nintendo and xbox360 had got their ass kicked)

Nintendo: Bad support for Europe made in Sony land, and honestly I don't think it will change much this time around.

Microsoft: Using standard component from the PC world without having good contracts for price reductions (xbox). No Halo3 for christmas 2006. Spending to much to trying to get japan.

foof, I have to call on the Wii lacking HD being a mistake. It would not have been easy to implement. A lot of the cost of developing the 360 and PS3 (that's developing, not even getting to manufacturing) was all the work at implementing HD into those systems. The had to figure out how much RAM they needed (they didn't just guess it was at least 512MB, and happened to be right); they had to figure out how to keep the system from overheating; and they would have had to program HD textures in their games, which takes more time and/or people than working on SD textures.

Robjoh, Nintendo is giving better support to Europe, although there is still work to be done. The Wii did launch just a few weeks after North America and Japan. Yet some games do need faster localization.

As for mistakes:

 Nintendo: Treating developers poorly until they walked away. Even the carts on the N64 did that, as developers insisted that they were not enough space, with not enough profit margin.

Sony: Turning the Playstations into kitchen sink devices, and forgetting that they were gaming systems more than anything else. The PSP may be selling on its multimedia, but that got more focus than the games. And the PS3 could have gotten away with its design (actually pretty close to the 360, but with the Cell, blu-ray, and mandatory HDD), but those parts were integrated hastily together, causing the system's infamous manufacturing cost.

 Microsoft: Pumping money into everything but proper research into worldwide marketing.

 But Nintendo has already said that they could implement HD support through a software upgrade. 

PS3- Price. Wii- No HD. Virtual Boy- Too early release, the tech was not ready for it at the time. GBA- Should have been released earlier. PSP- Shitty useability.

Squaresoft - Changing their focus from gameplay to FMV.

I completley disagree that no HD in Wii was a mistake. HD aren't that established yet, and by the time it is in 2010 Nintendo will release Nintendo6 anyways.

 But the biggest mistake was still Nintendos. Not having the guts to put CD in N64 was that consoles downfall.

 Although this may be something you dislike, I don't think this can be considered a "mistake."  The FF series saw unprecidented success right after the switch to FMV-style games.