Man that's a good point Rubang. If Sony and Nintendo had done that gaming would have had no competition. No competition = no quality.

The Neo Geo's price. Can you believe the console was more expensive than the PS3 and the cost of one game would get you 3 premium 360 tiltes today with lunch money left over?

SNK released the Neo Geo in 1990. It was an amazing sysytem, however, when the system had its national launch it debuted at $649.99 with two joysticks, a memory card, and a single pack-in game, Magician Lord. Without a game it cost..........$599 (still too expensive for a gaming system 17 full years later!)

Games cost $200 and UP—each. With these "premium" prices though, most gamers weren't able to afford the system and so the console was only accessible to a niche market.

Oddly enough SNK decided to abandon the NeoGeo hardware by the end of 1997, but software for was produced for many years after. Measured from the introduction of the arcade hardware in 1990 to the release of the last home cartridge in 2004, the Neo Geo's 14-year official span of support from its manufacturer makes it the second longest-lived arcade or home console system ever produced, only behind the Atari 2600, which was supported from 1977 until 1992.

agreed
worst ever = 1990, Neo Geo, $650.
Sony's got nothing on these nutjobs.

I say one of the top bad mistakes was the Atari Jaguar.

It was just too little to late , both the Genesis and the Super Nintendo had already been released and not only had the superior library's but where also cheaper by $50 PLUS it had to compete with the 3DO (already mentioned to be a flop too). It had big controllers the probably didn't do much but scare away buyers. Plus IT'S library failed in comparison in every way (at launch and the systems end). Several large games for the system  bombed hard.

Like their main sales slogan "Do the math" These things just did not add up. Here you have a name which died in 1983 during the crash and then suddenly comes back exactly one decade later. To this new generation of gamers Atari meant squat and to the last generation it was just the system they had before nintendo. It was released as a underdog with nothing accept power behind it. Developers complained it was hard to develop games and the released product had flaws in the hardware.

 

 It's probably up there with 3DO in bad moves in the industry. But hey, at least they tried.

*Sigh*

I bought a Jaguar...

Sony- Making PS3 too expensive to manufacture causing Sony to sell the system at a high price. Also Sony Concentrated too much on hardware and not enough on new game franchises. Look at Nintendo they release Brain Training and Nintnedogs and those are selling millions.

Sega- Releasing Dreamcast. Sega should have known it was over after Saturn. Sega was no match for Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony financially and creatively.

Nintendo – Continuing to have cartridges for N64. Also launching a Luigi game instead of Mario during Gamecube’s launch. Though I did enjoy playing Luigis mansion.

Microsoft? – Thinking that they can someday be profitable in Asia.

People saying the dreamcast in itself was a mistake are wrong, the dreamcast is what the saturn should have been, it was a result of learning from all the mistakes that they had made during the genesis/saturn era. Sega finally released a cheap system that was easy to develop for and got a headstart over the competition. The problem with it was that retailers and also gamers had lost faith in Sega because of the saturn/32x etc.

the reason EA abandoned Sega was because of how they treated them in the saturn generation, not because of the dreamcast itself. Some retailers wouldn't carry the dreamcast because of what happened with the 32x/saturn until Sega finally proved that it would sell when it started doing pretty well.

Microsoft joinin' the console business, to never know a global profit, even when their biggest hits are released...

You may call it a "long-term strategy", but i call it a total failure, and a bad business decision...

Actually that was their best decision ever, even at the expense of the RROD problem.

If it wasn't for their early start, they'd probably get creamed by the PS3, going against the Playstation brand is not an easy feat! Less people would know about the Xbox 360, the developers would be learning both architectures at the same time, and they'd care less about the Xbox 360. In hindsight, the RROD will probably be looked at as a little obstacle in the overall history of the Xbox 360.

I remember some pretty stupid ones in the Commodore/Sinclair era...

Anyway, here's a link for you:

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/