Beat me to it

I don't agree to the cartridge thing. I still prefer cartidges over optical disks: No loading times, savegames, more robust (+ low energy consumption, for handhelds). Look at iPods: The current trend is moving away from hard disks to flash RAM/ROM.

Nintendo:
- upsetting Square/Enix so bad they didn't wanna work for them any longer (and sacrificing Mario RPG's PAL release in the course!)
- splitting up with Sony over the SNES CD drive (or maybe the mistake was to even start a cooperation...?)

Sony:
- maybe the PS3's price. But it's too early, I remember thinking the PS2 was way too expensive when it was released.

Lucasfilm Games / Lucas Arts:
- abandoning their unpayable series of adventure games to become The Star Wars Game Outlet. Okay, business wise it probably paid off.

To be honest, 300 million for a company that hasnt really made a good game since Nintendo sold them doesnt really seem like bad business sense to me. I think it was a gutsy decision to sell Rare and one that has allowed them to invest in other 3rd parties.

But yeah im gonna have to admit that the PS1/SNES hybrid shouldnt have been scrapped, even if it was a failure, it still would have meant Sony not entering the console race and Nintendo making more $$$.

Saying that, if Sony hadnt, we may not have seen the gutsy resurgence we have of late from Nintendo and may not have even seen the Wii or DS. Remember, every bad decision made leads to a good thing (mostly.)

I STILL own a Jaguar. 64-bits of power FTW!

The $599 price point was pretty stupid in hindsight, but they should be able to overcome it.

As long as you make more right decisions that wrong, you will be fine. Nintendo make a lot of mistakes, but made many more right decisions. (How many people thought the Wii was a mistake before launch?) It seems that Sega's last few hardware generations were all mistakes.

I think the dumbest business decision were the years in between SNES and PS domination.

3DO, Jaguar, Everything SEGA, Virtual boy, N64 Cartridges, just plain awful times.....

Hey, who doesnt know about the 3DO. It was THE MULTIMEDIA MACHINE of its time. Total high tech, could use it to watch movies (i think), absolute beast and even though veryvery expensive, quite a deal for all the high tech inside - oh wait.

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.

 ... and Atari being approached by Sega pre Genesis launch to be Sega's american representative and refusing.

... and Atari  being approached by Namco pre US PacMan launch to be Pacman's american representative and refusing.

Really EA chose to skip Dreamcast support because Ricitiello ( Ceo of EA ) signed a very lucrative contract with SCE for producing PS2 games ...

One word, Kalecovision..............