You know about consoles that never saw the light of day, but what about the consoles that you are so dearly fond of that went on to make video game history? There’s barely any information online that concisely pins down the controversies behind the scenes when a new console is launched, and that deprives gamers of trivia they’d need to geek out about their favorite consoles.
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The video game industry has always been a tough market to jump into, every new venture is a risky gamble. Even big-time corporations often face some challenging hurdles that compromise the release of something innovative.
6The Original Xbox
TheXboxhad a secret name while it was in development hell, “the coffin box” because most employees within Microsoft who were working on the project deemed it a failure right from the get-go and feared losing their jobs over it. The main issue was the production of the units since Microsoft had to make each of them in-house.
Not only that, another hurdle was procuring a CPU to power the system. Although Microsoft tasked AMD with developing one, the company decided to opt out last minute for a CPU made by Intel instead, even though AMD helped with most of the development for the prototype hardware. Microsoft even had trouble finding the right controller, and ended up settling for a clunky confusing mess.
The initial launch was fairly successful.Microsoftsold a lot of units in North America, but soon it realized the production costs far outweighed the profits the console was generating. Microsoft stood to lose billions and immediately discontinued production of the original Xbox as soon as its successor theXbox 360was announced.
5Nintendo’s Famicom
Nintendowas a toy company when it first started and produced Hanafuda cards during its initial years. That start made them highly doubt the process of creating and launching their own home entertainment system, hence the creation of the Famicom wasn’t taken very seriously.
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The system barely saw any active development and the project definitely sowed some internal discord within the company. Even after its launch, the Famicom barely had any games to its name before Hudsonsoft started developing titles for the console. This was a huge shift in pace for Nintendo and came to later define the company as a whole.
4Nintendo’s Wii U
TheWii U, prior to its launch, saw a lot of controversy, and internal execs at Nintendo were pretty divided when it came to green-lighting the project due to the fact that they had little faith in its success and the addition of a screen.
Not only that, the company’s stock also took a major dip after the console was announced. The production costs far outweighed the benefits, yet Nintendo execs still went for it and powered through the losses since they knew they had a goodlineup of gamesplanned for the system.
3Sega’s DreamCast
Despite losing a lot of money trying topromote and sell the Genesis, the execs at Sega were still hoping to recover from that blow by launching a console that would shake up the video game market.
Not only didSegascoff atEA’s growing popularity and essentially shunned its lineup of games, but it even blew its budget on an advertising campaign that barely brought any traction. Its previous release, the Sega Saturn, failed majorly, since it barely had any games and most of them were a clunky visual mess.
Unfortunately, before its launch, the DreamCast was fairly internally contested and the company was unsure of the hardware’s capabilities. Inevitably after the launch, Sega quit manufacturing hardware entirely.
2Nintendo Switch
After the critical failure of the Wii U, Nintendo took a big risk with its next big console release. The higher-ups in the company were already weary of producing a system that mostly focused on single-player games but came to an agreement when they coined a unique way to use the controllers of the console. Nintendo needed to capitalize on its initial success with the Wii, and theSwitchwas a risky investment it thought would be worth it.
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It needed a way to close the gap between casual and heavily invested gamers. The Switch started off as a fairly ambitious project but with barely any direction going into it. The execs at Nintendo were still adamant about releasing moregames on the Wii, regardless of its age. The Switch wasn’t looking like it was going to cut it; however, the company still went ahead with producing units and eventually got a decent line-up of games on the console. It inevitably stepped away from touch controls and focused on mobile portability.
1Sony’s PlayStation 2
Although considered to be one of the highest-selling consoles of all time, upon launch, thePS2barely had enough units or decent games to ship out. Not only that, before launch, it faced some significant legal and technical hurdles. For example, the Emotion Engine Sony developed with Toshiba faced scrutiny over its production because it apparently infringed on a patent held by the University of Wisconsin.
The touch-feedback development company Immersion also took a swing at Sony for using its vibration technology to powerthe Dualshock controllersit so proudly boasted about and eventually won the case. It also didn’t help that the console was an absolute pain to develop games for.
It had ten different processors and the kits provided to game developers included stacks of hard-to-read manuals that barely made the process any easier. Most of the code they’d have to write would have to be flawless, since only the main CPU had a debugger they could use. For the rest, they’d have to develop without spotting any bugs.
Sony wasn’t confident when it came out with the PS2, and the top executives knew theline-up of gamesit had at the time was barely sub-par when compared to the boasts it was making, but it still managed to somehow generate enough hype to garner its success. Despite the challenges faced with console production and shipping upon launch, the PS2 bounced back and maintained its popularity with the public.
