Jaguar and 3D0 were around for at least 2 years that I know of
note i said released and
viable. The Jag was technically "pulled from shelves" by Atari in december of 1995, but no one was making games for it by then, retailers had long since banished it from shelves if they carried it at all, advertising had ceased, etc.
Wiki has it selling less than 250,000 units from 1993 to 1995. This is beyond abysmal. Most of those sales would have been at launch or christmas- and you can be reasonably certain sales were basically zero for the last year to six months or so. On average you're talking way less than 5K units a month outside of holiday season. The vita sold 6 or 7 times this amount in march, for reference.The 3D0 wasn't *quite* this bad, but the story is the same. Once the Saturn and PS1 launched, it was dead. FAR more expensive but with noticeably worse looking games, it wasn't long for retail.
CD-i not really a console??
It wasn't. The CD-i was what you might call an interactive media device. Philips ran hour long (?) infomercials to sell the thing, and the vast majority of it was focused on things like the encyclopedias, video CDs, and educational software it could run. It had a handful of token games- mostly the type full of TERRIBLE live action FMV, but that wasn't the point of the unit.
Note that for a "console", not shipping with a game controller at ALL is a very bad sign. The "controller" for the CDi was simply a remote control- to give you an idea of how essential philips thought gaming was to the unit.
Rare as unicorns? It was playable and available for purchase in every electronics store in Southern CA and i'm pretty sure even Electronics Boutique and Babbages used to sell it as well.)
as i noted before, Philips sold the thing primarily via infomercials. It didn't tend to show up in places like Sears, Wal mart, Kmart, Department Stores etc. where most consoles were actually sold. There was a revision later on that was targeted more towards gamers (you might be thinking of this version of the Cdi) but by then, it was hopelessly outclassed. No 3d capabilities, and 2D capabilities that were somehow worse than even the SNES and Genesis by a good amount. It's competition by then (the PS1 and Saturn) were far cheaper as well as being more powerful. It sold less than 500K over its lifespan- this is extremely rare for a console. I think the jag is the only major console with weaker sales- as Atari was basically insolvent and collapsing, this is not a good comparison.
Lol- and the pippin sold a grand total of 42K units and was pulled in less than a year. I'm pretty sure there actually ARE more unicorns than this.
