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[IrishNinja]

i will fight anyone that says sega-CD here

Edit: Saturn expensive 5 processors didn't help.

yeah but i mean, releasing early? shitting on retailers? pulling the system like a year before you had a replacement to sell? there's so much else that went wrong there too

i love this

The official Dreamcast magazine gave away a demo disk with an action replay cheat thing on it which just after publication was found to bypass the security on the system and allow pirated games to be burnt onto CDs and played with ease.

The OFFICIAL Dreamcast magazine.

i always forget that one - honestly the DC would've had more time without those burns, but not a whole hell of a lot, sadly

Prefer it in GIF form.

...that's damn good

 

[Seiryoden]

RRoD.

Maybe the necessity of upside-downing our PS1s deserves a mention? Seems pretty commonplace.

 

[KORNdoggy]

RROD affected me the most i reckon. Put me off the xbox brand almost entirely. Went from my primary console for 2 gens to something i barely touch these days.

 

[Toxi]

The official Dreamcast magazine gave away a demo disk with an action replay cheat thing on it which just after publication was found to bypass the security on the system and allow pirated games to be burnt onto CDs and played with ease.

The OFFICIAL Dreamcast magazine.

Okay, this is my favorite fuck up in this thread

 

[rainking187]

Okay, this is my favorite fuck up in this thread

That reminds me of the Viewtiful Joe demo disc on PS2 that would erase your memory card.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

It's definitely not as big in scope and damage as RROD, but I think my favorite one is the time Capcom printed the first run of Okami on the Wii with the IGN watermark on it

 

[opoth]

Get out of here anyone saying Wii U. GOAT Nintendo console, throw Retroarch and Nintendont on there and the world is your oyster. 32X, Jaguar and Saturn all much bigger disappointments, not to mention the RRoD.

 

[OriginalPoe]

Killed an entire company.

This is the winner I think

 

[99Luffy]

Is today National Hot Take Day? Biggest manufacturing blunders in video game history and these are your contributions?

Can people please stop saying hot take. Its so not fetch.

 

[Duffk1ng]

Gizmondo!

 

[Rellik]

I can't believe I went through 5 Xbox 360's. No wonder I finished the generation with a PS3/PC.

 

[Occam]

Semantics maybe, but wasn't RRoD a design flaw rather than a manufacturing blunder?

As far as under-producing is concerned, Nintendo is king. Once again not meeting demand with SNES Mini right after the NES Mini-shitshow can't just be incompetence, it has to be by design. Just like they purposely didn't make enough NES cartridges 30 years ago in order to keep demand and prices at an artificially inflated level.

 

[Ecotic]

uDraw sounds like a forecasting error, not exactly a manufacturing problem. Nothing was wrong with it, THQ just forecasted way more sales than they actually sold.

 

[Drilbit777]

U draw for sure

 

[Morrigan Stark]

The people that made E.T. and video game history.

Nothing can beat that, really.

 

[Atomski]

It shattered consumer confidence?

The 360 went on to sell over 85 million units.

Consumers got pretty screwed. Once you got a pretty big library and all your friends played on Xbox live you felt stuck.

Was one of the many reasons I moved on to PC for my dedicated gaming device and didn't look back.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Killed an entire company.

They tried to catch lightning in a bottle by jamming a fork into an electrical socket.

 

[MoonFrog]

Is there a single 2005 Xbox 360 alive still? One that hasn't been repaired that is.

Yep. Need to use a pin to open the disc drive though and I haven't personally checked it in years (my sister did play it about 1 year ago now though).

 

[sTiTcH AU]

Is there a single 2005 Xbox 360 alive still? One that hasn't been repaired that is.

Yep, my little sister still uses my old xbox 360 bought in may 2006 so launch period as is didnt release in AU until march 2006.

I actually had one of my 360's red ring, the power brick didnt like sitting on carpet. I let it cool down, moved the power brick to a batter spot and it never happened again (unless that was just pure coincidence).

 

[Garani]

While PS3 was not biggest manufacturing blunder in history it was biggest engineering blunder in history. $599 price tag and still taking over $200 hit per sold console. At the same time X360 costed $399 was sold with small loss and was pretty much equally powerful.

That isn't quite true. The PS3 was superior in hardware to the X360. The real problem is that it was so difficult to get it to work to its maximum that it felt as if the X360 was at the same level.

 

[Cepheus]

E.T. and Pac-Man on the 2600. Source: I did a 5,000-word EPQ on it. Pac-Man was actually more damaging to Atari than ET was- they produced about 6 million more carts than they could sell for the former. 6 million.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Hellgate: London? Too Human? Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning?

 

[Iriscomeback]

RROD no question

It made headlines here and a television show that deals with consumer related problems dedicated a whole show to it. That's what a spectacular disaster this was.

It cost Microsoft billions.

 

[foxuzamaki]

THQ was basically killed by over producing udraw tablets. That

I still can't believe this

 

[DocSeuss]

Udraw is easily the worst one ever. It literally killed an entire company that had previously been one of the largest, most successful publishers out there.

RROD didn't kill Microsoft, and Xbox division still made a ton of money. Stuff like Kin was more costly iirc, though it's been a REALLY long time since I looked at those numbers.

RROD no question

It made headlines here and a television show that deals with consumer related problems dedicated a whole show to it. That's what a spectacular disaster this was.

It cost Microsoft billions.

It didn't. It was 1.15 billion.

They spent $2 billion on minecraft.

 

[MilkyJoe]

Got to be Kinect 2.0

 

[Madame M]

Hard to compete with the massive scale of the red ring of death

 

[Haunted]

Came in here to post the udraw tablet.

 

[EctoPrime]

PSP launch model firmware 1.0 having rubbish security really turbo charged unofficial software development and in the end piracy.

 

[KillerMan91]

That isn't quite true. The PS3 was superior in hardware to the X360. The real problem is that it was so difficult to get it to work to its maximum that it felt as if the X360 was at the same level.

It was slightly more powerful in rights hands but costed way more to manufacture. It was engineering disaster.

 

[Markitron]

It's the RRoD and nothing even comes close. I only used the 360 for exclusives and still had 3 of them die on me.

 

[Linkstrikesback]

Woah what's the story here?

UDraw sold decently one year on Wii as an exclusive. They then doubled down on it the next year with PS3 and 360 versions, as well as a Wii re-release... and it absolutely cratered. They produce somewhere up to a million of the tablets and couldn't shift the vast majority of them.

The UDraw killed the company.

 

[Rellik]

PSP launch model firmware 1.0 having rubbish security really turbo charged unofficial software development and in the end piracy.

Which led to the PSP hardware being a huge success.

 

[Woo-Fu]

RRoD was crazy, one of the guys in our group was on his 11th 360 at one point.

 

[Kinyou]

I'd also go with Red ring of death. I had replace about four Xbox 360s which is just insane

 

[Jimnymebob]

That reminds me of the Viewtiful Joe demo disc on PS2 that would erase your memory card.

I was going to post that.
For something similar, Jak X would corrupt memory cards when it autosaved.

 

[kqedequalsvolvo]

The PS3 was a Trojan Horse though...they sold it at that kind of loss to win a format war against HD-DVD...stand alone Blu-ray players were going for $900+ when the PS3 launched it was not only a gaming console, bit the best Blu-ray player on the market for $300+ less...

Yeah, was just going to mention that regarding the PS3 being a loss leader. Essentially an investment to destroy a competitor's format partly by going to distributors and showing that millions of people suddenly had a Blu-Ray device in their home and therefore Blu-Ray was the format worth investing in.

OT, has to be RRoD. I feel like Atari/ET had the biggest economic and cultural impact in terms of the industry but I don't see that as a manufacturing blunder really. A well crafted E.T game probably would have shifted the copies, but they rushed it and paid for their hubris.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

The intial Xbox 360 in general was a huge blunder. We all remember the red ring of death but don't forget about scratching game disc, hard drive disconnects, crappy external wifi, over heating external power brick that was heavier than actual bricks, the slowest memory cards ever and easily dislodged video cables.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

UDraw is pretty impressive. It managed to actually kill an entire company.

 

[Zee-Row]

Nintendo forgot to put a CD drive.

 

[Zombie James]

The intial Xbox 360 in general was a huge blunder. We all remember the red ring of death but don't forget about scratching game disc, hard drive disconnects, crappy external wifi, over heating external power brick that was heavier than actual bricks, the slowest memory cards ever and easily dislodged video cables.

Throw in lack of HDMI and Wifi and you've got one of the most rushed systems in history. I still believe the vast majority of the 360's problems could have been prevented if it launched in 06.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

While the RROD was the biggest in terms of money loss no question, the udraw tablet defies rational thought.

They literally produced millions for a year late port on adult oriented consoles. They bet the company on them. Wasn't there a kotaku article that had quotes from the inside?

 

[Linkura]

The official Dreamcast magazine gave away a demo disk with an action replay cheat thing on it which just after publication was found to bypass the security on the system and allow pirated games to be burnt onto CDs and played with ease.

The OFFICIAL Dreamcast magazine.

I was a loyal subscriber and loved this magazine... never knew this. Lmao

 

[Herp Derpington]

32X and Saturn. Both debuted within 8 months of each other. This doesn't even take into account Neptune which never officially released (I'd like to get my hands on the one I saw in the wild recently though). RRoD is the popular choice because it's MS and more recent and I'd imagine the younger audience here skews towards recent events in their memory but MS was able to weather that storm and come out with a very capable redesign that probably saved the division (Kinect helped of course) and remained very popular. Being MS with billions helped too naturally.

If you're old enough to remember though Sega effectively committed seppuku with these products. They tried to overcome with a valiant effort in DC but it was too little too late. The mishandling of the transition from 16 to 32 bit effectively killed them as a hardware company. It was amazing to see happen.

Edit

It was slightly more powerful in rights hands but costed way more to manufacture. It was engineering disaster.

The PS3 was thankfully the end of esoteric Japanese hardware design. Should have happened a long time ago.

 

[Papo Swing]

Non of those come even close to the Virtual Boy.

All of those at least served a purpose even if it was a bad idea. The Virtual Boy was basically dead on arrival becaise who would use red as the only color in that scenerio.

At least it didn't kill the company like UDraw. Did that game suck really bad? It looks cool but wven then wow.

 

[AdmiralMikey]

Nintendo forgot to put a CD drive.

I'd agree with this one solely on the basis that the repercussions are still being felt 20 years later. By failing to keep up with Sony and Sega on the CD front, the N64 cost Nintendo a lot of good will with 3rd parties and opened the doors for them to jump to the other platforms more rapidly than in the NES or SNES days.

If Nintendo had gone with the disc platform, lowing 3rd party costs and expanding their creativity, who knows what could have been different? Could PS1 mainstays like FF7 and Metal Gear Solid have appeared on N64 instead, or perhaps ONLY on N64? Nintendo's stodgy stance on cartridges and piracy ended up with them losing generations of gamers.

 

[Fury451]

THQ was basically killed by over producing udraw tablets. That

Ah yes, the classic tale of the expensive product that nobody asked for, wanted, or knew what to do with, which has killed many a company.

Red Ring of Death is probably one of the most notable of all time from a high profile company.

Then again ET for the Atari almost killed the entire videogame industry, so probably that one.

 

[JimmyRustler]

RRoD

Funny times. At some point it didn't even upset me that much any more because MS was pretty generous with the compensation and exchanged the defect 360s quite fast.

 

[Neptonic]

THQ was basically killed by over producing udraw tablets. That

I laugh every single time I hear this

 

[Glowsquid]

I haven't seen anybody post a pic of the Yoshi's Storyu disc, which is even worse.

edit: nevermind, #28