Video games are a business, and just like with any other business there are often mistakes made. These can be minor and unimportant, or enormous and crippling, with the sheer breadth of these blunders and failures often mind-boggling in their oversight. With that in mind, let’s take a look at just a few of the many hundreds of mistakes made by this multi-billion dollar industry, and why these have earned a place of notoriety in the world of interactive entertainment.

Nintendo Accidentally Creates Their Biggest Competitor

The Nintendo Entertainment System was far from the first video game system, finding its place within the third generation of consoles, though it’s arguably still the most famous. Despite all this fame, love and attention, Nintendo is no stranger to, well, strange decisions, many of which would come back to bite them in a spectacular fashion.

Approaching the end of the fourth generation of consoles, Nintendo had been looking at different ideas which they could use to extend their line of consoles. While a full new machine was always an inevitability, there were other ideas which major console developers had been eyeing – addons. As the Sega Genesis had with the ill-fated 32X CD addition, Nintendo looked at a similar device for their SNES.

(Source: Flickr)

Working together with Sony, this CD addon would not only allow for storage capacity which would dwarf that of cartridge-based systems, but the added horsepower would also mean that the games could get even more bang for the user’s buck. Ultimately, however, Nintendo decided to dump this idea, reiterating their cartridge format for the next generation with the Nintendo 64. Meanwhile, the other device continued to evolve into a little something of its own, which you might recognize as the slightly popular console series called the Sony PlayStation.

In terms of poor business partnership decisions, this even surpasses when Blockbuster decided against working with Netflix, a mistake which Betway reports cost a relatively paltry $100 million but, also, possibly their entire business. Compare this with what Forbes reports as the estimated one-year revenue of over a billion dollars from PlayStation’s online service alone, and we have to wonder just how much Nintendo is still kicking themselves over that move.

The Successor Which Never Was

Speaking of Nintendo, their questionable decisions hardly stop there.

Anyone who remembers films from the 90s might remember the fascination we had at the time with the concept of virtual reality. It was the way of the future, and would undoubtedly become the basis for an enormous new entertainment market. Sure, but there was a little bit of a huge problem. The tech, as it turns out, was simply not there yet.

The Virtual Boy, originally designed as a successor for the GameBoy, was the earliest consumer-level gaming virtual reality device. It had a lot of hype, but in the end, it would leave customers seeing red, and not just because of the red and black monochrome display. Headache-inducing, uncomfortable, and with a small library of unimpressive games, the Virtual Boy would become another feather in Nintendo’s poor decision cap.

Ringing Red

The seventh generation of consoles was among the most anticipated of any so far. 3D had come so far in the prior generation that we all expected so much from the next, and in many ways, these hopes would be realized. If, however, you put your faith in preordering Microsoft’s second console effort, the Xbox 360, you might have been in for a shock.

Unlike Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft hadn’t quite the level of experience with developing hardware, and their efforts to rush out 360s at low cost meant that the quality control was less than terrible. With eventual fail-rates of this first shipping of consoles reaching around 23.7%, this necessitated a huge amount of refunds and repairs. Kitguru reported that this ultimately cost Microsoft over a billion dollars. Even Bill himself would feel that one.

What Do You Mean, Data Protection?

Not one to be left in the dust of Nintendo and Microsoft’s poor business decisions, Sony had a trick of their own up their sleeve. This trick was called not properly protecting user data or encrypting their servers, meaning that millions of users were at risk of having their personal and financial details stolen. Not only did the downtime put in place by Sony as they got themselves collected last months, but it also cost them around $171 million directly, according to Forbes. Add to this the cost of lower confidence in Sony as an organization and the real cost could easily reach double that.

Tip Of The Iceberg

Video games are a business, and like any business worth a great deal of money there is a constant tug of war between what developers want, and what consumers like. While incompetence and wishful thinking is often the cause of some of the biggest mistakes of the past, in the current era, we have reached a time where it is greed more than anything else which dictates the industries direction.

While we all hope that the market stays healthy and diverse, history teaches us that more mistakes are a matter of when not if. In fact, as we write this very article we see Electronic Arts facing off against Belgium’s legal system, in what we hope will eventually inspire another list. At least as consumers, we can be cautious and hope for the best from an industry which has given us hundreds of hours of entertainment.