The 50 Worst Fails in Tech History

[TornadoFive]

I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned it, but I honestly expected to see the original Xbox 360 in there somewhere. A massive technology fail if I ever saw one. Yeah, I know not all of them got the RROD, but a significant number did.

 

[Galduke]

Read Virtual Boy and muttered "f@ck you", super underrated system with it's sales ruined by rumors and ignorance IT WAS GRAND BOW BEFORE IT'S GLORY.

Edit: lol it's just cracked.com with a paint job, except cracked had 3-4 listed subjects per page in their lists not 1 at a freaking time.

 

[Coles_Law]

It seems weird to link to things like that Blackberry tablet, which was released two weeks ago. Precognition?

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

Huh, thats weird. I thought the biggest tech fail was when Sony got hacked and as a result, thousands of credit card numbers were stolen.

I actually didn't read the whole list so it might be up there somewhere.

 

[Kalabrikan]

First thought? The DSi XL is far from a failure and should not be on a list of 49 genuinely bad tech products that actually did flop, especially if you're someone like me who hasn't owned a DS previously and doesn't own any GBA games.

Edit: After actually looking at the entire list, a fair chunk of these products aren't bad, and might've been on par with or a tad better than their competitors in some cases (i.e. the Zune); they just didn't get enough market share.

 

[TriGGeR_HaPPy]

#14: Playstation Eye Toy
Have you ever seen anyone actually use one of these? We didn't think so. We're not sure how they managed pushing over 10 million of them.Really?

We had one. And back in its day (when I was a bit younger), that thing was hella fun! Whenever other family friends came to visit, their kids would want to play with our Eye Toy too.

That wasn't the best list I've seen, in my opinion. But I'll admit that most of those were worthy entrants.

 

[BlindMessiah94]

The 50 Worst Fails in Tech History

The wonders of modern technology are impressive but as this list of "The 50 Worst Fails in Tech History" proves, not every idea is a good one and even some good ideas just don't work out like they're supposed to.

Do you remember the Apple Pippin [http://www.complex.com/tech/2011/04/the-50-worst-fails-in-tech-history/apple-pippin]? I don't, and I don't think that's just because I'm not a console guy. The unit came out in 1996 bearing a fat price tag and no software of note, and right into a market being warred over by Nintendo and Sega. 100,000 units were built, of which just 42,000 were apparently sold. That's a fail, folks; one of the top 50 worst fails in tech history.

Put together by the gang at Complex, this worst-ever list is packed with an unfortunately large number of familiar products, but I have to admit that it's a lot of fun to look back on some of this stuff, occasionally with regret for a good idea that just didn't pan out but far more often with simple wonder that somebody thought it was a good idea in the first place. A device that lets you smell the internet? Seriously? [Yes, seriously.]

The list includes a few other infamous gaming products, like the Gameboy DSi XL, the Philips CD-i and the Nintendo Virtual Boy, as well as two separate versions of Windows. Microsoft is very well represented on the list, actually, but lest anyone get too smug, so is Apple. In fact, while some of these products are "one-hit wonders" from companies you've never heard of, most were created by huge, successful corporations. It would seem that for every iPhone on the market, there's a skeleton of a Newton hanging in a dark closet out back.

I won't spoil the number-one biggest tech fail of all time, but I will say that I'd never heard of it before today; apparently it was such an epic fail that the company responsible for it pulled the plug almost immediately and buried it deeper than Jimmy Hoffa. I guess it's like the man said: if at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried. The complete list of the 50 Worst Fails in Tech History is up at complex.com [http://www.complex.com/tech/2011/04/the-50-worst-fails-in-tech-history]. Got anything you'd like to add?


Permalink

This list was so pathetic. Simply linking to it and associating The Escapist with it and the site that had the idiocy to publish it makes me cringe a little.

That list had spelling error after error and grammatical errors on top of that. It's as if no one bothered to even edit it. They called the DSi LX a "Gameboy". It was filled with tons of other idiocies as well. Not to mention the fact that there was no way that I saw to view the entire list at once. Please never link to that god awful site again. Pretty please.

 

[Jumwa]

That might be true but it doesn't change the fact that ^

How did you play it? Easy, because it didn't look like crap. All the XL managed to do was stretch the picture over a bigger resolution and make it look worse.

The XL does NOT make the images look worse. That's just a total falsehood.

I'm dubious that you've ever even seen an actual XL in action, because myself and everyone I've ever known whose seen a XL running remarks at how impressively well it expands the image without losing any of the quality. These remarks about losing image quality are just nonsense from naysayers before the thing even launched.

Is it for everyone? Is any product for anyone? Certainly not on both accounts, but having owned and used mine extensively for a full year I can safely say it's a solid model that provides everything I wanted in a DS without any loss of features or quality.

 

[Stickfigure]

This article is terrible.

Beyond the fact that they have no consistent theme for what a tech "fail" actually IS, they simply could not make a more unwatchable website.

But seriously, half of these things don't even belong on here. What do they even mean by tech fail? Is it supposed to reference a technological hangup or problem? Because if so, I can say that HD DVD, Neo, and about six other things don't even belong on this list. Is it a commercial fail? Because if so, I know Internet Explorer 6 doesn't belong on this list, along with half a dozen other things.

All right, since the biggest fail is, in fact, this god-awful, garish, ad-cluttered, one-link-at-time, pagecount-hyping nightmare of a website, I'm just gonna write the list out. Look them up on wikipedia if you actually care about this.

1. Microsoft KIN
2. CueCat
3. DigiScents iSmell
4. Microsoft Windows ME
5. Nokia N-Gage
6. Gizmondo
7. The Rocbox
8. Microsoft Zune
9. Palm Foleo
10. HD DVD
11. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
12. Sirius S50
13. DIVX (Digital Video Express)
14. Playstation EyeToy
15. Apple Newton Message Pad
16. Modo
17. Motorola ROKR E1
18. DataPlay Disc
19. Segway
20. America Online
21. Lotus Notes
22. Oakley THUMP Sunglasses
23. 3Com Ergo Aubrey
24. MSN Direct Smart Watches
25. Twitter Peek
26. Nintendo Virtual Boy
27. Microsoft BOB
28. Garmin Nüvifone
29. (mislabeled on the site) Macintosh Portable
30. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player
31. Everex CloudBook
32. Philips CD-i
33. Olympus Eye-Trek FMD-700
34. Neo 1973
35. Kodak Disc 4000
36. IBM PCjr
37. Comet Systems Comet Cursor
38. Apple Pippin
39. Samsung Q1
40. WebTV
41. Viewsonic Air Panel Smart Display V100
42. OQO Model 1
43. Microsoft Windows Vista
44. Apple PowerMac G4 Cube
45. BlackBerry PlayBook
46. Nintendo Gameboy DSi XL
47. Sony NW-HD1 Audio Player
48. Itunes Ping
49. Xybernaut Poma Wearable PC
50. Google Wave

Also, they put all this shit on and they didn't even touch on the Game.com? Fuck this website (complex, not escapist... though fuck the submission).

 

[ImDrFreak]

I stopped reading the "list" after having to reload 10 pages. I did notice the DSi XL on the list, and a number of people talking about it here. I own one, and upgraded from (one of my) DL Lites. Excepting the loss of the GBA port, I love it. The thing is, it's not just for people with bad eyesight (mine is fine) but also just for big PEOPLE. I have big hands. The regular DS cramps my hand after a half hour, while the XL does not. One of the reasons I didn't get a 3DS is because I want a 3DS XL. And yeah, if they're going to include the XL on there, they need to include the PSP Go which is (as far as I've seen) a much bigger failure. Doesn't use the store-bought games, forcing you to download them all from an online service. What happens when the online version of a game is 30 bucks and a store has the game on sale for 10? Yeah...

edit: Thanks for posting the list, Stickfigure.
I'll give the CueCat credit. It was a total failure for what it was intended for, but it makes a nice, cheap barcode reader these days.

 

[Eri]

That might be true but it doesn't change the fact that ^

How did you play it? Easy, because it didn't look like crap. All the XL managed to do was stretch the picture over a bigger resolution and make it look worse.

The XL does NOT make the images look worse. That's just a total falsehood.

I'm dubious that you've ever even seen an actual XL in action, because myself and everyone I've ever known whose seen a XL running remarks at how impressively well it expands the image without losing any of the quality. These remarks about losing image quality are just nonsense from naysayers before the thing even launched.

Is it for everyone? Is any product for anyone? Certainly not on both accounts, but having owned and used mine extensively for a full year I can safely say it's a solid model that provides everything I wanted in a DS without any loss of features or quality.

Except you're wrong because that's physically impossible. You can't stretch an already set image size over a bigger screen without it losing quality.

 

[Jumwa]

Except you're wrong because that's physically impossible. You can't stretch an already set image size over a bigger screen without it losing quality.

Once again, false. There are more ways to enlarge an image than simply magnifying it.

You're insulting the product based upon your false assumptions. You could see for yourself there's no loss of image quality just by looking at one running.

Even if it is true, the difference must be so minuscule that neither myself, my partner, nor anyone we know has been able to notice a downgrade in quality between a XL and a regular DS running the same game side by side.

From one review:

I definitely didn?t notice this issue. I love playing RTS games like Civilization Revolution, and if the screen was fuzzy I?d definitely notice it. The screen was crisp and clear, and it didn?t feel like the games were designed for a smaller display at all, which was one of the things I was concerned about when I first read about the DSi XL.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/03/30/review-nintendo-dsi-xl/

The problem is a lot of people online prejudged the thing to have enlargement issues before it even launched, and that hasn't stopped anyone who's never even seen the thing from repeating it.

It's the same issue many developers face. People are still referring to Fallout 3 as "Oblivion with guns" even though the term was coined before anyone even knew anything more about the game other than "Bethesda is making it", and like how others are calling Skyrim "Fallout 3 with swords". Loud and opinionated internet people will continue to distribute inaccurate presumptions about products.

 

[Caligulove]

Decent read. Been done before, I suppose but thought all 50 were from a gaming perspective- which caught my interest... upon examination I was disappointed that it wasn't an account of hardware and tech that never even went anywhere- combined with the finished products that fell flat.

 

[Get_A_Grip_]

Webpage will not load. Fail.

 

[GeorgW]

Hadn't heard of a lot of them, so I learned. That nr 1 sure was a huge fail!

 

[linkvegeta]

honestly, I never met anyone who DIDN'T own a DS in some form or another before the DSi XL was released. So it was just a chunk of plastic not worth the investment, hell I still own my original fat DS, and it still works like a charm.

It was a chunk of plastic not worth the investment because nobody you knew needed one? Okay. I guess that will mean something as soon you and everyone you know is the entire world's consumer base for electronic devices. Until then, that doesn't mean all that much to me considering that the last estimation of the DSi XL's sales was 10.08 million as of March 31, 2011 (source [http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2011/110425e.pdf#page=16]). Yep, that's one of the 50 worst tech fails ever. Nintendo must be kicking themselves for making all that money.

DSi XL is not separate console from the DS, just a different version like the difference between PS2 and PS2 Slim or the Xbox 360/ Elite/ Slim. So if the DS is not a failure than the DSi XL can not be a failure.

Like the PSP go is just a different version of the PSP 1000, PSP 2000, and PSP 3000. So the PSP go isn't a failure, right? ...Well, I disagree. So do all these other people asking "Where's the PSP go?" apparently.

The DSi XL isn't a failure simply because the DSi XL didn't fail. Not because it's older brothers didn't fail.

Its nice to see someone with some sense. I completely agree with evrything you said. I own a dsi xl and ill never look back, best handheld i ever owned.

 

[direkiller]

I'm surprised Windows Vista is only #43

because of Windows ME

 

[DefinitelyPsychotic]

The Play Station Network?

ZING!

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

How can anyone not have heard of the KIN? It was advertised ALL over the place for the little time it existed.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Huh...

I would have expected some of the later Atari consoles (Jaguar, anyone?) or Sega Genesis add-ons (CD or 32X).

Or even the Dreamcast. I mean, it was one hell of an awesome console, but economically, it was quite the fail.

And does anyone still remember the Phantom?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_%28game_system%29