if I were to ask you what some of the bestselling consoles were you'd probably give a different response depending on when you started your gaming Journey the Super Nintendo PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 are some to name a few selling a combined total of 288 million units sales like these can be lucrative you see and attract companies to try their own hands at designing a console I'm Senor donor and today we'll be looking at five of the worst selling [Music] consoles the first console on the list is the Apple Pippin or the Apple Bandai pipin and yes you heard me correctly in 1994 Bandai wanted a slice of the gaming console Market they thought the Macintosh classic 2 would be the perfect computer to base their console design on discussions began with apple and both parties were able to come to an agreement Apple would develop the motherboards or logic boards in apple lingo and Bandai would manufacture the cases that would house the internal components Apple would go on to announce their partnership with Bandai in late 1994 where the Pippin was finally revealed two years later in 1996 the pipping would be released in Japan and the United States the Japanese version of the console was finished in white with the United St receiving a Black Version which they called the outworld clearly the employee that named this thing was an AB Bender the night before Bandai spent a whopping $93 million on marketing the pipin for costing sales of over 200,000 units in Japan and 300,000 units in the US within 12 months the pipin also cost $600 to purchase that's expensive in 2024 let alone 1996 baby it was also in direct competition with another console you may know the PlayStation 1 the PS1 was a console Juggernaut as well as costing half the price of a pipin at $300 the pipin was discontinued in 1997 with only 42,000 units being sold up next is the Mattel hypers scan it featured a controller that resembled a third party knockoff you know the type where you go to a makes house and no one wants to use it first the hypers scan released in 2006 with a unique gimmick it featured a radio frequency identification scanner that would transmit signals from a tagged item back to the console games for the hypers scan were made up of a game disc accompanied by game cards referred to as intell cards these held additional data that would also need to be scanned the problem was that only six of these intell cards would come with the game with the rest of them being purchased separately in the form of booster packs the additional game cards would store extra characters levels and abilities that's right these guys would sell you some of the game with the rest being paid DLC one game would set you back $20 which does sound a good deal but to get the complete Game you need to spend an additional $100 on booster packs and that's if you're lucky as the cards were randomized in each pack it was discontinued a year later in 2007 with less than 30,000 units being sold only five games were ever released with the other two in production being canceled due to bad sales the Third cons we'll be looking at is the Pioneer laser active the laser active wasn't just a games console though you could play karaoke CDs as well as what's laser dis based media these predated DVDs if you weren't aware all of this sounds great especially considering it released in 1993 so what was the problem well the laser active unit could only play music and movies in its base form to play games you'd need to purchase additional expansion modules called pack units the reason this was a problem was due to the laser active costing $970 as a standalone unit there were five additional pack units that would give you the full gaming experience including one for Sega CDs and Genesis cartridges NEC ROMs karaoke titles and other that would allow control of the unit via your PC and the 3D goggles Pack Unit that would work with certain games the combined cost of the laser active and the five pack modules was approximately $3,000 if that was an expensive enough some of the games were over $100 each I couldn't imagine paying that much for a console in games in 2024 let alone in 1993 this was a key factor in why the laser active failed it was simply too expensive only 10,000 units were ever sold and after years in the market it was discontinued coming in at number four is the amstrad gx4000 amstrad was a company that specialized within the home Computing market and was founded by Alan sugar you know the guy that says you're fired on The Apprentice amstrad like many others wanted a slice of that console Market money they decided to base their GX 4000 off their CPC plus line of computers with both of them set to release at the same time the GX was announced in August 1990 releasing only a month later in Europe the problem was that the GX utilized an 8-bit processor where a sega's mega driver Nintendo Super Nintendo were both powered by a 16-bit processor another issue was the majority of the gx's games they were just ports from amstrad's CPC Computing line they also jacked the price of the games up for example a game for the CPC would set you back $5 but the exact same game on the gx4000 would cost you 30 amrad also had issues with manufacturing the game cartridges which meant it was hard for consumers to even buy games at launch the console released at $130 which was a fair price at the time or anytime for that matter and a marketing budget of $25 million unfortunately the console only managed to sell 15,000 units by doing some quick math and using the retail price of the console that's just short of $2 million that didn't even cover the marketing spend let alone the cost of manufacturing a console not even a month into launch and the console was being discounted it would be discontinued a year later in 1991 at number five we have the Nintendo 64 DD the DD was a peripheral device that plugged into the extension slot of the Nintendo 64 and was seated underneath the console the device utilized magnetic discs to be played as opposed to the regular 64 cartridges the benefit of magneet discs included storing more data as well as cheaper production costs the DD included a real-time clock that would allow for a persistent State World a persistent State world would allow the user to turn the console off with changes still occurring in the background despite no user input in comparison a standard 64 cartridge could store up to 12 megabytes of data whilst the DD's magnetic disc could store 64 Nintendo's game designer sharato at toy believed they could expand on the amount of game Jers with the introduction of the DD the DD was announced in 1995 and would be fully revealed in November 1996 Nintendo it would launch in 1997 with sequels to Super Mario 64 and a new Zelda title being reported the Zelda title would never release for the DD but released on cartridge instead you may have heard of it it was a small title oh it was only called uh what was it called oh the AR Arena of time the DD was also hampered by two years of delays but was released in Japan in December 1999 the device was sold as a package that consisted of games being shipped to the customer throughout the year as well as a 12-month internet subscription 2 years later it was discontinued in February 2001 a approximately 15,000 units were sold which was a complete failure as they originally intended to send 500,000 units to retail the games that were set to be released on the DD were either released on the standard 64 console which now utiliz larger cartridge sizes at 64 mbes ported to other consoles or canceled entirely ladies and gents subs and non subs thank you for watching if you enjoyed the video you know what to do you've heard it all a million times all of my socials can be found in my description and remember I'll never be a real YouTuber until I've released an apology video or two that's all guys peace out [Music] n
