Topic: What was Virtual Boy's problem and how Nintendo won back its fans after its failure?

What makes me curious is that when sega constantly made the genesis look bad with its add-ons and Nintendo wanted to make a system during the development of n64 and well.....it was virtual boy and when that one failed.....how did the fans still support Nintendo after realizing that the system was ridiculous like SEGA's add-ons?

With next consoles no one get neckache

The thing to keep in mind about the virtual boy is that it actually was not a NexGen video game Console it was actually a toy conceptually, but the bigwigs at Nintendo at the bright idiot to branded it as a portable video game System. What the virtual boy should have been was a novelty item without Nintendo branding. Had it only been that, the virtual boy may have been a memorable piece of novelty technology during itst era instead of being the joke that it became. Ultimately the problem was Nintendo had sunk so much money into its development that it had no choice but to release the system and push it as a GameBoy follow up in order to recoup some of their losses. Ultimately though the virtual boy did not actually hurt Nintendo's credibility that much since the Nintendo 64 came out soon after and while it was not the smash hit the super Nintendo was, it was still a video game console that could be respected. So unlike Sega Nintendo did not have a string of failures to really damage it's image long-term.

As the 3DS shows us the concept of a Portable 3-D video game Console actually is viable idea, it is just that with the virtual boy the technology just was not there yet to be successful in a actual portable way.

1. SEGA's add ones were for consoles people had, but were exclusive to the add-on. Virtual Boy wasn't an add-on
2. Sega quickly stopped supporting the Sega CD after almost 3 million people bought it, pissing off a lot of people. Almost no one bought a Virtual Boy, so very little people were pissed off.
3. SNES sold 49 million units, and the N64 sold 33 million units, so saying fans still support Nintendo is a bit of a stretch.

I just thinking you're reaching for conversation and now you invaded my safe zone of retro rather than the ffa of other gaming.

We all know why it failed. We all know why it didn't hit Nintendo as hard.

Well it did hurt the eyes to use. Also not everyone could use it properly if you had vision issues or monocular blindness... However I think that is why the 3ds had the ability to turn off the 3d in the first place. I think if Nintendo hadn't had the VB experience then they would have mistakenly made the 3ds 3d all the time which i think would have been bad for sales. I know I wouldn't have bought one.

you really have no idea what your talking about.

Because with the Sega CD, 32X and Saturn, Americans decided Sega hit their three strikes.

The difference was Sega had one mistake after another while this is Nintendo's only one really. It wasn't marketed as the successor to the SNES nor did it have any competition like the Saturn did for example.

someone just take my brain and throw it in a deep fryer, it not required to use here

They kept it simple with their next hand held. Nintendo also brought some stellar titles. In the meantime they brought out the Gameboy Pocket which was much smaller, felt great, and was much more battery efficient (again exactly what the gamers wanted). The next console release was the GBA which to me wasn't that great due to no back light, but the SP is what truly saved Nintendo's handheld division. They goof'd with the DS, but won everyone back again with the DS Lite.

It appears that the revision of every hand held is the saving grace for Nintendo. Personally I wasn't fond of the 3DS, too small, too boxy. The 3DS XL brought me back to the design of the DS Lite. Simple, clean, better thought out.

At the end of the day, it always felt like the Virtual Boy wasn't meant to be released as it was. It was a product that needed a few years for technology to catch up with the concept instead of being rushed out, and the whole thing failed as a result. There's a reason the system was discontinued so soon, and not released outside of Japan and North America.

I own a Japanese Virtual Boy unit myself, and it's a great example of both Nintendo's ambition and their stubbornness. There are a few good ideas and some good games, but the lack of software support, the red/black display and the total non-portability of the system made it an irredeemable failure from the start.

Of course, the Virtual Boy didn't harm Nintendo too much, mainly because it was never marketed as a successor to the Game Boy; more like an additional experimental system (ala the Nintendo DS being a "third pillar" to GameCube & GBA). The N64 was fast approaching by that point, and once Super Mario 64 hit the scene, I think fans were already over the failure of the VB.

Meanwhile, Nintendo were working on several prototypes for the eventual successor to the Game Boy, washing their hands of the whole thing...

I would say that this had nothing to do with the Virtual Boy and everything to do with the N64 coming 2 years after the Playstation, having gimped 3rd party support, and a controller that nobody liked.

The N64 was a pretty innovative controller in its time.
I think the N64 was a technologically better console and maybe if Nintendo hadn't decided to be the only kid on the block still using carts, it could've been different.
Third parties were definitely driven away by high costs to produce a cart.
Also, probably about 2/3 of those N64s were sold in North America so its no wonder the Japanese third-parties largely ignored it. (Konami was the only big one I can immediately think of, and even then it was mostly their sports franchises) I do remember Game Informer back in the day called Square the most important third-party, I'm not sure of the extent to believe that, but they certainly had some influence in Japan's JRPG-leading market. Result that RPGs were a gaping hole in the N64's library, only filled with the promise of Mother 3 and Super Mario RPG 2. And we know, only one of those EVENTUALLY got released.

The Gamcube is the only system I have used where optical disks didn't negatively affect the experience. Sadly they are as bad as anyone else now. (Digital is a solution but paying £50 instead of £20 is not a fair deal).

@unrandomsam I agree but the Wii wasn't too bad for disc loading, especially compared to nearly every other console with an optical drive. The Wii U's drive could be terrible but luckily the processor acts as a bottleneck and even digital versions have 'un-Nintendo' loading times.

Sega released console updates pretty often through their hardware lifespan.

SG-1000: 1983 Japan (released in AU and EU as Sega Computer 3000, unreleased in North America)
SG-1000 Mark III/Master System: 1985 Japan/1986 west
Mega Drive/Genesis: 1988 Japan/1989 US/1990 EU
Mega CD/Sega CD/1991 Japan/1992 US/1993 EU
Sega 32X: 1994
Sega Saturn: 1994 Japan/1995 west
Dreamcast: 1998 Japan/1999 west

So Sega was on about a 3-year cycle, compared to about 5 for Nintendo and about 6 for Sony. (only counting home consoles)

The first time I played sonic on a Gamegear I fell in love. My son wanted one for his birthday and I tried at out at an EB (thats how long ago it was, lol) and it blew my mind. The weight due to all the batteries was a killer along with the sheer cost of all those batteries.

But that lit screen! Oh my. Yep, it was love.

Yeah I always thought the same thing. I also heard that the reason for the rushed release was cause they wanted to move the dev team to the N64 so they could get that released in time to compete with Sony and Sega.