Here, we’ll explore five revolutionary technologies that changed their category’s landscape forever, or collapsed silently, with nobody watching.
1. BetaMax
BetaMax lost to VHS in the Videotape format war. But that’s not where the product ended.
In 1983, Universal Studios was going up against the entirety of Sony of America. Why? Pirated media. Seems we can never catch a break. First this, then Napster… Anyway– Universal was mad at both VHS and BetaMax (but decided to go against the failure?) because they allowed the customer to record their content onto tape to watch later (the entire point of both the systems). The person I credit for saving the formats? Mr. Fred Rogers. His speech about the VCR were inspirational to the fact that he defended the formats basically saying that noncommercial use of on-air television was completely fine.
That said, BetaMax fell out of favor anyway for multiple other reasons.
2. DeLorean Motor Company: DMC-12
The DMC-12 (better known as the DeLorean car) was a car best known for being the Back to the Future car. It focused on a futuristic, all-metal design. It was a failure almost out of the gate. The aerodynamics (although not so important at the time) were terrible, the weight of the car made it have horrible fuel efficiency, and it lacked funding. The lifespan was about 3 years.
3. iMac G3
You ever heard of Apple Inc. before? Chances are you probably have. It wasn’t always like that.
Back in the mid 1990s, Apple was getting ready for bankruptcy. See, their products had been failing for years, and that combined with corporate mismanagement, and Steve Jobs fired, the company seemed doomed. In an act of desperateness, one of the Apple executives decided to try to purchase NeXT (the company Steve Jobs started, along with restarting Pixar). By making this purchase, they appointed Jobs to a high role in the company. The first thing Jobs did? Discontinue almost every single product and service, along with firing hundreds from the company. It worked. They created 3 new products, the iMac, PowerMac, and iMac DV. The iMac especially was a hit. It made beige Windows (and even earlier Macintoshes) look ugly (finally) compared to its translucent shell and variety of colors.
4. RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc
The VideoDisc has been covered on this blog before, you can see it here. Without getting into much detail, it was a format that put prerecorded videos onto a record-like disc. It was named Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) outside of the RCA marketing. The product was almost an instant fail, and kind of killed RCA altogether.
5. Nintendo Entertainment System
Even though this became a massive success, lasting over a decade until it was finally discontinued, the NES was a risk.
Back in 1983, Atari was struggling after not meeting expectations on their last game, E.T: The Extra-terrestrial. The game was supposed to be (basically) a money grab for Atari after the publicity of the movie. That turned out to be a mistake after the game (rushed and of poor quality) was a failure, and they tossed thousands of copies into New Mexico’s desert (at first a myth, then reality come 2013). This helped create ‘The North American Video Game Crash of 1983’ which shamed video games and made them almost nonexistent in 1984. In 1985, Nintendo wanted to release their already successful Famicom video game console (only sold in Japan) into North American markets. This was clearly risky. They touched up the look of the Famicom to make it look more like the successful VCR and changed it’s name to a more professional ‘Nintendo Entertainment System’. I think you can guess what happened next.