I on occasion have to discuss why technologies fail, even if they are perceived as better quality then the competing technology.
I’m old. the most obvious example I have is BetaMax vs. VCR technology.
I’d like to update my examples to something more culturally relevant to younger people.
I’m open for suggestions
Laserdisc failed even though it was better than VHS and Beta
It was too expensive. And the discs were too cumbersome. It was ahead of its time. People back then weren’t ready for widescreen at home and audio commentaries
The Amiga computer line, and more in general computers based on the Motorola 68000 CPU. A lot of them were sold (Amigas, Atari ST, early Macs and a few others) but after a few years they were all overtaken by Intel based PC, arguably inferior in many areas.
My Dad used to go on about how the condenser for a refrigerator was more efficient if it was on top of the refrigerator, but that it got moved to the back for <marketing reasons>*. From there the rant would descend to housewives being used to putting doilies on ice boxes and other things.
*said with sneer.
I don’t know if I’d call that a fail exactly; more like a non-competition. Most people who I know who had VCRs did use them to play pre-recorded tapes, but most also used them for time-shifting and recording things off broadcast TV and cable.
Laserdisc only offered half the functionality of the VCR- the playback side, and were limited by the cruddy resolution of the TVs of the day (480i). The difference between a non-worn out VHS tape and a laserdisc really wasn’t that much, just like the difference between a DVD and a non-worn out VHS tape wasn’t that much either. I’m not saying there weren’t differences, but that most people didn’t care.
The manufacturers misread the market. People were at least as interested in being able to record shows as they were in being able to rent movies. There was also the issue of being able to tape personal recordings and then watch them on your TV.
So of the three uses of the technology, videotapes could do all three while laserdiscs could only do one. The multiple uses of videotapes trumped the higher quality of laserdiscs.
Hate to be the guy who always jumps into these specific conversations, but…
While laserdisc never got beyond a niche (but very high-end) market, it lasted for over 22+ years in the US market, and arguably inspired the DVD standard (widescreen as standard, alternate audio tracks, extras, play-back only method for most users), while being the highest-quality home video until DVD, and often higher-quality audio until the end. Not so shabby for a CE format invented in the 60s… it wasn’t the 8-track it often is retroactively called. Plus, as a user, I appreciated being able to get new LD releases day-and-date for $30 at retail, with more features and better audio/video, rather than the $100 VHS rental-only releases common until near the end of both formats.
Beta might have flopped in market share, but it did beat VHS in performance… and often I’ve read that, because of the licensing involved, Sony profited more from the format (being the primary, and practically sole producer of machines and media over the years), than JVC on VHS due to their licensing agreements. Plus, related technologies made Beta-influenced commercial devices and media more useful and more used by things like local news stations and such. Not sure Sony was crying too much about being the owners of Beta; they ruled the industrial/commercial markets on related technologies, and earned higher profits on their home tech.
My first thought on the OP’s question: Sega Master System vs. NES. (Though like my above arguments, NES supporters can probably count the NES/Famicom’s bigger library over the SMS’s superior tech.)
It is of course debatable whether Betamax was better than VHS, anyway. Real-world picture quality was more or less the same, and any supposed superiority that Beta had was lost when they slowed down the tape speed to match VHS’s longer running time, which it turned out was more important to customers than some theoretical picture quality that they couldn’t see.
[edit: didn’t see that recent post]
The Atari 7800 was a dandy little video game system, but they never put out many games for it. Putting out hardware without software is a recipe for disaster.
I always thought MiniDisc was pretty cool. Smaller and better-sounding than tapes but more durable than CDs. No skipping. But they came at a time when “naked” discs were coming down in price and I suspect the cheapness of discs with no shell helped the CD/DVD format win out.
Nitpick: I think you mean Beta vs. VHS.
I love MiniDiscs. I could stick my player and a few discs in my pocket. You can’t do that with CDs. I still have a very miniature Sony player (only uses one AA battery) that works, but my Sharp MD recorder has bitten the dust. I think the iPod and related mp3 players had much to do with their demise.
Also, although there were prerecorded MiniDiscs available for a short time, the record labels soon stopped producing them. I always regretted that. I would have bought them over CDs.
That’s pretty much all of it, but details are missing. Sony ALWAYS tries to go for a corner on the technology licenses, and exploits its position to the max. JVC was part of a partnership between many makers who shared the VHS license on a cheaper basis. So sheer cost, driven by Sony greed, is part of what held Beta back from dominance. (VHS also moved a lot faster and cheaper into longer recording times per cassette, meaning movies could be had on one tape instead of two.)
OTOH, Beta just wasn’t all that much better. As I posted in another recent thread, both technologies fell far short of broadcast standard (480 lines) and only commercially-recorded cassettes could get near the nominal maximum for either. Home recordings, and playback on most consumer-grade machines, ate line resolution until the difference was somewhere between zero and maybe 10-15% resolution… with the tippity-top peak being around 75% of broadcast.
The fight was over which one was less fuzzy, and not much else.
To the OP’s point, the very best case for “WTF was the market thinking?” is the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray battle… which represents a Sony victory after a dozen failures, by the way.
The fundamental thing to keep in mind about this example, unlike most prior tech battles, is this: **There was next to no difference between the content and delivered media stream from an HD-DVD or BR disc. **They use essentially the same recording standards, minor codec differences aside, and contain exactly the same audio and video material of nearly identical format. The only difference between the two is the actual physical medium used to hold the laser-readable bits… and even then, there’s next to no physical difference between the discs themselves.
The battle, more than any other I can remember in the last 50 years, came down to marketing department vs. marketing department. BR claimed larger disc capacity, which HD-DVD was capable of in future revisions; Toshiba opted for a cheaper initial disc. (And those max capacities have yet to be used for much of anything practical - maybe 4K will need them.) HD-DVD touted its “live connection” to internet-delivered material; BR added BD-LIve within an iteration or two.
IMHO, HD-DVD had the advantage because it was an evolution of a proven technology and had greater potential for a smooth upgrade and future development path, while BR depended on new and relatively expensive R/W technology using blue lasers.
But in the end, the real difference was which company owned the rights… and I am still unhappy that Sony won, for no particularly good reason, and had their crappy business model validated.
Sony won because they bundled their then-new PS3 system with a Blu-ray drive. IIRC, in its first year of availability, Sony sold more PS3 systems than standalone Blu-ray and HD-DVD players combined.
Found it.
In its first year of availability (4/2006-4/2007), about 100,000 HD-DVD players were sold in the US. Tack on another 300,000 HD-DVD drive add-ons for the Xbox 360 and you get a total of 400,000. In its first two months of availability (11/06-12/06), Sony sold ONE MILLION PS3 systems.
Which still comes down to… marketing.
Not only was “technological superiority” not a part of the win, it wasn’t even part of the battle.
I’ve heard cookware made of the original material that Corningware was made of being used as an example of a technology that failed because it was superior. It was so durable that people who bought it seldom needed to buy anything new; so it was discontinued and a more fragile product using the same brand name was produced instead.
The original versions of nylon stockings went the same way. They lasted too long, so a more fragile version was introduced and an advertising campaign promoting “sheer” stockings was launched to successfully persuade women that an inferior product was in fact more desirable.
I’m not sure you know what marketing is if you think the HD-DVD/Blu-ray is a good example of it.
The question is, “In what way was Beta better than VHS?” While it may arguably have delivered a better picture, it was clearly inferior in recording time, which it turns out is the metric applied by the majority of consumers. Sony did eventually beef up the recording time, but by then its moment had passed.
So you’re under the impression that Sony put a new, relatively unsupported and proprietary drive system in the PS3 for engineering reasons?