10 Video Game Consoles The World Wasn't Ready For
3. SNK Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System
Fans of old-style cabinet arcade systems are probably familiar with the SNK Neo Geo as it was incredibly popular throughout the 1990s. The system was innovative in that it was cartridge-based, which meant that arcade owners could swap out the games in their cabinets without replacing the entire system.
Additionally, they featured up to four games per cabinet and even had a memory card slot so players could save their games and take the cards to other arcades to continue playing them. To continue marketing their product, SNK created the Advanced Entertainment System, a home console version released in 1991.
The console was a beast, and it blew the competition out of the water in terms of specs and capabilities, but it had one major design flaw: it was the exact same thing as the arcade version, just repackaged in a home console form.
This meant that the home console cost just as much as the arcade system, and since its game cartridges were sold directly to arcades, the games were too costly for most people. The home system cost $649.99 ($1,220 in 2019) while each game cost $200 ($376 in 2019) and up to twice that. With those numbers, it's easy to see why the incredibly advanced system failed in the home video game console market.