Why great Products still fail — or what Video Game Consoles have in common with a Knapsack

_

We all have experienced it, we saw a product and thought: wow, this is probably the best product I’ve ever seen, its superior in every way. You buy it, you use it and you love it but eventually you realize that you seem to be one of the few ones. Then a short while after you hear less and less about it, until it disappears completely and probably gets replaced by something inferior.

Now one might wonder, what happened and how a seemingly better product could fail while the worse version of it is gaining great fame. The first thing we should ask ourselves in these cases is: Was it actually really the better product? Often times you’ll realize that this was not entirely true and that the product itself maybe was highly interesting to you as an early adopter or as a tech freak, but not for a broad audience. First, let’s have a good look…

_

A brief digress into the gaming industry

As a huge admirer of retro technology, one of the most striking examples of intended vs. actual utility value was, in my opinion, the early 90s battle between Nintendo’s GameBoy and NEC’s TurboExpress (in Japan called PC Engine GT) Systems. Most of you will wonder: What is a PC Engine TurboExpress? While probably everyone of you knows the GameBoy or has owned one at some point in their life… Exactly. I guess now you’re already understanding where this is going.

In some way the TurboExpress was the ancestor of today’s concept behind the Nintendo Switch. It was actually a downsized mobile version of a back then popular home console called TurboGrafx-16. Which meant that you could take out the game cartridge, insert it into the mobile version and then play the same game while on the go.

The TurboExpress had powerful graphics, almost comparable to the slightly later released Super Nintendo, combined with a color display including backlight. There was even a TV accessory which enabled users to watch regular terrestrial TV on it, a feature which was also offered by the SEGA Game Gear. The GameBoy then again, only featured 8Bit graphics, no backlight and a black-and-white display and on top of that it used completely different cartridges than the other systems which meant that customers had to set up two different game libraries. It also took years until there were some interesting accessories like the GameBoy Camera and the GameBoy Printer.

Why didn’t people go for the TurboExpress or SEGA’s handheld, the Game Gear, but instead continued to buy the GameBoy — especially considering that the other handhelds were far superior in many regards and released barely one year later? From a management perspective, the NEC and also SEGA didn’t make any major mistakes. They used their second-mover advantage by considering the GameBoy’s flaws and created products that, at least regarding hardware and possibilities, were far more advanced regarding the seemingly most important aspects.

First impressions matter

This is the point where theory and reality start to diverge. The users surely did appreciate the power of NECs and SEGAs products, but by the time they were released Nintendo had already sold millions of GameBoys. The GameBoy especially sold so well because it already came with an addicting game included — tetris, which meant that it was usable immediately and got recommended further.

Nintendo was also already very popular due to the NES which was first released about 6 years before the GameBoy. So developers were familiar with Nintendo and knew that games will sell reasonably well. The GameBoy was also rugged but still quite compact for late 80s standards and it had a battery life of 14 hours with 4 AA batteries. So when Nintendo released the GameBoy, conveniently around japanese, american and european summer breaks in 1989 and 1990, it was destined to be a huge success.

The other handhelds entered the market roughly 1,5 years later, though the TurboExpress was never released outside of Japan and North America, with all the seemingly great advantages. But they couldn’t compete to the almost threefold battery life, the already huge games library with many great exclusive titles to come and last but not least the fan base which knew that Nintendo is synonymous with high quality games.

What prevented the success of the other handhelds were not only the 6 AA batteries these beasts needed, but simply the fact that we all have limited resources which we are willing use. We either have limited money, limited space, limited motivation to get to know other products and brands, limited trust etc.

This is comparable to the knapsack problem in combinatorial optimization. When there are certain constraints but we need to fit in as much value as possible, like in a knapsack, we will start to prioritize and weigh factors in order to have the highest (utility) value in regard of the constraints, like weight or space and so on.

Utility Value vs. Feature Lists

Why weren’t electrical cars as successful in the 90s, when they reemerged, as they are now? Why weren’t smart homes a thing already 20 years ago when the technology started to arise and was actually already functional? One of the possible answers is: it didn’t provide enough utility value to the user when taking the constraints, probably money and complexity, into account.

Electrical vehicles were very expensive but offered limited range with a lack of charging infrastructure. Smart home technology was sold, but by multiple different brands with varying and often proprietary standards. On top of that, wireless communication was only feasible for computers but far from the compact size these modules have today. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule and there are early adopters, but this doesn’t really contradict the earlier statements. It just means that some people have a different prioritization and weigh the factors in another manner.

So when customers are confronted with different handhelds, or any other product for that matter, they will go for the one that offers the highest utility value when taking all aspects into account. Users will always go for the best overall experience. This has been the case since forever and is even more present today, now that technologies are converging and emerging at an increasing rate. There were dozens of social networks but Facebook emerged. There were multiple streaming services, but Spotify still has the most successful one, this list goes on and on. All because we try to fill our knapsack with the highest overall utility value and user experience — and not only with the seemingly superior products according to a fact sheet.