Sometimes a console becomes a huge success while some of the add-ons become flops. In recent years we had an HD-DVD add-on to the Xbox 360 (bet you don’t remember that do you?). One of the most notorious add-ons came from the 90s and it happened to belong to the Sega Genesis. No it’s not Sega CD, it’s what came after.
The Sega 32X was released in 1994 to pretty much extend the life of the Sega Genesis. At the time, the Super Nintendo was destroying the Genesis in overall sales, and Sega wanted something that could possibly keep the Genesis alive. What made the 32X so special you might ask? Well it was in 32-bit and had 23MHz, which at the time was pretty impressive. At the launch, there were 4 games released for it. The game that it revolved around during the launch was Doom. Everybody wanted to pick this game up along with it, and anyone who had played the PC version knew it. However, there was a huge problem with it. This version of Doom was missing 10 levels. This made Doom fans and buyers in general disappointed. Despite this, sales at launch did pretty well.
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So what made this such a flop you ask? Well first off, lots of people were hesitant after the commercial flop of the Sega CD that many people were hesitant at spending $170 on. Most of the games that ended up being made for it were not very good at all. There were rumors of the 32X not working and could possibly fry your Genesis, and if you were a Hardcore Sega fan, you knew that the Genesis’ successor the Sega Saturn, was already out in Japan and everyone knew that it was eventually going to be released in the States (which it did 6 months later). This caused lots of developers to just start making games for the Sega Saturn instead of the 32X.
The 32X sold an estimated 350,000 in the first month, and by the end of its run sold around 600,000 units worldwide. This could have been a good feature if Sega would have changed a couple of things around. The fact that they had originally planned on releasing a console called the Sega Neptune, which was a standalone 32X, and releasing it while the Sega Saturn was just around the corner hurt it as well. Say hello ,32X, to the Gaming Graveyard.
