Are there any cases where superior products failed because of inferior advertising?

[Vorian_Atreides]

@ArthurItas

@colonelsmoothie

I also read that for Betamax, Sony wouldn’t license to other companies? Does that mean only they could sell Betamax players? That would seem like an extremely foolish decision to me but maybe that’s in hindsight.

Pretty sure this is true. Yes, they made a number of blunders after being first out of the gate, getting 100% market share with early adopters, and having superior video and audio quality. They did also stumble with only having a 1 hour format early. By the time they released longer formats, VCR’s had eaten much of the market share.

I do believe that the biggest reason that VHS ate up most of the market share was the price point to consumers was much, much lower than the Betamax; even to the point of the VHS itself being a loss-leader and the profit being made up on the tape sales.

[twig93]

@ArthurItas

Betamax vs VCR technology?

That was the first thing that popped into my head too.

[twig93]

@colonelsmoothie

there were some trade offs, like Betamax having better quality video and audio but VHS being cheaper and having a much longer recording time of 3hrs vs 1 hr for Betamax.

I don’t recall the bolded. We never had a Beta VCR, but lots of my friends did and I recall watching full-length movies on a single Beta tape. So I think Beta must have been at least 2+ hours. It would be kind of dumb to make a tape that couldn’t hold a movie. They could just add more length and get a full movie on there.

VHS was 6 hours, IIRC, so perhaps you are remembering the 3-1 ratio???

[twig93]

@colonelsmoothie

for Betamax, Sony wouldn’t license to other companies?

Yeah, I think this is the real reason for the downfall of Betamax.

[twig93]

@Vorian_Atreides

I do believe that the biggest reason that VCR ate up most of the market share was the price point to consumers was much, much lower than the Betamax; even to the point of the VCR itself being a loss-leader and the profit being made up on the tape sales.

Nitpick: Betamax was a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder). It’s competition was VHS. They were both VCRs.

And yes, VHS did come down in price much more quickly. Our first VCR was a Christmas present from my uncle who got some fantastic deal on VHS VCRs and bought them for everyone in the family.

We had a VCR before we had a color TV. Now that was very unusual, and we got a color TV two years later.

[Vorian_Atreides]

Thanks for the nitpick. I’ve edited my post.

[examsarehard]

The Amiga was superior to the PCs of the time in almost every way: it displayed thousands of colors, it played audio, and it had a GUI for its operating system, when PCs were still using DOS on monochrome displays.

It failed because business people associated the color and graphics with games, so they stuck with their IBMs and spreadsheets. The Amiga ended up mostly used to develop console video games.

[Vorian_Atreides]

@examsarehard

it had a GUI for its operating system, when PCs were still using DOS

There was also the perception that the GUI would be too restrictive (i.e., the user is forced to a singular “view” to the contents contained by the computer) and lack sufficient flexibility for business needs to address “new” issues–partly because any “changes” would require going to the company to be made.

[ArthurItas]

This doesn’t exactly fit the topic, but it’s related: Xerox Parc generated so many incredibly important ideas that still influence modern computing, yet somehow they failed to monetize any of them properly.

PARC (company)