Today, HMV launched HMV On-Demand, its own inevitable foray into the world of video on demand. But it seems to have missed the mark and may stumble straight out of the gates. In its honour, we’ve pulled out a list of the other last-ditch tech comebacks and launched that faltered, flapped and were dead on arrival.
Want to know how not to fight your way out of a tech corner? Read on.
1. Yahoo! redesign (2009)
The one-time success of Yahoo! is now a distant memory. Its coffin had been sealing up nicely as it was, thanks to Google’s superior search algorithms and general public approval, but it was the redesign in 2009 that really let it down when it needed a kicking the most.
The big mistake was that Yahoo! missed the main reason why people liked using Google: it’s clinical simplicity. Yahoo! tried to become ‘Your home on the web’, which basically meant ramming its homepage with an incredibly busy amount of unnecessary bollocks like plugins for Facebook. The idea was that you’d be able to get everything you’d normally want to do from one page. Jack of all, master of none. The new purple branding did nothing to help, either.
2. Blockbuster and HMV On-Demand
Allow us to sign a death warrant: HMV’s On-Demand is hindered massively by the fact that you can only watch its movies through your computer. Where’s the deal with consoles or set-top boxes? If you’ve got to buy a cable to hook your laptop up to your TV, that’s just not worth the hassle.
Similarly, Blockbuster has been floundering around ever since the concept of on-demand video first spilled out of the ether. The company went bankrupt in 2010 and was bought up earlier this year by Dish Network who’s now desperately trying to turn things around. The problem stemmed from BB’s initial insistence (in 2008) on plugging it’s own set-top box, rather than playing nice with others. That’s now changed, but it can’t seem to shake off the image.
3. Nintendo Wii MotionPlus controller
The original Nintendo Wii sold, as I’m sure you’re aware, pretty well. So well, in fact, that both Sony and Microsoft were forced to copy its motion-sensing tricks. The Sony Playstation Move controller did just that, but it went a bit beyond by introducing a third axis of movement: depth.
Nintendo then rushed the Wii MotionPlus controller into production. In my opinion, this has done nothing but draw everyone’s attention to the fact that the original Wiimote was lacking. In admitting their mistake Nintendo hasn’t fought the Move, it’s succumbed to it by merely copying what was already a copy. The Wii MotionPlus works, but it’s a glaringly obvious advert for Nintendo’s omission in the first place.
4. Google Buzz
Arguably, the stagnating Google+ has just as much right to be in this list, but it’s Google Buzz that really showed how badly Google can get things wrong. The now defunct social network was the big G’s prematurely ejaculated attempt to cover some of the bases that Facebook and Twitter had so expertly covered.
Its failure lay at the feet of it’s lack of publicity, a bunch of privacy issues that led to some users streaming their personal correspondence to people they’d rather not and, perhaps crucially, the lack of a real killer feature. At least Google+ is clean and tidy.
5. BlackBerry Storm
RIM’s answer to the iPhone and Androids of 2008 was a touchscreen monolith with a difference: for some reason, the BlackBerry Storm‘s entire screen was a big, clickable button. It made texting hard and just felt a bit breakable, given that the one thing your fingers would be touching most was squidgy.
This was clearly a hangover from the fact that RIM is used to making smartphones with billions of little buttons on them. Other issues, such as a poor web browser and some lagginess meant that the Storm never lived up to the market leading hype that RIM had formulated inside its own head.
6. N64 DD
You’ve got a more powerful console than the nearest rival, but for some reason you’re losing the war. What do you do? Try and bolt on more power! Nintendo’s N64 DD was a real disaster from the get go.
The big plastic shoe was intended to read a new and relatively expensive-to-produce format of disc that would add extra gubbins to games and provide more memory. It took 5 years to make it to shelves and was universally panned as a nonsense. Because it was. Meanwhile, the Sony Playstation continued to streak off into the distance with its cheap, capacious and easy CDs.
7. BBM Music
BBM Music is truly mental. Its concept is bizarre enough to assume that RIM must have looked at the payment models of Spotify, iTunes and everything in between and decided that they just needed do something, anything different. Even if that didn’t produce anything nearing a sane result.
You pay $5, (£3.22) to get 50 songs. Just 50 songs for the month. Next month, you can swap out up to 25, poker style, for new tracks. You can’t get any more than 50 at a time (save for streaming tracks your BBM Music friends have in their playlists) and there’s naf all you can do with those songs other than listen to them on one device. Class.
8. iTunes Ping
You’ve got to imagine that even Apple knows Ping is crap. The conversation probably went something along the lines of: “Everyone’s sharing playlists and finding new music through friends on Spotify. How can we do that?” And then they had their best go at it.
The problem is that the social aspect of musical exploration works a lot better when you can just dunk a song into a playlist and stream it all night long. If you need to start buying things just because your friends think they’re good, as in iTunes Ping, you’re less likely to use it.
9. Microsoft Zune Player
Have you ever seen a Microsoft Zune device (that isn’t also a phone) in person? If the answer’s ‘no’, it’s probably because you don’t live in the US and aren’t a tech journalist. Microsoft’s answer to the iPod was arguably a solid product, but for some reason the powers that be decided not to launch outside of the US.
When that happens it’s usually to do with boring legalities like international music licensing, but it just immediately think that there’s an internal lack of faith in the product. If you’re Microsoft and you genuinely believed that the Zune would smash the iPod into smithereens, you’d spend the time and money on putting it out there on a big scale.
10. Polaroid Zink ink-free printer
If there’s ever been a company that’s had the wind taken out of its sails by the march of technological progress, it’s Polaroid. The necessity of printing photographs went out the window as soon as digital photography allowed you to share your shots on a 55-inch mega TV.
The Zink ink-free technology developed by Polaroid to combat this problem is a clever solution now that it’s actually stuffed into a camera, but the initial offering (the Polaroid PoGo) couldn’t take photos. It was a portable printer. It kind of negates the notions of instancy and convenience if you need to carry around and connect a separate device.
If you know any more famous failed tech comebacks, let us know in the comment section below.
