Many people know Apple for its iPhone, iPad, MacBook or old iPod, among other brand products. But few people know that almost three decades ago they launched a console that was a huge failure. Specifically, Apple In 1996 launched in collaboration with Bandai on Pippin consolewhich wanted to be many things and ended in complete failure.
Making a name for yourself in the console market is really complicated, you have to offer something innovative, different. But in the 90s, it was even more complicated, since you had to fight against the giants Nintendo, Sega and Sony.
At that time, the Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn were on the market. Entering the console market, with all these beasts on the market, was an almost impossible task. Apple tried it in partnership with Bandai and it was a resounding failure.
Apple Pippin, a console that ended in a huge failure
The three consoles we mentioned were focused on video games, they were platforms for playing. These were fairly simple solutions created to run games, nothing more and nothing less.
It was in 1996 when Apple He told the Japanese Bandai THE manufacturing and the marketing of a console. Pippin wasn’t just a console, it was a multimedia device that could do more than run a game. Come on, Apple was several decades ahead of it, since now consoles can do a lot more than run a game games.
In reality, Apple and Bandai’s Pippin was not a console, it was a simple home computer capable of browsing the Internet, running educational and entertainment applications and, of course, moving games.
This platform was based on Apple’s Macintosh architecture. He used a PowerPC processor
It didn’t look bad, but the proposal was a huge failure for a few different reasons. The first reason was the presence on the market of Sony’s PlayStation consoles, Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn. Three brutal and more robust consoles with a large catalog of exclusive games.
To give you an idea, at the launch of the Apple Pippin, there were only 20 games available for the console. Additionally, the most important developers of the time abandoned the console altogether, as they saw huge success with the other platforms on the market.
The console also hit the market with an exchange price of around 600 dollars. To give you an idea, the “original” PlayStation cost around 360 dollars in exchange and the Nintendo 64 cost a little over 200 dollars in exchange. Come on, the Apple console has doubled and even tripled the price of the rest of the consoles on the market.
The disastrous marketing that Apple and Bandai did with this console didn’t help at all. They could not define whether the Pippin was a video game console, a basic computer or a multimedia device.
It is estimated that around 42,000 units were sold, although some speak of almost 80,000 units. Anyway, very far from the figures of the rest of the consoles on the market at the time. The Pippin was discontinued in 1997 and only lasted a year on the market.
