• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

Worst business decisions ever.

CastletonSnob

Active Member
Joined
Sep 3, 2021
Messages
36
Reaction score
15
What are the worst business decisions you've ever seen?

Blockbuster passing on Netflix has to be up there.
 
Usually when it comes to these 'obvious' bad decisions, if it had went the other way, both businesses would be drastically different.

Blockbuster buying Netflix would probably mean a larger customer bases for DVD rentals, and they may very well have not entered streaming.

Yahoo could have bought Google in 2002, but Yahoo, at the time, didn't need Google. Google had a better search, but didn't have the userbase.

The company that Netflix or Google is today would be massively different to what the prospective parent company would do - likely strip of assets and absorb technology and userbase, without developing the innovations that we know them for now.

I'd say the biggest business mistakes are slightly smaller scale - products that are dreadful ideas, or damaged the public perception of the company, like Google+, or were just unwanted, like HD DVD, or even sunk the entire industry, like with ET the Videogame.

Even things like Zune were flops, but they weren't bad ideas, just unwanted.
 
Sony forcing the SixAxis controls onto Lair. Not only did it contribute to Lair failing, but said failure lead to the closure of iconic development studio Factor 5.
Nintendo making the Super Mario 3D All Stars collection and the long awaited Western release of the first Fire Emblem game limited time exclusives.
Ubisoft adding DRM to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 that bricked the game for digital owners. It was so bad that they had to release a pirated crack of the game as an official patch in order to fix this problem.
EA forcing the devs of Spore to add SecuRom DRM to the game along with additional protections designed to throttle the used games market. It led to Spore being one of the most pirated games ever.
SimCity 2013 requiring an internet connection to even run the game at launch.
Nintendo backing away from Sony's deal to work with Phillips on the infamous Phillips CDI. It led to Sony entering the console market themselves with the Playstation and they dominated the console market from that point onwards.
Nintendo choosing to have the N64 use cartridges. This turned a lot of developers away from Nintendo, most notably Squaresoft who took Final Fantasy, which was previously a staple series for Nintendo consoles, over to Sony and their then new Playstation console.
Basically the entirety of the XBox One's E3 reveal. It was basically how not to reveal a new console at E3.
 
Warner Media and Discovery merging. I just think it's a bad thing considering all the things that are getting their plugs pulled. Animation isn't safe. =/
It's gonna make less people want to work for Warner Bros. Discovery, considering everything that has been canned, including the upcoming "Batgirl" movie that would have featured the grand return of Brendan Fraser to a big budget Hollywood movie and even Michael Keaton's "Batman", although Keaton is still gonna appear in "The Flash", which is still gonna release next year.
 
The USFL suing the NFL.

In August 1984, the USFL voted to move from a spring to a fall schedule in 1986 to compete directly with the NFL. This was done at the urging of New Jersey Generals majority owner Donald Trump and a handful of other owners as a way to force a merger between the leagues. As part of this strategy, the USFL filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League in 1986, and a jury ruled that the NFL had violated anti-monopoly laws. However, in a victory in name only, the USFL was awarded a judgment of just $1, which under antitrust laws, was tripled to $3.[2] This court decision effectively ended the USFL's existence. The league never played its planned 1986 season, and by the time it folded, it had lost over US$163 million (over $389 million in 2021 dollars).
 
Anyone here remember AOL? If you do, you might not want to remember them, haha. In any case, you might also remember AOL buying Time Warner in 2000 for $183 billion at the height of the infamous dot-com bubble. Said purchase would end up holding the dubious distinction of “largest corporate merger in history” for over two decades afterwards. It… didn’t end well. Especially for AOL. ’Nuff said, I think.
And with that, I think I’ve just won the thread, haha…

Also, perhaps more saliently to these forums that revolve around a video game: pretty much anything SEGA did between 1994 and 1997 could probably qualify as “worst business decision of all time”, really. Releasing the Sega 32X as “next-gen lite” after their last expensive add-on (the Sega CD) didn’t do too well… cutting off the Mega Drive/Genesis in favor of the Saturn while the SNES showed that there was still a market for 16-bit games as late as the year 2000… Sega of Japan effectively going to war against Sega of America despite the latter making the most of the company’s money… the list goes on and on. But probably their single biggest blunder — and arguably one of the most consequential in video game history — was Saturnday. Or to make a long story short: choosing not to make “Saturnday”, September 2nd, 1995 as the North American release date for their then-new Sega Saturn console, as was originally planned. Instead, they decided to move it up to May 11th, 1995 in an attempt to “one-up” Sony and their own PlayStation console, all without warning anyone — developers, retailers, no one — of this absolutely extreme rug pull. To say that people were pissed would be an understatement. Furthermore, they released it at a rather high price at the time: $399. Sony, for their part, responded swiftly with perhaps the single most epic rebuke in video game history:

Two ninety nine.

And with that, SEGA’s fate was pretty much sealed. The PlayStation would proceed to completely destroy the Saturn in North America and Europe, eliminating any chance for SEGA to make up for their past disappointments with the Sega CD and the 32X. Japan was the only place where SEGA stood a chance, tiny as that market was compared to the West where they were once a powerhouse. And indeed, they did hold their own there for a while… until their money started to run out as a result of their repeated bad business decisions. Oh, and before a little game called Final Fantasy VII made its monumental release on PlayStation. The rest is history…
 
Xerox also missed out on lots of opportunities.

But the worst one I have heard of is Enron. Stock market used to be such a mess before legislation...
 
A loan company a relative of mine is using to buy a house just downsized. These are people working with contracts that take a long time to hash out, mind you. So the sensible thing to do would be to give as much advance notice as possible to the people you're letting go, so that they'd have time to pass their contracts to someone else and the someone else would have time to get their footing.

Instead, they laid off a third of their employees with no warning and locked the accounts of everyone who was laid off, so that all the important paperwork would be inaccessible to their successors.

Why? Just why?
 
Please note: The thread is from 6 months ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom