With the launch of the new PS5 Slim, many users were quick to shout that the new design was even worse than the previous one. Taking into account that colors depend on taste (and that those who criticized the new model are exaggerated), we wanted to review all those consoles that did not have a very successful design when they went on sale. And yes, it will all be a matter of perspective, but surely in this entire list you will find something that seems horrible to you.
The ugliest consoles
The history of video games has great winners, with incredible games that teleported you to unimaginable worlds, the price to pay on some occasions was to place a device next to the TV that did not fit very well with the decoration of your living room. If you have memories of a similar feeling, you have probably owned some of the following game consoles:
Coleco Telstar Arcade
Someone at Coleco thought having three games in one was a great idea. The problem is that each game had its own control system, so the result was this Telstar Arcade. It was a triangular-shaped desktop console that on each of its sides offered a different control system.
Thus, we could play tennis (Pong) between two players with control dials, shoot at the screen with a gun, or drive with a steering wheel. A complete entertainment set that looked like an authentic medieval torture machine.
Atari Jaguar CD
The console itself may not meet many standards of perfection, but it more or less maintained a symmetry that could be forgiven, even with its CD reader accessory. The most important problem was in its control controller, since this controller offered a total of 17 buttons that had nothing to do with the distribution that we currently find in today’s controls.
Xbox One
The commitment to the definitive multimedia center that Microsoft envisioned made the company imagine a device that at first glance was not exactly a video game console. The errors were demonstrated with the failure of Kinect and with that design that inevitably reminded that of a VHS tape player that not many people liked. Luckily, the hardware refresh brought the new Xbox One X and the new design language, and the rest is history.
Nintendo 2DS
It is possibly the console that has received the most criticism in terms of its design, since the change from a normal Nintendo DS was quite drastic. With quite considerable dimensions, the portable concept fell by the wayside, and its intentions of being a cheap console left a quality in the finishes closer to a toy than a video game console.
Intellivision
There was a time when manufacturing processes did not allow making millimeter pieces of plastic, so the best solution was to use wood. The devices continued to evolve, but the wood remained as an elegant finish. What times. The Intellivision met all of these conditions, and also had two control knobs that looked more like a phone than a gamepad.
SEGA Genesis Nomad
Released exclusively in the United States, it was SEGA’s last portable console. It offered the possibility of playing Mega Drive games with a slot for Mega Drive cartridges on its 3.5-inch screen. The idea was incredible, but its price did not catch on in the market. Its asymmetrical design was very strange.
Not all of them are ugly by definition
Perhaps the problem with some consoles that were not very visually pleasing was not entirely their exterior design, but rather a set of conditions that did not help them succeed. On many occasions, if competitors get it right with an attractive design, the model is much more affected, and if the size is not good either, everything becomes more complicated.
This is something that history has demonstrated on more than one occasion, as happened with the original Xbox or the recent launch of PS5 in the latest generation of consoles.
Hardware Limited Design
In recent years, the raw power of consoles has allowed us to reach a spectacular graphic level, but this graphic potential requires the use of cutting-edge hardware, which is not exactly compact and requires large cooling sources. This causes the designs of new generations of machines to be, in most cases, crude and bulky.
We could see it on PlayStation 3, where the console was a machine of considerable dimensions (and which improved with the following hardware revisions). We saw it on the original Xbox, and it has been seen again on PS5, where now, after two years on the market, it will be replaced by a 30% smaller model.