The gaming industry is expanding rapidly with millions of new gamers entering the gaming world every day. This is largely due to the growth of mobile games and the rise in popularity of multiplayer online games. With this growth, comes the inevitable flood of cheap, low quality accessories that are a waste of money. Gaming Gadgets are often made for people who don’t know much about games, so you can find yourself stuck with a bad product if you’re not careful.
To help you avoid those expensive mistakes, we’ve compiled a list of our top 5 worst gaming gadget fails:
The Sony PS3 Move
Sony’s motion sensing peripheral was released in 2010 as a competitor to the Nintendo Wii. It was supposed to be an easy way for hardcore gamers to play casual style games, but it failed because it had no good games available at launch and cost too much money in comparison to its competitors. The PS3 Move has since been discontinued by Sony due to poor sales figures. It’s important to remember that just because something looks like a good idea on paper doesn’t mean it will be successful in practice!
ZiiO 7″ Android Tablet
The ZiiO was a tablet designed by Creative Labs for use with their high-end audio equipment. It was meant to be
There’s a lot of great gadgets and controllers out there for gamers to use. There’s also some bad ones. Here are the top 5 worst gaming gadget fails of all time.
5: Ouya
Ouya was a video game console running Android that was released in 2013. It was designed to play games downloaded from the Ouya store or streamed from other sources. The hardware was powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset and included 1GB of RAM and 8GB internal storage. While it didn’t have many games available for it, it did include ports for standard USB controllers and had a decent selection of games from the Google Play Store that could be played on it (although without optimizations for the hardware).
Ouya was created after a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised over $8 million dollars. But the console failed to live up to expectations as gamers complained about numerous issues with the hardware and software, including laggy performance, slow load times and buggy UI navigation. When it came time for Ouya’s second-generation console, they partnered with Razer and made the Razer Forge TV instead (which has since been discontinued).
4: Udraw Game Tablet
The Udraw Game Tablet was an art tablet developed by THQ’s li’l game studio,
The product in the fifth place is the Mad Catz Rock Band 3 Wireless Keyboard Controller. It is a keyboard controller for the video game Rock band, which worked with the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii consoles.
It was not a bad idea to implement a keyboard controller to the game, because it is always better for people to learn how to play musical instruments, instead of just pressing buttons on a console or an arcade machine.
However, this gadget was really expensive, costing almost $100! The device had some serious durability problems as well. In 2014, Mad Catz filed for bankruptcy and ceased all operations.
The fourth place goes to Ouya, an Android-based video game console developed by Ouya Inc. The console was announced in July 2012 by Julie Uhrman.
Ouya was positioned as an open platform for developers and it was supposed to be released on Kickstarter in October 2012 with a retail price of $99 (the final version costed around $130). But when it was released in 2013, it did not meet people’s expectations in terms of quality or performance. The company that developed Ouya went bankrupt before the end of 2015 and the hardware rights were sold to Razer Inc., another company that focuses on computer gaming hardware
The first gaming gadget to make the list is the, a system that promised to bring Wii-like motion controls to your PC or Mac. The device itself is a remote that you hold in your hand, with a sensor bar that plugs into your computer and tracks the position of the controller. The system is also compatible with roughly 200 PC and Mac games out of the box, and has drivers available for download if you want to get it working with other games.
At first glance it seems like a great idea on paper, but in practice it’s about as much fun as getting an ingrown toenail. The controller tracking was so bad that many gamers found themselves waving the remote around like crazy just to get it to register on screen. It’s also worth noting that while there are drivers available for other games, they’re often buggy and have limited functionality.
The second gadget on our list is the . This unique keyboard comes with a built-in LCD display and speakers, which allow you to watch movies, listen to music, and control several programs all from within games. Sounds like a pretty cool idea in theory, but in practice it doesn’t work very well.
The main problem with this keyboard is that it uses an outdated processor (the Intel Atom N270
1. The Atari 5200:
This was the console that started it all, but it was also the one that made Atari fail in the game industry. The controller was so bad that you couldn’t even play games with it. The controller had a joystick and a keypad on it, which could only be used for Pac-Man. Because of this, most people just ended up buying a regular controller for the console, which did not help Atari’s sales at all.
2. The Nintendo Power Glove:
This was a controller that looked like a glove, but it wasn’t very comfortable to use and didn’t work very well. It had buttons that were difficult to press and the cursor would jump around all over the screen when you moved your hand. Also, it only worked on some NES games and not others, so you had to buy a specific game just to be able to use the Power Glove.
3. The Sega Activator:
The Activator was basically an octagon with sensors in each corner, which were supposed to detect body movements and translate them into game controls. However, because of its poor design and inaccurate sensors, it only worked if you stood in one of its corners and stood still while playing your game. It only
The VR market is saturated with cheap headsets. They are marketed as being high quality and great value for money but in reality they are not. The headset might feel comfortable, the display may have a nice resolution and it might be supported by a number of games, but the tracking will always be lacking.
This is the most important feature to consider when buying a VR headset. The device needs to track your movements and display them in real time on screen in order to create an immersive experience. If you start feeling motion sickness or even get dizzy, it’s because of poor tracking.
When shopping for a VR headset, make sure it has at least 6DOF (degrees of freedom) tracking. This means that the device can track your movements in all directions: forward/backward, up/down, left/right and pitch, yaw and roll (rotation).
Controllers also need to be tracked separately from the headset so that they move appropriately as you move your hands in real life while holding them. If they’re not tracked accurately, this can break immersion and make you feel like you’re not really in the game world but just watching someone else play while wearing a fancy set of goggles.
1. Nintendo Virtual Boy
The dream of virtual reality has been with us for decades. Back in 1995, Nintendo took a stab at it with the Virtual Boy, a self-contained VR console that brought players right into the action. Unfortunately, the visuals were in black and white and the games were so bad that most people bought one, played it for 10 minutes, decided it sucked and never touched it again.
2. Sega Activator
If you love video games but hate buttons and joysticks, Sega’s Activator is just what you’ve been looking for! The Activator is an octagonal ring of light sensors that fits under your TV. You stand in the middle of it and punch the air to activate commands instead of pressing buttons. Now you can jump into the action like never before!
3. Atari Mindlink
With its no contact design, Atari’s Mindlink was hands down the weirdest controller ever made for a gaming system. The player wore a headband that featured two electrodes positioned over his or her eyes. To play a game, all you had to do was furrow your brow or roll your eyes up or down to send commands to your Atari 2600 system. Did we mention that this was all in 1984? Yeah… 1984!