So I've been intrigued by the Pippin, a relatively obscure media appliance/game console that Apple and Bandai released in the mid-1990s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin

It was Bandai's idea (not Apple's), but the end result was an extremely expensive ($600 in mid-1990s money) underpowered system that flopped in the marketplace. Footage of games that existed had atrocious frame rates and loading times (yes, even for CD based titles), but was it all the machine's fault? Could it have been cheaper?

Part of the problem was adding a modem to the system: they weren't cheap in those days. If Bandai had made a modem add-on (it was the 1990s--hardware add-ons were more accepted than today) and focused on bumping up stats, it made have made it. But it didn't. What say you?