Well, on top of no general market support,
here're some key factors that accelerated the demise of
Virtual Boy:<br><br>Initial system price:<br><br>WITH A
PRICE TAG OF $199.99, you can buy both SNES and Genesis
with over 1000 games in the library. Portable systems
are always considered to be a secondary purchase
besides it's monochrome, so strike one on price point
factor even before people try them out.<br><br>Bad
magazine publicity:<br><br>After the system was unveiled
at Shoshinkai 1994, almost all of the magazines put
the system down. Next Generation (March 1995) even
said that "either Nintendo is completely mad or they
see the future of gaming to be in crude and
monochrome setting. Only Diehard Gamefan gave Virtual Boy a
good rating. The problem is, you can feel the game
with screen shots on the magazine, you simply have to
try out the games to get to know the games/system, so
there goes strike two.<br><br>Launch of Nintendo
64<br><br>Everyone, I mean all of us worldwide, were excited about
N64 (Ultra 64) which magazines have been talking
about it since 1993. It would be almost impossible for
mass consumers to sink in money to buy both systems.
On top of that, Shigeru Miyamoto was putting nearly
all of his time and resources preparing launch of N64
in Japan, consequently, Virtual Boy was hugely
ignored, putting the system out of mainstream
market.<br><br>Another reason (if not admitted and discussed) was
concerns over liability, most people get headache after
playing this thing continuously for over 30 min, and
there were complaints over this shortly after the
system was released. Perhaps Nintendo (both Japan and
USA) didn't want to draw litigation over this, ending
the game/system development.<br><br>Because of
Virtual Boy, Gumpei Yokoi felt embarraced for his plan
and resigned from Nintendo for his mistake
(implicitly). He later on started his own company and developed
Wonder Swan. Unfortunately, he was killed in car
accident even before his dream system was launched.
Perhaps the Japanese support Wonder Swan because of this,
a fond memory of him.<br><br>Vince