Is there any retro consoles that you never lived up to their potential? where the games fell short of the hardware?.
Personally I feel that the NDS was under-utilized, as it was a fully 3d capable console, that was used mostly for 2d pixel art games, and platformers. When it was able to support full 3d platformers and even a fan remake of portal.
Sega was so drained after the very distracted years of juggling the SegaCD/32X/Saturn and people were sooo pissed how the Saturn went that even hardcore Sega fans were annoyed when the Dreamcast came out, wondering if it would have a short and frustrating lifetime like the Saturn did. Sega just had so much ADD in regards to their planning and strategy everyone was kind of doing a “wait and see”. Meanwhile, Sony threw the full might into the Playstation, had a great run there and then even the whispers of PS2 was enough to make everyone hyped. The other factor here is that the PS2 could also play DVDs and the Dreamcast could not. That doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but back then there was no online streaming and DVD players were really expensive. Some people bought the PS2 primarily because of the DVD support and the games were almost an afterthought.
It’s all a shame, because the Dreamcast was actually really strong technically. In a vacuum it probably would have done better, but alas, it was not in a vacuum and Sony was able to easily grab up all the market share with the PS2.