The most epically bad tech product launches of all time

As ZDNet's Zack Whittaker noted at the time, this cloud- and server-based disaster was very, very not prepared for "the sheer number of users" that "overwhelmed" the back-end systems.

Gamers weren't even able to log in half the time. Those who were part of the lucky few could barely do anything when in game-play mode. In some cases, large amounts of their created cities were lost, according to user reports. Ouch.

A phone that carried exclusive ESPN content and video, it was, according to Business Insider, "one of the biggest flame-outs of mobile virtual network operators."

The product launched in January only to be shut down eight months later, as its $400 price tag proved too steep for even the most obsessive sports fanatic.

Well, no one bought them. That, plus lackluster mobile sales combined to drive Samsung's profits down a whopping 60 percent in 2014.

When your product was originally launched and lauded by Jeff Bezos as "one of the most famous and anticipated product introductions of all time" and was supposed to change lifestyles, and has now become a niche market buy that George Bush fell off of ... well... that's not exactly a smashing. success.

The N-Gage was supposed to be Nokia's attempt at dominating the hand-held gaming market. However, the combo gaming/mobile device was awkward to use, cost $299, and you had to hold your head sideways to talk into it, which inspired "side-talkin'" (yes there's a website for that, and here it is).

The first PDA, this landmark technology flopped because it was too ahead of its time. Add in a $700 price tag, a less-than-perfect handwriting feature that got lampooned in a Doonesbury cartoon, and you got, as Wired wrote, "a prophetic failure."

Launched a year after JVC released the revolutionary VHS player, the Betamax was technically superior. However, it lost to VHS because it a) cost more, and b) had tapes that lasted only one hour, as opposed to the 3 hours of VHS.

Funnily enough, Sony didn't discontinue Betamax tapes until, well, this month, long after everyone thought they were already dead.

Overpriced, facing too much competition, and with an expensive data plan, the Kin only spent 2 months on shelves before Microsoft pulled it.

Blasted even before its launch as a failure, users decidedly disliked the "Facebook phone." As CNET wrote, "What was the point of a smartphone focused on Facebook Home when you can get Facebook Home on several different -- and superior -- phones?"

The death knell? When AT&T did a price reduction "sale" from $99 to $0.99 for the handset.

HP's attempt to compete with the iPad failed soon after it launched. The result for the company was a huge revenue loss. Time reported that Hewlett Packard "wrote off $885 million in assets and incurred an additional $755 million in costs to wind down its webOS operations."

High-capacity storage discs, these disco-colored dinner plates were a) enormous, b) easy to break and c) very expensive. So, Laserdisc went the way of history, marked, as ZDNET commented in an earlier article, as a flop.

It was supposed to be a user-friendly interface for Windows. What it ended up being was a major failure for Microsoft, scrapped a mere year after launching.

Why? As Bill Gates wrote, "Unfortunately, the software demanded more performance than typical computer hardware could deliver at the time, and there wasn't an adequately large market. Bob died."

The replacement for Windows XP was launched in January of 2007, and immediately triggered an avalanche of complaints about bugs. A mere four months later, Microsoft scrapped the system.

No doubt about it: The DVD war was definitely won by Sony's Blu-ray disc. Reputedly, Toshiba's investment in the losing product cost it over $1 billion.

A sign that all was not well with your console, this problem in the original Xbox 360 caused Microsoft to extend the warranty to three years, and also cost more than $1 billion to fix.

The rollout of the Obamacare website was, in short, a disaster. No one was able to use the site in the initial launch, and its massive failure resulted in Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius's resignation. Eventually, the government called in tech giants such as Google to help fix its disaster of a website.

Remember last year, when Amazon tried to launch a phone? Remember how it totally crashed and burned?

Just how bad of a failure was it? Business Insider reported Amazon had to take a $170 million charge on all those phones people didn't buy.

It's a smartphone with two screens. One is a phone. The other is an ... e-reader? Other than the fact they have apps for that, the YotaPhone 2 didn't even make it to the U.S., and then had to return all the money on the pre-orders. Oops.

WebTV was supposed to revolutionize television via Internet connection in the 90s. Sadly, the service never made the revenue it needed, but it did create a host of customer service problems. It never grew past the 1 million subscriber mark. Microsoft did buy the brand, but they didn't keep it for long after the 1997 buy.

A tablet that wasn't really a tablet (it allowed users to access their desktop within a 150-foot range), it also cost $1000, was glitchy, and rendered your actual computer unusable to others while you used the Airpanel.

It sounded great: People could chat via TV straight from their living room. But with the high-priced device needed to convert the TV into a chat screen ($600.00), plus Cisco asking a $25 monthly fee for the service, everyone decided to use free chatting services like Skype and FaceTime instead.

The G4 Cube was one of Apple's rare missteps. Although its sleek design pleased the eye, its bugs (like not taking full-length graphic disk cards) and its high price proved a market flop. Apple ended up discontinuing it after a year.

Released in 2005, the Gizmondo was a portable gaming device with GPS. Sadly, it didn't sell well, and the company went bankrupt a mere year after its release, after spending millions in the product's marketing and development.

It was supposed to be the next big thing, but the product had delay after delay ... and then the iPad came along. The poor QUE e-reader never stood a chance, and the product was never released to market.