This is true. I was at SGI, and their entire business was optimized to serving the needs of very sophisticated customers who were themselves pushing the envelope. Absolutely great customers to work with. But SGI’s DNA couldn’t adjust to the low margin high volume consumer space.

They built an incredible Windows NT system (for the time) but couldn’t keep up with the 6 month release cycle their competitors were on.

SGI was an incredible place to work while it lasted.

Spot on. They had the tech advantages but the high margins of full work stations blinded them to the changing winds in the industry.

I remember at the time seeing some folks blown away that they could do SGI like stuff on a PC with a $199 add on card. It wasn't identical but it was close enough and you didn't have to switch to out of the Windows ecosystem. That kind of scaling and software inertia is just too hard to compete against.

> That kind of scaling and software inertia is just too hard to compete against.

What stopped SGI from offering such $199 add-on cards, but with their name on it?

Hubris. And Microsoft.

It's very unclear in that era that there is a big market for 3D graphics at home. So their big customers would buy the cheap cards but in low volumes -> bankruptcy. And maybe there's either no big consumer market, or it grows too slowly to replace the loss of their main business.

They were offered one mass-market opportunity on a silver platter, which they took: When Nintendo asked them to design the N64 GPU. It didn't seem to be very profitable for them.