CD-i was supposed to be a dutch example of innovation. But unfortunately Philips took two unfortunate steps to keep CD-i more positive in the news. At several presentations Philips did not allow presenters who were negative about CD-i. The presse even reports that Philips did not give real numbers of selling consoles. Philips regularly updated the press with sales numbers, but reported the number that left the factory, not the amount that was sold in the store.
The Dutch Research Center "Research voor Beleid" investigated the popularity of CD-i in 1992 together with agency "Electronic Media Reporting" by asking several developers if they thought CD-i was going to be successful. A majority did not think CD-i was going to be succesful. They published it in this magazine with the title "Wie zit er te wachten op cd Interactive?"
In 1995 CD-i should have its breakthrough with a new impuls by the Interactive Encyclopedia (Philips reported that thanks to the encyclopedia 40.000 extra CD-i players were sold in The Netherlands, with a total amount of 160.000 CD-i players. Worldwide over 1 million CD-i players were sold, according to Philips.
In 1996 Philips presented their new "global strategy for multimedia". CD-i was still a part of it. But CEO Boonstra did not accept the strategy view. Philips changed its view from content related activities to hardware. In the end of 1996 Boonstra officialy announced that CD-i was a failure and Philips would step out of the (games) market. In the eyes of Boonstra Philips should never have chosen the role of a content producer/publisher.
[Thanks, https://toendigitalemedianognieuwwaren.blogspot.com]