<i>Before starting with the new article, i'd like to thank all the people that "lost" their free time reading and commenting my preceding post. And obviously thanks to all the people who pointed out my engrish, or suggested me how to cleanup my text to make it more acceptable for motherlanguage readers. I've made a great effort on my english in this article and i hope it shows somehow I was happy to see the forum reacting when stimulated with a more tought inducing topic, expecially because i posted it in a time in which some people were complaining on the forum's topics quality. But now it's time to go back to our businnes. Again it'll be a LONG read and i choose a time close to christmas on purpouse! </i> <b>IMPORTANT NOTICE!</b> this article contains debatable and not perfect information ON PURPOUSE! I want people to get passionate and express their ideas! <b>karsten's videogaming talks Vol.2 "The Golden Era of VideoGames"</b> I think i'm a lucky guy because i was already a gamer in the old times of 1988 and had the luck to pass through what i consider the golden age of videogames: The years between 1988 up to 1998 and a little later. Why i consider this years as a golden age? Because in these years occurred an evolution in videogaming that is really unlikely to happen again. Many companies tried to enter in the videogaming world and brought in their different views on games, hardware, multimedia, marketing. But what i consider the most amazing is that almost all those companies that entered the fight had actually brought something precious in the gaming world (unlike nokia's effort for example...). Also most of the machine had the chance to be winners... What do i mean? Let me elaborate. First of all, many machine were available to the public: Sega Genesis/Megadrive SNES PcEngine Neo Geo Philips CD-I 3DO Commodore CD-TV Atari Jaguar Playstation Saturn Pippin FM towns Neo Geo CD Nintendo 64 and surely other systems i can't remember right now, along with many add-ons and handhelds. That created a situation in which each company had to work hard to put out the best they could, as fast as possible and at the lowest price; a rush for technology and price. But not just that, all those companies tried hard to differentiate their offers to the public. And it was a critical time for technology; optical storage media were starting to take off, and all the companies had to make a move for not being left behind. Let's start our analysis from the companies that didn't start immediatly with CD based consoles or didn't embrace the standard. Some companies had faith in the new media and came out with new machines (Philips, 3DO, Sony etc), other companies come out first with "upgrades" of their current ones like Sega did. The part concerning the upgrades is really interesting, and Sega was quite a pioneer in it. The Mega CD, and 32x and later the Saturn were the machine that slowly made the customer's faith in the company go down and down, and that slowed down up to killing the Dreamcast. Nintendo too, as everybody knows, was planning a Cd-Rom drive add on for the SNES, that was later canned. This was one of the most important steps in the story of videogames. Cancelling the SNES CD-ROM (that had the potential to became the first REALLY successful upgrade), meant 2 important things: 1) Sony entered the battlefield, 2) having no chance to come out with a CD based machine. The N64 capabilities were GREAT. Great processor (100MHZ! it was insane, 3 times faster than a Playstation!), pretty 3d graphics.... but... the downside were great. COSTY, damn costy games, little space in cartdridges didn't allow the nice 3d system to shine due to bad low textures that were recicled more and more times, the great sound engine had to play low quality tunes (compared to CD-Roms) due to space problems... Sega as stated before, first sent out the Mega CD, and interesting hardware, that had one fault: not expanding the machine's palette. That was bad. It was a complaint point to the old genesis. I remember reading an interview in some italian magazine in which they asked a Sega engineer why they didn't made so that the Mega CD could display better palette and or resolutions. He said "we planned it, but in the end the manufacturing costs would have raised by 2 or 3 dollars so we had to drop it". No comment. But the worst came out later. Sega had another bitter medicine to serve with his fans. The 32x. Based on what would have later been the Saturn's architecture, was adding Mhz to the old Genesis and better palette and resolution, but was working with carts. See Nintendo :-/. Also the last crazyness was that a couple of games were released requiring the GENESIS+MEGA CD+32X togheter... Also word of the saturn release were around not helping the machine at all... why buying a machine that would be obsolete or not supported in a short time!? Beside Nintendo someone else didn't embrace the upcoming new media immediatly, but tried to catch up later like TurboGrafx, Neo Geo CD and the Atari jaguar. Three really different machines, one succesful in japan, the other one born in hope to get some extra cash and relieve SNK financial stress (but was strongly criticized for having SLOW CD access and read speed [1X] and later even saw a revision with a faster cd drive [2X]), and the latter one was a real tech jewel that used too costy cartdridges and in his last days tried to save itself with a CD add-on that would have lowered consistently the game's price. BREAK TIME (now go and take a coffee) Now after this coffee you all people should feel less sleepy from my long talk, and we can go on... - - - The last group of machines, are the ones that had cd-rom support since the beginning. We'll concentrate our talk in just a few of them, 3DO, Philips CD-I, Playstation and Saturn. Since my knowledge of Pippin, FM towns etc is close to zero i'll gladly hear your points and comments about them. The 3DO was an interesting machine, born in an unusual way; instead of being brought on by a single brand it was a project that was made and licensed around at various companies. The machine was a nice one, with some really good games and arcade conversions (i remember drooling over Super street fighter 2) and was making a really good use of its cd media. It was available a VCD card as an expansion. The machine was quite a nice one, but was overly priced and had price drop far too late in its life for managing to keep the pace of the upcoming Playstation and Saturn. The CD-I is a most interesting machine. The most bashed of the group too... The CD-I had decent processor and built in MPEG cart decoder (at least 90% of the players had it inside). With this machine Philips tried hard with it to enforce a new concept, to slide in every dining room a multimedia machine that could play games, digital video, music, photos, be a help for kids thanks to edutainment software and on disc interactive encyclopedias. A big, huge task, too difficult to comply for a lone company, and so it was in the end. Playstation and Saturn had a great potential. But Saturn failed. Now we all know how bad is (was?) Sega for what concerns sales strategies, price points and advertisements... Playstation instead had great success (probably the greatest success in videogames history). So each machine and company left us with something important beside games. Sega teached the market many things: that successful add-ons are a rare thing that pissing off your fans by pulling the plug too early in the fight for the market (Saturn!) will make them have less faith in your future machines not releasing the best japanese hits in the states and europe won't help sales uselessly complicated architecture is hard to take advantage of if you have a strong mascot, USE IT don't keep it in your closet until it's too late! Don't push multiple hardwares at the same time. When users buy a piece of hardware, they expect it to have a reasonably long live If you abandon a fight (gamegear) instead of keep updating and enhancing it (nintendo with gameboy, gameboy light, GB color), you give your opponents a great chance to dominate a market share Nintendo teached that you can't keep people waiting and waiting for an add-on, can it, exit with a machine whose games costs almost twice as much as playstation and hope to succeed add-on can be succesful only on successful machines (64DD) Having great tech chances, but limiting it throught obsolete media in the long run will make you machine feel old 3rd party support is important to fullfill all your customer's taste (N64). censorship of games is a boomerang and can cause loss of image (MK1 was censored and failed, MK2 wasn't and was a masterpiece on SNES) Sony teached how to advertize a console and games and turn it into mass product teached that when you're just in the market piracy can help improving the user base (psx was awfully [intentionally?] easy to hack or mod for backups, compared to saturn) killer games can turn the tide to your side when the market is uncertain (Final Fantasy VII is a good example) Great 3rd party support help turning the market to your machine Neo Geo CD Teached that a console must have reasonable loading times 3DO having a good product, but not enough market penetration leads to failure. This later would express in the sony's strategy of selling at a loss for widening user base. something that if done at the right time could have really helped the machine. CD-I it's impossible to push a machine in all homes like if it was a VCR recorder when: -you are alone -cd burners are not widespread and costy -you publicize and distribute only in an handful of countries being able to use great franchises (mario and zelda) doesn't make you an instant winner. It's IMPORTANT to know how to publicize and market your console; you can't sell it first as a Hi-FI equip, then as an home computer, and then as a game machine. Jaguar being the best in tech specs doesn't make you a winner (see 3DO) coming out with a console that is that costy is a risk, only healty companies should dare the market is made out of 3 main regions. trying hard in only one is not enough. price point is important for users a late cd add-on can't save a doomed machine. So what are your toughts? Are you happier now with a three sided market or enjoyed more these pionerist times? what do you agree or NOT agree with? DISCUSS karsten
Nice little trip down memory lane there but I think you were a bit cruel on the Saturn calling it a "bad" machine. As I've always thought, Sega's downfall was down to Sega of America doing whatever they wanted and Sega of Japan doing whatever they wanted. The result being 32x being made in America without knowledge of the Saturn being developed in Japan. I guess you could say that makes a system bad, but in my eyes (and I know many others) it was the victim of misfortune and bad management....oh wait I guess that does make the system bad :-/. <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--> [rant] Also a big turning point in all of this was the quality of games. The Megadrive/Genesis wasn't doing too bad but the Mega/Sega CD had some real poor quality games. Had Sega put some more 1st party developers to make some decent games and not the masses of FMV games we got instead it may very well have been a different story. When people saw the Mega/Sega CD fail, who in the right mind would want to develop for the 32x when it's most likely going to be a failure and the new generation of CD based consoles are just around the corner? The Saturn just continued this trend all over again. I mean it had some GREAT games and the console itself was (at least in my opinion) amazing. Online gaming? Video player? Hard-drive? Sega thought of all these things to include in the Saturn, although granted the hard-drive never made it out. They had great vision but with the lack of sucess with the 32x, the high price of the Saturn and no truly great system selling game on or near launch....that is what I see as their downfall. Maybe it's me being a bit of a Sega fanboy, or maybe it's just that growing up on Sega consoles, but I don't think Sega should've done so badly with the Saturn and eventually Dreamcast. Those two consoles were so ahead of the times it's unreal. [/rant] But I guess that's not really my point anyway. Gaming was at a big turning point, the gamers themselves were now older and wanted a more mature system. The Playstation answered this call and Sony aimed it’s console at the more adult market. In the last generation this was Sega’s bread and butter, but dumping Megadrive/Genesis support (when it had at least another year) to concentrate on the Saturn was just shooting themselves in the foot. The once Sega only user moved towards the more mature system and the rest as they say...is history. I think I’m going to go for a little cry now and maybe play an old Saturn game or two...
Thread hijacker . Also I don't want our relationship spread all over the internet! Anymore of this and you won't get your special treat for Christmas!
offtopic, ban him! N64 era was awesome. There was so much variety from all fronts, as well stellar previous generation offerings. The PS2 generation never felt more than a formulaic repetition of the previous era.
don't misunderstand, the saturn is and was a great machine, hardware-wise and game wise. my analysys is more aimed at faults not at successes. I mean, that you can learn something from successes, but far more from failures. And Sega is a company that shows that they can't learn from their mistakes.... and also, as i stated, never leave the field empty for just one to dominate! Sega made the mistake many times: gamegear - gameboy (they left the field to be dominated by nintendo for almost 10 years! they saved their asses with it) genesis - snes (stopped to early his support) saturn - playstation (early stopping support, weak launch lineup, high price, bad marketing they left the market to be dominated by sony) dreamcast (inexistant advertising, customer faith lost) now you can see that nowadays companies try not to make old mistakes like gamegear, look at sony's efforts! leaving a market share to your opponents without fighting is never a good idea. microsoft did the same against ps2 and managed to slow it down a little and gain some market penetration (and customer appreciation) that was retained in the following hardware. many things are overlooked.
Some of the taught the market things were a bit late... Sega already knew that add ons don't sell, see Sega SG-1000 / Mark III series, although they could have picked up tips from Atari along the way. Back to your points... Sega - First you say that sega was trying to push too many formats and then you say that they stopped support too soon, make up your mind which. Although Sega should not have dropped support for the Megadrive / Genesis when it did and probably should have dropped the Megadrive / Genesis and released the Neptune they did have the Saturn where as Nintendo had the SNES and not much else for another 2 years... Gamegear - Great piece of hardware but you didn't once mention why it failed (as the Atari Lynx and PC Engine GT did too), it was too big, the screen was not as clear as the Game Boy and more importantly it sucked batteries. Rechargable batteries were still too big and bulky. As for updating, how many times did Nintendo update the Gameboy (excluding case designs) in it's first 7 years. Answer none. How many times did it update it in the next 7? Answer 5... 3rd party support is important to fullfill all your customer's taste, this indeed true but more importantly and a point you should have touched on as every maker does the same mistake.. "Being arrogant will lose you sales, piss off developers and gamers". Nintendo, Sony, Sega and to a degree Microsoft have all shown this... Neo Geo CD - Releasing CD based console on old tech when others are releasing consoles based on new tech and charging the same ammount for it is probably not a good idea. 3DO - Having a licensed base doesn't work if you have to make or buy expensive chips, being relatively underpowered and more importantly expensive isn't going to make you a mass market machine. CD-I - Let us remember the fact that originally the CD-i was a multimedia device and not a games console. A DVD player could play games but it is not a games console. The CD-i standard failed as it was too expensive and didn't offer anything really new but it was used a great deal in the professional fields in point of information, training and educational fields and this was until the early part of this decade. Every maker that made Multimedia players failed and this included Apple, Commodore, Tandy and to a degree Panasonic. Jaguar - 64bit, chortle... If only Mattel had decided to say "Intellivision - Powerful 16 Bit chip, twice as powerful as the Coleco and Atari"
so first: concerning sega i meant the saturn/32x situation, and it's safe to say that the saturn and genesis were left to die too soon the point i wished to show is that gamegear even with those flaws MUST have had new revisions on par with the new technology advancing... i'm well aware of his limitations, but that doesn't mean that later they could have made a slimmer and longer lasting version, right? Also i can't tell for the "engine" but the linx had another updated revision (or 2? i can't remember) that were of great quality and had really sweet battery life. sure, atari was at his lasts, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been a treat to nintendo's portable monopoly if that improved machine was in the hands of SEGA for example. also those 7 years when nintendo started upgrading the GB, i guess people from ninty started looking seriously at wonderswan and neo geo pocket efforts. if there's monopoly the technology is slow to improve, and the handheld were really left behind in updates just a few years ago. did i explain myself better? waiting to hear your opinions on this points. karsten
First off, your article began alot better than your first one! The grammar started off great and went a bit downhill toward the middle/end, but overall it was much better. I agree with most of the corrections that people made, however I understand that your (Karsten) intention is to learn from mistakes and to not focus on the successes. This brings me to the next point... As for the Saturn being pulled too early, I think it is entirely relative to which country you are talking about. I am thinking this because I thought that the Saturn in JP lasted a long longer than in N. America and Europe. However, the Saturn in N. America and Europe was pulled too early...And just as you said, they didn't release enough of the JP hits in other countries, so the titles in the West were nowhere near as good as the ones in the East. This being said, statements such as "But Saturn failed." are too subjective and relative, and show excessive bias in the writing. They should be avoided so as to add clarity to writing and to avoid confusions. Also, if they are to be used, then it is better to cite opinions of other authoritative sources rather than your own, because these are harder to contest and can be referenced to others to read before judging your own analysis.
it certainly was in the N64 times... now cartridges and mass storage ar5e viable and suggested too (IMHO).
unless I am missing something Karsten, wasn't there a golden era prior to the 16/32bit era, like the Atari/nes area and then previous to that the various teletennis/pong clones era (i.e dedicated gaming systems) or did you create a thread for that as well
eh it's all up to personal experience/tastes... i consider the one i wrote about the "real" golden era.
