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The Battle Of The Consoles: From Atari To The Xbox
msolnik writes: "There's been a lot of talk about Xbox, and GameCube, and even more speculation about the technology inside the box. However, the console wars are not going to be won based purely on technology. There's a long history of cyclical win and lose peaks and troughs for companies that have tried to stay the course in this business. Nintendo stands alone in having survived a number of generations of innovation and still managed to remain a contender in the market. Tom's Hardware has delivered this unique assessment of The Console Wars." Update: 12/06 16:28 GMT by M : Note that Tom's has updated some of the charts in the article - they note that there was a misunderstanding between Tom's and the article's author as to which version of the charts to post.
The 3do was a cool system, even if I was the only one in town who owned one.... Star Control II on the console, all the way!
They might be lost though. If it turns out to be really easy to modify an X-Box enough to run Linux and play your MP3's, DIV-X movies, do email, etc, then people might buy an X-Box and never spend a penny on an X-Box game.
Since Microsoft, as with most console companies, are selling the console at a loss, and making up for it with game sales, this can't be a good thing for them. Their choice of almost-standard components might cost them in the long run.
On this page, there is a chart that shows "Console History", with the relative successes by companies shown in bold. Not only is th SNES not boled, It's not even there. I find this very unsual, since growing up, everyone I knew had an SNES, period. You were considered "way out of it" if you were stuck with one of those crappy Genesis things.
A better 'that was then, this is now' comparison might have been to show Wolfenstein 3D and Return to Castle Wolfenstein... Enormous difference ten years makes!
(Even better, show the original Wolfenstein game, 2D with stick figures. Wasn't that kind of a 'Berserk' ripoff? Coward. Fight like a robot.)
"Information wants to be paid"
A combination of two or more of these usually makes up for a lack in the others. Likewise, failure in multiple categories often doom a system. Nintendo dominated with the SNES, which had an incredible set of developers. But they took a long time developing a replacement, and when they did the N64 was both hard to develop for, couldn't run old games, and didn't have the ability to easily hold as much as the PS1(FMV on a cartridge?). It had plenty of power over the PS1, but not much else.
Likewise, the current PS2 isn't as easy to develop for, or as powerful as the Xbox and Gamecube. But it is easy enough, and since it can run all the PS1 games and came out first it has a huge market penetration jump start. If a company can only afford to initially develop for one platform, they will probably do it on the system that has the most market share. Likewise, many consumers will buy the system with the most games, building an upward momentum for the system. Neither Nintendo(with experience) or Microsoft(with $$$) are small contenders who can be counted out, which is good as it will make sure none of the companies sit on their laurels. Hopefully, we will get to seem some really great development in the years ahead.
The review seems a bit sketchy. How can we skip from 'Tennis for Two' (1958) to Doom (1993)?
Aside from a few sales numbers, I see no mention of Atari. This is more of a Console vs PC's article --- and new consoles at that.
Oh yeah, I don't think the PSX was 64 bits.
-B
-- he's not heavy, he's my sysadmin!
There may be a battle for the console market, but the question is why are they at war.
Microsoft is looking for control over the television. They think they've taken the first step, selling a box that people hook up to their TV. Too bad it's $300, but that's the microsoft way - you might as well charge the customer if they're willing to pay.
Nintendo is looking for control of the gaming market. Control of the television is not an aspiration - yet.
...Further proof that the world is in dire need of more (competent) editors.
... Relative successes are listed in bold." NEC's Turbografx 16 is listed in bold, as a "relative success." Sega's Genesis, on the other hand...? Apparently Genesis wasn't "relatively successful," according to Hodgson, etc. Oh, and FYI, while I'm sure Nintendo appreciates their listing N64 as a "relative success," they might have preferred that the authors at least INCLUDE the Super NES on the list.
The authors open their article with a neat little chart listing "the dates of the introductions of various consoles.
Their wonderfully-short second section, "Console History," spans in painstaking detail the gaming industry's progress during the crucial period between the heyday of MIT's Rail Road Club and the formation of software giant Infocomm in 1979. From there, they proceed directly to the next logical video gaming landmark -- with a third section, accurately titled, "Then Came Doom."
The article's most valuable offerings are a 21-item chart comparing a whopping three consoles (Xbox, PS2 and GCN), including such poignant criteria as "DVD Movie Playback" and "Broadband Enabled"; and a whole five sentences comparing these three systems, proving conclusively that somewhere during the authors' extensive research for this article, one of them did in fact quickly scan MSNBC's "Game Time" article -- which, it's worth adding, is a vastly more useful and intelligent article (with regard to the current "Top 3"), and can be found at the following URL:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/techgames_front.asp
crib
Please don't read my journal
I have a box that connects to the TV. With wireless capability. It does control the television as well. It comes with it! It does not cost $300, require an operating system. Neither can you play Halo on it, but it allows you to find a good TV program to watch instead.
Anyway, the GC has 12m triangles a second, the XBox can do 100m+. But XBox developers say they are having difficulty getting 30m a second, whilst GC developers are saying that they are clearing 20m a second without any trouble. This is obviously the real-world performance of each box - more accurate than the marketeering that Microsoft is chunking out.
Looks like Tom forgot all about the SNES. Kind of a big omission. I remember the SNES starting out slow, but becoming one of the biggest consoles ever.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Really? Is it fully programmable over the network?
It's obvious that technology doesn't really come into play when consoles are concerned. It's all about marketing and getting the buy-in of the game development companies. Just like the applications make the OS, the games make the console.
The Sega Dreamcast was WAY ahead of its time when it came to graphics. Soul Calibur is one example of a game with outstanding graphics that kick the crap out of anything on the PSone (which was the competition at the time). Personally, I think it competes more directly with the PS2, but that's another topic altogether. The point is that it didn't have the backing of the game developers like the PS did, so in the end, it lost out. Not because it was an inferior system (it wasn't), but because the marketing push and support wasn't there.
The history was superficial, and the information on the current consoles was wrong in respect to the Game Cube.
First, he makes the common mistake of giving the polygon/sec counts. MS and Sony have theoretical maximum counts while Nintendo's count is real-world with all of the eye candy turned on. He then uses this comparison to show the inferiority of the Cube hardware when the framerate of Cube games could be higher given the same games with complex action.
Look at the columns of features. See "N/A" next to most of the Cube's fetures? It makes it look like there's nothing there, yet the Cube has good marks in most of these rows, such as audio, HDTV, broadband and 56K modem.
...that someone got paid money for writing this rubbish.
DVD players were more expensive than a PS2 in Japan so people bought them and didn't buy games. Sony took a bath until DVD players got cheap.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
If everyone starts buying Xboxes, the cost will go down.
Now that's rich. I challenge you to name any Microsoft product where the price has dropped with mass production.
The cost of PC's has fallen to become an unbelievable value. The cost of the Microsoft software kindly preloaded on those PC's? Just the opposite.
Some "innovation," Bill. Sheesh...
Just my personal opinion....
Atari 2600 was the first game console I bought. Thoughout the game history I think it was the games themselves leading the trend, rather than the game consoles.
We choose a game console by the games which they could run, rather by the innovative technologies it had. I wouldn't buy PS if it couldn't run Final Fantasy, etc.(like I wouldn't consider switching from Apple II to IBM if IBM couldn't run Ultima. ^_^)
I wondered why so many good games would only run on one particular game console, until I got to meet a game developer who told me that gaming industry is in fact, in contrary to what I thought, running a very serious business out there.
Production of a game nowaday involved a lot of money. Unless a game developer signed a very restrictive license agreement with the game console vendor, you wouldn't be granted the right to develop game for their console, and VC wouldn't give you money for your development.
The gaming business in game console is very different from gaming business in PC. Everybody can write games for PC, but only under close-partnership would one be allowed to develop game in a particular game console.
That explain why one game would appear in one game console seldom(not never) appear in another.
This may sound like nitpicking...
"With this month's launch of the two most advanced domestic computing consoles ever witnessed - Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox"
Nintendo is a Japanese company, and the Gamecube is hardly a domestic console. In fact I believe the X-Box to be the first truely domestic console.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Not a good history of video games and I learned nothing..... I liked the chart of the gaming systems and time...
I agree. It stands unique as the worst one I've seen so far.
Whether or not it is truly a console could be debated, but these guys even forgot to mention the most popular gaming machine ever. Still hard to believe that the little old gameboy is the most used system, but it's true.
Had some interesting little tidbits- but it was like he tried to rush that article in a day or something, the history of video games had huge holes in it.
And the hardware is somewhat irrelevant at this point I think- it's all about the games that are available! Playstation2 is the clear winner this year- though it did have a head start. X-Box though just has so much power and potential- it'll be interesting to see what comes out this time next year for it. Nintendo- well Nintendo is Nintendo and they just go and do their thing and sell millions of units almost apart from what everyone else is doing- as long as they keep their strong branding to kids they will happily suck up the cash.
As in, like, you domesticate a pet by teaching it not to poop all over the floor?
The article says the DC is only 64 Bit. I thought that the system was 128 Bit. Have the authors ever even put a DC next to an N64? There's no contest that the DC graphics are better.
I didn't realise that we went straight from infocom to doom. Man, those graphics cards manufacturers sure beat moores law there ;)
the turbografx made the list, yet the SNES and the gameboy didn't? hello? the gameboy has been the hottest selling console and i still see myself playing one in 10 years. i thought the jaguar was 64bit? it got listed as 32! and the psx which is 32 got listed as 64.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
but in inflation adjusted dollars where you commodity is high priced programmers and not mass produced boards I would not be surprised if you found that MS's price has actually declined.
Did it decline as much as hardware? No.
Did it decline as much/more than their competition? I think there is a strong argument for yes -- their competiton is SUN and Apple and any other commercial product. Apple and SUN bundle the hardware and software. Their net price has not declined a whole lot and arguably has declined less than MS's.
The assumption that MS is overcharging for software is not based on facts. As a customer most companies care little about the cost and more about their return on that investment. MS has proven a high return on investment.
The Genesis was highly successful... And so was the SNES, which isn't even on there. The PS1 was only a 32 bit system, but the Atari Jaguar was 64. The Dreamcast is 128 bit. Who wrote this article? 3 People from "Crocodile" Dundee securities, including a Dr. couldn't get it right... Gee, If they're this bad with these numbers, how good are they with financial numbers?
But as far as the Game Boy is concerned... Let's face it, Nintendo played its cards right. When the GB first came out it actually wasn't that expensive. It boasted the power of the NES (which was the only Nintendo console available) and a simple grayscale LCD screen. And it was cheap. When I got my GB, I bought it myself with money I had saved up (I was maybe 11 at the time), and it was maybe $150 CDN for me to buy. Plus I was able to afford a game or two.
Now, along comes Sega's Game Gear a few years later. Think Portable Genesis. That's all well and good, but the colour screen drove up the price enough to make it more inaccessible to some. And from what I understand from a couple of people who had them, they weren't that great for battery life.
Among the Nintendo users, people were always posing the question of when Nintendo would release a colour version of the GB, and the reply was when Nintendo could guarantee a similar price and similar battery life - two of the important factors for a good handheld console.
The Game Gear folded, maybe because it was too expensive. The TurboExpress was definitely a technical achievement for the time, but the price was definitely a little much, and out of the price range of its target audience.
Yes, Nintendo's taken its sweet time to producing a 16-bit colour handheld, but one thing I respect them for is their methodology. With the GB line, they tend to wait until they can guarantee that any new products meet price and performance requirements set by their original device... And it's been worth the wait.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
Just stick with the computer hardware review guys.
You are not cut out for consoles
What the hell is going on. I really dont what too be lumped with another lemon this cristmass like I was with the dreamcast (though it had some great games). I just what too get a console that I know will still be having games developed for it five years into the future like the ps1, is that so much ask for.
Please give real sales figures not stuff like my mates mate walked in the local eb and man where those xbox's pileing up or bs like, dude its the demand for the console that matters like the xbox is kewl casue there is more demand for it like dude.
Text adventures are still alive and well, and still to this day feature better graphics than any console. (Even if you have a 1600x1200 monitory, text adventures feature more detail, you can zoom in infinantly on any area if your imangination is good enough)
Text adventures have always been puzzles and NPC interactoin. Sure there is a strong movement away from pure puzzles in the text adventure world, but they are still there. Doom is about finding the blue key, while Zork is getting the theif to do what you can't do yourself.
if only I could ammend my post to say in recent years
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
http://www.actsofgord.com/page46.html
gord is correct ,
I like this one:
:)
A whopping 9k in length, it debuted on the brand-new PDP1 and was the precursor to the arcade classic Asteroids. Space War, truly, was the first first-person shooter console game.
I thought it was third person
That article was almost as vapid as a Gartner report.... And free of charge!
And thus, with some battle lost, Rome fell, leaving only monuments and lead piping behind
NEXT>>>> The American Civil War
Did anyone else notice the chart on the second page. The 'history of game consoles'?
It was so full of errors as to be amazing. No mention of the supernintendo, marking the Turbo Graphix 16 as a 'success' and marking the orgional playstation as being 64bit? I mean its not a big deal, but seeing it really calls into question the crediblity of the whole article, IMO
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
CNBC did a report on the X-Box on monday during Business Center and brought up a good point. Historically consoles have been highly proprietary and had long lifespans. But with the introduction of the X-Box Microsoft is changing the industry. A typical console has a development time of 18-24 months and a lifespan of 5 years. The long lifespan is to recoup the losses incurred in the first few years of producing the hardware.
The X-Box on the otherhand is off the shelf parts. The original development cycle took 18 months, but it can be upgraded every year. There aren't much technical hurdles from keeping microsoft from putting P4's into next year's version of the XBox. They can upgrade is every year and it will still run all the games.
It introduces problems like minimum requirements for consoles, but Microsoft is still ahead because they shortened the development cycle. From now on Nintendo and Sony will have to rethink their business model and will have to play catch up to microsoft in the near term.
Where's the mention of Commodore? I remember having oodles of boxes of 5 1/4" disks with nothing but C64 games on them. Might I remind everyone of the graphics and sound superiority? Next, the Amiga. Again, superior when it came to a/v. Let's not forget also, the CD32 and the CDi systems that sold like hotcakes in Europe.
I might have missed it in the list but I could swear the NeoGeo was nowhere to be found.
Except for its horrid cost it was a great console system
Orac
it was two hydrid 32 bit processors, kinda like the sega 32X wasnt a 32bit machine just two 16 bit processors working in tandem.
Neither the xbox nor the gamecube have the same amount of units sold or sitting in peoples houses as the ps2.Neither the xbox nor the gamecube have the same amount of titel's in development or currently on sale as the ps2! If microsoft and or nintendo do not get a large enough unit base then it will make no sense for developers to develop for there consoles as they will make more money selling to the ps2's much larger user base.0 1. html read
http://www.actsofgord.com/page46.html read
http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter
gord has the correct answer!!!!
It looks like there is a possibility that Sega is going to start producing more Dreamcasts. We'll have to wait and see if this is true.
= 87
Check out:
http://sega.cloudchaser.com/news/index.php?view
Take it from someone who has been programming consoles and home computers for 20 years. Even back in the day, you'd read that the Atari 2600 had only a couple of sprites, then you'd see games with a dozen or more moving objects. The problem is simple: specs are the raw capabilities of what the hardware can do. They're the *starting* point for the programmer. And of course they're meaningless by themselves. Let's use a guitar as an analogy. Imagine that console makers sold guitars:
1. In the spec lists comparing Nintendo's guitar to Sony's guitar, you'd see that one had 6 strings and the other 12. Does this mean you can play twice as many songs on the latter?
2. Sony claims that their guitar is capable of 1000 chords per second. Now what do they mean by that? Is that the limit to how much beating the strings can take? But what if you played 1000 chords per second? Would there be any time for subtleties or even *changing* chords? Of course not, so who cares about that number.
Hardware specs really are like this (for example, 3dfx loved to claim 3 million triangles per second on some of their cards; in reality, programmers only got about 150,000). Fanboys *love* to think that bigger is better and that console X really can have games with 50,000,000 triangles per second, but that's not how it works.
typicaly any 'timeline' of video game console successes is always from an Americain point of view. People tend to forget that places like, I dunno.. Europe are significant consumers of games too and their views on whats a big seller and what isnt can be different.
In my part of the world (some where in the Southern Hemisphere) the big sellers of the past were the Atari2600 (of course!), Sega's Master System (specificly the 2nd model) and Mega Drive (ditto) which brings us up to the present where the PSX is Number 1 and the N64 2nd (nobody gave a flying fudge about the Dreamcast here). not much of a time line, is it? I guess Nintendo and anybody else had no intrest in our puny population (3 1/2 Million) back then - the NES is considered rare and the Snes is obscure too. Nintendo's only hits have been the N64 (bit of a weak hit) and the dead then risen again modern Gameboy line.
Theres no guarantee that the Xbox will come out here either.. sigh.
sorry for that little bit of crying...
Infocomm? Wasn't that supposed to be "Infocom"?
Did Taco write this article?
In addition, the ease of porting a PC platform game to the Xbox will certainly add to the pitch. Can anyone verify that it does in fact use the DirectX APIs. I have read that it does but I have not verified this for myself yet.
I bought an XBox yesterday and have not even opened the damn thing yet. Couldn't believe they had ONE at the local WalMart. A 320 (with tax) impulse buy...doh
I wonder though, how long it will take them to develop this side of the product, and if there will be such a profusion of basically obsoleted 1/2Gig+ boxes out there as to make it a moot point - I've been predicting that in the end the teevee issue will fundamentally be a software rather than a hardware solution. That is, a box, and who cares what it looks like, who sells it or where it sits, is your primary home data input node, where your telephone, internet and teevee all collect, and the teevee is just another remote appliance rather than the central device.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
my first memories of game consoles in the 80's when nintendo and sega first broke out in the 80's the emphasis in advertising was on how much fun you could have using their consoles, the average person who buys game consoles is more into professional wresting and not kernel updates.
let's face it, there's a lot of really games out there that have amazing graphics, require state of the art technology to run, had used millions of man hours in their creation, etc... still are still not as adictive and fun as something as silly as a very low tech game you would use on your pda.
it just seems to me that it's getting harder and harder to find a game console that offers a countless number of games that are hard to put down.
They say the Atari 2600 came out in 1976 - BUT the ORIGINAL name of that system was the Atari VCS (Video Computer System) the 2600 moniker was added later to keep it in line with the 5200.
-ShieldWolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
I think Xbox is just a shrewd out-flanking manuever by M$ to control our minds at work AND at home. OMG!
I really should login, eh! Comments?
My first console was an Atari VCS (the wooden version of the 2600) - My how things have changed.
Call me nostalgic, but I stil believe the 8-bit days were the best. Get your SEGA Master System or your NES (with funky robot if rich) and you were away!
I currently own a PS2, I use it sometimes, GT3 and GTA3 are pretty good games, lots of fun.. But having observed the progression of games over the last, say, 10 years, I believe they came to a bit of a halt when the Internet got popular.
Games houses all thought "Wow, the Internet, let's make our games support online play, let's build communities!".
Sure, that's a great idea. Brings in money. Uses the Internet. Builds huge user bases (look at Ultima Online, Everquest etc.)
Also, around the same time, more and more games started getting ported to new funky 3D versions - of course Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake were the daddy's - other platforms such as the Amiga failed miserably (With the likes of Alien Breed 3D - the apparent Doom competitor). I've not really seen any _really_ original games in the past 5 years, maybe it's not possible anymore? Maybe people are too narrowminded. I don't want any more 3D conversions of driving games, fighting games, or platform games. What does that leave? Is the games market so huge that we've expired originality and can now only focus on making our GPU's in consoles faster to support prettier textures on the same old 3D models. Who knows.
Why were 3D platform games soooo good? Why did everyone love a parallel scrolling Shoot'em UP? Sit a kid of today down infront of a 8/16-bit console with a 'decent' game from the past. Sure, they'll complain "the graphics are crappy!", but give it 5 minutes of gameplay and they probably wouldn't be able to get off it all day. I doubt they'd be the same with their new GameCube or PS2 or XBOX.
What changed? What happened?
Maybe I just got old and don't get the buzz from gaming I used to, I'm quite partial to a bit of GT3/GTA3 on the PS2 and FlightSim/Quake/UT on the PC - but you just don't get the same flashy lights around the 'gaming' thing anymore.
Be it the XBOX, PS2 or GameCube - they all basically do the same thing. Sure, some have slightly higher specs, some have Internet support, some have big this, big that. Whatever. The key to consoles being successful (as they once were) would be for the games designers. Back in the day, games designers/dev guys would make the most out of the limitations of the machine - look at platforms like the C-64/ZX Sinclair. People used to get excited about the demo's cracking groups etc. used to release basically because it was so unreal of the technology at the time. You don't see that anymore. I'm not actually aware of any 'demo scene' on the PC. Did the PC get too good? Is there nothing worth making a demo about these days?
The flair has gone. Modern games are just conversions of old games, made into pretty 3D and added Internet play.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
As a kid that Vectrex of your was my favorite game system I couldn't afford. Talk about a cool system... --M
This article is riddled with all sorts of errors, omissions and just plain stupidity.
Space war "was the first first-person shooter console game"? I don't want to get into any arguments over what WAS the first person shooter game, but Space War, while possibly being the first graphical real-time computer game was certainly no first-person shooter by any stretch of the imagination.
The Genesis wasn't a success (and thus not bolded in the chart)? Ridiculous! The SNES isn't even on the chart despite being quite successful itself, particularly in non-US markets.
Doom was important, yes, but I believe he is missing some other games that were involved in getting people to purchase game-ready PCs. Notably, Wing Commander is absent, despite the fact that at that time many people cited that game as the reason for going to VGA graphics with a digital soundcard.
And to top it off, beyond all the problems with the article, when it does get things right it doesn't say anything that isn't completely obvious to even the most casual gamer. The article basically takes 5 pages to say "We don't know what will happen with the future of console gaming..it depends on a lot of things". Well, no shit!
So in summary, no one gets the history right. As a professors of mine once said, "History tends to raise up the peaks and lets all else fall by the wayside."
My oppinion is that this kind of article represents a real problem in console gaming coverage by the PC gaming/hardware press. When dealing with issues that they feel they need to publish an article on yet they really don't know much about, they write a piece that doesn't say much of anything (yet fills up space!). Frequently, as part of this kind of article, the journalist will drop an unqualified chart or comparison sheet into the middle of their article.
For instance this article I'm annoyed with above has a large comparison chart in the middle of it that runs comparisons between the X-Box, PS2, and GameCube. Over half of the GC entries are marked "N/A" for not applicable. And stats in the GC column are just wrong in the context of what they're supposed to represent to the other systems. Top example here is the line that compares polygon processing. For X-Box and PS2 they have noted the "maximum poly rate", but on GC since Nintendo doesn't provide such a number, they have listed the "average poly rate"... yet nowhere do they distinguish what these numbers really represent, and the uninformed reader is left thinking that the GC is heavily inferior to the other two systems.
Ok, then next, how about this "3-D audio support in hardware" category? Well this is a bit misleading. All three systems have the ability to output 3-D audio... the GC supports Dolby Pro Logic II output, and the PS2 supports Digital Dolby output. Both of these allow for 3-D audio spaces (just listen to Rogue Squadron on the GC and tell me it doesn't feature some of the best separated audio space you've ever heard). All the "3-D audio hardware" does is it provides developers a crutch for their sound production. Now instead of having to actually engineer a program to handle the spatial modification/broadcast of sounds in a game space, they can just create a sound "bump map" (effectively a 2-D drawing with light and dark spots... a simple example would be light places allow sound through, dark spaces reflect sounds) and have their program send the sound clip, it's coordinates, and it's broadcast direction to the chip and the hardware does the rest. While this can be a boon to some developers, it isn't required to have 3-D sound.
Or worse yet, "HDTV support" listed as both Yes for Movie and Game support for X-Box when HDTV support for at least movies was actually canned just a few weeks ago... and wait, what's this, GameCube has N/A for game support??? Did the author of this chart do any research? The GC supports progressive scan output, and a number of games out now and coming soon also feature Anamorphic or 16:9/Anamorphic output to really take full advantage of an widescreen HDTV system.
Look, I'm not against listing comparisons between systems where one system has features that another lacks. But I do think it is a disservice to a company when you compare features that are only on system "A", yet skipping features that only appear on system "B"... or worse, listing a feature on "A" and not even acknowledging the feature on "B" (like in the HDTV game support reference above.
I guess I could say that it would be nice to see someone do a relevant comparison chart sometimes, with entries qualified as needed. Heck, the above mentioned article that shows this chart really doesn't even make use of the chart data, they just threw it in as a space filler to their readers to use for comparison. Unfortunately, if the author of the piece had a clue about what he was writing, he would have either A) not used the chart, or B) added the qualifiers needed to make the chart relevant.
I could be wrong as it could be a typo, but isn't the Jaguar the first 32-bit system? (it is NOT a 64-bit system, it has two 32-bit Motorola 68060 processors, but it doesn't make it 64-bit)?
As well, Playstation is 32-bit, not 64-bit as stated by the article.
As well, it looks like the article is biased towards Microsoft's Xbox.
And why did the writer skip from Infocomm straight to Doom. There were a lot of genres that grew up between text adventures and FPSes. What happened to the side-scrolling platform jumpers like Sonic and Super Mario Brothers? What about all of the RPGs published by Square? Sports games grew by leaps and bounds during that time.
I generally like the articles on Tom's Hardware, but this one seemed like it was thrown together by a team of rabid monkeys (or some other randomly-generated /. page creator) in a matter of minutes. I know that failure to check your sources is nothing new to most slashdotters, but I hope it doesn't become the norm for other sites like Tom's.
</RANT>
Consolewire had a little blurb about the xbox's true purpose, that being M$'s first step creating an all-purpose set top hub
For nostalgia's sake I just drove through Vectrex lane on EBAY and see that there are three or four systems up for sale right now. Looks like ~$100 or so will get me a Vectrex if I really care. Trouble is I just bought a house and need a refridgerator more than a Vectrex. :) So, yeah... right... us grownups can buy all the video games we want, if we're willing to sacrifice FOOD! Heh...
Oh well, I've got my ps2, GT3 and Ace Combat 4. Who am I to complain?
Cheers,
--Maynard
Just a short look at the article reveals that:
- They seriously think that NeoGeo (680x0 CPU) is "24-bit". Yea. Right.
- They do not seem to know of the SNES existance at all.
- They call NEC's TurboGrafx-16 a "success", while not considering Genesis a success.
...
This list can continue for ever and ever, but you get the drift.Very thoughtful article, folks. Now, go and read something decent on console history. There is a plenty of sites on the Net with much more knowledgable articles.
PS: Of course, 99% of Slashdot readers will only care whether you could run Linux on any of those mahcines 8)<
Maybe we've finally reached a new level of console gaming, where no clear-cut winner will EVER emerge. It's no longer the console which defines the industry, but rather, the games available. The growing trend of having most games available on all platforms just further proves that a world with three consoles is still possible. The only deciding factor will come down to whether you prefer to play a game with a fat lazy plumber or a blue hedgehog or crash bandicoot. And even then, you're likely to find a similar style game with just different characters substituted for the platform of your choice.
I'm not gonna retype all the errors.. so here's my email to their editor pointing a slew out...
.. I don't have a clue and don't care so I'll put N/A.
.
In the console list...
The Playstation is a 32-bit machine.
The Dreamcast is a 128-bit machine.
The Sega Genesis was the most popular platform of the 16-bit generation.
The second most popular machine of that generation was the Super Nintendo which is missing from your list.
You are also missing the 3DO console which was 32-bit IIRC.
..
In the features of the current crop of consoles..
The Gamecube can do 8 texture effects per pixel per pass.
The Gamecube's polygon performance you have listed is misleading, as that is in-game estimates from Nintendo, vs theoretical maximums of unlit triangles which the Xbox and Playstation 2 numbers are.
The Gamecube supports 3D sound, in fact Rouge Squadron 2 (a launch title) supports Dolby Pro Logic II (5.1).
Most Gamecube games support HDTV 640p, and the Gamecube has digital video out support.
Why is the XBox OS not considered "Closed, Microsoft proprietary"? Which it is.
The Gamecube will have broadband and 56k modem support via a plug in modem/nic.
For future reference, N/A means Not Applicable.. Not
A ? is a better substitute for not having a clue than N/A.
You also have the wrong CPU and Graphics processor speeds on the Gamecube. The CPU is 485Mhz, and graphics core operates at 1/3 the speed or around 162Mhz. The number you had were old number prior to E3.
Up to date Gamecube spec are here http://www.nintendo.com/systems/gcn/gcn_specs.jsp
Because in the last two-three weeks, it seems as if almost all new articles on Tom's were featured here a few days after.
It's not that Tom's a bad site (actually, it's one of the 4-5 sites I go on a daily basis), but if I want to know what he has to say (or Omid or else), I'll go check it up myself. Tom's not as prolific as Salon or Wired or the NYT, so it's much easier to check what's new on his site on a regular basis and still manage to do something else.
Anyway, the goal of my comment is just to raise the issue, not to troll. I read Tom regularly for 3-4 years now, as well as Anand, so it's just that I don't appreciate reading all of it twice.
X-Box: W2k Kernel
PS2: Closed, Sony proprietory
Cube: Closed, Nintendo proprietory
That should be:
X-Box: Closed, Microsoft proprietory
PS2: Closed, Sony proprietory
Cube: Closed, Nintendo proprietory
I like how having the OS be the W2k kernel is presented as a bonus. You have to pay a hefty license to develop/publish a game on ALL the systems. Maybe this guy is just a little too used to getting all of his Nvidia hardware and MS software for free.
Not only is the SuperNES missing, but they screwed up the details on several other consoles too. Atari's Jaguar was 64-bit, the PSX 1 was/is 32-bit and the Dreamcast was/is 128-bit. I also have a suspicion that the Neo-Geo was 32-bit but I can't check this up 'cos the SNK website is, er, "down" :-)
And while we're on this, why don't the Commodores, Speccies, Amstrads and indeed Atari (ST) get mentioned as far as games go? I guess that accounts for the gap between the TMRC stories on one page followed immediately by DOOM on the next. Those little "home computers" were where the technological barriers were broken for years. In the UK and Ireland anyway... Consoles?! Ha!
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
A couple of days ago, I posted an article about The History of Atari on TQY3. It was'nt meant to directly compare the Atari Systems to modern day, but instead allow the reader to make thier own decisions on the future of gaming through historical education. Far from required reading, but if you were an Atari Child or have intrest in Atari's History, I'd Suggest giving it a peek.
Opinions Expressed by Me should be Forced on Others - PbHead
...perhaps you were thinking of the CDTV.
Commodore claimed the name stood for something stupid like Commodores Dynamic Total Vision, when it was obviously just CD + TV
That artical at Tom's was some fairly lame reading. They didn't really talk about why certain consoles did well and why others failed. ie the PS1's cheep'o API, Nintendo's rights to Miyamoto's brain, etc.
Moreover, I was also kind of let down by the fact that Tom's Hardware had practically no info on the GameCube's hardware, and no info on the different architectures of the xbox, ps2, and cube. That info does exist in the world.
Just seems like a bunch of geeks trying to justify their xbox purchases. Was it just me, or did I see no mention of the disadvantages of the xboxes desktop-pc hardware design and the x-boxes lack of classic game titles? This is just my opinion, but I would much rather have a ps2 or cube simply because of the games. These systems have a lot more titles that look interesting to me.... titles that I have known to kick butt in the past.
And as for the cube-kiddy comment. Well, IGN seems to have a whole array of up coming blood-filled cube games. So that kiddy argument does seem to hold much ground.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Now, along comes Sega's Game Gear a few years later. Think Portable Genesis.
Portable Master System really - the Game Gear was 8-bit. It does illustrate the point about hi-tech v. practicality though: The Game Gear had a 16 colour backlit LCD screen that was as blurry as fuck when playing Sega's flagship game, namely Sonic. 6 (or was it 8?) AA batteries barely lasted 2 hours and yes, it was way too expensive.
But the real tragedy was the Atari Lynx, the 16-bit handheld (GB Advance is 32-bit, btw) as powerful as a Genesis/Megadrive that fell by the wayside because of crap games. Ditto the Jaguar, the most powerful console for years until the Nintendo 64. And don't even start me on the Amiga CD32...
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
CDi (by Philips) is nothing like an Amiga. It didn't even have a Motorola processor but some crappy M68k rip off (68070!?).
not to mention their total disregard of the NES. it's not on their little table and i think most people would agree that it had alot to do with the reviving of the gaming industry in america after the crash of the atari systems.
another thing that bugged me, was in the text of the article the jump from 1979's zork to 1993's Doom. i seem to remember being alive in the 80's and i think that i played some video games, pretty sure at least.
i guess the author's intention was to race quickly through the history of consoles (which he harldly talks about, save for one incomplete chart) to get to the hardware of the new stuff, since it is tom's hardware. but whatever, very incomplete...blarg.
Master Using It, and You can have THIS!!
Wow, look how crippled the GameCube's polygon performance is! And the GameCube doesn't even support compressed textures or "simultaneous texture fills"! It looks like GameCube games will have around less than 1/10th the polygons as the other consoles, with a single bad texture on them. This thing sucks! I'm glad I read a good in-depth technical site Tom's Hardware instead of the promotional literature produced by the console maker's themselves. I almost wasted my money on that lame-ass underpowered GameCube!
(Clue for the clueless: that was sarcasm.)
those were my reactions to the article as well.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
Features include business plan speculation about future profitability as reality and truth, the complete lack of the Nintendo NES on the list of the history of console systems, and a bunch of incomplete information that somehow makes the GameCube look like a big question mark that you'd need a crystal ball to see. The omission of the single most successful console system in the history of the industry (the NES) is especially suspect.
Nice going Tom, seeing that MS has an Intel chip in the Xbox, and your continuing blind support of Nvidia, we can all see where your true interests lie. And I mean lie in both senses of the word.
I used to come to Tom's site for useful information. It has ceased to be a source of anything but Intel/Nvidia propaganda for the past year at least. I don't think I need to remind anyone of his assertion that Athlon processors were a fire hazard if the heat sink fell off.
Oh, and Intel/Nvidia is synonymous with Microsoft these days. So throw them into the mix.
Too bad that another good source of independent information has sold out.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
My apologies for the flod (yes, flod. as in flawed) info about the GameGear. As I mentioned, I was Nintendo's loyal fanboy (still am, really) and up until recently never cared about other systems.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
On another note,
Funny, I don't remember many people with a 486-66 back then. The BIG deal about Doom was that you DIDN'T need the newest and best PC to run it. Low end 386's did it just fine, if you didn't mind a reduced screen size.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
According to http://www.xboxweb.com/news/1201/006.html the XBox is the fastest selling console in history, not the GameCube. Interesting
I am Slad.
I emailed Tom's Hardware pointing out several mistakes they had made on the same day it was posted, including some missing systems like the 3DO unit in the console list and listing the Dreamcast as a 64-bit system, rather than a 128-bit system. Amongst other complaints I made were the inclusion of Doom, which had very little role in the console realm, and over the lacking actual history in the history section. No mention of the great video game Crash of 1984? Or how the advent of polygon gaming changed the scene entirely? There was no response to my letter, and no change to the article. Personally I wonder if any of the writers has ever played on a console before the Playstation era.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
They also made a portable Genesis, it was called the Nomad. Looked like a genesis controler with a screen in it.
Nintendo's strategy:
NES: Super Mario Brothers and other kiddie games
SNES: Super Mario Brothers and other kiddie games
N64: Super Mario World and other kiddie games
Gamecube: Luigi's Castle and other kiddie games
I'm sure Pokemon has a stake in this somewhere too (the portable market) but for the most part, Nintendo is an expert at the 'wash, rinse, repeat' game cycle. How many years can someone run around as a damn plumber collecting coins before they simply tire of this style of gaming? Nintendo sucks but every year there are millions of kids who love it.
The new list has the SNES, but it is missing the NES. Tom's Hardware needs to pull its head out of its ass.
LIVE NUDE PETS!
Reread the article...
sounds like its trying to sell Xbox's to me instead of reveal much factual information about gaming's history.
He left out Commodore - who released two consoles. Both of which were somewhat groundbreaking - the CDTV being the first system to have a CD-Rom drive (released in 1989 - designed by former Atari guy who invented pong) and the CD-32 the first 32 bit dedicated console - which actually has a lot in common with the Xbox - being that they were both came from former PC's. At the time I thought they both played great games.
Don't forget that Sony and it's subsidiaries publish thousands of DVD's. Maybe SCE (sony computer electronics) doesn't get their cash directly but the parent company does. I'm sure they noticed a spike in DVD sales after the release of the PS2. Overall this was great for Sony and Friends.
Really, this person doesn't seem to complain about the X-Box's Halo, which could be said to be just a revamp of Quake, which was a revamp of Doom, which was a revamp of Wolfenstein. Or DOA3, which is yet another copy of every other fighting game out there. Naturally these statements aren't entirely true, but it is the same type of argument.
Yes, Nintendo recylces the same video game characters and general themes, but they do a great job of putting them into new gaming experiences that show vast improvements over other games.
NES: Super Mario Brothers was one of the first side scrolling action games ever. Clearly a big step up from the one screen games like Donkey Kong.
SNES: Super Mario World was a huge improvement over the original SMB concept. Larger (sorta non-linear) world, multiple exits in one level, more power ups and abilities for Mario, Mario can ride on "Yoshi."
N64: Super Mario 64 was a much different game than
the side scrollers, being 3D.
With totally different objectives, power ups, level ideas, and abilities.
Game Cube: Luigi's Castle isn't a Mario game. It is a totally different type of game in which Luigi captures ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. It is a bit strange, but it isn't the same thing we've seen before at all.
And of course, by mentioning Mario and other kiddie games, we are of course forgetting Nintendo's other titles. Most of them might be family friendly in that both the small kids and adults can enjoy them, but that doesn't make them kiddie. Zelda and Metroid come to mind, as well as the fact that Miyamoto doesn't produce crappy games in the opinion of most gamers, even those that don't own Nintendo consoles. His worst game was probably Zelda 2, which is a lot better than the average PS2 title by far.
Playing as the same plumber over and over has never ceased to be fun, really.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I seem to have noticed that they didn't include the Nintendo 8-bit console on the list, the Nintendo Entertainment System. You know, the one that had The Legend of Zelda, Bionic Commando, Final Fantasy, Contra, Super Mario Bros I, II and III? Ya, it was missing on the list when I looked at it, 1:36pm EST. One would kinda think they would at least mention the console that for so long was the thing to buy to play games. There had to have been at least 500 titles released for it. Feh to them I say!
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
The popularity of consoles varied dramatically from region to region.
Just to give a few examples:
Turbografx-16 was more or less a flop in north america but in Japan it was *the* most popular system of its generation.
Genesis aka Mega Drive did quite well in NA, Europe, and Japan although it was definitely second fiddle to the pc engine.
SNES aka superfamicom had to play catchup as genesis had a huge head start on it but by the end of the 16-bit era this system was probably the most widely supported. My personal belief on how genesis managed to lose the crown was segas lack of a good 6-button controller when fighting games were at the peak of their popularity (yes I know one eventually came out but it was too late).
To sum it up I certainly agree with you that there is no way SNES should have been left out. As far as which systems were "successful" it all depends on what market you are talking about.
- Toby
The 7800 inclucing backwards compatibility out of the box MAY have hurt them. I loved my 5200, and when I played a 2600, it was neat to know that it was one of the original systems.
However, when the 7800 came out, able to play 2600 games, we (my friends, young at the time) assumed that it meant that it was a glorified 2600. Recently, a friedn bought a 5200 and some games off E-bay for nostalgia, and referred to it has the "best Atari system ever" reminding me of our thoughts.
I have mixed feelings on backwards compatibility. At the time, I was appalled that Nintendo didn't let me play me 30 NES games on the SNES. However, I still had a working NES, so it wasn't THAT big a deal. However, when I got my SNES at launch and it lacked games, it really turned me off to the system... I ended up playing my Genesis more as a result.
However, with the NES and SNES on the same TV, I don't know why I cared that I needed separate systems.
However, the Sega Master System, while "better" hardware (specwise) felt flimsy, and seemed to have problems moving. Ours died when we moved it from TV-to-TV once. The Power Converter/Genesis seemed like a more useful purchase at the time then a new SMS.
There are three types of problems in this chart. In many places the authors put "N/A" because they were simply too lazy to find out the correct specifications. Uninformed readers might get the impression this means the console lacked any features in that category. Secondly, some of the numbers are just wrong. Finally, many of these numbers are comparing apples to oranges. Since the errors seem to be concentrated on the Gamecube, and that's the console I know the most about, I'll just stick to correcting their mistakes on that column in the table.
Graphics Processing Unit_____162.5 MHz, not 200 .5 meg and up cards, an
+____________________________adapter will allow the use of flash
+____________________________cards up to 64 megs in size
Memory Bandwidth_____________2.6 GB/s, not 3.2
Simultaneous Texture Fills___8
Compressed Textures__________6:1 (S3TC)
Storage______________________Standard
Maximum Resolution___________1920x1080
Many of these categories aren't directly comparable. Even the RAM comparison is misleading, because Nintendo decided to use several different types of RAM. There are 24 MBs of so-called "1T-SRAM," which is actually a new type of DRAM offering improved and more consistent access times and transfer rates. There are also 16 megs of 83 MHz SDRAM, for sound and (speculatively) "other" unspecified purposes. Flipper has 3MB of embedded memory in the form of 2MB frame buffer and a 1MB texture cache. This totals 43 megs. On the other hand, the Xbox is a UMA machine with 64 MB of 200 MHz DDR-Dram. It has more memory and memory bandwidth, but actual performance is further from the peak numbers listed, in comparison to the Gamecube, and UMA designs are less bandwidth efficient. Therefore the memory bandwidth numbers aren't comparable either. The Gamecube is really the most bandwidth efficient of all 3 consoles, for a handful of reasons.
The polygon performance numbers given are meaningless, and clearly whoever posted those numbers has no idea what they mean. "6-12M/s" is Nintendo's conservative estimate of what developers would achieve in game. The PS2 and Xbox numbers are probably for flat-shaded triangle meshes - a number which is nearly useless in revealing what the hardware can do in a real game. Unless, of course, I, Robot becomes popular again.
Pardon my shitty chart, but the <pre> tag isn't allowed anymore, and the lameness filter was driving me nuts.
--
Ikaruga scoreboard (supports netranking)
Out of all the game systems on his chart, Tom totally forgot to list the Nintendo Entertainment System in the grid with the release dates. Unfortunate to miss perhaps the most signifigant of all the gaming platforms. The NES's popularity exceeded all others on that list (in terms of titles made and sold, installed base) and it earns a spot in history as one of the first pieces of entertainment to actually surpass the installed base of VCR's in the US.
--Jon
I can't understand how this horrible mess even gets posted.
:)
First, look at the history. One page attempting to cover console history from its infancy to present?? Oh but wait let's throw in some crap about PC games as well, and mash everything all together! Idiots.
Second, their concept of the various generations is way wrong. You want a brief overview, here you go:
Prehistoric Age
(Atari 2600, Coleco, Intellivision, etc) Mostly dominated by Atari but definite niches for the other systems. Good debate to be had as to respective merits.
Age of Revolution
Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System
This is what really brought consoles into homes. Almost everybody had one or the other of these. Yeah, it depended on your region or local distribution, but both systems had excellent and addictive titles. Again, you can have great debates over which one was more dominant.
Round of 16 (bits)
The logical extension of the previous age. SNES & Genesis. One more time, great games and great fun. Sure that TurboGrafx and some other crap was in here mixing things up a bit.
Pre-Modern
PSX, N64, and Dreamcast
These span a pretty wide time period. But you look at what people were actually playing, and it's clear that recent competition was between these 3, until we reach the present.
Now - "Next-generation" consoles are here today!
PS2, GameCube, and X-Box
Well, there's been enough talk debating the respective merits of these suckers. Time will tell the winner.
Final rant
PC games started up for real around the time of NES. By for real I mean getting serious about graphics and starting to drive the hardware revolution (which I think was possibly one point of this misguided article). Once that first VGA monitor hit, that really kicked things off. (Does anyone remember MCGA?
Since then, PC games have continued merrily along in their SEPARATE MARKET from consoles. Let's all say that slowly. SEPARATE MARKET. There NEVER will be an integration between the two, the differences in the platforms are far too great. People need to stop with the arguments of which one is better since they're just different.
Look at it: Screen resolution, user interface (10-12 key controller vs. 101-key + mouse), storage capacity, delivery mediums, the list goes on and on.
If Microsoft's business plan is to merge the two together and dominate all gaming worldwide, well they're screwed. They'll get beat by people writing games just for PC's that do a better job, and they'll get beat by people writing console-specific games that do a better job.
Terrible article, but at least it can kick off the discussion...
-a rogue Nugget
The Playstation has many games, as a result, people can rent a new game for each weekend. This means that you need to crank out games, because you can't get best sellers. The only games that sell are those that are too long for 1-2 weekends. The Final Fantasies sold, but the rest are variations. They may all be the same game, but the graphics are a bit different so you rent a different one for the weekend. Sony with its Third Party strategy created a system where games sell for a bit then become bargain bins and rentals run the market.
Look at the N64, and the Gamecube is similar. Sure there are games that you can rent and beat in a weekend, but Nintendo STILL focuses on game play. Their strategy, since the NES, was to make amazing games that would be best sellers and create artificial shortages.
For N64, Bond was an amazing game. Sure, it's a FPS (which I normally hate), but it was DAMNED fun. People played and played and played. The game is still fun 5 years ago.
Super Smash Brothers is AMAZING. It's a fun game that never gets old because you play against your friends. Mario 64 had LOADS of fun and a lot of gameplay. The Zeldas for N64 were creative and interesting. Midway's Blitz and Hang Time are phenomenal lines of games, arcade style sports games are a blast.
Hell, I only played the N64 heavily for the first year before I left for school, I had a blast with it. When I visited the folks on breaks, my brother always had 2-3 new awesome games that were a blast.
Nintendo still focuses on Gameplay. Their lines of games are amazing. I hope that more people interested in gaming see through the "hundred of identical games" and pick up a Gamecube instead and get 5-10 games that they will play for years. That combined with enough Third Parties that you can rent a new game whenever you want should make an awesome system.
The problem is the economics of the system. People rent games and play through them then move on. There are still games that remain loads of fun (I still play a few games of Powerball on the Genesis when I visit my parents), but they don't work in the rental-focused market.
Alex
first side scrolling action
Have you forgotten Moon Patrol? Cool side scrolling game. You couldn't do nearly as much, but then it came out a lot earlier. I seem to recall other side scrolling games as well, though few were particularly memerable.
I guess since the Playstation 2 and Gamecube are both listed as having 'closed' and 'proprietary' kernels and the X-box isn't listed that way, windows 2k is open and non-proprietary. Sweet! Ironically, playstation 2 is the only platform with a version of linux ready for it.
Here is a good site about the CDTV and CD32.
This site says the CDTV was released in 1990. Not sure who is right, that was a while back. Anyhow, the specs on this machine was pretty impressive for the time:
Motorola 68000 7.14Mhz 16 Bit CPU
1 Meg Chip RAM
A graphics coprocessor which could display full screen animations at up to 4096 colors
Stereo 4 channel 14 Bit sound chip (the system could also play audio CDs)
DMA Architecture (transfer data with no CPU usage)
1x CD-ROM drive
VCR style case
When you think about it, Commodore basically released the first 16 bit CD-ROM based game console (with the exception that it was designed to look good with the rest of your AV components). A lot of upgrades and such were also available, both from Commodore and third parties (allowing everything from adding floppy and hard drives, a mouse and a keyboard, and more).
The CD32 was just as impressive, considering it was released in 1993:
Motorola 68020 14Mhz 32 Bit CPU
2 Meg Chip RAM
2X speed SCSI CD-ROM
16,000,000 colours Max
Game console style case with top loading CD-ROM
It used the same style sound system as the CDTV and other Amigas. There was also an expansion slot, which was typically used for what was called the "FMV Card" - which essentially allowed you to watch CD-I and VCD movies through the console. The controllers were pretty slick too, from what I remember. So, here you have in 1993, Commodore releases the first 32 Bit CD-ROM based console with movie playing capabilities.
Of course, as we all know, both of these consoles (and Commodore itself) bombed.
I don't understand why, outside of poor marketing (or lack of would be the better way to put it). The same thing happenned to the Neo-Geo and the 3DO. The high price also managed to help on all of these platforms.
But what is the difference today? The marketing by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft is much higher than what the other consoles did - but I do remember 3DO being marketed pretty hard, same with Neo-Geo. I remember playing a 3DO at Best Buy, next to "next best" offerrings from Sega and Nintendo.
The 3DO was pretty expensive, so were the Neo Geo and CD32. But why is it today super expensive consoles fly off the shelves (even in a recession!), but back then, in relatively good times - they didn't? Can someone explain that?
To top it off, why is it that consoles with way far advanced capabilities don't seem to sell, but ones with marginal capabilities over last year's model seem to sell easily (and really, the capabilities of the X-Box, etc - really aren't that great over last years offerings)?
It is like the market is offered a super sports car for $10,000 - but no one wants it. But when the features that were in it appear in a sedan five years later, selling for the same amount - everyone can't wait!
Actually, I bet the car market works like this too...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This article should have been listed as humor, not gaming...what a piece of shit, it didn't go anywhere or even even make sense, not to mention all the errors that everyone else here has mentioned. Does anyone do research anymore? Most tech review articles seem to have been shitty 2 years ago and have been getting worse. And Tom's joint has gone from the best to the utmost worst site i've ever read (many many of the past year's articles go nowhere, make no point, don't even give any information that I can't read off the box, or hte manufacturer's marketing site. ugh, rant.
1) N64: MarioCart (I barely graduated from college because of this game... Battle?).
2) Gameboy: Tetris (I can still beat game B 9/5 fairly easily)
3) PC: SimCity 2000
4) Genesis: EA Sports NHL 93 (Hockey games haven't gotten much better than this, too bad)
5) Nintendo: Techmo Bowl
Why is there a gaping hole in the timeline of this article, from 1979 to 1993 with Duke Nukem? It can't be because their weren't any interesting technological improvements during those years, because there were.
Interesting nonetheless, but it seemed like he was missing a few things.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Seriously, I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and shit a better story about consoles than this. It seems that some PC nitwit who's never touched a console in his life wrote a history of PC games off the top of his head, stole a few images and tables to make it seem like it was about consoles, and of course Tom's Hardware picked it up. Crap like this is why I stopped reading that site in 1997.
Even more sad is that this board is being used to argue whether or not buying the Xbox hurts Microsoft or not. Mod me down if you want, but I'm really disappointed in Slashdot today.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Elevator Action was awesome in it's day also. A must have for any MAME gamer.
...is the coolest console game I've played in a long time. It will ruin me because next week are finals and my thumbs will be throbbing too much to think of anything else. Gamecube doesn't have any Simpsons titles? That is a strike against it. Not a DVD player? Two strikes. I believe PS2 will hang tough with Xbox and Gamecube for a long time and ultimitely prohibit both other systems from doing as well as anticipated.
That said, good luck to Microsoft and Nintendo -- we need more competition in the console wars.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Not trolling, just stating my opinion like 99% of everyone else here.
Quote " Luigi's Castle isn't a Mario game. It is a totally different type of game in which Luigi captures ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. It is a bit strange, but it isn't the same thing we've seen before at all."
Sucking up ghosts in a vacuum cleaner huh. Collecting coins..collecting ghosts. Brilliant Miyamoto! What's next, collecting mushrooms? Oh, done that. I'll give them props for the cartoon rendering which looks nice, but open your eyes man! It's the _exact same game_ with new graphics and a new whizbang vacuum cleaner. It's STILL Mario Bros all over again. I guess for some people that's not a bad thing, but where's the innovation? In Sony's camp.
Yeah Sony has their share of repeaters (Final Fantasy..what is it up to now? X or XI? If it's final why does it have so damn many sequels?) However, they have _variety_. That's why they're on top and will continue to have the lion's share of the market. With GTA3, Gran Turismo3, Metal Gear Solid 2, etc. etc. they're just ruling. They make games for me, a young adult, and they know who their audience is and what they wanna play. They know I got tired of chasing mushrooms and koopas about a decade ago.
I didn't mention the XBox and Halo because after playing Halo 2 player coop, I dismissed it as poorly coded and slow. 5fps in some sections? Please. This game should never have hit the shelves in it's current state. I doubt the coders wanted it that way but Microsoft probably shifted the release date so soon and pressed them so hard they cranked it out too early. Oh well. The second generation of games will be worth playing, if they replace that gigantic worthless Batarang controller.
Hmm..one more point. Miyamoto's worst game was Zelda 2? I'd say the Zelda games on the n64 were downright horrible. Maybe not his fault since the n64 hardware itself sucked BAD. I always laughed everytime I saw those 4 polygon characters running around in their blurry, 16 color worlds. SGI worked on this thing? Bahahah! At least Nintendo has some decent hardware now, and I'm looking forward to seeing some actual new games from them. Not WaveRace 128 or whatever they're calling their latest batch of rehashes, but real, new games.
Hey, at least we have alot of choices right?
This seems to sit well with something I remember reading.
I seem to recall an interview where some Nintendo rep (who knows, maybe it was even Miyamoto-sensei or Yamauchi-san) states that 6-12 million polys per second is the Gamecube's guaranteed performance, with high-res textures and all features in use, at a high framerate. When asked if those were the high-end limits of the hardware, I believe the interviewee resisted comment and only repeated that 6-12m were guaranteed with all features turned on.
If I'm not hallucinating, this would clearly be a case of Nintendo not adhering to the old line of "lies, damn lies, and specifications," however I can't find the article doing a google search for ``gamecube "12 million" guarantee,'' so can someone help locate this?
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Not to mention the Sierra era of the PC! I was in absolute shock that they skipped over the golden age of adventure gaming. Between the sierra stuff (King's/Space Quest) and Lucas Arts (Indy/Maniac Mansion/Monkey Island) there was a whole age of pre-FPS gaming that the article blatantly ignored, in favor of lumping adventure games in with Doom.
Of course, you're very right about PC's not being dominant. The fact that the NES had the lion's share of great games for either PC or Console of that era is very telling.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
The Genesis was not "technically better hardware."
It had a faster CPU. That's it. The graphics and sound processors in the Super NES were far more advanced than those of the Genesis. The SNES's "Mode 7" graphics mode forced Sega to implement hardware 2-D scaling and rotation features in their Sega CD add-on to the Genesis, and it still had no 3-D capabilities that could compare to the SNES. You didn't see PilotWings-style or F-Zero-style games from Sega for the Genesis, and those games used the SNES built-in hardware, and not any add-on chips that came in the cartridge. And you can't seriously compare Genesis MIDI to SNES MIDI. Everything (particularly synthesized orchestral RPG music and vocal samples like those in Star Ocean) sounded best on SNES, while Genesis musicians stuck to composing techno-rock style music (like Thunder Force III and Streets of Rage) because of the poor sounding synthesizer.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry about the rant. ^_^
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Yes, developers do look at the installed base but they also look at sales figures for the top titles and especially sales figures of titles in the same genre as their own product. Your assertion that this "will increase their dominance in the gaming market" is a supposition that looks at the issue from only one angle. There's much more to it than that.
You will never see GTA3 (or something of they sort) for any Nintendo console... Little cute cartoon characters just don't do it for me...
Why don't we just PLAGURISE the first paragraph of the article, hmmm?
I just read that piece last night because I stay about 6 months behind in all my magazine reading. I would like to say I do it deliberately to keep things "in perspective," but its more like I've got too many classes and too much work and too much web site to read the things when they first come in.
One more moderation and I'll hit the karma ceiling...
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Where does all of this misinformation come from?
? pa ge=a2
It was a 64 bit system. Had 2 64bit processors, 2 32bit processors, and a 16bit processor. It also had a 64bit wide system bus.
Read a FAQ if you don't believe me.
http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/showpage.phtml
With MMORPGs making most of their money off subscription fees, there's more incentive for game developers to make their game infinitely replayable and addictive.
Of course, this only applies to that market, but look at Half Life for another example of this. A high quality single player game, and designed to allow a user community to add whatever is wanted to it. I can imagine people playing Half Life in 10 years.
This is entirely the same with the game box market. What's in the XBoX? Ask Sega. Anyone who hasnt realized who makes the XBoX by now doesnt deserve to be called a console gamesenthusiast. Or perhaps it is just coincidental that the design (including the entirely asthetic things like the triangles and button lettering) are so similar to the DreamCast (as well as so much along the same specs as the planned DreamCast successor that Sega dropped - also coincidentally shortly after MS announced XBoX)...
So, the question is all a matter of marketing - as always. There was an article in (I think) "XBox Magazine" a while back (the mag that claims it isnt in any way biased towards the XBox... btw) stating that there will only be a few hundred thousand units produced per month - which is supposed to be about a tenth of Sony's plans for PS2... this is the only thing I can think of that would change whether or not marketing has the (normal) affect on such things.
This is something I am truly curious about - is Sega going to make so few XBox's for MS? Or is the article wrong? If the article was correct, then it's probably a PS2, GameCube, XBox (in that order) world, based off name recognition and marketing... otherwise, MS, through Sega's efforts, I forsee being number 1 in the game console world.
If anyone has any information pointing to someone else making the XBox, I'd be very interested in that as well... though I dont think anything legitimate exists stating otherwise.. and *somebody* had to make it since MS doesnt make hardware, doesnt design hardware, and doesnt write software (at least not since Edlin). Robert
WebMaster:
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Let me also guess that you HAVE NOT PLAYED the N64 Zeldas, which were awesome... much better than any of the aforementioned Playstation 2 titles, which are also good games, two of which I own.
I think the original Zelda is _still_ a better game than Metal Gear Solid 2.
But to play devil's advocate:
I don't know WHAT Konami was thinking with Metal Gear Solid 2! Open your eyes man, it is the exact same game except it has whizbang amphibious Metal Gear, and a pretty-boy named Raiden! Other than that it is just a rehashed, uninventive clone of Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, and Metal Gear Solid! Where is the innovation?
Naturally, the same thing could be said about all of the games you mentioned, since they are all "sequels."
Let us not forget that many companys "in Sony's camp" will probably also be making Game Cube and X-Box games. The best that Sony has exclusively right now is Square. I doubt that Playstation would have the market share it did without all of those Square games on their system.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if your criteria for just "the exact same game" includes the same characters and themes, it is something that is not exclusive to the Game Cube, since the same could be said about most of the popular franchises.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
*sigh*
;) I guess my taste in games just matured over time.
Sony has plenty of good licensees. They're not worried. That doesn't concern me.
Yeah Metal Gear 2 is a sequel, but name one game that comes close in physics, visuals, storyline, action, etc. The Zelda games don't hold a match to them by any stretch of imagination but that's my opinion.
My problem with Nintendo is what I originally stated: they recycle the hell out of their games. I bet there have been over 2 dozen mario games. And you probably own all of them
Just wanted to point out that with this accessory: Mobile Monitor 5.4
the gamecube rocks! Puts the ps one to shame, and shows why it's an advantage to have a small console.
...really. Trust me on this one.
if you're a developer who is publishing titles for an installed base who never takes the bait, when do you scale back your rush to glut the budget bins? granted MS needs the numbers to leverage coders, but if a majority of users are hackers copping cheap hardware (which i doubt will happen, btw), titles could trickle to simple ports from other systems. why invest time and money on an indifferent installed base? in this extreme situation, the thread of "losing on tech" could have merit.
the tech of the ps2 has hurt Sony to a small degree, as a large portion of the installed initially purchased the console as a dvd player. developers are still on board w/ps2 because the base contains rabid gamers; with metal_gear_2 selling 1.8 million units in a week, even a possible sleeper hit on the console makes the dev time worth the risk.
MS needs both a large user base and a dasiy-chain of modest hits to insure continued exclusives for it's box.
a linuxbox world would negate that. MS is expected to take a loss on the console but publishers try hard to avoid the same. supply tapers to demand more often than not.
If you actually read his site, his reviews all the way back from the introduction of the Athlon have been fairly scathing of Intel chips. Even his recent review of the Duron chip said that the Celeron and even the P4 compared poorly to the Duron's performance. In fact, I've often felt Tom to be a little biased against Intel.
But I just bought a Vectrex with three carts on Ebay for $81 bucks. I checked into the Sean Kelly multicart and sent him a note. When he replies I buy one. Cool! :)
Best,
--Maynard