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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.
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
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.
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.
Not a good history of video games and I learned nothing..... I liked the chart of the gaming systems and time...
Yeah 3DO actually lasted me a little while...SC2 was such a great game! Ah well I think they sort of fell between the cracks tech wise (wasn't really quite up to high powered 3D) and just never caught on (Atari Jaguar was another half-assed step). Though there were some fine 3DO games:
Star Control 2: great game single & multiplayer
Killing Time: neat little FPS
Slayer: randomized D&D dungeon call in 3D- not bad for a play now and again
3D Heli Backpack game: name elludes me
PO'D: it had mobs that shot poo at you
Cyberspace game RPG/Action: another name lost hehe
Samurai Shodown: was a perfect port of SS...good enough that I was able to ditch the ol NeoGeo (now there was an odd system- $250 games! I got mine used with SS and some golf game but could never afford to buy new games for it!)
I agree. It stands unique as the worst one I've seen so far.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Domestic as in "for home use". I'm not aware of another English-speaking country that uses domestic in the the US sense of "national". Tom Pabst is a German living in England, and would hardly use domestic in the second sense.
--
E_NOSIG
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.
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();
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..."
Normally, I'd just sign that up to the fact that THG is a German site, and most of its authors I believe are German too. But I checked, and at least the names of the authors for this article sound like they could be native speakers of English. Otherwise, I would have guessed they called the consoles "domestic" since they are used in the home (as opposed to, I guess, at an arcade). *Shrug*. I'm not a native speaker of English myself, but I still find the headlines and other attempts at being witty/whatever at THG quite painful at times. Or just plain unintelligble--I still haven't figured out what they mean by "Joysticks For Flight Simulation- Using A Lever To Fly A Plane!". They sound as if the concept is somehow unique... Weird. Oh, and why have they made the text on the page unselectable? Probably just to annoy me, and cause more people to read their source. Mumble.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
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.
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>
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 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.)
Factually incorrect on one point:
SS on the 3d0 was *not* a perfect port of the Arcade (NeoGeo game). Sprites were different. Frames of animation were missing. The scaling was off. Timing was off for a few players. Yes it was a *damn* fine port, by far the best of that generation of hardware.
But perfect it was not.
(former owner of SS1/SS2/SS3 and SS4 on a NeoGeo JAMMA cabinet)
--- I do not moderate.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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.
They also made a portable Genesis, it was called the Nomad. Looked like a genesis controler with a screen in it.
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.
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 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)
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.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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
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.
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.
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.
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