I think now I understand why the NES beat the 7800

[ATARI7800fan]

Man, so much to read and catch up on!

 

My question is this: how did the whole Sega Dreamcast thing go down? As I remember, we're playing it in the fall of 99, loving it, Crazy Taxi, blown away by the sheer POWER of such a great system, fun games, cool controllers, a wicked Resident Evil game...and a few months later, GONE!!!...I mean, how exactly did that all happen?

A quick answer would be that Sega Had lost to much money on the Saturn and where already in the hole when the Dreamcast fist came out, then with Sony announcing and Pushing the PS2 over a year before it came out stopped alot of people from buying the Dreamcast and waiting for the PS2, with a console it either has to be big or fail there is really not inbetween. The thing is if they had sold another 1 to 1.5 million units that would have been enough to keep them going a little longer, plus the fear of the Gamecube(what a let down and it think I bought one instead of getting a Dreamcast, that was after they quite making them though. Still would have had better games then the Gamecube.) and Microsoft stabbing them in the back and announcing the Xbox. Sega just decided there was to much compitetion and decide to play it safe and quite. The thing is speck wise the Dreamcast did have a 128 bit processor unlike the PS2. That seems to sound familar(Atari Jaguar). I really think if they would have stayed in things would have turned out fine, plus people burning games did not help there profits either because you do not have to mode your system to play burnt games.

Edited March 16, 2011 by ATARI7800fan

[Rex Dart]

Not that it matters, but the Dreamcast's 32-bit, man.

Edited March 16, 2011 by Rex Dart

[SpaceDice2010]

Man, so much to read and catch up on!

 

My question is this: how did the whole Sega Dreamcast thing go down? As I remember, we're playing it in the fall of 99, loving it, Crazy Taxi, blown away by the sheer POWER of such a great system, fun games, cool controllers, a wicked Resident Evil game...and a few months later, GONE!!!...I mean, how exactly did that all happen?

A quick answer would be that Sega Had lost to much money on the Saturn and where already in the hole when the Dreamcast fist came out, then with Sony announcing and Pushing the PS2 over a year before it came out stopped alot of people from buying the Dreamcast and waiting for the PS2, with a console it either has to be big or fail there is really not inbetween. The thing is if they had sold another 1 to 1.5 million units that would have been enough to keep them going a little longer, plus the fear of the Gamecube(what a let down and it think I bought one instead of getting a Dreamcast, that was after they quite making them though. Still would have had better games then the Gamecube.) and Microsoft stabbing them in the back and announcing the Xbox. Sega just decided there was to much compitetion and decide to play it safe and quite. The thing is speck wise the Dreamcast did have a 128 bit processor unlike the PS2. That seems to sound familar(Atari Jaguar). I really think if they would have stayed in things would have turned out fine, plus people burning games did not help there profits either because you do not have to mode your system to play burnt games.

 

The PS2 had a DVD drive. It was cheaper in Japan to buy a PS2 than it was to buy a DVD player. Heck, tv shops that never carried video games before were now selling PS2's like hotcackes. To a lesser degree EA never did anything with the DC as well.

[DracIsBack]

Anyone who wants to know the tale of the Dreamcast needs to read this interview:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2008/sep/11/gamesinterviews.microsoft1

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2008/sep/11/playstation.microsoft?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

[ATARI7800fan]

Not that it matters, but the Dreamcast's 32-bit, man.

 

I meant that the GPU was 128 bit. Also yes the PS2 did have a DVD drive but looking at it from a pure gaming perspective should that have mattered. Even know it still is not common to have your game system in your living room. Heck Wii's are more common in family rooms and they still do not allow people to watch DVD's plus Blue ray did not take off like people had that plus now there is streaming.

[Retro Rogue]

Not that it matters, but the Dreamcast's 32-bit, man.

 

I meant that the GPU was 128 bit.

 

Bitness is ridiculous to talk about anyways when defining a console, it was a marketing invention. Especially when talking about some of the later multiprocessor systems that combine processors of various bitness. When people bring it up, they usually mean the graphics processing capabilities anyways. For example, the Intellivision has a 16-bit CPU but is certainly not capable of graphics like later 16-bit CPU driven consoles like the Genesis or SNES. GPU wise, the Dreamcast is a 128-bit system. The GPU is on-die with the CPU, alleviating the normal slowdown associated with accessing it externally through a slower general system bus (on-die communications are almost always faster). And in fact the CPU itself is a super-scalar CPU which also increases the speed by using instruction level parallelism - i.e. it executes more than one instruction during a cycle, further allowing it to be less of a bottleneck to the GPU than a standard 32-bit CPU. The GPU itself performs 128-bit 3D calculations, however the 64-bit data bus would slow down the access to said 128-bit data (though the video ram is 128-bit). This is in contrast to something like the Jaguar, which actually has a 64-bit data bus for it's 64-bit Object Processor and 64-bit Blitter to access. Regardless, calling the Dreamcast a 32-bit system is an oversimplification of the above info and not accurate.

Edited March 16, 2011 by wgungfu

[Rex Dart]

Anyways, the PS2 surely beat the Dreamcast because it had far more whistles available in its games. I can't even think of a single DC game with a whistle at the moment.

Edited March 16, 2011 by Rex Dart

[Tubular Gearhead]

Anyways, the PS2 surely beat the Dreamcast because it had far more whistles available in its games. I can't even think of a single DC game with a whistle at the moment.

 

Nice recovery! And were back on topic!

[DracIsBack]

This is in contrast to something like the Jaguar, which actually has a 64-bit data bus for it's 64-bit Object Processor and 64-bit Blitter to access. Regardless, calling the Dreamcast a 32-bit system is an oversimplification of the above info and not accurate.

 

Yeah ... "bitness" for me is kind of like the generic "more powerful" claims. Oversimplistic. Still ... not as bad as the folks who refer to the 2600 as a 4-bit system.

 

I like my Jaguar and all, but if someone wanted to place bets on whether or not a Dreamcast could produce better graphics than a Jaguar, I know where I'd place my money ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, haven't there been enough NES vs. 7800 threads?

Edited March 16, 2011 by DracIsBack

[Rex Dart]

Anyways, the PS2 surely beat the Dreamcast because it had far more whistles available in its games. I can't even think of a single DC game with a whistle at the moment.

 

Nice recovery! And were back on topic!

 

 

Eh, I was going to go into why it's perfectly fine to call it 32-bit, but decided against helping this turn into a dreamcast discussion.

[kool kitty89]

Man, so much to read and catch up on!

 

My question is this: how did the whole Sega Dreamcast thing go down? As I remember, we're playing it in the fall of 99, loving it, Crazy Taxi, blown away by the sheer POWER of such a great system, fun games, cool controllers, a wicked Resident Evil game...and a few months later, GONE!!!...I mean, how exactly did that all happen?

Sega had managed to get some great momentum in the US, but Sega of Japan felt it wasn't going to be enough to be profitable. The DC had failed to gain significant market share in Japan or Europe (Japan mainly due to crushing competition and Europe more due to poor management iirc). Sega of Japan wasn't willing to whittle things down to cater mainly to the successful North American market of the DC, and even in NA things had been pretty tight with the margins Sega of America had been pushing. (the losses over Saturn, general debt, and low DC prices -let alone other special deals- made that tighter)

 

In hindsight, they may have been able to manage a stable market in the US if they'd tempered things a bit more. (the modem was cool, but putting it pack-in standard along with the browser for free made them lose even more money on each console sold and meant it would take much longer to start selling consoles above cost, the rebate with Seganet made that worse, as did the price drop on the DC in late 2000 -they should have kept the $200 price, it was already $100 cheaper than the PS2 and had a large software library)

The only thing they shouldn't have cut back on was advertising. Strong advertising is absolutely critical in the US market, more than any other factor for such products. Strong marketing and hype will drive sales and boost 3rd party developer interest and confidence.

 

 

DVD, PS2 hype, piracy, and lack of EA support are things people like to throw around, but only some of those were definitive issues, and some only really mattered due to Sega's tight position after the Saturn. (Sega had awesome sports games for the time with NFL2k, etc, so losing Madden was less of an issue, the piracy issue was a hit to PR with developers for sure and one Sega could ill afford at the time -though piracy on the DC never reached the levels it had on the PSX, DVD was a biggest issue in Japan but in the US was just one more thing to add to Sony's hype)

They obviously weren't ever going to match the PS2, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have hung in there alongside Sony and Microsoft, if not coming out ahead of them in market share. (with the exception of the PS2, all the new consoles on the market and contemporary PCs also favored relatively efficient cross-platform development, making it even more likely to get long-term 3rd party support -and Sega could/should have been pushing most hot 1st party games onto the PC shortly following their native console releases -they should have pushed that much more with the Saturn, especially from 1997 onward)

 

Hell, in hindsight, you could argue that Sega STILL made the wrong decision to cancel the DC like they did in January of 2001 given the repercussions it had in the short run for their stock prices, PR, and general financial position. (they definitely would have needed to cut things back to remain stable, but may have been better off carefully managing the DC with plans to stay for the long haul -or at least up to 2002 to see how they'd stack up after the GC and Xbox launches: hell, depriving Nintendo and MS the Sega releases would have weakened their software lineups as well)

 

 

The thing is speck wise the Dreamcast did have a 128 bit processor unlike the PS2. That seems to sound familar(Atari Jaguar). I really think if they would have stayed in things would have turned out fine, plus people burning games did not help there profits either because you do not have to mode your system to play burnt games.

No, the DC was no more "128 bit" than the PS2. Both had 128-bit coprocessors (both embedded in the same chip as the CPUs iirc), but neither were 128-bit systems in the formal sense. (ie CPU "bitness" as even the 360 and PS3 are 64-bit systems in that sense, the PS2 was 64-bit in that sense as well, the Xbox, DC, GC, and Wii are 32-bit in that sense)

The PS2 has mainly 16-bit buses (very fast RDRAM, but 16-bits wide like the N64's 9-bits) while the DC uses 64-bit wide main and video buses with SDRAM and the Xbox uses 128-bit wide dual-channel DDR on a shared bus for the CPU and GPU. (GC is mostly 64-bits wide iirc, but with a mix of different RAM types)

 

Bitness really doesn't matter though, it's really a useless metric as such and just a marketing gimmick. (even more than MIPS ratings or clock speeds) Hell, the dreamcast's CPU used a fully 16-bit instruction set, but that was beneficial to performance. (higher code density, more efficient caching, etc)

 

What matters is peak and real world performance, and that's determined by a number of things. In the DC vs PS2, the DC was far more programmable (more like contemporary PCs, CG, and Xbox) with very powerful high-level tools to match that (taking what Sony did with the PSX a step further with even cleaner hardware and better tools). The PS2 was the polar opposite with low-level optimized hardware and a general lack of high-level tools provided by Sony (odd given the programmability and high-level libraries of the PSX had been one of its strong points for developers -some programmers complained about lack of comprehensive low-level documentation, but I highly doubt that any wanted to do away with the nice libraries). That meant that the DC would be much easier to push close to peak performance than the PS2 (sort of like PSX vs Jag or Saturn), but in terms of peak performance: the PS2 had much more polygon pushing power but the DC had more dedicated video RAM and more capable texture/effects/AA/etc supported in hardware (one of the reasons you see more desaturated textures and dithered highcolor rendering rather than predominantly truecolor rendering as on the PS2's contemporaries), so the PS2 could push many more polygons but the DC could push nicer looking polygons. (and the DC's real world performance was much closer to theoretical performance than the PS2's real-world performance -let alone its average performance)

 

 

 

Not that it matters, but the Dreamcast's 32-bit, man.

Yep, and Wii, and GC, and Xbox all going by the metric used for PCs (CPU/ALU), though the N64's CPU is 32-bit external 64-bit internal (sort of like the 386 SX, 65816, 8088, etc -not like the 68k's 16/32-bit since that has a 16-bit ALU in spite of the 32-bit addressing and 32-bit registers). By that metric, the Jaguar's RISC processors are also 32-bit (64-bit bus -16 bit for JERRY- 64-bit internal registers but 32-bit ALU -I think the ISA is also 16-bit fixed length sort of like Hitachi's SH1/2/3/4/etc), though the OPL and Blitter can be considered 64-bit processors. (though that's technically debatable as well)

 

In any case, that really doesn't matter as the "bittness" used to label consoles and generations is/was pure gimmick. (hence things like the 24-bit Neo Geo ) I for one am glad they dropped that BS last gen.

 

 

 

Not that it matters, but the Dreamcast's 32-bit, man.

 

I meant that the GPU was 128 bit. Also yes the PS2 did have a DVD drive but looking at it from a pure gaming perspective should that have mattered. Even know it still is not common to have your game system in your living room. Heck Wii's are more common in family rooms and they still do not allow people to watch DVD's plus Blue ray did not take off like people had that plus now there is streaming.

Actually DVD did matter for gaming. It meant fewer discs, potentially faster load times, and more/better multimedia content. (though in the last case, that's mainly due to the fewer discs since the GC and DC both should have been capable of similar bitrate and video compression as the PS2 -or not too far off with the DC at least, it had MPEG2 acceleration iirc and most cutscenes certainly look MPEG2 quality, like lower bitrate DVD)

 

The PS2's DVD feature (especially being competitive or cheaper than standalone players) definitely made for a compelling selling point and induced many non-gamers to buy it and eventually get games for it as well. (of course, Sony had many advantages for pushing such that the competition couldn't match -and had added interest in pushing the DVD standard) Even MS opted to pass the overhead of a DVD license to an add-on rather than adding that to the already significant loss on each console sold.

 

The Wii not being able to play DVD video is rather ridiculous IMO given how cheap DVD licensing is now, but oh well...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bitness is ridiculous to talk about anyways when defining a console, it was a marketing invention. Especially when talking about some of the later multiprocessor systems that combine processors of various bitness. When people bring it up, they usually mean the graphics processing capabilities anyways. For example, the Intellivision has a 16-bit CPU but is certainly not capable of graphics like later 16-bit CPU driven consoles like the Genesis or SNES. GPU wise, the Dreamcast is a 128-bit system. The GPU is on-die with the CPU, alleviating the normal slowdown associated with accessing it externally through a slower general system bus (on-die communications are almost always faster). And in fact the CPU itself is a super-scalar CPU which also increases the speed by using instruction level parallelism - i.e. it executes more than one instruction during a cycle, further allowing it to be less of a bottleneck to the GPU than a standard 32-bit CPU. The GPU itself performs 128-bit 3D calculations, however the 64-bit data bus would slow down the access to said 128-bit data (though the video ram is 128-bit). This is in contrast to something like the Jaguar, which actually has a 64-bit data bus for it's 64-bit Object Processor and 64-bit Blitter to access. Regardless, calling the Dreamcast a 32-bit system is an oversimplification of the above info and not accurate.

Yes, bitness is stupid to push as such. (even by the 4th generation you had a lot of different internal and external bit depths as well, and of course, you can have 8-bit CPUs that are more powerful than 16-bit or even 32-bit CPUs, etc)

 

However, I thought it wasn't the full GPU, but just one part of the graphics chipset that's on-die with the CPU in the DC (the vector unit). Sort of like the GTE on-chip with the R3000 in the PSX or coprocessing logic on-die with the EE in the PS2. (of course the GC and Xbox CPUs have FPUs on-chip, but that's been relatively common since the 486 came on the scene)

That and the bus widths of the DC are 64-bit for video and CPU (32-bit for sound iirc) while the PS2 uses mostly (or entirely?) 16-bit RDRAM. (and the Xbox dual channel 128-bit DDR, GC a mix of SDRAM and 1T-SRAM -DC is all SDRAM)

[kool kitty89]

Anyways, the PS2 surely beat the Dreamcast because it had far more whistles available in its games. I can't even think of a single DC game with a whistle at the moment.

You must not have played Sonic Adventure 2. Whistling for the Chao AND for the mystic melody secrets. (I forget if Sonic Advneture has chao whistling too)

 

 

 

But back on this issue:

Nintendo's policy was that publishers could release only five games per year and they had to be exclusive to Nintendo for two years.

 

That is correct. The reason games like double dragon where are multiple systems is because if a Arcade developer licensed there games to other companies the contracts only counted for the developers that signed up for it not the company that had originally created the game, which is what companies like Sega and the ones that owned Double Dragon did, a little loop hole that was hardly used.

OK, but how would that loophole differing from just having differing publishers regardless of the developer?

 

It wasn't the developers who signed up with Nintendo contracts, it was the publishers (regardless of whether said publishers were using in-house development divisions or outsourcing).

 

Take Atari Corp for instance: pretty much no games on the 7800 were Atari produced but almost 100% were Atari published.

 

How would Nintendo's contracts differentiate from a developer publishing through multiple 3rd parties and through a mix of 3rd and 1st parties?

What about 1st party proxies? (wholely owned subsidiary labels like Konami's Ultra and Acclaim's LJN -such proxies were almost exclusively used to get around the 5 game/year limit and not for publishing to competing consoles)

 

What if a developer published/licensed a game for a non-nintendo console before the Nintendo console release?

 

 

Again, the developer shouldn't matter (only the publisher), thus an Arcade company could pay a 3rd party to program a console conversion of an arcade game and then publish it through the arcade company's label and be just as limited as if they'd programmed it in-house.

 

There's also a good chunk of NES games that had completely different publishers in the west than in Japan.

 

 

And again, even with JP/US developers largely locked-in with Nintendo, Atari had a wealth of European developers and publishers to look towards. (often with more competitive console-like games than much of what's on the 7800 -and many of which were never released on the NES either, so would have been defacto 7800 exclusives in the US -in some cases with US computer versions, others not even then)

Having those games on the 7800 also would have made it more marketable in Europe. (and even with the price disadvantages of the carts, the low margins pushed with the 7800 would have made it a lot closer to computer game pricing than competing consoles in Europe -except the 2600, obviously)

Edited March 16, 2011 by kool kitty89

[Rex Dart]

Anyways, the PS2 surely beat the Dreamcast because it had far more whistles available in its games. I can't even think of a single DC game with a whistle at the moment.

You must not have played Sonic Adventure 2. Whistling for the Chao AND for the mystic melody secrets. (I forget if Sonic Advneture has chao whistling too)

 

 

Sho'nuff. I really did not like SA2 much at all. Shadow was the last straw.

[SpaceDice2010]

Why would a company want to develop for the 7800 anyways?

[Lynxpro]

Has anyone read Game Over, by any chance? What's the verdict on that one?

 

 

I enjoyed it [the first edition]. The Atari parts seemed almost like a direct sequel to Zap the Rise and Fall of Atari...

 

Game Over also asserted the theory that Steve Ross at Time Warner was paying for Atari Corp's legal fees in its case against Nintendo...

 

 

 

Atari failed to market the 2600 in Japan early enough or license it to an effective 3rd party Japanese distributor. (it seems the VCS's price was abnormally high in Japan as well) The same was true for localizations of the Intellivision and such. (and some JP exclusive systems)

 

 

What is missing from the discussion is how hard it was for American companies to penetrate the Japanese consumer market due to the complex and highly nationalistic distribution system Japan had back then. For Atari to have succeeded then marketing the system on their own would have been for Toys R Us to have already been in the market. Toys R Us dealt directly with companies and bypassed the distribution system but that wasn't until the late 80s. The only other choice would've been for Atari to either have a Japanese company distribute their products [i'm assuming Namco only distributed Atari coin-op games in Japan and not the consumer products] or license the hardware to the likes of Sony, Matsushita [Panasonic, JVC, etc.], NEC, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, etc. and/or all of the above.

 

Hell, even today with the break down of the distribution system, Microsoft can barely sell any Xboxes there. Microsoft could change its name to "Atari", have 100% non-defective rate on the Xbox, have exclusive Japanese content on the system, and pay Japanese consumers to purchase it and I'm sure Nintendo and Sony would still outsell them. It's just the nature of their closed market. I'm surprised Apple does so damn well there in spite of all of this...

 

Face it, Atari could've executed everything perfectly in the Japanese consumer market in the late 70s/early 80s and Nintendo probably would've still outsold them once the Japanese consumers understood the Japanese sounding "Atari" was an American company.

 

 

 

 

Others beat me to the punch [sleep, job, and pregnant wife telling me I spend too much time on the net, especially here] about answering the licensing questions regarding NES exclusivity. It should be noted that Technos did not publish for the NES directly so it got to sub-license Double Dragon to all the console platforms via different game publishers.

 

As Kool Kitty has mentioned numerous times, Atari Corp. could've sidestepped console exclusivity by licensing the titles for the Atari 8-bit line - and thus benefiting the XEGS - but the marketing and consumer confusion - along with the actual cost and the cheapness of Jack Tramiel - negated it. Imagine releasing all the games that appeared on the NES for the XEGS via packaging them for the "XE line of Computers". Under those circumstances, Atari probably would've been prevented from attaching a sticker stating "also plays on XEGS" from the packaging because the retailers would've objected out of fear of being sued by Nintendo [or withholding shipments which Nintendo allegedly did], or being prevented from releasing the titles on cartridges and restricting them to 5 1/4 floppy disks which Toys R Us and KB would've threw a fit over [and publishers would've been angered over the piracy potential]. So it's no surprise this didn't transpire, not to mention the fact that the 7800 would've still been boned...

 

 

 

 

Man, so much to read and catch up on!

My question is this: how did the whole Sega Dreamcast thing go down? As I remember, we're playing it in the fall of 99, loving it, Crazy Taxi, blown away by the sheer POWER of such a great system, fun games, cool controllers, a wicked Resident Evil game...and a few months later, GONE!!!...I mean, how exactly did that all happen?

 

 

Lack of DVD drive and Microsoft forcing Sega to violate their contracts with 3dfx and dumping their chipset in favor of NEC's PowerVR during the development phase of the "Blackbelt" followed by the unwillingness of Microsoft to continue funding Sega when Microsoft had already decided to launch the Xbox...

[Retro Rogue]

Atari failed to market the 2600 in Japan early enough or license it to an effective 3rd party Japanese distributor. (it seems the VCS's price was abnormally high in Japan as well) The same was true for localizations of the Intellivision and such. (and some JP exclusive systems)

 

 

What is missing from the discussion is how hard it was for American companies to penetrate the Japanese consumer market due to the complex and highly nationalistic distribution system Japan had back then. For Atari to have succeeded then marketing the system on their own would have been for Toys R Us to have already been in the market. Toys R Us dealt directly with companies and bypassed the distribution system but that wasn't until the late 80s. The only other choice would've been for Atari to either have a Japanese company distribute their products [i'm assuming Namco only distributed Atari coin-op games in Japan and not the consumer products] or license the hardware to the likes of Sony, Matsushita [Panasonic, JVC, etc.], NEC, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, etc. and/or all of the above.

 

What they should have done is back in '77 is go the OEM route in Japan with Namco, the Japanese company it already had a working relationship with (all the way to when Namco's video game division was originally Atari Japan), and have them release an OEM version. If they could do it with Sears and were even investigating a Kee Games version, there's no reason they couldn't have done it with Namco. Home market presence wise, Atari could have had a Japanese OEM version of the 2600 and 5200 on the market before the Famicom ever appeared - which would have given them a much better chance in the market there and a working relationship with Japanese game software companies before Nintendo locked them in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[toptenmaterial]

The 7800 lacked the identity of it's competitor. There's nothing inherently wrong with it: though it has been often debated, I still really don't see a difference in graphics from the NES. The sound did suck, yes, but I've read that there were carts out there that compensated for that. As for the controllers? The Advantage for NES seems to indicate that people were still using joysticks. And there were also the proline controllers (don't know if we had those in the US).

 

From the perspective of a layman, and a kid who grew up in this era, the focus was on games that the player could identify with. Nintendo understood this and successfully exploited it. Yes, there were platformers and such for the 7800, but there weren't many. The fact that a lot of them are rare (I think, could be wrong) seems to indicate that they weren't very prevalent. There just wasn't any defining or competitive edge to the 7800 at that particular time. The consumer knew it too.

[Cynicaster]

A good portion of 7800 titles suck the meat whistle, but I'm guessing that doesn't count.

[Cynicaster]

Oops, sorry about my last post, I was reading the first page of this thread on my phone and did a quick reply without realizing it had 10 pages.

 

I know I’m late here, but one thing I wanted to comment on was the 7800 vs. NES thing. Believe me, my brother and I were about as much “Atari kids” as a couple kids could be back in the day. We decided we wanted the Atari 7800 as our replacement for the 2600. We got one for Christmas in ’87, played it heavily for about 2 years, and did our best to enjoy it. It had some moments, but it was by and large a bit of a let down, and we eventually saved our pennies to buy a NES. I guess what I’m saying is, when I see comments like “I hate the NES with all my being, I don’t like any of the games” coming from somebody who, in the next breath, goes on to extol the virtues of the 7800 library, it’s good for a laugh. I mean, could you possibly be any less objective? I just don’t see how anybody who is simply a pure video game fan with no blind loyalties or affiliations could have this opinion—it’s total craziness.

 

As for which system is more “powerful”, who gives a shart? The 7800 apparently had some nice specs, but if they were never (or at least, rarely) put to good use by the game developers, then they might as well have not ever existed. It’s like arguing with somebody over whose car is faster, and saying “Well, my car would be as fast as yours—if not faster—if I only knew how to drive better!” The end result is all that matters; with cars it’s who crosses the finish line first, when comparing consoles it’s the games.

[Lynxpro]

What they should have done is back in '77 is go the OEM route in Japan with Namco, the Japanese company it already had a working relationship with (all the way to when Namco's video game division was originally Atari Japan), and have them release an OEM version. If they could do it with Sears and were even investigating a Kee Games version, there's no reason they couldn't have done it with Namco. Home market presence wise, Atari could have had a Japanese OEM version of the 2600 and 5200 on the market before the Famicom ever appeared - which would have given them a much better chance in the market there and a working relationship with Japanese game software companies before Nintendo locked them in.

 

 

Agreed in full. However, does anyone know if Namco ever expressed an interest in this?

 

Maybe Warner Atari didn't want Namco getting too big for their britches, so to speak... Japan was the second largest economy in the world behind the US with 120 million'ish consumers...

 

 

 

The 7800 lacked the identity of it's competitor. There's nothing inherently wrong with it: though it has been often debated, I still really don't see a difference in graphics from the NES. The sound did suck, yes, but I've read that there were carts out there that compensated for that. As for the controllers? The Advantage for NES seems to indicate that people were still using joysticks. And there were also the proline controllers (don't know if we had those in the US).

 

 

I really liked the NES Advantage. It was a piece of quality. Super Mario was a blast with it compared to the joypads.

 

Too bad the 7800 didn't have a quality arcade joystick like it. Or two fire buttoned Epyx joysticks...

 

I should quantify that as I loved the NES Advantage until the Lynx debuted and then I sold my NES quickly for funds to buy the Lynx...

[jd_1138]

A good portion of 7800 titles suck the meat whistle, but I'm guessing that doesn't count.

 

Don't you mean "blow" the meat whistle?

[mbd30]

A good portion of 7800 titles suck the meat whistle, but I'm guessing that doesn't count.

 

Don't you mean "blow" the meat whistle?

 

To be fair, some NES games have that too.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWGUSiYQFAQ

[jd_1138]

 

To be fair, some NES games have that too.

 

 

lol. It looks like Ring King was trying to copy the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out style of having a small boxer go up against a bigger dude.

[kool kitty89]

Why would a company want to develop for the 7800 anyways?

Because they had brand recognition, a significant market share, etc, etc. (and that market share would have been considerably higher with open 3rd party support without the walls put up by Nintendo)

 

I mean, in spite of the budget/support issues, Atari DID have a substantial brand name at the time and DID sell 3.77 million unite from '86-90. (nearly 3 million in '87 and '88 alone, the best 2 years for the system)

They were also well ahead of Sega in the US in spite of Sega's better funding and software resources.

 

A better question is why 3rd parties supported the Jaguar as much as they did in spite of the sales. (not talking about the Atari commissioned/published stuff, but the fair amount of actual 3rd party publishing the console saw)

 

 

Except I wonder why the 7800 didn't at least get a little European publishing given the general lack of Nintendo-bound publishers and wealth of computer game developers at the time. (and the 7800 apparently being decently popular in Europe if not actually selling better than in the US -it did have a better overall market share in the US due to Nintendo being far less dominant, but it was also behind Sega and had the low-end computers to contend with)

That and I again wonder why Katz didn't push for direct licensing/commissioned computer games from Europe. (a lot more on the table than in the US and probably at more competitive prices)

 

 

 

 

 

As Kool Kitty has mentioned numerous times, Atari Corp. could've sidestepped console exclusivity by licensing the titles for the Atari 8-bit line - and thus benefiting the XEGS - but the marketing and consumer confusion - along with the actual cost and the cheapness of Jack Tramiel - negated it. Imagine releasing all the games that appeared on the NES for the XEGS via packaging them for the "XE line of Computers". Under those circumstances, Atari probably would've been prevented from attaching a sticker stating "also plays on XEGS" from the packaging because the retailers would've objected out of fear of being sued by Nintendo [or withholding shipments which Nintendo allegedly did], or being prevented from releasing the titles on cartridges and restricting them to 5 1/4 floppy disks which Toys R Us and KB would've threw a fit over [and publishers would've been angered over the piracy potential]. So it's no surprise this didn't transpire, not to mention the fact that the 7800 would've still been boned...

After the 7800's release it would have been hard to push, but there were other reasons to not release the 7800 in general.

 

OTOH they could have released a keyboard/computer module expansion for the 7800 too. (maybe something like a scaled back 7800 XM with added DRAM or DRAM -Epyx carts were already pushing 32k SRAM chips in '87 to put that in perspective- and POKEY with a minimalistic membrane keyboard integrated with it and added peripheral/expansion support using POKEY's IO for use of a full-quality external keyboard a la XEGS, SIO port, and maybe added controller ports using the POT lines for analog and/or hacked as digital I/O ports -except you'd need more than 8 IO lines if you wanted more than 1 added controller port, so that would mean hacking the key inputs or just limiting it to 1 added controller port possibly with POKEY POT scanning support for analog joystick(s) and paddles)

 

That probably would have been a better investment than the XEGS by 1987. (and that also could have meant no carts using onboard RAM or POKEY, just require the expansion and possibly offer them as tapes or disks to load into the module's onboard RAM, and 1987 was the first really big year for the 7800 with over 1 million units sold)

Hell, they could even have released a "7800 Plus" with the expansion module's features totally built-in.

 

That also may have made it more attractive for the European budget market. (probably best to add a built-in analog cassette interface in that case too rather than relying on SIO based drives -or at least release upgraded drives with high-speed FSK decoders supporting at least 1500 baud -preferably double that or more)

 

 

Lack of DVD drive and Microsoft forcing Sega to violate their contracts with 3dfx and dumping their chipset in favor of NEC's PowerVR during the development phase of the "Blackbelt" followed by the unwillingness of Microsoft to continue funding Sega when Microsoft had already decided to launch the Xbox...

Not really right, I already addressed it though. Microsoft had very little to do with it other than scaring Sega with added competition.

 

The windows CE deal was highly favorable to Sega, it was Sega of Japan who ultimately decided on the PowerVR chipset (and it had been they who fostered the conflicting dual platform development with neither team knowing of the others' existence which led to some of the later problems).

The PowerVR chipset was more cost effective and ended up having awesome development tools.

 

Otherwise, i think I summarized Sega's problems pretty well. The DC had sold poorly in Europe and Japan, but done well in the US, Sega had not been conservative enough for their dire financial situation (wasting money with the free modem, hefty rebates, unnecessary price drops and a lot more), the piracy exploit certainly didn't help and then there's Sony's hype. (and a lot of other stuff I addressed in much more detail in my previous post)

 

If Sega had managed to get a better foothold in Japan, have an even stronger following in Europe than the US (the former hardcore Sega market and one where the Saturn didn't crash as hard or as quickly as the US), temper their spending (though the biggest thing they couldn't afford to drop in the US was the ad campaigns -those are critical in the US and something that went a long way towards weakening the Saturn on top of Sega's many other problems), prevented the piracy exploits (GDROM ripping and CD-R booting), and invest in PC publishing a hell of a lot more (especially after the Saturn was failing in '97), and Sega may have been able to remain profitable in the home console hardware business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What they should have done is back in '77 is go the OEM route in Japan with Namco, the Japanese company it already had a working relationship with (all the way to when Namco's video game division was originally Atari Japan), and have them release an OEM version. If they could do it with Sears and were even investigating a Kee Games version, there's no reason they couldn't have done it with Namco. Home market presence wise, Atari could have had a Japanese OEM version of the 2600 and 5200 on the market before the Famicom ever appeared - which would have given them a much better chance in the market there and a working relationship with Japanese game software companies before Nintendo locked them in.

 

 

Agreed in full. However, does anyone know if Namco ever expressed an interest in this?

 

Maybe Warner Atari didn't want Namco getting too big for their britches, so to speak... Japan was the second largest economy in the world behind the US with 120 million'ish consumers...

Maybe, but maintaining a good partner relationship would have facilitated avoiding such conflicts. (and in hindsight, they'd probably have been a lot better off regardless)

 

 

I really liked the NES Advantage. It was a piece of quality. Super Mario was a blast with it compared to the joypads.

 

Too bad the 7800 didn't have a quality arcade joystick like it. Or two fire buttoned Epyx joysticks...

 

I should quantify that as I loved the NES Advantage until the Lynx debuted and then I sold my NES quickly for funds to buy the Lynx...

Yeah, that palm-held Epyx stick is nice. Interestingly, Konix distributed a nearly identical joystick as the Speedking.

It would have been perfect if there had been a version with thumb operated fire buttons. (perhaps in addition to redundant trigger buttons)

Edited March 20, 2011 by kool kitty89

[SpaceDice2010]

Why would a company want to develop for the 7800 anyways?

Because they had brand recognition, a significant market share, etc, etc. (and that market share would have been considerably higher with open 3rd party support without the walls put up by Nintendo)

 

I mean, in spite of the budget/support issues, Atari DID have a substantial brand name at the time and DID sell 3.77 million unite from '86-90. (nearly 3 million in '87 and '88 alone, the best 2 years for the system)

They were also well ahead of Sega in the US in spite of Sega's better funding and software resources.

 

A better question is why 3rd parties supported the Jaguar as much as they did in spite of the sales. (not talking about the Atari commissioned/published stuff, but the fair amount of actual 3rd party publishing the console saw)

 

 

Except I wonder why the 7800 didn't at least get a little European publishing given the general lack of Nintendo-bound publishers and wealth of computer game developers at the time. (and the 7800 apparently being decently popular in Europe if not actually selling better than in the US -it did have a better overall market share in the US due to Nintendo being far less dominant, but it was also behind Sega and had the low-end computers to contend with)

That and I again wonder why Katz didn't push for direct licensing/commissioned computer games from Europe. (a lot more on the table than in the US and probably at more competitive prices)

 

 

Okay. fair enough. Why did Activision only release two games 1989+ if the system was doing so well in '87 and '88. Why did other companies not design games for this hot selling system. (The NES excuse is overrated.) What about Europe? Why not? There are two sides to every story.

 

Now, I admit that I don't know what Atari was offering developers. What was the dev system cost? Was it free? How much did it cost? What developer support did Atari have? What was Atari offering for licenses? Marketing support? What did developers feel about Atari's long term stability (keep in mind that many developers saw the crash and burn years earlier). How did developers feel about competing with Atari's $10-$20 game prices? How did they measure the position of the 7800 vs NES in the market... I have another 20 or so questions, but I will stop there for now.

 

As for the NES issue. How many here believe that Osborne Computer crashed because they announced the new computer too early?

 

I also wonder about the European support as well. Why didn't they? Maybe it was Nintendo as well?

Edited March 21, 2011 by SpaceDice2010