Commercially successful Jaguar

[Lost Dragon]

The book:Opening The Xbox:inside Microsofts Plan To Unleash An Entertainment Revolution' (Dean Takahasi) could explain the Xbox scenario far better than i, but the goals basically were:

To make money, expand Microsofts technology into the living room and create a perception among the consumers that MS was leading the way in the field of new consumer appaliances.

You've Ed Fries to thank for the HDD as standard, he fought it's corner saying it was the key to online gaming and represented the next evolution in console hardware, this 'endorsement' is said to have caught Gate's attention and Gates felt having it as standard would help set it aside from it's rival consoles.

MS has always said it needed to do something to 'contain' Sony-ie stop it taking all the hardcore gamers, hence the Xbox was born.

[+madman]

Looks like another one escaped the mental institution.

[Rick Dangerous]

No. To everything.

[NeoGeoNinja]

Thing is though, you look at say Retro Gamer Magazine, EDge or Gamestm a few years ago-you'd often hear of the PC or Amiga version of a 'Classic' being talked about or the C64/ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC version of a game, or earlier still the 2600 version, but you'd be forgiven for thinking the A8 range (400/800/XL/XE) never existed, let alone the 7800 and it used to frustrate so many of us the ST versions of games (even when they appeared before the Amiga version) were never mentioned in an article...

My point here is the 'Atari Brand' simply was'nt that strong.

 

Absolutely.

 

After the initial 2600 in the 80's, Atari had very minimal market presence here in the UK. It was ALL about Commodore with a splash of Sinclair or Amstrad.

 

NES in UK? despite what likes of Gamestm/RetroGamer (advertising partners with Nintendo) will tell you in revised history articles, arrived far too late in UK, by that time hardware was dated, games over-priced, UK eyes on ST/Amiga, consoles like MD/PC Engine and Master System.

 

More or less, quite true, although, the PCE/TG16 had NO presence here in the UK, whatsoever.

 

Here in the UK, back in the very early 90's (before the MD/SNES era took over) it was all about the MasterSystem, console wise.

 

Most other people had 80's 'home computers', but personally, I couldn't stand them and couldn't wait to get rid and migrate to SEGA & Nintendo's platforms. I still, very fondly remember my cousin wanting to swap my C64 for his SMS! I really lucked out there, as it saved my having to request one next Xmas/B'day etc

 

Last I checked the Jag is at 250K sold.

 

Nope. 250k manufactured. Half of that is estimated to have actually sold (presumably, at retail/consumer level).

 

Regarding the whole Euro zone, let's all remember that it was the bed of home computers for the whole 80s early 90s, not many consoles were such a success during that time frame, families wanted their money's worth so "little Bobby" can play and study with the same tool ..... as if!!!

 

Spot on. Here in the UK, it was all about the: Amstrad, Spectrum & C64 era, closely followed by the Amiga & ST era... although, I will say... that was really the Amiga era tbh

 

I think we keep on circling around the Jag because we have free time to do it and somewhat we like Atari more than say SNK.

 

Speak for yourself

 

As mentioned elsewhere on this forum in the past, it's ironic, but I'd never paid any SERIOUS attention to Atari UNTIL the Jaguar came out...

Edited March 1, 2015 by NeoGeoNinja

[phoenixdownita]

Honestly of all the consoles I have amassed over the last 5 or 6 years, the one that impressed me the most has to be the Neo Geo in all of its incarnations: AES or CD (CDZ better).

 

Obviously fighters are slow to load on the CD (a little more bearable on the CDZ but not by much) the rest loads in less than 30sec or so, at the same time pretty much everything AES is quite expensive (even in MVS format just not so bad).

 

I really wish there was more variety because that console is a god send, the library is obviously very weak on anything that didn't fit the arcade model so ... you know .... no RPGs (I do not speak Japanese so Samurai Shodown RPG is a no go but I may make do with the French fan translation [no I am not French]) or deep platformers to talk about (Raguy .... wtf??). Also after a while I got tired of playing yet another fighter, basically 1/3 to 1/2 of the whole library is fighters.

 

But back to the Jag, I bought it because I was curious like hell and AVP always enticed me, it is not too bad but the games do not shine in any particular way or fashion. I also got the CD "toilet" add-on and well, it doesn't add much .... I'm just so glad that Cyrano is porting so many ST games in ABS format that I can actually use the "toilet" a little more [sounds like a bad joke but no offense meant, Cyrano work is truly outstanding]

Edited March 1, 2015 by phoenixdownita

[sh3-rg]

1. On the hardware front, add a dust guard to the cartridge slot and remove those stupid looking buttons from the controller. Those changes wouldn't cost the company any extra money and would be easy fixes to implement. The lack of a dust guard was just a bad design and those buttons are really lame and made the console seem like a throwback to the 2nd generation.

The controller already existed form the STe era. It cost nothing more to use it on Jaguar. The fact that the Pro Controller exists proves they knew there were issues with using it, but they didn't have the time or money to make it happen early enough. A dust flap and the mechanism would cost more - assembly, mould, engineering - might seem trivial and amount to pennies, but... Atari. Atari were all about the pennies.

 

Dust flaps do not sell consoles.

 

2. Dump the Lynx and the CD add on. There was never any room in the hand held market for anything besides the Game Gear and Gameboy so the Lynx was a terrible idea and in my plan the Jaguar is only mean to be a niche console anyway so there will never be enough sales to merit add ons. Both the Lynx and the CD add on were a waste of scarce resources.

The Lynx was effectively already dead.

 

When a platform holder abandons a machine, it only highlights concern for the buying public.

 

How is producing a niche console supposed to generate return on investment, never mind profit?

 

3. Drastically reduce the advertising budget. We're not competing with Nintendo, Sega and Sony so no need to advertise on TV slots. Use (relatively) cheap adds in gaming magazines since our target market is hardcore gamers only.

So Atari wasted money on advertising too much? Were you actually around in the 90s? I'm not anyone can seriously accuse Atari of squandering millions on putting the word out.

 

4. A lot of money have been saved with less advertising and getting rid of the Lynx and CD; some of these resources can be put back in to game development. The most important thing is to develop a quality, 3d knock off of Virtua Fighter which should be sold as the system's pack in game. Virtua Fighter was huge in 93 and so many people wanted to play the game at home, even if it wasn't a perfect arcade port. It would also be a good demonstration of the systems capabilities.

You want Atari to spend years making a clone of a genre-creating game they cannot physically have either seen or imagined, and you want them to have it ready to ship in the same year as this game without final hardware or dev tools? Do the math - I cannot calculate the amount of fail in such a suggestion. They couldn't even reproduced a half decent knock off years after the fact.

 

5. Do not sell the system at a loss. Again, we aren't Nintendo, Sony or Sega and there is no hope of us every recouping our loss through game sales because our market just isn't big enough. We aren't fighting for market share so no need to get in to price wars. Now maybe somebody can correct my numbers but I believe that the system could be sold with a pack in at 500 dollars a unit and break even so lets go with that.

Incorrect and wow, I'm finding this difficult to take seriously at this point. You want Atari to manufacture a niche console targeted to only a subset of gamers and make money on every unit from day one? Do you have any idea of the kind of investment it takes to design a hardware platform? Again, do the math... how many thousands of dollars is this console going to cost at this point?

 

6. Since the console is selling at cost, Atari can afford to adopt a liberal licensing policy with lower fees which means a bigger library and cheaper games.

Has no basis in the practicalities of the situation.

 

Okay, so Atari does all these things, but I think the question you all will now have is "if it's selling at 500, why even buy it?".

No. The question everyone had back then when it was actually selling for half that was... "Why even buy it?", and, as sales figures highlight, they were at a loss to answer that convincingly.

 

1. The Jaguar is at least as good a piece of hardware as the 3DO and NeoGeo, with a better library of games and is even a tad cheaper. The 3DO and NeoGeo literally sold millions of units, no reason the superior Jaguar couldn't have taken at least half of their sales.

Sigh.

 

2. It's cool and "quirky". It is made in the US and has the iconic Atari name.

For every person who thought that was a good thing, there were likely a dozen who laughed. The Atari brand was approaching toxicity and only ever recovered from that point thanks to nostalgia and things retro.

 

3. It has a unique library that other systems can't match.

Oh, it was unique alright... apart from all the ports and...

 

4. There was still a strong interest in quality 2d games all the way into the late 90s, and the Jaguar as a tweener system between the 4th and 5th generation can do 2d better than the Genesis or SNES. For gamers looking for new, high quality 2d games the Jaguar will be the best option available to them.

That person did not exist. Playstation took gaming to new places, made it "cool" to be into games, began the process of making gaming acceptable to the general public and shrugging (shrug, lolol!) off the image of nerdy fat geeks locked away in their bedrooms 24/7. It did that through exceptionally well judged advertising and pin-point target demographic nukes from the above. No prisoners were taken.

 

If Atari had done all of this I could see the Jaguar selling around 2 million units and being profitable

Name a profitable, successful, 2-million selling console platform.

Don't utter the words N**-G**, that was a spin-off revenue stream from an established, successful arcade business with pricing that doesn't align even slightly with the laughable business model described above.

 

 

Why the hell did I reply to this? Never felt like I've been so trolled so hard ever... lol.

 

Looks like another one escaped the mental institution.

 

Yup.

 

No. To everything.

 

Wish I'd had the sense to optimise my thoughts to succinctly.

Edited March 1, 2015 by sh3-rg

[+CyranoJ]

Why the hell did I reply to this? Never felt like I've been so trolled so hard ever... lol.

Why the hell did I read it? Lol.

[sh3-rg]

Why the hell did I read it? Lol.

 

Why the hell haven't I got you on ignore already?

 

You could be great, you know... but your ego gets the better of you and holds you back.

 

I'm overjoyed to know you wasted a fraction of your evening out reading the reply that took me all my porridge time and more to write!!!11 <insert another annoyingly smug emoticon all the really cool posters use>

[+CyranoJ]

I'll just Shruggie that off. Lol.

[high voltage]

The Atari 8-bit computer was the second best import computer in UK, after C64, but UK developers didn't get it (Atari always had a huge presence in UK (Atari, Silica Shop, Atari World, Maplin and more)). C64 and ZX were tape (cassette) based platforms, eg cheap, whilst A8 users most of the time used fdds. The cream of A8 software was always coming from US, eg companies like SSI, Origin, Datasoft, Sirius, EA, Mindscape, Activision etc....

Edited March 1, 2015 by high voltage

[Lost Dragon]

Just a side note:My comment about all eyes being on the PC Engine here in UK along with MD etc, that refered to the likes of TGM/ACE/ZERO/C+VG building the hype nicely for what was then expected to be an upcoming UK Launch of this little wonder and reviewing games for those who'd imported a machine.

UK Launch sadly never happened, but press coverage for the machine was everywhere at the time.So it had a 'magazine' presence as oppossed to retail one.

[AtariORdead]

Was the Atari Jaguare really ahead of its time though? It had some power but everything about the way Atari went with it was stuck in the past.

 

It was obvious at that time that the industry was experimenting with CD and that was the way it was heading.

 

Every other console that was coming out was coming with memory cards or built in memory

 

SFII was hugely popular and 6 button pads were becoming standard, releasing with 3 main fire buttons was woefully inadequate

 

Shoulder buttons, such a small thing but once the Snes released with them they were a mainstay. Jag, doom, iron soldier, AVP would have greatly benefited with strafe controles on shoulder buttons.

 

Even the games, while some were technically good the whole idea behind them were based on looking at what was already out, the releases were as by the numbers as you couls get. they saw what had been popular and just tried to copy and paste

 

Host of ports from 16 bit consoles

 

Mortal kombat clone - Kasumi ninja

 

Mariokart - atari karts

 

Starfox - cybermorph, and for good measure release a standard shooter with anima characters - trevor mcfur.

 

Your standard doom, wolfenstein releases

 

Virtua racer clone - checkered flag

 

Slap a bit of paint on and update a whole load of old games, missile command, defender, tempest.

 

 

powerful hardware but handicapped by people who were too backward thinking in terms of everything else. I just think the people behind had no idea where the industry was heading.

[Lost Dragon]

The coders here could answer the question far better than i, but looking back when RG Magazine covered the Jaguar a few years back, there was a lot of talk of it's power being used for complex A.I routines and network/link-up play.Plus there's been talk of it's strength being in area's like 65,000 colours (24 Bit Colour?) so it has advantage here as well over PS1/Saturn?

These are just 'educated by what i've read' guesses.

Atari was crippled by many things, including backwards thinking, very limited budgets, still trying to do things on the cheap, rushing unfinished games out just to get product on shelves, a toxic brand name etc etc.

I can see why they wanted to get in on the console market share with the Jaguar, just as Commodore and Amstrad saw the MS/NES market and thought we'll have a slice of that, but just as bad decisions made there with the C64GS and GX4000 (and the CDTV and CD32, Mega PC etc etc).

Lot of companies wasted a lot of resources on poorly thought out and poorly implemented hardware.

[+CyranoJ]

 

The coders here could answer the question far better than i, but looking back when RG Magazine covered the Jaguar a few years back, there was a lot of talk of it's power being used for complex A.I routines and network/link-up play.Plus there's been talk of it's strength being in area's like 65,000 colours (24 Bit Colour?) so it has advantage here as well over PS1/Saturn?

 

AI: Nope, not enough RAM in the jriscs.

Network link up: Nope, UART is bugged, needs nanny watching from a cpu to make work.

65000 colours: Odd number. 65536 is 16-bit, not 24 bit.

Edited March 1, 2015 by CyranoJ

[Major Havoc 2049]

As for the European angle: growing up in America in the early 90s I actually never even heard of the Jaguar. I didn't know about it until a few months ago when I saw an old AVGN about it. But I know from reading about it that they did advertise heavily in the States, I just must have missed it, along with apparently 100s of millions of other people.

 

If you were into video games in the early 90's, then you would have heard about the Atari Jaguar and Atari Lynx. The Jaguar had presence in every multi-platform video game magazine of the day and even a few cover stories here and there. The Jaguar also had retail presence at every major video game retail outlet in the United States and a few other national retail chains as well. The Jaguar had television ads, but since the Atari marketing budget was really small, Atari would buy television time at off hours on cable networks. I remember seeing commercials for Tempest 2000, Alien vs Predator, Doom and the system itself, but it was always on networks like USA and TNT, always between like 10pm and 2am.

[Eyemsougly]

I have no memory of it whatsoever. All I remember is adds for SNES and Genesis. I remember the Saturn being a big deal a couple of years later cause you could play Virtua Fighter on it, at the time my favorite game.

 

I also never heard of the Atari 2600 growing up nor did I know that Sega had an 8 bit system before they released the Genesis. I thought that the NES was the first non-pong home video game console ever built and I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

 

For me, my consoles went like this:

NES, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox360. I'll probably get a PS4 when I go back home and I assume that will be the last console I'll ever get. The end of an era.

[Eyemsougly]

but it was always on networks like USA and TNT.

 

My family didn't have cable and I never got video game magazines.

[Lost Dragon]

:-) right so basically all that talk of Jaguar being able to handle A.I routines way beyond the PS1, was'nt until Xbox arrived A.I coding came close i seem to recal being claimed in a RG Article on Jaguar a few years back was...ahem..optimistic?

 

 

The Link-Up claim i think was Darryl Still reply in C+VG Letter bag, but he was only going on what Atari Engineers had told him and the 24 Bit Colour thing, admittidly i just pulled that from depths of my mind, think that migh have been a Rebellion quote, saying it was one of the Jaguars strengths and then they went onto say AVP ran in 65,000 colours..

 

And i wonder why i stopped buying UK magazines in volumes i once did...

[JagChris]

:-) right so basically all that talk of Jaguar being able to handle A.I routines way beyond the PS1, was'nt until Xbox arrived A.I coding came close i seem to recal being claimed in a RG Article on Jaguar a few years back was...ahem..optimistic?

 

I think you are talking about the RVG interview that happened over at JSII? That interview was conducted with forum members and developers from there. You can get hold of most of them on Facebook on the Jaguar webpage.

[Bill Loguidice]

I'm sorry, but I'm of the opinion that there's no scenario where the Jaguar would have been successful, niche or otherwise. There were several main issues against the Jaguar. One, was Atari itself, which was both financially weak and had a poor or otherwise lackluster reputation among that generation of gamers. Second, was the hardware, which, while more powerful than the 16-bit systems that were still in their prime, had nothing in it to noticeably differentiate from those platforms (the PS1 was a clear differentiator, which was one of many reasons why it was a blockbuster success). The financial aspects come into play, because not only would it take shrewd advertising (we can all agree harping on the 64-bit thing was a mistake; another angle would have been needed), but also AAA games that would have unequivocally been creations that couldn't be done on the aforementioned 16-bit systems which were being pushed to new heights. There was no room in that market between the release of the SNES and PS1 for a niche system.

 

Significant market share would have needed to have been gained before the PS1's release. None of its contemporaries did that, and not even Sega's Saturn could muster much of a fight. By that time, Sega was itself financially and reputation damaged, and they were in a far better position to compete than a company like Atari.

 

If you ask me what REALISTIC option Atari could have pursued to carve out anything resembling a sustainable/survivable niche would have been forgetting about the Jaguar entirely and doing a Lynx 2, one with backwards compatibility, competitive battery life, and a more pocketable form factor. Portable games was the one area Atari's financial constraints would have made far less of a difference in relative game quality/competitiveness, and even the Lynx 1 technology was still more than competitive with what the competition was doing at the time. Even then they'd be competing against the juggernaut GameBoy line, which no one was really able to make much of a dent in until the PSP (and even that, far, far, behind), but at least it seems they would have had a chance, particularly with the right type of addictive portable games.

[Lost Dragon]

:-) Nope.It was def.an RG Magazine article, it stands out (and i can almost picture the cover, think Jaguar was on there, Sonic in top corner?).It was the 1st time i'd seen the Jaguar covered in the magazine, it might of been Battlesphere coder quoted? but i'd honestly have to dig it out.

 

Def.was'nt the Gamestm article, as that stuck in my mind as 1st time i'd seen a tech specs box-out claiming a figure for polys per second on Jaguar.No idea how accurate that was either :-).

 

Never read anything on JSII, nor do i do Facebook.

 

The claim of not until Xbox arrived could coders do such complex A.I routines seems to stick in my head.Details though are hazy.

 

End of the day though, to be fair to the article, any quotes would be the opinion of the person interviewed.

[Lost Dragon]

@Bill.Atari's reputation, previous handling of earlier hardware and money issues, i feel would have blighted any Alt.hardware options they might have tried..Panther, Lynx 2 etc.

 

You've only to look at quotes from industry figures as to why the passed on Panther, Jaguar etc or the existing realationships they had with likes of SEGA-regular cheques coming in, great working atmosphere.

 

Why would they risk getting bogged down with contractual obligations with Atari?.

 

 

And without the essential 3rd party software support...your back in a familar land.

[Bill Loguidice]

@Bill.Atari's reputation, previous handling of earlier hardware and money issues, i feel would have blighted any Alt.hardware options they might have tried..Panther, Lynx 2 etc.

 

You've only to look at quotes from industry figures as to why the passed on Panther, Jaguar etc or the existing realationships they had with likes of SEGA-regular cheques coming in, great working atmosphere.

 

Why would they risk getting bogged down with contractual obligations with Atari?.

 

 

And without the essential 3rd party software support...your back in a familar land.

 

I still argue that if we're looking for a possible scenario where Atari would have a survivable niche, a Lynx 2 (in the form I described) would have been it. Such a platform could be properly supported by Atari in its then state and would have only needed modest third party support, so it could have likely worked with the same type of companies that ended up supporting the Jaguar. A Tetris-like go-to title or two would have probably been a necessity, though.

 

With all of the above in mind, I'm certainly not saying there were really many options for Atari to succeed in any capacity (and more or less stated as such in the previous comment), I'm just trying to play along with the "what if?".

[Lost Dragon]

The What If...scenario's are of interest to myself, i just tend to use existing quotes to kind of gauge the industry feeling of how news of new Atari hardware was responded to.

 

It's curious to hear of just why people passed up on the chance to develop for new hardware, be it Mev Dinc on the Panther or Jez San in 'Version 1' of events relating to Jaguar development (see Ste Pickford comment in the Chimera thread also for now telling a rather different tale :-) ) and the one thing than seems to stand out is Atari's inability to support and market hardware, properly, were the kiss of death for many.

 

I know Nintendo seem to do well supporting their own platforms when 3rd party support either dries up or simply is'nt there (Wii, Wii U etc) perhaps better than Sony (PSP Vita etc), but i personally cannot see Atari getting enough support or understanding the handheld market and which games are best suited for handheld play (something Sony struggled with as well on PSP+Vita), to really make a go of any Lynx 2.

[JagChris]

:-) Nope.It was def.an RG Magazine article, it stands out (and i can almost picture the cover, think Jaguar was on there, Sonic in top corner?).It was the 1st time i'd seen the Jaguar covered in the magazine, it might of been Battlesphere coder quoted? but i'd honestly have to dig it out.

 

Def.was'nt the Gamestm article, as that stuck in my mind as 1st time i'd seen a tech specs box-out claiming a figure for polys per second on Jaguar.No idea how accurate that was either :-).

 

Never read anything on JSII, nor do i do Facebook.

 

The claim of not until Xbox arrived could coders do such complex A.I routines seems to stick in my head.Details though are hazy.

 

End of the day though, to be fair to the article, any quotes would be the opinion of the person interviewed.

 

 

Yeah I still have that magazine. They just said that Halo 1 beat their A.I. not that it could not have been done before that.