What could have saved the Jag?

[phoenixdownita]

4 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

Back on Topic (a g a i n  heh)

 

What could have saved The Jaguar?

 

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Spoiler Tags!   Sometimes ya gotta work for it!  Yeah!!

 

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GAMES!!

DEV TOOLS!

DEVS!!!!

DEVS who weren't Tools!

A Better ATARI

Better 3rd Party relations

Atari not being dicks to devs in the past

Killer Apps!

More Killer Apps!

Advertising!!!

Magazine coverage of Killer Aps!

Better system specs

A lower price

Multiple Jaguar colors!  (To match your living room)

More Games in a shorter time frame

More Jag Shelf Space in MORE retailers

Positive Game Reviews in Magazines!

Posters, Coffee Mugs, T-Shirts and licensed Atari Scuba Gear, Safari Hats, Race Cars and Thermoses

Jaguar appearing in a movie, TV show, or Nirvana video

Atari having MORE CASH in the First place!

Maybe a Time Machine to prevent the Tramiel Sale

Nolan Bushnell

 

 

Your Mom buying everyone Jaguars for their birthdays (And Christmas!)

 

 

It's all so simple really.

 

 

Cheers!

...

DEV TOOLS!

DEVS!!!!

DEVS who weren't Tools!

...

 

ROTFL ... this made my day ... 

[Matt_B]

Is that a Jane Whittaker reference, perchance?

[pacman000]

16 hours ago, alucardX said:

Maybe a Nintendo logo on the Jaguar could have saved it.

Didn't work with the Wii U or Virtual Boy.

[pacman000]

15 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

...

DEV TOOLS!

DEVS!!!!

DEVS who weren't Tools!

Developers with some experience may have helped. It seems the people who worked on the Jaguar were either smell upstarts, or the one kid at a major developer who had an ST. "We have to support Atari! I had an Atari! I love Atari! They're coming out with a new system! It'll be awesome & make them a major player again!"

 

Another option: If Atari had some sort of developer support system in place; from interviews it seems the entire development support team was Leonard Tramiel. "You're a bad programmer! If you weren't you could figure this out yourself! I know this because I have a degree in astrophysics!"

 

(Not actual quotes; based on hazy memories of interviews. Meant to semi-comically explain the state of Atari at the time. And, yes, I know explaining jokes is poor form, but creating fake quotes without labeling them as such can create confusion in the future. I may have done so in the past, but I'm trying to repent.)

[Lost Monkey]

Virtual Boy - 770,000

Wii U  - 13,560,000

Atari Jaguar - <150,000

 

Lol - they weren't 'saved' but Atari would have loved to have either of those sales volumes with the Jaguar.

 

[Bill Loguidice]

3 hours ago, Lost Monkey said:

Virtual Boy - 770,000

Wii U  - 13,560,000

Atari Jaguar - <150,000

 

Lol - they weren't 'saved' but Atari would have loved to have either of those sales volumes with the Jaguar.

 

Yeah, the numbers don't lie and always put how badly the Jaguar did in perspective. For a major console release, the Jaguar was the most epic failure imaginable. Pre-Crash, the RCA Studio II was a worse seller than the Jaguar, while post-Crash, you have to look at something like the Amiga CD32, which wasn't even released in the US, for something that sold about the same. Just about everything else I can think of ended up selling more, and often much more, even if flagged a similar failure. Excluding limited-release platforms like the VIS, the Jaguar just never made an impact like you would expect a major release to do despite plenty of retail presence, advertising, and press (albeit, often not positive). It's striking, really.

[Lost Monkey]

5 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Yeah, the numbers don't lie and always put how badly the Jaguar did in perspective. For a major console release, the Jaguar was the most epic failure imaginable. Pre-Crash, the RCA Studio II was a worse seller than the Jaguar, while post-Crash, you have to look at something like the Amiga CD32, which wasn't even released in the US, for something that sold about the same. Just about everything else I can think of ended up selling more, and often much more, even if flagged a similar failure. Excluding limited-release platforms like the VIS, the Jaguar just never made an impact like you would expect a major release to do despite plenty of retail presence, advertising, and press (albeit, often not positive). It's striking, really.

Having lived through it, the interviews and statements from Atari now seem like a grift rather than a genuine underdog attempt at the market.    

 

Remember the Sega lawsuit/settlement?   - meant nothing, but they made it sound like a serious influx of cash to propel the company forward.

 

Remember the "hints" that half a dozen Sega titles would be appearing on the Jaguar as a result?  "We've already picked our titles" - nothing, except maybe Tempest 2000 ending up on Saturn.

 

"Jaguar is as powerful as Saturn, if not more..."   - nope, but you could embarrass yourself saying it to your Saturn owning friends.

 

"The Playstation... ...is a little bit more powerful in certain areas - but not in others" - lol

 

I don't think anything could have "saved" the Jaguar, I am not even convinced Atari wanted it saved. 

[leech]

The problem the Jaguar had was all down to... the failure of the 5200, 7800, and partial success of the Lynx.  Back in the day when it was released, talking to the younger crowd... they didn't even know Atari at all.  I'm talking about the ones who think Nintendo invented video games.  Even if they had heard of Atari, they had thought they'd died many years before the Jaguar was made.  I knew no one with a 5200 or 7800, growing up.  The most Atari people had were the 2600, then the 8bit line of computers.  A few, including myself, eventually got an ST. 

 

The only thing that could have saved the Jaguar would have been Atari itself.  And at that point, they shouldn't have wasted their time on the Jag and just made a game system based on the Falcon.  Granted, maybe that would have cost too much.

[alucardX]

5 hours ago, pacman000 said:

Didn't work with the Wii U or Virtual Boy.

At the time of the Jaguar, Nintendo hadn't tasted failure yet.

[Bill Loguidice]

1 hour ago, leech said:

The problem the Jaguar had was all down to... the failure of the 5200, 7800, and partial success of the Lynx.  Back in the day when it was released, talking to the younger crowd... they didn't even know Atari at all.  I'm talking about the ones who think Nintendo invented video games.  Even if they had heard of Atari, they had thought they'd died many years before the Jaguar was made.  I knew no one with a 5200 or 7800, growing up.  The most Atari people had were the 2600, then the 8bit line of computers.  A few, including myself, eventually got an ST. 

 

The only thing that could have saved the Jaguar would have been Atari itself.  And at that point, they shouldn't have wasted their time on the Jag and just made a game system based on the Falcon.  Granted, maybe that would have cost too much.

Exactly, and Sega followed a similar path, though uninterrupted, from 1986 - 2001, and started to lose goodwill and momentum from 32X (although you could include the Sega CD in there) until the Dreamcast, which by then was not quite enough to reverse the company's fortunes. Atari produced home consoles over a much more impressive timespan, 1975 - 1996 (though with much more erratic timing and gaps), but, as you imply, they never got momentum with a 2600 successor, first with the 5200, then with the 7800, thanks in no small part to the Crash and change in ownership. But of course, worse still, was not having a 16-bit entry. Going that route may have hastened the company's demise, but it could also instead have given them more strategic positioning in the market, and more time, to release a better version of what became the Jaguar. Again, a 16-bit Atari console release in the early 1991 timeframe likely would have been a relative dud, much like the 7800, but perhaps that would have been the only way to put a future Jaguar in a better overall position for success, allowing some of the ideas presented in the thread to have an actual working chance. 

 

Of course, my opinion is even with a 16-bit Atari console and somehow surviving to release a slightly later and better-designed Jaguar, it would have made little difference. Like with the rise of PC DOS and Windows versus other computer platforms, it feels like Sony's PlayStation was a market inevitability in terms of dominance, being designed, executed, and released in exactly the way most of the market didn't know it wanted/needed.

As for making a console based around the Falcon, much like the proposed Amiga console, I don't see it working. There wouldn't have been advantages over what Sega and Sony ended up doing with their 16-bit consoles. We got a chance to see what Amiga (and equivalent) computer ports did on the Genesis, and to a lesser degree on the SNES, and they were rarely stand-outs or great sellers. The console market came to expect something more and different.

[pacman000]

1 hour ago, alucardX said:

At the time of the Jaguar, Nintendo hadn't tasted failure yet.

Except for Radar Scope. And a bunch of weird, non game\toy related things from the 60's.

[alucardX]

1 hour ago, pacman000 said:

Except for Radar Scope. And a bunch of weird, non game\toy related things from the 60's.

Radar Scope, what? What Radar scope? Those have always been Donkey Kong machines.