What could have saved the Jag?

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, laymanpigeon said:

2 confused reactions to my post from people, read this;

 

IBM to Make Atari’s New Video Game : Technology: The $500-million deal will make the next-generation system the only video game made in America.

 

Atari Signs $500 Million Contract with IBM (Jul.09,1993)

 

Atari Jaguar an IBM animal

 

There's no real confusion regarding the Toshiba or Motorola Chip manufacturing issues, it was a new technology, initial chip yields on production runs supposedly as low as 40%

 

The Jaguar hardware needed another 2 revisions to iron all the bugs out, ATD were tasked with bug testing, did what they could in time allowed, Atari implemented at least 1 minor hardware change they suggested, AVP used it. 

 

Atari didn't have the resources or luxury of time, to delay the Jaguar further, it was originally pitched to take on the Genesis and SNES according to the Tramiel family and they then foolishly tried to have the hardware compete with fully texture mapped titles on 3DO,Saturn and PlayStation.

 

 

As for IBM? They supposedly put in the cheapest tender, Atari awarded them a 30-month contract worth $500 million, they
were responsible for component sourcing, quality testing, console
assembly, packaging and distribution, and built the system at the 
Charlotte, N.C., facility, which reportedly had spate capacity/had been sat idle for months prior..

 

The  Jaguar motherboard came from an IBM-approved manufacturer. 

 

Asking what could of saved the Jaguar, under the Tramiel Family, is akin to asking what could of saved an unfortunate victim of drowning in an icy lake. 

 

It doesn't matter if death was by drowning, hyperthemina or something else. 

 

A death occurred. 

 

 

 

 

 

[harmonyFM]

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

It's a extremely well trodden path now, but the numeric pad was supposedly intended to try and convince developers to convert complex  Amiga/PC Flight Sims etc, which required keyboard commands, to the Jaguar, we never even saw Gunship 2000 from Microprose for example, so that idea never went anywhere. 

 

Yes there was far more demand than actual console numbers available, here in the UK, but that's only because so few units arrived to go into key High Street stores over here, there were dissapointed kids, angry parents. 

 

The hype has come from likes of Darryl Still rolling out the same old ancedote about angry parent dumping rubbish in the reception at Atari UK HQ in Slough, whenever he's asked about the Jaguar and magazines like Retrogamer Magazine printing absolute nonsense claims about European Pre-Order figures, reaching the millions. 

 

Could Atari UK of sold more Jaguars, had they been available at launch? 

 

Yes. 

 

Would it of done anything to even buy Atari sometine with the Jaguar? 

 

Not really. 

 

The UK market isn't where success is born. 

Having a healthy overseas market is better than none, either have enough stock to launch everywhere you want to launch but half-assing it and just having it in some shops as you say cheesed off potential customers who now totally wrote it off. That’s bad buzz and it’s not helpful when everyone else also has bad buzz from how the launch went for them. They just weren’t ready anywhere.

[laymanpigeon]

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

There's no real confusion regarding the Toshiba or Motorola Chip manufacturing issues, it was a new technology, initial chip yields on production runs supposedly as low as 40%

It is sometimes stated size of Tom was near limitation of what could be have been  manufactured by either thus I am wondering if transistor limit was 800 thousand.

 

Also I assume figure of 750 thousand transistors for Tom was rounded up.

 

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

The Jaguar hardware needed another 2 revisions to iron all the bugs out, ATD were tasked with bug testing, did what they could in time allowed, Atari implemented at least 1 minor hardware change they suggested, AVP used it. 

In my opinion the concurrent of Panther and Jaguar was wasteful with resources as fourth generation was in full swing for former to have any impact at all while latter could have been completed sooner with hardware bugs resolved at least.

 

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Atari didn't have the resources or luxury of time, to delay the Jaguar further, it was originally pitched to take on the Genesis and SNES according to the Tramiel family and they then foolishly tried to have the hardware compete with fully texture mapped titles on 3DO,Saturn and PlayStation.

Panther and Jaguar could take on Genesis and SNES with Jaguar absolutely dominate though Panther too could as it was basically twice CPU clock as Genesis and at least twice as good GPU than SNES had even with additive chips in cartridge.

 

Jaguar could have in theory competed if decisions were made differently early on such as in 1991 or 1992 even when considering Atari could not have of course be aware of either Sega's Saturn nor Sony's Playstation unlike 3DO's 3DO.

 

One of critical bad decisions early on made by Atari was choosing Motorola 68000 over 68020 for cost reasons thus former that needs baby sitting and constant reminder to do nothing in order not to it too out pressure on system bandwidth.

 

Since 68000 does not have cache unlike 68020 along half clock speed as Tom and Jerry while only 16 bit data bus and 24 bit address bus. Coincidentally bandwidth of system memory is 106MBps despite being 64 bit wide with four 512KB of 16 bit FPM DRAM thus only explanation it is same clock as 68000 for some reason.

 

If that is reason for anemic clock of system memory then bandwidth with 68020 would have had been double and from what I remember doubling bandwidth can cause 25 percent uplift in performance. Also just having 68020 would be far less impactful on system memory bandwidth due to having cache thus even when used for game logic and artificial intelligence due to much higher clock speed hence communication with Tom and Jerry would nowhere as must stall as with 68000.

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

As for IBM? They supposedly put in the cheapest tender, Atari awarded them a 30-month contract worth $500 million, they
were responsible for component sourcing, quality testing, console
assembly, packaging and distribution, and built the system at the 
Charlotte, N.C., facility, which reportedly had spate capacity/had been sat idle for months prior..

I understand. It was a win win situation at the time.

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

. . .

Atari mismanaged Jaguar and tried to be in Europe along Japan without having enough supply hence botched launch in UK thus in my opinion Jaguar should have launched in Europe a year after American launch or at least soonest in October.

1 hour ago, harmonyFM said:

Having a healthy overseas market is better than none, either have enough stock to launch everywhere you want to launch but half-assing it and just having it in some shops as you say cheesed off potential customers who now totally wrote it off. That’s bad buzz and it’s not helpful when everyone else also has bad buzz from how the launch went for them. They just weren’t ready anywhere.

Absolutely.

 

Atari should have launched on December 23rd instead of November as too a year later primary UK, France and Germany.

 

Not sure what were they thinking by launching in Japan in December when Golden Week in April of 1995 would have been better launch date.

[Lostdragon]

6 hours ago, harmonyFM said:

Having a healthy overseas market is better than none, either have enough stock to launch everywhere you want to launch but half-assing it and just having it in some shops as you say cheesed off potential customers who now totally wrote it off. That’s bad buzz and it’s not helpful when everyone else also has bad buzz from how the launch went for them. They just weren’t ready anywhere.

Putting Falcon game development on hold to focus on Jaguar titles for launch, cheesed off both developers/publishers and customers who'd just forked out a considerable sum for an Atari Falcon computer. 

 

Killing off  key Lynx titles you  had been promising  your customers (Rolling Thunder, 720, Vindicators, Cabal, AVP etc), to focus on Jaguar software before that.. 

 

 

Having your your third party developers put resources into Panther projects like Shadow Of The Beast, The Crypt etc, only to turn around and tell them you'd now cancelled the console, put all focus on the Jaguar, just pisses them off. 

 

Atari created so much ill-wind for themselves from publishers, developers, customers and retailers, prior to the UK launch, i am honestly surprised they had the initial goodwill UK Press and customer orders they had. 

 

The fact they couldn't fulfill anywhere near the number of orders they had, didn't come as any surprise. 

[Lostdragon]

4 hours ago, laymanpigeon said:

It is sometimes stated size of Tom was near limitation of what could be have been  manufactured by either thus I am wondering if transistor limit was 800 thousand.

 

Also I assume figure of 750 thousand transistors for Tom was rounded up.

 

In my opinion the concurrent of Panther and Jaguar was wasteful with resources as fourth generation was in full swing for former to have any impact at all while latter could have been completed sooner with hardware bugs resolved at least.

 

Panther and Jaguar could take on Genesis and SNES with Jaguar absolutely dominate though Panther too could as it was basically twice CPU clock as Genesis and at least twice as good GPU than SNES had even with additive chips in cartridge.

 

Jaguar could have in theory competed if decisions were made differently early on such as in 1991 or 1992 even when considering Atari could not have of course be aware of either Sega's Saturn nor Sony's Playstation unlike 3DO's 3DO.

 

One of critical bad decisions early on made by Atari was choosing Motorola 68000 over 68020 for cost reasons thus former that needs baby sitting and constant reminder to do nothing in order not to it too out pressure on system bandwidth.

 

Since 68000 does not have cache unlike 68020 along half clock speed as Tom and Jerry while only 16 bit data bus and 24 bit address bus. Coincidentally bandwidth of system memory is 106MBps despite being 64 bit wide with four 512KB of 16 bit FPM DRAM thus only explanation it is same clock as 68000 for some reason.

 

If that is reason for anemic clock of system memory then bandwidth with 68020 would have had been double and from what I remember doubling bandwidth can cause 25 percent uplift in performance. Also just having 68020 would be far less impactful on system memory bandwidth due to having cache thus even when used for game logic and artificial intelligence due to much higher clock speed hence communication with Tom and Jerry would nowhere as must stall as with 68000.

I understand. It was a win win situation at the time.

Atari mismanaged Jaguar and tried to be in Europe along Japan without having enough supply hence botched launch in UK thus in my opinion Jaguar should have launched in Europe a year after American launch or at least soonest in October.

Absolutely.

 

Atari should have launched on December 23rd instead of November as too a year later primary UK, France and Germany.

 

Not sure what were they thinking by launching in Japan in December when Golden Week in April of 1995 would have been better launch date.

Without wishing to sound arrogant, having put the legwork in looking into the Panther on behalf of other sites and individuals, i side with those who worked on it who say it was a colossal waste of resources. 

 

At best, it was Tramiel Atari doing what they did best, maintaining a presence in the press, getting free P. R. 

 

The actual hardware was crippled by lack of RAM, there's plenty of speculation the Tramiels would of dumped the custom soundchip for something far cheaper, the sprite handling abilities fell far short of what was promised and the initial games planned/started on, would of been pathetic next to the existing SNES and Genesis libraries. 

[laymanpigeon]

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Putting Falcon game development on hold to focus on Jaguar titles for launch, cheesed off both developers/publishers and customers who'd just forked out a considerable sum for an Atari Falcon computer.

This is almost certainly consequence of earlier decision by Atari to select 68000 over 68020 that is close enough to 68030 aside from lacking data cache. Though if 68020 was picked instead of 68000 then later on 68EC030 could have been implemented that is effectively 68020 with addition of data cache while as 68000 it is lacking memory manage unit and in the end development of games for Falcon could have continued with ports to Jaguar later on.

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

 

Killing off  key Lynx titles you  had been promising  your customers (Rolling Thunder, 720, Vindicators, Cabal, AVP etc), to focus on Jaguar software before that.. 

It is rather unfortunate that happened when developing for Lynx required a fraction of resources compared to Jaguar.

Another that it does not seem it was ever seriously considered for Lynx and Jaguar to interface with each other.

If such was done then for some may have been one of reasons to buying Lynx or Jaguar if one or other owned.

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Having your your third party developers put resources into Panther projects like Shadow Of The Beast, The Crypt etc, only to turn around and tell them you'd now cancelled the console, put all focus on the Jaguar, just pisses them off. 

Panther had Motorola 68000 just as Sega's Genesis with difference being it was much higher clocked on former and many home computers had 68000 thus porting would have been trivial while even if initially game was made with Panther in mind it could have been adapted/ported to other platforms.

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Atari created so much ill-wind for themselves from publishers, developers, customers and retailers, prior to the UK launch, i am honestly surprised they had the initial goodwill UK Press and customer orders they had. 

 

The fact they couldn't fulfill anywhere near the number of orders they had, didn't come as any surprise. 

Because in mindset of Atari's management they had to be first while also they were too late with consolidating resources as clearly they were indecisive until it was too late to be decisive with clear goal in mind as to where to place resources.

6 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Without wishing to sound arrogant, having put the legwork in looking into the Panther on behalf of other sites and individuals, i side with those who worked on it who say it was a colossal waste of resources. 

By 1991 it was since Atari and Flare had separate developments with some joint work together while if focus was solely on Panther then maybe it could have been completed sooner to release by end of 1990 before fourth console generation was solidified. Because if Panther could have been launched in 1990 then it could have fair chance to find market in Europe when against Genesis while year before SNES was launched in United States.

6 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

The actual hardware was crippled by lack of RAM, there's plenty of speculation the Tramiels would of dumped the custom soundchip for something far cheaper, the sprite handling abilities fell far short of what was promised and the initial games planned/started on, would of been pathetic next to the existing SNES and Genesis libraries. 

It is not that simple as RAM in question was SRAM that has much lower latency and power consumption while higher cost per kilobyte as for each bit it needed 6 transistors thus in theory it could have had same amount of RAM as Super Nintendo if cheaper alternatives were selected.

 

Though Panther having twice as high CPU clock as Genesis while true SRAM former has instead of PSRAM that latter has would result in more efficient utilization of the CPU while also could have used the port to expand it by another 32KB of SRAM. In theory cartridge ROM bandwidth could have been over 20 megabytes per second hence 32KB of SRAM could be used to store game logic while 32KB of RAM from expansion port could be used as framebuffer.

 

I am a layman so I do not know if instead of SRAM could PSRAM be used as that is what Genesis is using if compatible. But then power consumption would increase considerably along too latency even if not as bad as DRAM for memory. Anyway it might have been possible to port Doom to Panther while at least same as Super FX Doom.

 

I can not find any mention of what price point was aim for Panther if its 150USD or 200USD in 1991 as if it could be sold for former then in theory they could have aimed a bit higher with perhaps 16MHz 68EC030 instead of 68000. In case PSRAM could replace SRAM then Panther could have had 128KB of it and further 128KB with expansion port used.

Or maybe it could match 486DX 40MHz.

[+madman]

19 minutes ago, laymanpigeon said:

Anyway it might have been possible to port Doom to Panther while at least same as Super FX Doom.

Could a Doom port at launch have saved the Panther?

[+CyranoJ]

23 minutes ago, madman said:

Could a Doom port at launch have saved the Panther?

 

Doom, Quake 3 Arena, Bioshock Infinite and Star Citizen would easily have been possible. Hell, I bet even Concord would have of been possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All it really needed was a quote button and multiple linefeeds inbetween every line of text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quote

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah



blah



blah blah blah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See?

 

 

 

 

 

[edited for lack of clarity]

[laymanpigeon]

20 minutes ago, madman said:

Could a Doom port at launch have saved the Panther?

Maybe if you genius had a time machine, hello Dexter.

[roots.genoa]

4 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

[edited for lack of clarity]

I love how your quote isn't displayed entirely (at least on my PC) and you have to press "expand" to see the last "blah blah blah" ☺️

[42bs]

This could have saved it!
 

 

[LynxJagLunatic]

The Jaguar as well as the Lynx suffered from the same problem. Atari! Had Nintendo or Sega put out their systems they would have dominated the market. Jaguar needed money and lots of it. Unfortunately Atari either didn’t have the funds or had money but cheaped out. I’m glad we got what we got but if the Jag would have had Nintendo money backing it there’s no telling what it would have done. 

Edited September 20 by LynxJagLunatic

[Piledriver]

Not using the word "math" in their marketing.

[+Biff Burgertime]

On 9/18/2024 at 1:34 PM, 42bs said:

This could have saved it!
 

 

Xeno Crisis, Xenocider, Xenowings... lots of good Xeno- homebrew in recent years.

[Bill Loguidice]

4 minutes ago, Biff Burgertime said:

Xeno Crisis, Xenocider, Xenowings... lots of good Xeno- homebrew in recent years.

The problem is the Jaguar couldn't pull off the 3D ones and the 2D ones are really good on the SNES and Genesis. It's tough being in the generational place the Jaguar is in.

[Piledriver]

64 bit games

[+GoldLeader]

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Posted May 8, 2022

An AtariAger walks into a bar.

 

The bartender says, "Sorry, nothing could have saved the Jaguar."

[+GoldLeader]

 

^  The weird (attempted) quote above is from @roots.genoa

 

 

Saw it in the joke forum and have been laughing ever since

[roots.genoa]

10 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

 

^  The weird (attempted) quote above is from @roots.genoa

 

 

Saw it in the joke forum and have been laughing ever since

Thanks, I had forgotten it was mine to be honest. 😅

[alucardX]

On 9/21/2024 at 6:47 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

The problem is the Jaguar couldn't pull off the 3D ones and the 2D ones are really good on the SNES and Genesis. It's tough being in the generational place the Jaguar is in.

We were so excited for 3D games that really good flat shaded games would have been good at the time. A good example is T2K and Iron Soldier. More could have been done in 3d but it is what it is and was what it was.

[Bill Loguidice]

20 hours ago, alucardX said:

We were so excited for 3D games that really good flat shaded games would have been good at the time. A good example is T2K and Iron Soldier. More could have been done in 3d but it is what it is and was what it was.

Of course, my comment wasn't referring to contemporary 3D. It was in reference to (Xeno-series games) modern-ish 3D games that really only PS1+-era consoles could pull off, and in fact in that specific case I was referring to, only the Dreamcast+. 

I suspect one day we'll see flat-shaded 3D games for the Jaguar semi-regularly released. It's still inconsistent on the 2D side, so it's still asking a bit too much in the short-term for 3D stuff I would think. Of course, personally, I'd still rather see better 2D stuff than any type of 3D stuff on the Jaguar, but that's just me. It may just never be a big enough homebrew market to see something like that, though (again, acknowledging that we have seen some great 2D homebrew stuff, just nowhere near as consistently as on other, more popular platforms like the Sega Genesis). 

[+pboland]

20 hours ago, alucardX said:

We were so excited for 3D games that really good flat shaded games would have been good at the time. A good example is T2K and Iron Soldier. More could have been done in 3d but it is what it is and was what it was.

I always thought Zero5 was a good game as far as 3D goes on the Jag. I got it brand new BITD. I liked I-war as well, but it did feel a little unpolished. I know these type of games are not the type of 3D that people think of, but it did look pretty good on the Jag. Don't know if more games like that would have helped the Jag cause, but it's neat to think about.

[Bill Loguidice]

1 minute ago, pboland said:

I always thought Zero5 was a good game as far as 3D goes on the Jag. I got it brand new BITD. I liked I-war as well, but it did feel a little unpolished. I know these type of games are not the type of 3D that people think of, but it did look pretty good on the Jag. Don't know if more games like that would have helped the Jag cause, but it's neat to think about.

I always loved how that game looked. It would not have been a bad thing to get more like that early on.

[Lostdragon]

16 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I always loved how that game looked. It would not have been a bad thing to get more like that early on.

From what has been said by Matthew Gosling, game development  started towards the end of January '95 and they  delivered the beta to Atari towards the end of February '96. They then spent about a month waiting to be paid for the beta, fixing a few small bugs, and trying to tie up a publishing deal with a giant publisher for a Playstation version of Zero 5.. 

 

 

IF it had been started earlier and had a longer development cycle, hopefully they could of included the 2-Player mode they had originally planned to put in, but ran out of time. 

 

Caspain were a small company, so I doubt they could of have started any earlier .

[+madman]

1 hour ago, pboland said:

I always thought Zero5 was a good game as far as 3D goes on the Jag. I got it brand new BITD. I liked I-war as well, but it did feel a little unpolished. I know these type of games are not the type of 3D that people think of, but it did look pretty good on the Jag. Don't know if more games like that would have helped the Jag cause, but it's neat to think about.

Even today I still like the look of flat and Gouraud shaded 3D games. The 32x had games like Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing Deluxe, Star Wars Arcade and Shadow Squadron which are great examples and those couldn't help the 32x...