What could have saved the Jag?

[agradeneu]

The Genesis channel with the bald headed guy hypes up any new homebrew effort btw.

 

Its great support. Its also true, that only a few games on Genesis are at the level of AAA production level, e.g. like Demons of Asteborg.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:45 AM by agradeneu

[+CyranoJ]

5 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

The Genesis channel with the bald headed guy hypes up any new homebrew effort btw.

 

Its great support. Its also true, that only a few games on Genesis are at the level of AAA production level, e.g. like Demons of Asteborg.

 

 

 

 

 

That and xeno are written in basic... while great games... I'm sure they truly push the system to the limits..........

 

/sarcasm

[roots.genoa]

Xeno Crisis probably doesn't push the Genesis hardware (there is no scrolling after all), but one of the best pixelartists in the world made the graphics, so it kinda helps I guess. 😅

But yeah, a lot of Genesis homebrew games are overrated imho, and it's clearly easier to make a game for it, and even easier to get money to make one (even though crowdfunding campaigns are usually launched to finance cart production rather than developing the actual game, in general).

Anyway I think everyone here (except maybe JagChris) appreciate what you guys are doing.

[JPF997]

Imo what could have saved the Jaguar would  have been to have released it a few years later with a more budget friendly price, Atari could have capitalized on the fact that all the other 5th generation consoles were pretty expensive for middle and  lower class families and tried to position the Jaguar as the peoples Console (  Sega Saturn is 399$, Sony's PSX  is sold for a more reasonable 299$ but only Atari gives you a next generation system for the low low price of 149.99 $ !!!  Pre order yours now and get a free copy of the brand new Atari karts game!!! ps also sold separately for 19.99$ ).

Edited yesterday at 11:28 AM by JPF997

[+Sauron]

50 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

Imo what could have saved the Jaguar would  have been to have released it a few years later with a more budget friendly price, Atari could have capitalized on the fact that all the other 5th generation consoles were pretty expensive for middle and  lower class families and tried to position the Jaguar as the peoples Console (  Sega Saturn is 399$, Sony's PSX  is sold for a more reasonable 299$ but only Atari gives you a next generation system for the low low price of 149.99 $ !!!  Pre order yours now and get a free copy of the brand new Atari karts game!!! ps also sold separately for 19.99$ ).

The Jaguar was already cheaper than the other 32-bit systems when they released. The lower price point didn't seem to help sales at all.

 

[JPF997]

30 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The Jaguar was already cheaper than the other 32-bit systems when they released. The lower price point didn't seem to help sales at all.

 

Keyword "when they released", by the time the Saturn and PSX launched the Jaguars reputation was already in the mud, if the Jaguar had come out  in 1995 like the other 5th gen consoles then Atari would of had more time to prepare a proper Launch line up of games, maybe improve the game development kits a bit to make it easier to develop games for the console, also   since the hardware was weaker/cheaper to produce than it's competitors Atari could have sold a Jaguar for half the price of a PSX and still made a profit.

Edited 22 hours ago by JPF997

[JPF997]

2 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

Oops reposted the other post, ignore this one.

 

Edited 22 hours ago by JPF997

[pacman000]

1 hour ago, JPF997 said:

Imo what could have saved the Jaguar would  have been to have released it a few years later with a more budget friendly price, Atari could have capitalized on the fact that all the other 5th generation consoles were pretty expensive for middle and  lower class families and tried to position the Jaguar as the peoples Console (  Sega Saturn is 399$, Sony's PSX  is sold for a more reasonable 299$ but only Atari gives you a next generation system for the low low price of 149.99 $ !!!  Pre order yours now and get a free copy of the brand new Atari karts game!!! ps also sold separately for 19.99$ ).

Sounds good on paper, but the Genesis & SNES had large libraries of games, & the systems were only $50 USD. Even if Atari waited, they couldn't have gotten hundreds of titles ready, & they couldn't've got the Jaguar's price down to $50.

 

That's why consoles aimed at the lower end of the market usually fail; the lower end of the market already has systems available to it: last gen's systems. "Next Gen" only matters to early adopters; the last gen's stuff is still fun, &, if it's 1/2 the price of anything new, it's a good deal.

Edited 22 hours ago by pacman000

[Bill Loguidice]

Yeah, there were a lot bigger issues with the Jaguar than its price as we've discussed throughout the thread. Consider that the 3DO sold better, even at its launch price of $699.99. If the Jaguar couldn't outsell the 3DO before the 3DO's series of price drops, you know the issue with the Jaguar wasn't the price. There were bigger names involved on the other side and they did a better job of generating excitement and selling the "next gen" power of the 3DO platform, even though it initially had arguably an even worse launch window lineup, which took something like 3+ months to begin to improve. 

Atari sold about 125,000 units from launch to the end of 1995, with another 100,000 only after it was liquidated, so a super low price DID help, but of course that was not a practical way to do business. Liquidation was when I got my first Jaguar bundle, with the CD add-on and a bunch of games for a super low price from Tiger Direct mail order. I also remember Kay-Bee Toy Stores having them on clearance. Of course, I had already got a PS1 on launch day and probably even had a Sega Saturn by then, so I obviously had no expectations for the Jaguar as anything but a secondary platform, just keeping an eye on Telegames releases, which was the only company I recall being active at the time with publishing.

[Lost Monkey]

34 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

Keyword "when they released", by the time the Saturn and PSX launched the Jaguars reputation was already in the mud, if the Jaguar had come out  in 1995 like the other 5th gen consoles then Atari would of had more time to prepare a proper Launch line up of games, maybe improve the game development kits a bit to make it easier to develop games for the console, also   since the hardware was weaker/cheaper to produce than it's competitors Atari could have sold a Jaguar for half the price of a PSX and still made a profit.

At the end of the day they weren't able to release a great deal of good titles over the lifetime of the Jaguar, so it seems unlikely that having the additional handicap of no revenue for an extra 2 years would have enabled a scenario where they could somehow end up with a stronger software lineup. 

[Bill Loguidice]

4 hours ago, Lost Monkey said:

At the end of the day they weren't able to release a great deal of good titles over the lifetime of the Jaguar, so it seems unlikely that having the additional handicap of no revenue for an extra 2 years would have enabled a scenario where they could somehow end up with a stronger software lineup. 

It's also important to note that a lot of the stuff promised from third parties never ended up materializing on the Jaguar. The 3DO suffered from this as well, with a cool Star Trek TNG game and NHL Hockey, for instance, being heavily advertised in the brochure, but never actually getting anywhere. Of course, we know that some promised third party Jaguar titles were pretty close to completion (Brett Hull Hockey, for example), or at least were worked on, but I imagine a lot of promised/expected third party support vanished when the Jaguar only moved around 100,000 units from 1993 through the end of 1994. So *maybe* if Atari could have taken more of a loss on the console in the first year to increase sales and encourage more third parties to fulfill their initial commitments, it might have helped bring in a few more titles, but again, that's a big, potentially baseless assumption that the cost of the console was one of the negative factors in its lack of adoption.

[leech]

6 hours ago, JPF997 said:

Keyword "when they released", by the time the Saturn and PSX launched the Jaguars reputation was already in the mud, if the Jaguar had come out  in 1995 like the other 5th gen consoles then Atari would of had more time to prepare a proper Launch line up of games, maybe improve the game development kits a bit to make it easier to develop games for the console, also   since the hardware was weaker/cheaper to produce than it's competitors Atari could have sold a Jaguar for half the price of a PSX and still made a profit.

In all likelihood, the Jag would have done better had it been ready to release a year earlier, or even had the Panther been able to be released a year or two before.  The problem with the Jag, as I said before, was that they hadn't released a new console for so long, and their last few were unsuccessful, that many of the people that were buying consoles didn't even know who they were.  Or the only thing they knew Atari had released was the old 2600 that their parents grew up with.

Atari was foolish with their previous consoles.  When the 2600 was huge, they had the people to make great games for them.  When Warner bought them and devs left to form 3rd parties they shrunk, but for some reason thought their consoles could still survive on the Atari name and with only a small amount of 3rd party support. 

Look at the track record for the 5200, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar.  Not a whole lot of games not published by Atari.  They needed to chase developers down and get commitments to make games, but they just didn't have the reputation anymore.  Didn't help that the Tramiels didn't buy the arcade division, that still pumped out some of the best arcade games ever.

[JagChris]

10 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Anyway I think everyone here (except maybe JagChris) appreciate what you guys are doing.

I don't care about what they do. I agreed with Bill because he was right.

 

All the narrative about needing a huge backing and a huge community to do AAA titles is false. Duranik proved that 20+ years ago with Alpine games and earlier with the Native demo which still hasn't been beat. 

 

Then they continued that with Sturmwind.

 

Nobody has to follow in their footsteps. They can do what they want. But Duranik will always be there to remind us its possible even in this tiny community.

 

 

[alucardX]

5 minutes ago, JagChris said:

All the narrative about needing a huge backing and a huge community to do AAA titles is false. Duranik proved that 20+ years ago with Alpine games and earlier with the Native demo which still hasn't been beat. 

Where is the finished Jag version of this again?

[agradeneu]

30 minutes ago, alucardX said:

Where is the finished Jag version of this again?

Iam pretty sure Duranik would feel embarrased by trolls using their work to talk all kind  of crap about homebrews.

Unlike Jagchris, they know the amount of work it takes to complete a full game.

Btw i chatted with one of the devs a bit some years ago.

 

Edited 15 hours ago by agradeneu

[micdune]

23 minutes ago, alucardX said:

Where is the finished Jag version of this again?

A shame,  the demo looked great but the scope was probably too much for such a small return on investment.

Edited 15 hours ago by micdune
typo

[agradeneu]

2 minutes ago, micdune said:

A shame,  the demo looked great but the scope was probably too much for such a small return on investment.

Its excellent for a Demo. 

I hope they still follow the community.

[JagChris]

8 minutes ago, micdune said:

A shame,  the demo looked great but the scope was probably too much for such a small return on investment.

Yeah perhaps but I believe the big stumbling block was the development setup at the time.

 

However there are people who spend 2-3 years on projects in this community so maybe not. 

[Lostdragon]

2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

It's also important to note that a lot of the stuff promised from third parties never ended up materializing on the Jaguar. The 3DO suffered from this as well, with a cool Star Trek TNG game and NHL Hockey, for instance, being heavily advertised in the brochure, but never actually getting anywhere. Of course, we know that some promised third party Jaguar titles were pretty close to completion (Brett Hull Hockey, for example), or at least were worked on, but I imagine a lot of promised/expected third party support vanished when the Jaguar only moved around 100,000 units from 1993 through the end of 1994. So *maybe* if Atari could have taken more of a loss on the console in the first year to increase sales and encourage more third parties to fulfill their initial commitments, it might have helped bring in a few more titles, but again, that's a big, potentially baseless assumption that the cost of the console was one of the negative factors in its lack of adoption.

'We' looked into that very 3DO Star Trek:TNG game, some time ago.. 

 

If anyone is interested in the findings, such as they were.. 

 

 

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2023/11/star-trek-a-world-for-all-seasons/

 

 

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, leech said:

In all likelihood, the Jag would have done better had it been ready to release a year earlier, or even had the Panther been able to be released a year or two before.  The problem with the Jag, as I said before, was that they hadn't released a new console for so long, and their last few were unsuccessful, that many of the people that were buying consoles didn't even know who they were.  Or the only thing they knew Atari had released was the old 2600 that their parents grew up with.

Atari was foolish with their previous consoles.  When the 2600 was huge, they had the people to make great games for them.  When Warner bought them and devs left to form 3rd parties they shrunk, but for some reason thought their consoles could still survive on the Atari name and with only a small amount of 3rd party support. 

Look at the track record for the 5200, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar.  Not a whole lot of games not published by Atari.  They needed to chase developers down and get commitments to make games, but they just didn't have the reputation anymore.  Didn't help that the Tramiels didn't buy the arcade division, that still pumped out some of the best arcade games ever.

But as has been stated by various Atari sources, the original plan was to release the Panther alongside the launch of the Lynx. 

 

Atari lacked anything like the resources needed to market and support 2 flagship consoles at one.. 

 

They didn't have the budget, the didn't have the internal development teams and various third party developers who'd been invited to develop for the Panther, just weren't interested, they were making money developing on SNES and MD. 

 

Nintendo and Sega paid well and paid on time for the most part. 

 

They invited developers, developers declined as they knew the Tramiel track record. 

[micdune]

2 minutes ago, JagChris said:

Yeah perhaps but I believe the big stumbling block was the development setup at the time.

 

However there are people who spend 2-3 years on projects in this community so maybe not. 

This kind of game requires quite some design work to make compelling levels, which is very time consuming in terms of tweaking and testing. Sturmwind took quite some time to reach completion so kudos to them for sticking to their guns but that's unavoidable unless you go full time on this kind of project.

 

All things considered, work on Xenowings went pretty fast (mostof the game was done around september 2023), especially considering it was all done from zero as a first game on this platform. But it would have easily taken twice that time to make more complex level design than what you find in a Galaga clone.

[Austin]

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

...and the same goes for you as well. Your attacks on Bill are unwarranted. Seriously, this is giving me shades of the Jag community from over 20 years ago, when no one could say anything other than fawing praise of Battlesphere or whatever Gorf shat out without being shouted down. Let's not become the monsters we got rid of so many years ago.

 

The super condescending, "Let me unzip my pants, now get down on your knees" attitude I am seeing from devs in this thread reeks of 20 years ago, and it's pretty disheartening.

[JagChris]

7 minutes ago, micdune said:

This kind of game requires quite some design work to make compelling levels, which is very time consuming in terms of tweaking and testing. Sturmwind took quite some time to reach completion so kudos to them for sticking to their guns but that's unavoidable unless you go full time on this kind of project.

 

All things considered, work on Xenowings went pretty fast (mostof the game was done around september 2023), especially considering it was all done from zero as a first game on this platform. But it would have easily taken twice that time to make more complex level design than what you find in a Galaga clone.

Alpine games I'm sure did as well. I'm not saying these things don't take work. I'm just saying its possible. And teams here are already saying they are putting multiple years in development for games. So its not out of the question.

[agradeneu]

2 minutes ago, Austin said:

The super condescending, "Let me unzip my pants, now get down on your knees" attitude I am seeing from devs in this thread reeks of 20 years ago, and it's pretty disheartening.

Its not like your redundant negativity was fun or serves any kind of purpose. 

 

[+grips03]

I know having Rebooteroids as a pack in game would have made me buy the console back in the day.  Its the best game on the Jag.

JAS and Asteroite  would have been awesome launch titles.  Imagine if they made arcade perfect Toki.  That would have been killer. 

I hope more folks continue to make great titles.