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Where do you think gaming would be today if sony didn't....
yomama
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Registered User regular
I often think about what would the gaming industry be like today if sony and nintendo didn't have a falling out with the supposed add-on to the SNES, and sony did in fact released what we know as the PS1 today as the add-on the SNES.
Who do you think would have been the industry leader today, and do you think that Sega would still be in the hardware business?
I don't wan't to get flamed for this, but the dreamcast is still one of my favorite systems to this date, and perhaps if sony didn't force them out of the hardware business sega would still give a shit about about it's quality of games. The only game franchise you can count on being good is Virtua fighter now. It is just that sega had a list full of fuck-ups that made the gamer weary of any of their hardware purchases. The sega CD, and the 32x didn't have the third-party support it needed or the consumer base as well as being pretty pricey, and the Saturn was difficult to develop for.
In my opinion sega just stopped trying to develop good games since being forced out of the hardware business by sony. I remember playing sonic games (1-3 and sonic and knuckles specifically) and enjoying the hell out of them, along with vectorman, streets of rage, Powerstone, Jet Set radio, Panzer dragoon, Space harrier, altered beast, and especially The revenge of Shinobi etc.
I know that i have digressed, and I apologize. So to ask again. Where do you think gaming would be if sony and nintendo had indeed stuck together, and released that cd add-on for the SNES, and do you think that sega would still be in the hardware business today??? What are your thoughts on this Penny-Arcade?
Monoxide Edit: Fixed your ENORMOUS WALL OF TEXT so people might actually read your post instead of just sticking up for the sanctity of the line break.
Who do you think would have been the industry leader today, and do you think that Sega would still be in the hardware business?
I don't wan't to get flamed for this, but the dreamcast is still one of my favorite systems to this date, and perhaps if sony didn't force them out of the hardware business sega would still give a shit about about it's quality of games. The only game franchise you can count on being good is Virtua fighter now. It is just that sega had a list full of fuck-ups that made the gamer weary of any of their hardware purchases. The sega CD, and the 32x didn't have the third-party support it needed or the consumer base as well as being pretty pricey, and the Saturn was difficult to develop for.
In my opinion sega just stopped trying to develop good games since being forced out of the hardware business by sony. I remember playing sonic games (1-3 and sonic and knuckles specifically) and enjoying the hell out of them, along with vectorman, streets of rage, Powerstone, Jet Set radio, Panzer dragoon, Space harrier, altered beast, and especially The revenge of Shinobi etc.
I know that i have digressed, and I apologize. So to ask again. Where do you think gaming would be if sony and nintendo had indeed stuck together, and released that cd add-on for the SNES, and do you think that sega would still be in the hardware business today??? What are your thoughts on this Penny-Arcade?
Monoxide Edit: Fixed your ENORMOUS WALL OF TEXT so people might actually read your post instead of just sticking up for the sanctity of the line break.
yomama on
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(also, in before Mr. Period comic gets posted three times and somebody points out that the entire page-long post is one paragraph.)
And then they would have gone fucking bankrupt anyway, and Microsoft would have stepped in anyway, and we'd be in mostly the same situation we are today.
Limed for truth.
I can see SEGA releasing an Overpriced Saturn 3 today, and subsequently being crushed by Microsoft because they can't subsidize their gaming consoles like Sony can with the PS3. The PS3 is in the same situation today as the Saturn was when it launched. Over-priced, hard to program for, and nothing special going for the system to differ it from the competition. However, Sony is quite larger then SEGA, and won't go down with a fight.
The Dreamcast is when they started turning things around, but by that time, they were locked in a battle they couldn't win. The Playstation line was loved by gamers, and Sony hadn't made any mistakes up to that point. Sega had lost a lot of its credibility because it had made a LOT of mistakes. If it weren't for the existence of the 32X and the bungled launch of the Saturn, the Dreamcast might have stuck around until 2005. After both of these grievous errors there was no way even an awesome console like the Dreamcast could have survived.
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So if Sony weren't around to woo third parties and bring them to prominence, Nintendo and Sega would continue their dominance of quality at not lose the really talented programmers. I also think arcades would still be around if Sega and Nintendo faced no competition from others. I don't know why but Yamauchi seemed to hate arcade ports...
The Dreamcast was still a fuckup. They had two separate teams work on the design, one in America and the other in Japan, without knowing that the other was working on the same thing. The American team had a deal with 3DFX for the GPU practically in the bag when Sega corporate, in a fit of xenophobia, decided to go with the Japan team's ideas simply because they used Japanese parts, despite the Japanese design being less powerful for the same cost. Interesting sidenote to this story is that the loss of the Sega deal was probably the straw that broke 3DFX's back, leading to their buyout by nVidia.
And man, as much as I love my Dreamcast and believe that it could easily have stood up to the PS2 graphics-wise, Sega blew their load waaay too early, and the Gamecube and Xbox would have murdered it. And like Triko said, even if they managed to survive their way through that gen, they would have burned out on this one by doing something stupid like releasing a consolized version of the Lindberg arcade board as their next home console, taking a $500 loss on each unit and still getting outpowered by the 360.
Man, didn't you hear? You can run Doom 3 on SLI'd Voodoo2s.
Above all else, Sega's most damning flaw was that it was cowardly. Whenever it got the slightest whiff of competition, the company panicked and released new hardware, rather than standing by its current flagship console. By the turn of the century, it became obvious that Sega was a company that consumers just couldn't trust. If Sega hadn't squandered all of its goodwill with idiotic add-ons like the 32X, I think the Dreamcast could have lasted another couple of years, even in the face of strong competition by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.
Also, I still stand by Sega's decision to drop the 3Dfx chipset. It cost the company a valuable relationship with Electronic Arts, but it also resulted in a more flexible console which could handle BOTH 2D and 3D games, and one with a more developer-friendly programming environment.
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To the other comments. I can agree somewhat. With the dreamcast it seemed that sega was on the rebound. It was just a little too late for them.
I'm not really getting this argument. Glide was a dream to program for, and was more advanced than even Direct3D at the time. Everybody on the PC was using it. The loss of the Madden franchise probably crippled the Dreamcast as much as the lack of DVD playback surely did. And what's this about lack of any 2D support? You just pull that from your ass or something? The Voodoo Banshee was already out by 1998.
On the other hand, Sega and 3dfx joining forces kind of seems like two desperate loser companies trying to team up in one last-ditch attempt to stay solvent. edit: I mean, 3dfx had at least as many crazy-ass designs as Sega did. After the Voodoo5 got beat by the Geforce256, they started to get really desperate. Check out the prototype for the Voodoo6:
Of course, if nVidia were to release a card like that today (only up to today's power standards), it would probably get rave reviews, no matter the cost. Oh wait, they did.
;-)
Anyway, I heard back in the day that the switch from Black Belt (the 3Dfx architecture) to the Katana (the actual Dreamcast hardware) was due to the Katana's ease of use. Looking at the Wikipedia entry, however, it appears that politics may have had more to do with it. 3Dfx screwed the pooch by announcing its plans to make the Dreamcast chip after Sega told them to keep the news quiet, and Sega responded by dumping them and going with plan B.
I still think they made the right choice- the Katana hardware was astonishingly powerful in 1998, the year of its Japanese debut- but it certainly didn't make them any friends. I could be mistaken, but I heard that Electronic Arts dumped big bucks into 3Dfx, hoping to make a huge profit from the manufacture of the Dreamcast. Sega's decision to go with Katana left them with a lot of worthless stock, along with one hell of a grudge.
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Hiroshi Yamauchi would still be head of Nintendo, his tactics for consoles (I don't mean his specifically, more the company attitude under his iron fist) would have kicked the shit out of the saturn (Remember, the full 3d capability of the saturn was only added after a Sega exec saw what the PS1 was doing and had a fucking fit), and console gaming would stil be 3d as standard now, but took longer to get there.
Nintendo would still be releasing carts, with more expensive ones every so often, sega releasing saturn addons eventually, possibly no ocarina of time.
In short, video games would be a 2 horse race worldwide (stuff like tg 16 just didn't make the inpoact they needed to and Neo Geo/3DO home systems were too fucking expensive). Nintendo would have switched to 3d gaming when they completely exhausted 2d, Sega around the same time. No wii.
Overall, gaming would be poorer for it.
Given that I think Sony are complete fuckers for most of their decisions, I still acknowledge that their contributions have either improved the gaming scene or inspired other to improve it.
Beat me on 360: Raybies666
I remember when I had time to be good at games.
WHOA WHOA WHOA Back that truck up.
Nintendo screwed Sony. Nintendo agreed to a contract, then later decided that the contract wasn't acceptable, and then let Sony believe they were still in league until they announced that they were going to work on the SNESCD with Phillips at the CES... with Sony still showing some prototype hardware of their version of the SNES Play Station.
Edit: Then, if I remember correctly, Nintendo even tried to sue to stop the release of the PlayStation.
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People got feed up with it, Sega in their quest to be the ultimate "bad boy" of the gaming world alienated a lot of gamers. And I for one was glad to see them get out of the console business, now I am hoping for bankruptcy.
God I am trying so hard to stay civil.
So hard
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Hey, do yyou remember the nasty Sega ads from the 90's? They never built their products up, they were just mud slinging against Nintendo, and Nintendo owners. Sorry If I have no love for a company that pretty much implies that I am mentally retarded for wanting to own a Gameboy over a GameGear. Geee a system with horrid battery life, nothing but scaled down ports with COLOR, or a system with excellent first and third party games, exceptional batter life, and a monochrome screen. The gameplay was the key.
The ads were awesome. Did you ever thee the pictures of the Sega Truck that drove around right after the PS2 launch? It was a semi who's trailer that said something along the lines of "Dear Sony, we at Sega would like to extend our deepest condolences at your hardware shortage for the PlayStation 2 loss", and had a giant picture of a kid sticking his tongue out and pulling on his ears. Genesis does what Nintendon't indeed.
Anyway, if you want to harp about Sega trying to describe people who own other systems as stupid, find and watch some of the old "Nintendo Propaganda" VHS tapes that used to come in the mail to gamers registered with Nintendo Power.
Then shut the fuck up.
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The Voodoo 6000 was never really going to come out, and it wasn't a true sequel to the 5500 anyway. It was just four VSA-100 chips instead of two, or, in the case of the 4000, one. I believe I read somewhere that it was going to have an external PSU, too. I remember when everyone laughed at the molex power connector on the Voodoo 5 5500, but it's been a standard now for a long time. I fully expect graphics cards to be coming packaged with their own PSU's in the near-distant future. Man, what did they have in the water over at 3dfx? They did all these things before anyone else started thinking about it, heh.
Anyway, the 6000, even if released, would only have appealed to a small number of consumers due to it's high price. The next card to come out would have been the Daytona, which was basically a VSA-100 chip with a 64-bit memory bus and DDR memory. It wouldn't have been that successful, just a stop-gap basically to reduce nVidia's claims of superiority by using DDR technology in their GeForce 2 GTS/Ultra cards. After Daytona would come Rampage, which looked quite powerful. It supported multi-chip solutions and so 3dfx cards would likely continue to look much bigger next to their nVidia and ATi counterparts. Rampage was quiet powerful - apparently it was able to achieve speeds of 200MHz with passive cooling, but there's no reason to believe that variations of the card wouldn't top 250MHz. Rampage was a DirectX 8 card. A single-chip variation called Tantrum was planned too, much like Daytona.
The "real upset", however, was the chipset named Fear. It was the first card to incorporate both 3dfx and GigaPixel technology, featuring a "deferred rendering architecture" (GigaPixel's part), DirectX 8/9 Pixel Shader, and a DirectX 8/9 Vertex Shader. Speeds would have exceeded 250MHz. Sage II, a chip on the board, provided the other part of the board (called Fusion) with a sustained rate of 100 million triangles per/second with a theoretical 300 million triangles per/second. The Vertex Shader was also on Sage II. Considering the previous technologies 3dfx had developed, this one was very, very powerful. Fear, also, would have been a multi-chip solution.
Far, far into the distant future beyond the Voodoo 5 5500, the follow-up chipset to Fear was called Mojo. Based on an entirely new design, it was considered to feature the next generation of deferred rendering. Because of Fear's very high performance, Mojo would, at first, have been slightly underpowered next to it, as it was a single-chip solution. However, it carried a supposedly very extensive feature set, targeting DirectX 9 and beyond.
And, er... I've quite gone off-topic. Do excuse.
Edit -
"To be this good will take Sega ages."
Commodore ad for the CD32. And if nobody gets the joke, it's a play on Sega's ad campaign that they called Ages.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Well those were never publicly aired and were only given to the members of Nintendo Power. And if you recall even SEGA's company phone number even bashed Nintendo. I called it once for the heck of it "We do not accept idea for games, but why don't you try Nintendo since they have so few" This was around the N64 launch.
Genesis does what Nintendon't Yeah, like stay in business.
If you honestly think that people were so offended at Sega's mudslinging that they abandoned the company and caused the hardware's downfall, you're out of your mind. They made more than enough real mistakes to dig their own grave, the politics had little to nothing to do with it.
I still love the Big N. Probably always will. But they've been as bad as Sony/Microsoft/SEGA when it comes to stupid/insulting/commercially retarded decisions.
Interviews with Yamauchi were absolutely breathtaking in their utter arrogance. The man really helped pick up the industry, dust it off and get it back on its feet, but at the same time he was so insulting to his customers, competition and even partners that it was just amazing. I always read the interviews though. He was entertaining as hell.
You're talking about the GBA Shining Force, and not stuff like Shining Force Neo, right?
Right?
I think that when it comes to Sega, the majority of their franchises took a turn downward once they were released on non-Sega hardware (with the strange exception of just about everything released on the Xbox like Panzer Dragoon, Crazy Taxi, and PSO, OutRun, and the Virtua Fighter series on the PS2/PS3).
Sonic, Sega Rally, Sega GT, and Phantasy Star have taken a dump since the DC, and most of the other major franchises (that weren't released on the Xbox) have been MIA since then: Stuff like Daytona, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, and more.
Shining Force got a good GBA game, and Sonic Advance and it's sequels was good, though. Sonic Rush could have used some work, but it was ok.
Anyway, I think the bottom line is that Sega did most of it's best work on it's own hardware. Ever since the shakeup, half of the company has been completely off it's game.
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I never played the Shining Force GBA series and was talking about Shining Tears, Neo and the new EXA. Currently I am playing Tears, and I absolutly love it.
I felt the same way about the Dreamcast and the PS2, and it had pretty much the same end result(with maybe just a little smaller of a divide).
I'm positive Sega would still be in the market if it weren't for Sony. It'd still be like the old days: Nintendo VS Sega. As for Microsoft... I'd like to think they would have worked with Sega in the hardware category instead of setting out on their own, but that's open to conjecture.
And yes, Sega's best games, BY FAR, were on their own systems.
The best Shining games were on the Saturn and Sega CD, the best Sonic games were on the Sega CD and Dreamcast, the definitive Jet Set Radio experience is on the Dreamcast, etc.
Not to mention original properties like Dragon Force, Shenmue, Burning Rangers, NiGHTS, etc.
No, I am not saying that. I meant that a lot of people would not buy Sega for that reason. I
And I am no rabid Nintendo fanboy, They did lose my support for a while, but they have just won it back. The Wii and DS are superb gaming systems.
They were arrogant and got too cocky for their own good, and they paid for it. But they learned and changed their ways. And are better for it.
I think as far as the Xbox side of things with Sega last generation, it had a lot to do with the way Sega split up their development teams. Though I like PSU and Billy Hatcher, Sonic Team have had one hell of a time finding their footing for quite some time now. But then you have AM2 which have continued putting out gems with the Virtua Fighter series, and off the top of my head, the excellent Macross game a couple years ago. Then you had the Xbox, which if you notice, most of the really damned good games that they hit us up with came out of the same development team, Smilebit. Now they seem to have trimmed a lot of the extra teams, merged Sega back together, a lot of people left, and things are a bit shaky. Kind of a shame too, I really miss Smilebit's stuff.
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Sony also really pushed gaming outside of Japan. Videogames were a niche market in the States, and moreso in Europe, until Final Fantasy 7 advertisements began airing on MTV. If the western market hadn't grown so much, we might not have seen the return of Metroid as a major Nintendo franchise (at least, if my understanding is correct the Metroid games were far more popular in the west than in Japan).
Another thing to consider, Sony was really pushing the 3D gaming angle. Without that influence, and the year head start on Nintendo, it's possible that Sega may have played up the Saturn's 2D strength. It was really unfortunate for them, and for gamers, that they didn't do that anyways, as the Saturn was hands down the most powerful 2D gaming machine at the time.
If Nintendo had retained their prominent place in the market, it's very unlikely that we'd be seeing a console like the Wii today. Nintendo only made such a ballsy move in console design because they really feel they need to. Last generation they released a console with better graphics than Sony, they ditched carts, they priced it reasonably, and they bent over backwards for developers like they never had before...and still couldn't gain ground on Sony.
Personally, I'm pretty happy Sony jumped in when they did. However, currently, Sony is in the place Nintendo was when Sony first arrived on the scene. They're making a lot of the same mistakes, plus a few more. I'm hoping Nintendo and Microsoft can put up enough competition to force Sony into making better decisions for gaming as a whole.
On the whole, this is pretty much why I've always disliked the brand loyalty you see with so many gamers (and people in general, really). If any one company continued having unrivaled success no matter what they or their comeptition did, that company would continue to do less and less, while charging more and more, and gaming as an industry would be nearly stagnant on the hardware end.
Sony and Nintendo release the SNESCD add on.
This then competes with the SEGACD add on.
Add ons are always rubbish at penetrating market share - and both make little impact, and simply chug on. Square consider FFVII but never finish it in time for the SNES add on, and so transfer the game to 'next gen' platforms. The extended length of this gen hurts Gameboy progress developement but sells as well as ever. The Gamegear is still a huge failure because it needs to be plugged into the wall.
The Saturn and Nintendo CD4 (ho ho) (sans analogue stick) launch against each other about equal power graphically - sony and nintendo fight over the philosophy of games, no loading, fun, bright, happy - vs sonys 90s cool, fmvs and style. Leads to more fractured games. But wider variety leads to larger market share.
FFVII is released for the NCD4 - doesn't make the same mass media break through in the west as before - more true to it roots, its still a great success. Hell it could even go multiformat.
SEGAs flapping leads to them fucking up a little less than before as have less competition. In europe SEGA maintains the stranglehold on the market and pushes into America a lot, whilst the Nintendo/Sony stregthen in Japan.
This East/West split becomes more apparent and SEGA start working with Microsoft (as before) in secret for the next console (Dreamcast).
The Dreamcast (with WinCE on line capabilities) launches again the PlayCube (ho ho!) strenthening the East/West split further. There are large 'subcultures' of 'proper' 'gamers' who perfer the 'more exotic' 'foriegn' consoles but on the whole the two markets seperate further. With 'western style' games going to SEGA and 'eastern' to Nintendo. Because of this focus - it's sega, who have less graphical might who push controller developement with analogue sticks etc. As the current gameboy color/advance is less powerful than in our timeline the low power Dreamcast VMU is far more successful - as is the dreamcasts on line service. With a lot of games and devices backing it.
Because SEGA aren't going bust, Microsoft stick with them rather than go their own way so we have the two super powers streghtening against each other.
The DreamBox (ho ho) launches against the WiiPlay (ho ho) . The Dreambox has a strong online service, primarly western style games (the innovative weird sega of old is limited to a few weird developement houses) and crucially to battle the success of the iPod the VMU2 is a replacable flashmemory player that syncs to the brand new harddrive in the Dreambox. Syncs with your music, and with later versions video (the VMU updates it's line like the iPod - whilst the DreamBox stays constant). Obviously the iPod is still a huge success that dwarfs the VMU II but it does weaken the NSP (PSP in our timestream)
.
Although the WiiPlay has limited online capabilities it doesn't compare to the DreamBox and connectivity to the NSP is limited too. The strong game developement, and wide variety of genres keeps the WiiPlay a formidable opponent. And the only way to play JRPGs and the beautifully innovative 'crazy' japanese games.
And then we are at today. Almost a generation behind development wise - which puts the next gen more insync with HD televisions, and so the chaos of this generation is limited somewhat. The Dream 3 launches in 2008 along with the Vune a touch screen (another first) PDA/MP3/VIDEO player that also syncs to vista. The WiiPlay 360 (Don't want to say 2 - ho ho) launches with a simlar package.
Ironically without trying so hard as here, in this timeline consoles do become home (and away) entertianment centres. DVD players, Hifi music docks and so on.
Are we are in the wrong time line!?
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Who would it be? Apple (I know the Pippin, but let's forget that)? IBM? Maybe (shudder) Dell? Infineon Labs?
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