Shadow1980 said:
"Alladin from Genesis and SNES, na other licensed games. A link for you to read if yiu want https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?135147-Different-games-with-the-same-name-(Genesis-and-SNES)" Aside from Aladdin and maybe Batman Returns, how many of those were really good and popular games? Was either version good enough and/or popular enough to where it made a difference one way or another that each version was a different game? You may dismiss all you want, but it was true that they needed to make 2 versions usually with different teams or companies because of the Nintendo policies even with all claims of they being laxed. Which clearly shows devs weren't happy as you tried to deny. "Shows they were already working together and easy port of árcade to console." Still irrelevant. Not sure why would be irrelevant that they were planing support even before the gen started (on your claim that devs were waiting to see PS catch momentum before hand, while this happened even before) "You may have the tracking, and the information I heard here may be false, but until Sega decided to go to CD and 32X they were leading against SNES, and if I'm not wrong like a year ago someone posted a link from one exec of sega or Tectoy (their partner in Brazil). The legs were dying out because they lost focus, same is said about Wii and that were fast death." Again, the Sega CD was released in 1992, to no ill effect for the Genesis, which was doing just fine in the U.S. during the generation proper. The 32X was released around the same time the Saturn was in Japan, and only a few months before the Saturn's U.S. release. Sega was indeed already focused on moving to 32-bit systems, to the detriment of the Genesis, which had worse software support after 1994 than the SNES did (and it is normal for a console's sales to accelerate in their decline once they're replaced, regardless of support). But even had Sega supported the Genesis better it wouldn't have gotten them the win in the U.S., or at least not a convincing one. Based on what I've seen, for the period of 1991-1994, the SNES and Genesis were essentially neck-and-neck, with the Genesis only having a very small LTD lead because of its head start. That lead evaporated quickly starting in 1995. At best, had the Genesis been supported better, the U.S. would have ended up a near-tie. You contradict your own numbers, if they were neck to neck while they were both supported, and after support dropped it slowed down, then the more probable outcome had support not be cut would be sales still coming. A much more possible outcome than the whole world changing if Nintendo did got CD. "May very well be true, but consider the increase it have from Master System and decline of NES to SNES. I see it very clear that Nintendo was losing power worldwide and would continue against Sony that was a much better structured company than Sega." Nintendo only lost significant market share to Sega in the U.S./NA. I'd argue that it was due largely to Sega of America's aggressive, confrontational, in-your-face ad campaigns that frequently attacked Nintendo, as well as generally having a vastly superior library of content than the Master System. American gamers are notoriously fickle and their tastes have changed more than any other major market. So you are going to say Sega didn't saw a massive increase in Europe and RotW? Master System Japan: 1M NA: 2M Europe: 6.8M RotW:3.2M Brazil: 8M (mostly after gen anyway) Genesis Japan: 3.58M (258% increase)North America:17M (750% increase) Europe: 8.39M (23% increase) RotW 0.59M (probably wrong as Brazil alone have 3M and another place by Majesco 1.5M and missing more than 1M compared with Sega) This seem as good increase in sales in most regions NES Japan:19.35M NA:33.49M Europe: 8.30M RotW: 0.77M SNES Japan: 17.17M (seems like the difference is almost what Sega captured) NA: 22.88M (32% decrease) Europe: 8.15M (flat) RotW:0.9M These RotW and Europe numbers that gone from less than 1M and 8M on SNES to 9M and 37M with Sony can hardly be claimed that Nintendo would achieve with doing what they were doing back then (they haven't found this sucess in the next gen as well).
"Very much true, but those games didn't need CD to work and that already show that even if Nintendo had CD Sony would still have snatched a lot of support. We do have some devs interviews showing they left Nintendo because of CD (but funny enough didn't go to Sega which was the consolidated brand, they gone Sony). I'm pretty sure Sony would have used their financial power to bring the devs because they were even less developed as developers than Sega so their dependence on 3rd parties would push them to it and Nintendo would still think they had the game won. Just look at they keep not caring about getting support until Switch really and how people claim several companies still hold a grudge." Still, there is no evidence suggesting that it was some sort of grudge the largest third parties at the time had against Nintendo that caused them to move away from Nintendo for home console development. The evidence is clear from they not putting games that didn't need CD on N64, nor GC, nor Wii, nor WiiU..... they didn't seem very eager to go back to Nintendo as soon as they got a viable alternative. "The key here is likely, you are considering inertia would have caried all that support to Nintendo if they hadn't left CD behind. Like if they cared so much to have that support they wouldn't have kept away from CD like they did. The newcomer would have targeted exactly those companies (perhaps even purchasing them if necessary). You yourself said they had no loyalty to Sony so there is no reason to believe they would have any for Nintendo that ignored their inputs." This is an alternate history thread. In our reality, Nintendo did not have the enthusiasm for CDs in the late 80s that some others did and failed to continue to pursue CDs as a format after their attempts to develop an SNES-CD failed. This alternate history assumes that some sort of change happened at Nintendo that led to key decision makers having greater interest in and generally seeing the merits and advantages of optical discs over cartridges, leading them to abandon the latter. Maybe Ken Kutaragi did some things differently that convinced Nintendo higher-ups that CDs were the future. Who knows? We can speculate about a divergence point, but this is an alternate history thread and a divergence point of some kind is necessary and thus automatically implied. Then you are changing more than what OP suggest that was simply having CD not changing an entire corporate philosophy. Back in the late 80s, while Sony, Sega, and NEC saw the merits of CDs, Nintendo did not. Their failure to see the value in CD at the time was not because they didn't care about what third parties wanted. They were skeptical that gamers would want to deal with the long load times, and while they did approve Sony's CD-ROM add-on they weren't gung-ho about it. Later on in the generation it was clear that the format had gone nowhere in the 16-bit era, seeing as how the Sega CD had very few worthwhile games and how CD add-ons for the TG16/PC Engine and Neo Geo generated even less interest from gamers and developers alike. Once the SNES-CD deals fell through, they ceased serious pursuit of optical discs. There was some residual interest as very early in the N64's development there were still discussions on whether it should use CDs in some capacity, though the 64DD shows that Nintendo saw even more merit in floppy disks (one of their concerns was that a CD-ROM drive would hurt them by making the N64 more expensive). It's hard to blame their long-term skepticism of CDs given what the format produced in the first half of the 90s. It wasn't until gaming started to move fully to 3D that the value of the CD format made itself obvious for all to see, but by that point it was too late for the N64 to have ever been a CD-based system. That's our reality, but it is not the hypothetical reality we are discussing in this thread. In our reality they also didn't try DVD on GC and BD or HDDVD on Wii. They are very skeptical of market practices, and we have seem a lot of reports in the forum of they not caring about 3rd parties and hearing them. Not hard to verify this comparing to Xbox coming and getting more support than GC, also that even with big sales Wii didn't get much support. Call it what you want, Nintendo makes the HW they want and 3rd parties follow if they like. Also when you point on their reason to avoid CD you also have to consider that perhaps Mario 64 and others would had become much worse games and N64 could have done worse than it did in real world. "You may say otherwise but you most agree with me than disagree (GC could have any game PS2 had, multiples discs weren't a problem in the gen prior, GC gen or even next gen). Nintendo simply didn't care about the needs of third parties, to make them happy or even have they on their platform for multiple gens. So I fail to see why in this alternative universe just by having CD they would start caring." I address most of this above. I just wanted to address the GC's format. Its mini-DVDs had a capacity of only 1.5GB, whereas a single-layer DVD can 4.7GB and a double-layer DVD can hold 8.5GB. Many PS2 and Xbox games had a capacity greater than 1.5GB. Multiple discs were never an optimal solution. They weren't the norm on on the PS1, and even less so afterward. With a tiny handful of exceptions, most multi-disc releases post-Gen 5 were games with a bonus disc, with the game itself fitting on a single DVD. The GameCube's format would have necessitated more games being split across multiple discs than a lot of developers would care for. There's probably a reason why some multiplatform games came to both the PS2 and Xbox but not the GameCube, and I doubt it was because Nintendo were being dicks to their publishers. That being said, the GC had better support than the N64. Weren't the norm, but if we are so much claiming FF VII gone to PS1 due to CDs we had it with 3 right? And FF IX with 4 CDs. So even though it may be somewhat of a bother they could make multiple layer or multiple disc games (or use more compression, simplified audio, etc), it was doable but devs just didn't care. You can have your doubts, but you dismiss everything negative as not possible because no one were vocal about it, but you are adamant everything would change because you have one interview from Square saying the CD tied them down. Not to forget that several games were selling much better in Xbox or PS2 than on GC, because people buying Nintendo HW wanted their games. |
Shadow1980 said:
Yeah. The N64 was $200 but the games averaged at least $60. Assuming a $300 CD-based N64 with games averaging $45, the savings from software would make up for the $100 higher price of the system after 7 games purchased. The typical attach rates for systems from the Big Three have ranged between 7 and 11. |
Except people are more alert to barrier of entry of 199 vs 299 than the price of games 45 to 60. And that would have slowered Nintendo HW sales much more (not to forget they wouldn't take a loss on HW different than Sony)
duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363
Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994
Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."