mai said:
Very few PS1 games actually exceed, say, N64 cart memory of 64MB if we rip prerendered movies out of them. And those that exceed could be easily compressed (audio, textures etc) into one, compare it to modern-day Blu-ray versus DVD, for example. The real issue was manufacturing price of N64 cart and hype of new CD technology regardless of actual benefits for games (not sure if prerendered movies is such a big achievement in gaming). Of course, there're dozens of other issues that make PS1 a success, but N64 cart memory limitations have very little to do with that, to a great extent it's a myth that was created by PR at the time and lived to this day. |
You're focusing too much on just one thing: Memory size of N64 game cartridges. I remember this generation pretty well, and Nintendo focusing on cartridges was the singular decision that cost them the generation. Many of you might be too young to realize just what an impact Final Fantasy VII had. For a while, it was the de facto reason to own a Playstation. The announcement that FFVII had left the N64 to the Playstation pretty much put that system on the map. I saw long-time Nintendo and Sega fans turn up their noses at Nintendo in favor of Sony simply because of that one game. Memory size of the cartridges has a lot to do with it, but so does manufactering costs, order delays, and how much the games cost at retail. Square even cited the lack of memory in N64 cartridges--and keep in mind, their max size of 512 megabits (or 64 Megabytes) wasn't realized until the latter half of the console's lifespan. If I remember correctly, Super Mario 64 was on a cartridge only twice the size of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. That's miniscule, that's 64 megabits. Memory was a huge issue.
Many RPG's of the generation also spanned several discs on the Playstation. You couldn't do that on the N64. Because developers were limited to one cartridge with very little storage space. With CD's, it was virtually limitless. No reason to downgrade or compress everything, no reason to cut corners or remove content to cram it onto an N64 cart--essentially, the restrictions were far fewer. The N64 was already hard enough to develop for (and the Saturn was worse), so why work on a harder system if you don't have the space or freedom to develop? And then, there's no guarantee you'll get the right amount of product on store shelves in time since pressing carts took far longer and cost far more than burning a few more CD's.
Had Nintendo been smart--and used CD's, they would have dominated the generation quite easily. How do I know? People had largely abandoned Sega. There were three 32-bit consoles competing, often, on fairly equal levels at the time--the 3DO, Saturn, and Playstation. Had Nintendo come out with a 64-bit, CD-based system, they not only would have kept Square and damn near every other developer, but they would have been able to show a powerful edge in the industry. And a machine with both Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII would have been legendary in its popularity. On top of this, the N64 set truly impressive sales records upon it's launch (later broken by the ill-fated Dreamcast). If the N64 had been a CD-based system, it would have had a steady stream of popular titles from quality developers right from the start, and it's momentum would never have dropped as it did.
At the time, simply the announcement that Final Fantasy VII (among some other less heavy-duty titles) moving from Nintendo to Sony was enough to get people buying the Playstation--up to a full year before FFVII launched. Back when it was still known in the West as Final Fantasy IV. One of my best friends in high school gave the system extra attention when he heard of Square's move. It didn't help things that Sega had so painfully ruined themselves that when the Playstation came out, the Saturn was made irrelevant almost overnight.
On the one hand, some people have a point, that it wasn't just CD's that made the N64 the silver medal winner to Sony's gold. But that was the primary cause, and storage space and cost of CD's was the primary reason people abandoned Nintendo for Sony--mostly starting with Square's departure. It didn't matter if some Playstation games were essentially the same size as the largest N64 games--developers only cared about having the space and it being available cheaply. Nintendo went with carts, Square went with Sony, and a cascade effect eventually put Sony far, far into the lead. Sony would have easily trumped Sega at the time, but if the N64 had used CD's--they never would have trumped Nintendo. They probably wouldn't have even come close.
