Nintendo What-If? #4

[bdbdbd]

Werix357 said:

So Nintendo bungled the design, doesn't surprise me as they have done that on a couple of occasions.

Basically they did, yes. This was because N64 was supposed to be a lot more powerful than it was and everything was supposed to be done by the hardware. Instead of FMV's that were new stuff at the time N64 started being developed, Nintendo was opting for real-time animations by game engine.

I don't know if Nintendo have fucked up any other desing than this. You could argue Virtual Boy, 3DS's 3D screen and Wii U gamepad being the ones, but the problem with the latter two of them is more on the software than hardware.

Mummelmann said:

I know that the licensing policies were a result of the video game crash, that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is letting publishers and developers take the entire cost of releasing and even demanding upfront payment for the cartridges that Nintendo themselves had full production rights over and then letting their own magazine do the reviews to gain complete power over 3rd parties. Paired with the strong-arming and downright threats made to retailers to prevent them from selling competing products, and you're left with tactics that are impossible to defend or attribute to the mere safe guarding against a new crash. It's no wonder why developers fled the moment they could and retailers still have a somewhat wonky relationship with them as well.

Umm... I think that's how it's done: the publisher buys the stock it's selling to retailers from the manufacturers. As far as I'm concerned, that's what everyne does, you buy your COD discs from Sony and MS (or whoever you pay to press them on PC) and the risk is yours, not the hardware manufacturers or the disc pressing facility. Just like the risk in developing a game is on who's paying it and not on the platform owner. 

On the matter of crediting the publishers, I can see both sides.

I don't know about threatening the retailers, as far as I remember, Nintendo products and competitors products have been available at the same stores, if the stores carried the products - however, elsewhere may be different. Anyway, didn't Sony and MS blackmail the retailers as well. Not in the sense that you could not carry competitors products (aside MS and Linux netbook manufacturers), but to carry their product that had no demand in order to get a product that has demand.

Ljink96 said:

bigtakilla said:

*edit* Weren't there Sega CD games that had cg cutscenes (Lunar and Vay to name 2), and heck, couldn't it be argued that Star Fox had CG cutscenes on Super Nintendo? 

Nope, those were FMVs. Which consisted of on the off occasion, studio animation or pixel animation. Starfox simply had hardware that rendered untextured 3D polygons without lighting. FFVII used technology that was cutting edge at the time, Pixar was the only ones who outdid them at that time. It rendred thousands of polygons, with models that were textured, rigged and fully animated with particle effects, etc. Neither of the games you've listed use the tech that FFVII utilized.

There was Jurassic Park years before the Pixar animations.