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Who won E3 1996?

Nintendo 24 54.55%
 
SEGA 3 6.82%
 
Sony 17 38.64%
 
Microsoft 0 0%
 
Total:44
Dulfite said:
Snesboy said:
Nintendo this time around. It's tough to beat a system that is launching in 3 months that would have all the hype behind it. Even though the N64 was inferior in regards to lacking a CD drive.

As for finding info, it's going to be tough since all the big websites from back then are now defunct or deleted old content.

Didn't cartridges still retain one major advantage at the time? I can't remember what it was.

No loading times. CDs had better music, and were almost free to produce compared to carts. Carts were almost impossible to pirate at the time, and the early death of the Dreamcast was partly due to piracy. So Nintendo kind of had the right idea to stick with carts. Carts held almost no data compared to CDs though. 



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Cerebralbore101 said:
Dulfite said:

Didn't cartridges still retain one major advantage at the time? I can't remember what it was.

No loading times. CDs had better music, and were almost free to produce compared to carts. Carts were almost impossible to pirate at the time, and the early death of the Dreamcast was partly due to piracy. So Nintendo kind of had the right idea to stick with carts. Carts held almost no data compared to CDs though. 

And now carts are good again?



Bandorr said:
https://www.ign.com/wikis/e3/E3_1996

"Humiliated by Sony's cataclysmic announcement of the year before, the hardware manufacturers had supposedly all agreed not to make similar announcements in 1996."
Which is the PS1 coming out and destroying the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo Virtual Boy. The PS1 was announced for $300, a $100 less than the Sega Saturn.

"Despite the big announcement from Sony, SEGA and Nintendo tried to stay the course with their pricing. It didn't work. By the end of day one, Nintendo announced plans to match price with Nintendo 64. By day 2, SEGA did the same.

And apparently that all came round the same rumors of Microsoft doing price cuts.

The Sega Saturn launched at $400 in 1995. Dropped to $200 in 1996. That is a beating.

Dulfite said:
COKTOE said:

This one is a bit tougher. I have to try to find more info on the PS show before I vote.

Also, what the hell does this mean? "Major price drop of Playstation from $299 to $199 after agreeing with SEGA and Nintendo not to drop prices on hardware this year."

It seems that you're saying the 3 companies entered into some kind of unofficial pinky-swear pact to keep their hardware the same price?

Bandorr linked the source of that below!

Well, true or not, and it looks as if it's not verifiable ( the article says "supposedly", and Jim Whims, the man running SCEA at the time said he never agreed to it ), the concept of such an agreement is ludicrous. Business competitors, agreeing to....not compete? Oh, and PLEASE, not at out industry's trade show. LOL! To what end? To stop mean old Sony from "humiliating" Sega and Nintendo again by offering a top shelf product at a great price?

I have my doubts as to veracity of this scenario unfolding as the article purports it may have. An interesting historical footnote nonetheless. :)

- I have to drop this bit from the article as well:

"On day 2, SEGA PR representative Angela Edwards was outside the convention center with a stack of "Now $199" signs when some Sony people happened by. One of them walked up to her and sneered, "You're pathetic."

Haa. Ok that's mean. I'm surprised it didn't mention that the Sony guys pulled up in a convertible, wearing leather jackets, and sporting ducktail haircuts. 

Last edited by COKTOE - on 27 June 2019

- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

COKTOE said:
Bandorr said:
https://www.ign.com/wikis/e3/E3_1996

"Humiliated by Sony's cataclysmic announcement of the year before, the hardware manufacturers had supposedly all agreed not to make similar announcements in 1996."
Which is the PS1 coming out and destroying the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo Virtual Boy. The PS1 was announced for $300, a $100 less than the Sega Saturn.

"Despite the big announcement from Sony, SEGA and Nintendo tried to stay the course with their pricing. It didn't work. By the end of day one, Nintendo announced plans to match price with Nintendo 64. By day 2, SEGA did the same.

And apparently that all came round the same rumors of Microsoft doing price cuts.

The Sega Saturn launched at $400 in 1995. Dropped to $200 in 1996. That is a beating.

Dulfite said:

Bandorr linked the source of that below!

Well, true or not, and it looks as if it's not verifiable ( the article says "supposedly", and Jim Whims, the man running SCEA at the time said he never agreed to it ), the concept of such an agreement is ludicrous. Business competitors, agreeing to....not compete? Oh, and PLEASE, not at out industry's trade show. LOL! To what end? To stop mean old Sony from "humiliating" Sega and Nintendo again by offering a top shelf product at a great price?

I have my doubts as to veracity of this scenario unfolding as the article purports it may have. An interesting historical footnote nonetheless. :)

- I have to drop this bit from the article as well:

"On day 2, SEGA PR representative Angela Edwards was outside the convention center with a stack of "Now $199" signs when some Sony people happened by. One of them walked up to her and sneered, "You're pathetic."

Haa. Ok that's mean. I'm surprised it didn't mention that the Sony guys pulled up in a convertible, wearing leather jackets, and sporting ducktail haircuts. 

When I first read it I was cracking up too. Sony straight trolled their competitors that year if true, haha. we



RolStoppable said:
Dulfite said:

And now carts are good again?

The space of CDs was used for FMVs (full motion video) to impress with graphics that the CD consoles actually weren't capable of; these FMVs were very space-demanding, so a CD could hold at most 70 minutes of such videos, but in that extreme case there would be no game at all on the CD. That's why FMVs were ultimately sparsely used and were mainly reserved for intros, endings and key events in the story of a game, because it wasn't feasible to do an entire story that way. You've played Final Fantasy IX, so you've seen how infrequent those videos were and that game shipped on four CDs when it was originally released.

The space limitations of cartridges meant that FMVs on the N64 were either extremely short and low quality, or usually non-existent. This led many gamers to believe that the PS1 was capable of better graphics, even though the console merely played videos from disc.

The last major console to use cartridges was the GBA. Later consoles that avoided optical media (that's CDs, DVDs, UMDs and Blu-rays) make use of cards which is flash storage. Differences between cartridges and cards are:

1. Cartridges load data significantly faster.
2. Cards are much cheaper produce.
3. Cards can hold much more data.

In general, cards hit the middleground between cartridges and optical media, so they provide a lot of advantages with very few drawbacks. Considering that any portable console has to deal with the challenges of size of the device, heat dissipation and battery life, cards are way superior to optical media solutions.

Thanks for the answer, that was helpful!



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I'd have to give it to Sony, although I don't think any of them were particularly impressive at the time. IIRC, Sony really started to shine in 1997.



RolStoppable said:
Dulfite said:

And now carts are good again?

The space of CDs was used for FMVs (full motion video) to impress with graphics that the CD consoles actually weren't capable of; these FMVs were very space-demanding, so a CD could hold at most 70 minutes of such videos, but in that extreme case there would be no game at all on the CD. That's why FMVs were ultimately sparsely used and were mainly reserved for intros, endings and key events in the story of a game, because it wasn't feasible to do an entire story that way. You've played Final Fantasy IX, so you've seen how infrequent those videos were and that game shipped on four CDs when it was originally released.

The space limitations of cartridges meant that FMVs on the N64 were either extremely short and low quality, or usually non-existent. This led many gamers to believe that the PS1 was capable of better graphics, even though the console merely played videos from disc.

The last major console to use cartridges was the GBA. Later consoles that avoided optical media (that's CDs, DVDs, UMDs and Blu-rays) make use of cards which is flash storage. Differences between cartridges and cards are:

1. Cartridges load data significantly faster.
2. Cards are much cheaper produce.
3. Cards can hold much more data.

In general, cards hit the middleground between cartridges and optical media, so they provide a lot of advantages with very few drawbacks. Considering that any portable console has to deal with the challenges of size of the device, heat dissipation and battery life, cards are way superior to optical media solutions.

This whole post is so good.

Another thing to point out is flash storage used to be really expensive. Discs are still cheaper but a Switch Game Card is different from an N64 cartridge. Game Cards are just SD cards that are read-only.



NightlyPoe said:
Snesboy said:
Nintendo this time around. It's tough to beat a system that is launching in 3 months that would have all the hype behind it. Even though the N64 was inferior in regards to lacking a CD drive.

As for finding info, it's going to be tough since all the big websites from back then are now defunct or deleted old content.

Meh, I'll take zero loading times and better in-game performance over a few minutes of FMV cut scenes any day.  I understand why companies liked the cheaper CDs, but as far as gaming goes, it was really just a limited gimmick.

You're not wrong but a lot of people back in those days did buy into the FMV cutscene gimmick. The other reason was a PS1 CD cost cents on the dollar (apparently 3 dollars in 96) compared to an N64 cart, which cost over 30 USD (https://archive.org/stream/NextGeneration24Dec1996/Next_Generation_24_Dec_1996#page/n75/mode/2up)

CDs also maxed out at 700MB. The biggest and most expensive 64 carts maxed out at...67 MB, still less than a tenth of a CD at 10X the cost.



From the list of highlights in the OP, I'd say Nintendo won. But, from my very loose recollections of the time, I'd say Sony got the most run. So, they probably won.

It certainly wasn't Sega or MS.



VAMatt said:
From the list of highlights in the OP, I'd say Nintendo won. But, from my very loose recollections of the time, I'd say Sony got the most run. So, they probably won.

It certainly wasn't Sega or MS.

I wish I could find a source for information regarding 3rd party company games for that E3, so we could have more options on who to vote for like the 1995 poll, but I've find next to nothing in that regard without looking at specific company websites, which would take forever.