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happydolphin on 02 February 2012
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o_O.Q said:
happydolphin said:

(I needed to perform some explicitation and sentence structure improvement, please don't take this badly. If I didn't, I would simply not understand.)

PLEASE: DO NOT MESH THIS POST WITH THE OTHERS, IT'S COMPLICATED AS IT IS. I want this resolved and I only have a measure of energy and patience. If you spaghettize this again, I'm afraid I will have no more motivation left, and be totally discouraged. Keep this post alone and don't mix it with the others, k?

o_O.Q said:

happydolphin said:

My barometer in judging which system brought it to the masses first is a sales threshold considered reasonable...

Ok, well then.

Therefore, you are making a point unrelated to mine, as i'm talking about my issue with this saying: "the n64 could be more mainstream than its rival". I'm at issue with it, since the N64's rival (in this occurrence the PS1) outsold it by a wide margin.

I understand that the PS1 outsold the N64. What I'm asking is, who came first? Who appealed to a large audience with the tech first?

The answer is: Nintendo, with the N64.

We can't agree, since you judge it by total console sales, while I judge it by first to a reasonably vast audience (5Million+).

By your measure (total console sales comparison), we have 2 big problems:

1) Incomplete support of Dual-shock on the platform (a point still in debate).

2) It doesn't answer my SNES to GBA 16-bit metaphore, which you can find in a previous post. This was the comparison:

 

SNES to GBA 16-bit metaphore:

The Super Nintendo has relatively small total sales as compared to the PS2, yet it and the Genesis introduced 16-bit gaming to the masses. If another console 10 years later, also 16-bits (think GBA), managed to sell much more and also offer 16-bits, will you say the new system brought it to the masses? NO.

 

 

1) Incomplete support of Dual-shock on the platform (a point still in debate)

for me its not... it was a dumb point from the beginning imo

i can personally remember playing ps1 with my friend and playing just about every game with analog control, i'm not really sure where you're getting this incomplete support idea from but whatever

 

"The Super Nintendo has relatively small total sales as compared to the PS2, yet it and the Genesis introduced 16-bit gaming to the masses. If another console 10 years later, also 16-bits (think GBA), managed to sell much more and also offer 16-bits, will you say the new system brought it to the masses?"

the thing you haven't yet realised that makes this irrelevant is the time period between the consoles in question... the n64 and ps1 were direct competitors, how can you compare that to consoles decades apart?


as to the rest of your post as i said before your point is completely unrelated to mine and i never questioned that the n64 came out or that it ( obviously ) had a userbase before analogs were supported on the ps1 

my point from the beginning is how can it be said that the n64 is more mainstream or made a feature more mainstream than its direct competitor that outsold it by a huge margin with the same ( or even a better arrangement of the ) feature

i may be wrong but i'm pretty sure that the ps1 sold more software playable with analog technology than the n64

@bold. I'm starting to have more faith in you. Yes, the total n64 library may be greater than dual-shock supporting PS1 software. Since we're not sure, let's just put this aside for now.

my point from the beginning is how can it be said that the n64 is more mainstream or made a feature more mainstream than its direct competitor that outsold it by a huge margin with the same ( or even a better arrangement of the ) feature

It can only be said by using the supported software argument, but as I said above, I'm putting it aside for now.

Let's just go on your end of the argument for a second: "which sold more in HW sales and just total SW sales?". Obviously it's the PS1. But the point I was trying to make is that, by the time the PS1 began supporting analog controls via DualShock, Nintendo had already exposed a considerably large userbase to the technology, much differently than say the Vectrex would have. Their flagship, Mario, made heavy use of it as of launch. Its sales amounted to 11.89 million, the bulk of which was sold in the first two years.

Mario 64 release date: Japan: Jun 1996    NA: Sep 1996   EU: Mar 1997

Dual Shock release date: Japan: Nov 1997  NA: May 1998  EU:  ?

Mario 64 Sales by region: Japan: 1.91M  NA: 6.91M  EU:  2.86M

Time diff Mario 64 vs dual shock: Japan: 17 months  NA: 20 months  EU:  ?

So, by the time the dualshock came out, just Mario 64 was already in the hands of roughly 8 to 9 million users out there. I consider that in this case Nintendo was the first to market and to a wide audience.

Cheers.