| Asriel said: My wider point was that Nintendo have never really played the pure graphics game, and the more they played the technology game, the more it cost them. I wouldn't deny N64 was a powerful machine (given I owned both that and a PS1), but between decisions like sticking with cartridges, the limited texture cache and Z-buffering, and the difficulty of developing for it, Nintendo really did shoot themselves in the foot when it came to competing with PlayStation. |
But Nintendo wasn't competing with the Playstation! They wanted to be the best, without argument, no matter the worms that challenged them. And that's what they were (graphically speaking) with the N64. It was the best.
Their mistakes in architecture are just as bad as Sony's overkill with the cell. Your blame of Nintendo is horribly one-sided. Did you see MS sell their 360 at 600$? I didn't! The Playstation was 500$ in Canada when it released, the N64 was 350$. For a much better graphically capable console, I had a better price. The Playstation was not Nintendo's enemy, Nintendo was. They made aweful decisions I won't argue that, but none of them had to do with them wanting to be the more graphically capable console. Are you telling me that they would have had less graphical capability had they gone optical? Their choice for cartridges goes way beyond graphics, and is a much much more complex matter.
The limited texture cache as I said had lots of workarounds, there are articles in Wikipedia on that, it wasn't a show-stopper. The difficulty of developing for the N64 was an N64 issue, not a Nintendo issue. They worked with a 3rd party called Silicon Graphics and I'm not sure that worked so well in the end result in terms of developer-friendliness. Look at the Cube, still good old Nintendo, all issues resolved. It was (so they say) easy to develop for, moreso than the PS2 with the emotion engine. You're gonna tell me I'm using the improvement argument and it doesn't count, but Sony entered the market in that same generation, so starting from there on out is fair game.
Nintendo has played the pure graphics game for many years, and yes, they marketed the SNES as a "16-bit" machine. It mattered to them. They called their consoles Super and Ultra for a reason, they were competing in a market where capability mattered. Your view on Nintendo is revisionism and desperately at that.
Even in the trivial handheld market, Nintendo stayed graphically relevant without sacrificing other more important portability considerations (form-factor, battery life, price, quality and variety of games). The Game Boy Advance did one thing better than its predecessor, and that's graphics.
@attoyou. Your face sigs are not funny!
