Shadow1980 said:
pokoko said:
And if cats had gills, they could live underwater.
This thread is basically saying that if Nintendo were Nintendo while not being Nintendo then they could have remained at the top. The N64 not having a CD slot was a symptom, it wasn't the root of the problem.
Why did Nintendo fall despite having an absolute stranglehold on the market? Because of attitude. They got to the top by being ruthless and controlling. When someone else came along that exploited those weaknesses, they took a major hit. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Playstation hit at the exact perfect time. Developers and publishers were itching to break out from Nintendo's grasp. Much of the third-party market was eager for competition to emerge. They wanted someone who listened to them, who gave consideration to their opinions, who allowed them room for profit, and was ready to explore new technology and themes.
Here is a quote from a Square executive about FF7:
Yoshihiro Maruyama, Executive vice president, Square U.S. - I don’t think [anyone from Nintendo gave us a hard time]. They said, “Oh, we don’t need that.” That’s what they said. [Laughs] Their philosophy has always been that Nintendo hardware is for their games, and if a publisher wants to publish, “OK you can do it.” But if you don’t like it, “We don’t want you.” http://gonintendo.com/stories/271612-square-enix-dev-says-nintendo-told-squaresoft-to-never-come-back
Nintendo put themselves above gaming and tried to define the market. I have no sympathy for the N64. |
@Bolded. Third parties had an opportunity to ditch Nintendo half a decade earlier. With Nintendo's de facto monopoly broken and third parties free to develop for the Genesis, they could have told Nintendo to kiss their asses then. But they didn't.
No, this was all about format. CDs held over ten times the data of the largest N64 carts, yet cost only one tenth what an N64 cart did. That's two orders of magnitude difference on a cost-per-megabyte basis. While CDs had loading times and weren't as durable as carts, their higher capacity and lower price made them far more appealing to developers and publishers.
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Even if Nintendo went with CDs, they would still have been Nintendo of that era. Which means much more control on devs and higher fees to publish games on their systems. A point I think was hammered home to companies after they saw how they treated Sony with the PS deal. And Sega was better with 3rd parties, but still weren't as good for them as Sony was in terms of freedom and profitability.
pokoko said:
VGPolyglot said:
I don't remember either, that wasn't me that mentioned those games. Though, Alien: Resurrection came out in 2000 for the PS1, and look at one quote from the Gamespot review:
"The game's control setup is its most terrifying element. The left analog stick moves you forward, back, and strafes right and left, while the right analog stick turns you and can be used to look up and down."
So, even in 2000, 4 years after the N64, it was not compared to it.
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I think (almost) everyone is aware that both schemes were attempts to replicate the precision and fluidity of the PC experience. One scheme failed to catch on, the other performed much better and is thus considered an industry standard today. Trying to give all the credit for everything to one company is just revisionism.
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This is probably the biggest problem I have with many Nintendo fans. All credit for anything gaming is given to Nintendo using some strange logic, while everyone else just copies them. Problem is almost everything in gaming was tried out during the Atari age in gaming, including motion controls. Most things past that are just improvements in tech and/or people putting their own spin on ideas of the past. Nintendo is not as revolutionary as the fans think they are.
