Sony Considering Playstation Classic

[Bofferbrauer2]

Conina said:

GProgrammer said:

Those 2D games would of looked worse on the PS1 than if it was than if on a pure 2D PS1. The reason being Sony blew all the hardware power budget on the 3d hardware, if instead of doing that they put it into a beefier 2d blitter they could of ran their games at 640x480 instead of the 320x240 mess that most ended up being

And it would probably have been a commercial failure if they had offered a pure 2D console while Nintendo and Sega were offering consoles who can handle 2D and 3D games. Especially as a newcomer in the console sector. Most gamers wanted polygon-based 3D games in the mid-nineties, which also allowed new perspectives and gameplay due to the flexible camera.

2D in native 640 x 480 also needed a lot of performance back then, so the pure 2D console wouldn't even have a price advantage.

It would have been for sure. Ever heard of the PC-FX? No? It's the sucessor of the PC Engine, also known as TurbopraphX and SupergraphX in the west. It totally flopped because, although expandable like a PC (and looking like a miniature PC Tower) it's a pure 2D console. sold about as well as the 360 did in Japan, and never released overseas.

The reason they decided not to have 3D graphics was because it would be too blocky and not look good, instead focusing on pre-rendered graphics (like the Donkey Kong country series on the SNES), motion JPEG and FMV. An understandable choice, but nonetheless still the wrong decision.