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Forums - Sales Discussion - If the N64 had a CD-ROM Drive, would've Nintendo won the generation in sales?

 

If N64 had a CD-ROM Drive, would've Nintendo won the generation in sales?

Yes 39 50.00%
 
No 39 50.00%
 
Total:78

PS1 games have more detailed backgrounds and richer artystle compared to N64. That make their games more cinematic and atmospheric than N64

And good and inspired artsyle stomps high resolution assets every day until now

That's why imo PS1 games looks better than N64 games



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LivingMetal said:
Intrinsic said:
The N64 didn't lose because it still used carts. Or at least that's only 20% of the reason. The other 80% was because that was when it nearly totally lost al their party support. Playstation basically built their platform on the failings of Nintendo. Hell, you can even say that the only reason PlayStation even exists today is thanks to how Nintendo treated sony.

In a manner of speaking, Playstation s the bastard step child of Nintendo.

Ummm... No.  When Nintendo announced their partnership with Phillips, Sony had every intend to cut their losses and abandoned the PlayStation project.  They were not under any obligations to continue it.  But it was Ken Kutaragi that convinced the then president of Sony that "Nintendo publicly shamed Sony" and that the PlayStation project should continue.  And when examining a found "Nintendo PlayStation" prototype, it was concluded that the peripheral would have been no more powerful than the SNES it was designed for.  So given some of the business and technical development details prior to the original PlayStation and the PlayStation itself, it was more of a "rebirth" for Sony and a botched opportunity for Nintendo.

How are we not saying the same thing?

I said the reason Playstation exists today is thanks to Nintendo.

All you have done is explained how.

Nintendo started off getting into a partnership with Sony. Sony spent however long working on the said partnership. At the last minute, Nintendo undercut sony and decided to go a different route. Someone at any (ken) wasn't having it and got the company to build a console that would never have existed if Nintendo didn't cut them off, to begin with.



Intrinsic said:
LivingMetal said:

Ummm... No.  When Nintendo announced their partnership with Phillips, Sony had every intend to cut their losses and abandoned the PlayStation project.  They were not under any obligations to continue it.  But it was Ken Kutaragi that convinced the then president of Sony that "Nintendo publicly shamed Sony" and that the PlayStation project should continue.  And when examining a found "Nintendo PlayStation" prototype, it was concluded that the peripheral would have been no more powerful than the SNES it was designed for.  So given some of the business and technical development details prior to the original PlayStation and the PlayStation itself, it was more of a "rebirth" for Sony and a botched opportunity for Nintendo.

How are we not saying the same thing?

I said the reason Playstation exists today is thanks to Nintendo.

All you have done is explained how.

Nintendo started off getting into a partnership with Sony. Sony spent however long working on the said partnership. At the last minute, Nintendo undercut sony and decided to go a different route. Someone at any (ken) wasn't having it and got the company to build a console that would never have existed if Nintendo didn't cut them off, to begin with.

Ok.  I"ll keep this simple:  "Nintendo PlayStation" =/= PlayStation.  There.



bdbdbd said:
Slownenberg said:

Playstation resolutions were terrible compared to N64. The only thing PS1 was better at with in-game graphics was that technically it had a higher polygon count, but what it could do with those polygons was crap compared to N64. PS1 textures were super pixelated and looked abysmal compared to N64 textures, PS1 graphics were super glitchy and the jaggies on polygons were far more pronounced than on N64, PS1 particle effects were also far inferior to N64. I don't get why anyone tries to say PS1 games looked better because in reality they looked far worse. N64 was significantly more powerful than PS1 and it was very obvious graphically. Yeah PS1 had FMV and cgi cut scenes simply due to the fact that it had room for those things on disc while N64 didn't on cartridge, but those aren't in-game graphics. N64 graphics blew PS1 away in every regard.

Anyway, to answer the question, I don't know if Nintendo would have won that generation if it had CDs but it certainly would have been a hell of a lot closer. Third parties were still very happy to go away from Nintendo's bad policies regarding them, even without getting the extra space CDs allowed on PS1. So PS1 may have still have more games, but Nintendo would have kept some key games like the Final Fantasy games which would have been huge. N64 had such a slow release schedule that would be unthinkable these days. Literally like a game or two would come out most months. If they had gone with CDs they would have had a far more regular release schedule, had a library full of 3rd parties though likely still lacking behind Sony, would have kept some major series like Final Fantasy, and of course still have the best games of the gen that N64 did get like Mario, Zeldas, MK, GoldenEye, etc. People are saying N64 would have cost $100 more with a CD drive...is that really true? It's hard to imagine taking out cartridges and adding in a CD Rom drive would add $100. Let's say $50 is more reasonable, which still would have put N64 in a good price range.

With CD's N64 would have had everything going or it - most of the absolute best games of the gen from Nintendo and Rare, best graphics by far, would have kept Square in Nintendo's corner so N64 would have been the RPG console instead of PS1, a much heavier release schedule full of 3rd parties though possibly still not quite as full as PS1, ability to create larger games and include FMV and cgi cut scenes which became a fad that generation. Can't say if it would have beaten Sony, but PS1 would have gotten far fewer sales and N64 would have gotten probably at least double the sales it did so I think it certainly would have had a chance to beat PS1.

I say it hinges on sports games. Sports games were huge and in that a lot of people want to buy the system that has the best sports games (something that still holds Nintendo systems back). Most of the good sports games went to PS1. N64 still had more and better sports games than say Switch does today, but anyone who loved sports games had a PS1. With CDs its very possible N64 sports library would have been on par with PS1's, and when you factor in the better graphics and 4 player N64 had I think it's very possible sports fans would have bought N64 in droves instead of Playstations, which could have been the deciding factor and made N64 beat out PS1, perhaps but a good bit.

It did not have higher polygon count - of course depends on the game, but N64 was roughly twice as powerful when it comes to polycount, and also the hardware effects were much better. PS could stream textures from CD (N64 could do this too, but there wasn't space on cartridge to do that) and N64 had incredibly small texture cache, which is why N64 graphics were blurry.

PS1 could technically do more polygons. I don't know the specifics of it but at the time and ever since every report I've ever read about the two systems says PS1 could do more polygons. That may just refer to a technical ability though, as in when you add in textures and effects and everything it may not have mattered because PS1 was so much less capable than N64. But technically PS1 had higher polygon count, but overall far inferior graphics.

The bit of blurriness N64 games had was just from the use (some say overuse) of Anti-Aliasing. PS1 had super pixelated textures and super jagged polygons (along with very glitchy graphics), N64 was obviously better in all regards because it was more powerful, but devs also used Anti-Aliasing to smooth out the image to further decrease pixelated textures and jaggies. This made N64 graphics smoother looking than they otherwise would have been, but also made them look slightly blurry.



Nintendo would have won with a CD-Rom.  Playstation was not selling well until it got Final Fantasy 7.  It was doing ok, but not nearly well enough to beat Nintendo.  The main third parties that didn't like Nintendo were Western devs like EA, but Western devs were not that important during the Gen 5 era.  Plenty of third party games still ended up on the Gameboy.  This idea that devs wanted to flee Nintendo is extremely overstated.  There was no mass exodus from Nintendo handhelds.  The main reason why third parties switched on home systems was 1) CD's were a much better format and 2) Playstation was selling well after FF7 ended up on it.  If Nintendo has CDs and FF7, then Playstation doesn't do nearly as well.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 02 September 2020

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Third party dint run away from nintendo because of the disk drive. If II remember correctly nintendo had a insane quality requirement and devs could not meet thouse requirements but sony accepted them all. Thus they had way more games. Had nitendo not been so demanding devs would have just work around the space limitation of the cartridge as they where the leading brand.



It takes genuine talent to see greatness in yourself despite your absence of genuine talent.

Slownenberg said:
bdbdbd said:

It did not have higher polygon count - of course depends on the game, but N64 was roughly twice as powerful when it comes to polycount, and also the hardware effects were much better. PS could stream textures from CD (N64 could do this too, but there wasn't space on cartridge to do that) and N64 had incredibly small texture cache, which is why N64 graphics were blurry.

PS1 could technically do more polygons. I don't know the specifics of it but at the time and ever since every report I've ever read about the two systems says PS1 could do more polygons. That may just refer to a technical ability though, as in when you add in textures and effects and everything it may not have mattered because PS1 was so much less capable than N64. But technically PS1 had higher polygon count, but overall far inferior graphics.

The bit of blurriness N64 games had was just from the use (some say overuse) of Anti-Aliasing. PS1 had super pixelated textures and super jagged polygons (along with very glitchy graphics), N64 was obviously better in all regards because it was more powerful, but devs also used Anti-Aliasing to smooth out the image to further decrease pixelated textures and jaggies. This made N64 graphics smoother looking than they otherwise would have been, but also made them look slightly blurry.

The blurriness was because of the 4kilobyte texture cache. There's really no way around it (technically you could read the cache twice for one screen by halving the frame rate).

The original spec for N64 was 100 000 polygons per second, opposed to 300 000 for PSX, whereas the "new" microcode that took better advantage of the memory made it possible for N64 to churn 500 000 polygons per second. Even as N64 had modern unified memory architecture, it had it's memory divided between the different processors - if you did not need the whole memory reserved for audio, it was unused. The "new" microcode Nintendo provided made the memory dynamic, so you could use the non-used memory for other purposes, like graphics.



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

Xxain said:

No. We already know that at the time 3rd party developers had nearly broke necks to move away from Nintendo and their policies at the time. N64 failure was not just a tech thing.

EDIT: This is a old tired topic. How many times have we had discussion on this topic and how many more times can anybody stomach it?

Even so, the one and only reason that Square walked away was the format.  Square admits they viewed themselves as a 2nd party publisher for Nintendo at the time and only began developing for Sony when Nintendo didn't follow Squares advise about making sure the N64 was day one CD-ROM capable.

Hironobu Sakaguchi

Producer and executive vice president, Square Japan; Chairman and chief executive officer, Square USA

PlayStation games being on CDs was the biggest factor.  The biggest problem was, of course, memory. Based on our calculations there was no way it could all fit on a ROM cartridge. So our main reason for choosing the PlayStation was really just because it was the only console which would allow us to use CD-ROM media.

Shinichiro Kajitani

Vice president, Square USA

At that time, Square was really close to Nintendo — we were basically like a second party for them. So when their new system was in development, we gave them lots of advice, like, “You’re going to need a CD-ROM drive for it,” “You don’t have enough bandwidth to do what we’re trying to do,” and, “With what you have now, we’re not going to be able to make an RPG.” We gave them lots of advice. But [Nintendo president] Yamauchi-san at Nintendo basically refused to listen to any of it. And that’s when Sakaguchi-san and the management team at Square decided, “OK, we’re going to go with Sony now.”

https://gonintendo.com/stories/289651-square-enix-opens-up-about-trying-to-make-final-fantasy-vii-for-n

If the N64 had been released with CD-ROM as its launch software format, it's a safe bet that Konami would have also released Metal Gear Solid on it as well.  Then, there goes 2 of the PlayStation's biggest 3rd party exclusives.  So yes, basically 1 change in development decision could have had a massive impact on the way the 5th console generation played out.



LivingMetal said:
Intrinsic said:

How are we not saying the same thing?

I said the reason Playstation exists today is thanks to Nintendo.

All you have done is explained how.

Nintendo started off getting into a partnership with Sony. Sony spent however long working on the said partnership. At the last minute, Nintendo undercut sony and decided to go a different route. Someone at any (ken) wasn't having it and got the company to build a console that would never have existed if Nintendo didn't cut them off, to begin with.

Ok.  I"ll keep this simple:  "Nintendo PlayStation" =/= PlayStation.  There.

I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion. Here are the known facts.

  1. Kutaragi (unknown to the higher us at sony) designed a SNES sound chip for Nintendo, and it lost cost him his job but fr he intervention of then sony president Ohga or whatever his name was (can't recall).
  2. After that successful chip, Ken went on to convince the board at sony that they should make aCD add on for the SNES. And Nintendo agreed to this. There was not a lot of support from both camps as sony felt gaming was a fad at the time and not worth investing in and Nintendo wasn't keen on CD-Roms.
  3. Then Nintendo went back on this deal and announced that they were intended partnering with Phillips. The messed up thing was, Sony found out about this along with everyone else when Nintendo announced their partnership with Phillips.
  4.  Then Ken convinced the board that they should go on with the project and make their own game console. And that is how we have Playstation today.

I don't know how else to look at that, but I think its safe to say, that chances are, if that Nintendo Playstation actually came to light, and was a commercial failure (as was the case with the Sega CD), then sony would have sen no reason what so ever to listen to Ken and mak their own console. And the Playstation would never have existed. 

If it was a commercial success, then sony and Nintendo would have started off a long partnership, and sony would probably just be a third party game publisher today if at anything.

I can't see what reason or how to look at this any other way. Nothing at all points to the suggestion that sony would ever have made a Playstation if things hadn't gone south with their partnership with Nintendo.



Intrinsic said:
LivingMetal said:

Ok.  I"ll keep this simple:  "Nintendo PlayStation" =/= PlayStation.  There.

I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion. Here are the known facts.

  1. Kutaragi (unknown to the higher us at sony) designed a SNES sound chip for Nintendo, and it lost cost him his job but fr he intervention of then sony president Ohga or whatever his name was (can't recall).
  2. After that successful chip, Ken went on to convince the board at sony that they should make aCD add on for the SNES. And Nintendo agreed to this. There was not a lot of support from both camps as sony felt gaming was a fad at the time and not worth investing in and Nintendo wasn't keen on CD-Roms.
  3. Then Nintendo went back on this deal and announced that they were intended partnering with Phillips. The messed up thing was, Sony found out about this along with everyone else when Nintendo announced their partnership with Phillips.
  4.  Then Ken convinced the board that they should go on with the project and make their own game console. And that is how we have Playstation today.

I don't know how else to look at that, but I think its safe to say, that chances are, if that Nintendo Playstation actually came to light, and was a commercial failure (as was the case with the Sega CD), then sony would have sen no reason what so ever to listen to Ken and mak their own console. And the Playstation would never have existed. 

If it was a commercial success, then sony and Nintendo would have started off a long partnership, and sony would probably just be a third party game publisher today if at anything.

I can't see what reason or how to look at this any other way. Nothing at all points to the suggestion that sony would ever have made a Playstation if things hadn't gone south with their partnership with Nintendo.

My guess would be that Sony would be major player in manufacturing hardware for others. They would work more like they operate in music and movies.



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.