Well I guess its confusing when I have sarcasm off and then on. Yes that part was complete BS, and that narrator was probably successful in brainwashing a couple people.
Well I guess its confusing when I have sarcasm off and then on. Yes that part was complete BS, and that narrator was probably successful in brainwashing a couple people.
Ah, okay, sorry. Didn't catch it... I'm usually pretty good at catching sarcasm as I use it a lot myself. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
Well that second paragraph was supposed to be intended for steath. I think he thought I was calling out that shark for being CGI, when I was really calling out the narrator.
Anyways, I think its awesome that they used Shenmue for the Saturn tech demo. But that wasn't a tech demo I don't think.
Yeah, I thought a number of the choices in that video were odd. The PS2, Gamecube and Xbox stuff was all CGI mock up garbage, the Genesis and 32X were a mix of actual game content and promotional tech demos supposedly running on real hardware. The SNES demo was the intro for Star Fox, which should have been a Super FX demo but it is absolutely real time on real hardware. But yeah, the N64 shark thing was probably legitimate for the graphics but the commentary about cart speed being the only thing to allow the scene was promotional bull the same as Sony's CGI trailers.Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
PS2 stuff wasn't CGI :)
That walking bean poll Ridge Racer scene sure as heck was. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazyace
The point of that girl walking down the red carpet, was to show how good the PS2 could play FMV. Duh.
No - the RR girl wasn't FMV - it was more like a real time cut scene. ( Just like the Final Fantasy dance demo )Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
If that was possible in real time why didn't any games over the last ten years match the RR chick especially in facial detail and individual strands of hair? Not to mention resolution/AA.
It was more like PS2 models looked like this:
Attachment 7342
(I don't know if the image will show up too small.)
It was a tech demo :) The background was pretty minimal - and it had really crap AA.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
-edit- moved to the 6th Gen thread.
The Shenmue passport bust tech demos are realtime and look better than the RR lady and other bust models in the same PS2 tech demo.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
I kind of doubt the cost of a CD-ROM drive was the issue here. By 1995 (the original planned launch) the prices had come down substantially and were still falling . . . let alone the delay to 1996 the N64 actually saw.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chilly Willy
The overall cost trade-offs to cart production totally nullified that as well by that time. (so much so that Nintendo eating the cost of the drive and pushing up software margins on cheap discs -on top of having MORE content- would have more than made up for it)
Finally, Nintendo ended up going for the even stranger route of the DD with drive and media considerably MORE costly and considerably less useful than optical media.
The only sensible argument I've seen here is Nintendo wanting to maintain proprietary control over the format and maintain control over ALL manufacturing of media for their console. (also a major argument of why the SNES CD was cancelled)
OTOH, why Nintendo didn't invest in developing a custom optical format (standard CD media and drive mech, but custom data format, more like GDROM or GC/Wii disc) I'm no really sure. Hell, if THAT had been the target, than launching with cart with the custom format still in development would have made sense: later releasing a custom optical drive (like '97 or '98) at reasonable cost (no more than $100) and standardizing it on later N64 models would have made a decent amount of sense.
In the end though, it's kind of ironic since Nintendo really wasn't in a position to benefit from regulating software production so heavily at that point . . . that died with the SNES (handhelds aside) and they'd have been better off trying to open up more to 3rd parties and remain more competitive as a mainstream development platform. (but Nintendo is weird and stubborn, so there you go ;))
Hell, had it not been for Sony's huge boom on the market, Nintendo's mistakes there easily could have handed the market to Sega with the Saturn and DC in spite of Sega's own problems. (which wouldn't have been so severe anyway without Sony's stiff competition :p ) Granted, the best case overall would have been all the competitors making good decisions and stable management overall, so the market would have had that many more competitive platforms to choose from and both consumers and developers could realistically have more open choices in general. ;)
As stated by others, DVD would have killed Sega MUCH faster, even worse if they included a license for DVD video playback (not just DVD-ROM for games). Only Sony could afford that at the time, and in large part due to their owning patents/licenses internally already (vertical integration and all that). Hell, even MS didn't include DVD video out of the box, in spite of that being several years later AND pushed by a megacorp with money to spare.Quote:
Originally Posted by zyrobs
Sega's main problems were with various PR issues (developers, consumers, and retailers), marketing (different problems in different regions), and (especially) funding at that point . . . and making some decisions that were rather questionable given their limited funds. (like heavily investing in the Seganet ISP and all the rebates and price cuts the DC saw) And finally just a lack of willingness to risk pushing for the long haul . . . hence the decision to halt it in late 2000 (official in early 2001).
Besides that, what you describe is more a successor to the DC anyway, which would have made sense around 2003 (perhaps 02 at the earliest), given it was a pretty decent 1998 design as it was. (and at that point, DVD would have been perfectly viable anyway, perhaps dual-layer support even)
RAM expansion support would have been nice, but after the fact there wasn't the hardware support for it unfortunately . . . something plaguing all 6th and 7th gen consoles (and probably 8th too). A real shame given how useful and practical that can be mid-gen.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
I'd argue RAM expansion could have been pushed in 2001 though, an added 16 MB of PC-100 SDRAM should have been quite reasonable then (and 32 MB standard for later models). By 2002, you'd be getting close to the time where a new console release would be reasonable though, and again 2003 (for Japan) would fall into the typical/average 5 year date for the DC.
So, even without RAM expansion, Sega could have their bases covered for the really neat heavy hitter RAM (and graphics) intensive early 2000s games, and with the newest hardware to boot. (actually, it would have been rather interesting having Sega's hardware releases staggered compared to the competition -first major player out in the new gen, but later on the cheapest/weakest of the generation for the most part -which, TBH worked well for the Genesis in the US and Europe)
On that note though, as cool at it would be, I doubt hardware level backwards compatibility would have worked though (with PowerVR development halting and later SuperH derivatives being less competitive with contemporary alternatives for 2003). If they could go with a fast SH5 (iirc SH6 had problems), then that might have worked out given the API-oriented nature of the DC, so you'd have hardware CPU compatibility and high-level emulated graphics on another GPU architecture (probably ATi).
Unless, of course, Sega's continued mass-market usage of PowerVR actually spurred further development of that architecture.
On the SH5 though, I'm really not sure how far it got . . . it has some advanced features and looks like it would be pretty powerful per-clock compared to PPC and x86 contemporaries (and considerably faster per-clock than the SH4), but I can't find many detailed references as to what products actually became available other than early (2001) overviews and roadmaps mentioning things like plans for going beyond 600 MHz.
I saved a link to this site a while back when doing some other Super H discussions, and hoped it had product info on SH-5 models, but it looks like the SH4A is the furthest it goes:
http://www.renesas.com/products/mpum...7780/index.jsp
I don't know any product model numbers for SH-5 CPUs, so I can't use that to try searching for pages that might have lists of other models either. (which is how I found the above site originally while searching for SH1 models after TA brought up that 1993 article on the Saturn listing the SH7032)
Of course, they also could have just imbedded an SH4 as cheaply as possible as a slave CPU and added a totally different architecture as the main CPU. (around 2003, AMD was probably the most attractive option . . . Athlon 64 was probably too expensive, but an imbedded Athlon XP derivative might have made sense) Given the older (and generally lower cost) nature of the DC architecture (and especially the SH4 itself) doing that should have been a lot more feasible than what Sony did with the EE in the early PS3 (cost and complexity wise). OTOH, Sony also probably could have made some different design decisions that would have made hardware compatibility (and overall cost) more reasonable on the PS3. (even with the BD drive)
Yea its became obvious that Nintendo is scared of standard formats, because of piracy and royalty fees. Always gotta go proprietary.
And that fear costed them %50 of their third party support.
I wouldn't say the same for Sega, they went with GD-Rom, because DVD technology would make the console cost $350, and CDs didn't have enough capacity. They needed something in the middle.