I can see why you’d look at that. It has some validity and it’s easy to use as a measurement. But is it useful? You can make a very cheap, very powerful computer system. But raw horsepower is almost useless as measurement, so who cares?
What made Nintendo a leader, and made them successful, was their ability to develop a system rather than a calculator. In fact, raw power often didn’t have that much to do with console market success or the quality of the games available. Even rganting that markets aren’t always rational and developers and skill matter, you’re still looking at a situation where Nintendo accurately deployed its resources to create technical systems. These systems in the NES era were able to combine ease of use, storage, graphics, and sound to a level which hadn’t been done before. These are harder to measure than processors, but they are more critical challenges than speed.
WIth the N64, Nintendo became a follower - of its own success. They didn’t want to move to discs. In fact, the N64 did have in some ways better hardware on its lonesome than the PS1. But that didn’t matter; Sony did to Nintendo was what Nintendo did to Sega (then later on, Microsoft hilariously strolled in and did to Sony’s PS3 what Sony did to Nintendo’s N64). Technology is always a matter of constraints and trade-offs; processor speed is of no value apart form that consideration.
Anyway, that’s my view, and I think it goes to the heart of the issue. I may even make a blog post on it.
I don’t disagree. I wasn’t debating who was right or successful or had the best supply chain management. All I said was Nintendo rarely has the most advanced hardware on the market when they launch. People seem to think I’m arguing that the Neo Geo was “better” or “more successful” than the SNES. I said no such thing.
In the context of competition between the consoles, the question of whether anyone actually bought a particular console is absolutely relevant. If nobody bought it, who cares how powerful it was?
Bullshit. The Dreamcast was a sixth generation system. The N64 was a fifth. Of course the Dreamcast was more powerful. But the N64 blew the PS1 out of the water, powerwise. The only thing the PS1 had going for it was the bigger storage capacity of CDs, which is used to create cinematic games that the N64 mostly wasn’t capable of (RE2 and Zelda: OoT being notable exception).
And again, the SNES was more powerful than the Genesis and the GameCube was way more powerful than the PS2 and almost as powerful as the Xbox.
Being the biggest, baddest graphics machine was absolutely Nintendo’s thing until the Wii came along.
Also, excellent job demolishing an argument, again, that I never made. I don’t care that the Gamecube was more powerful that the PS2. That wasn’t my point. You really need to work on your reading comprehension.
Don’t insult me with this lame dodging act. Not thirty minutes ago you wrote:
You’re wrong. Which is exactly what my post showed.
ETA: And now you’re trying to edit away your mistakes. Great.
You can’t compare a console created in 1996 with a console created in 1999 and expect the '96 console to even come close. The whole point of a console is that it’s technical specs are static throughout it’s entire lifespan. If you don’t know this, you don’t belong in a thread about the “console war.”
That damn well was your point and I refer you to your post quoted above as proof.
Are you really this obtuse? Yes, I said Nintendo rarely has the most advanced hardware on the market when they launch. And you pull out…wait for it…the Gamecube, which is, in your words, “almost as powerful as the Xbox,” and so NOT the most advanced hardware on the market and then keep parroting “SNES is better than the Genesis” even though my example was the Neo Geo.
You just ignore the actual points and hit your Nintendo fanboy autotext key.
The NeoGeo wasn’t a home console. It was a multi-cartridge arcade format that SNK also marketed (unsuccessfully) as a console. It doesn’t belong in this discussion.
As for the GameCube, it may have been slightly less powerful than the Xbox, but the two systems were very close (and there are some people that tout the GameCube as more powerful even today) and Nintendo did it for $100 cheaper. That’s damn impressive and shows that Nintendo cared very much about having the most powerful system on the market until the Wii.
ETA:
The Genesis and the SNES are considered part of the same generation.
Oh my god. It doesn’t matter what’s considered part of what generation for what I said. I said most advanced hardware ON THE MARKET AT LAUNCH. Period.
NOT “most advanced of its commonly agreed-upon generation”
NOT “most impressive performance for price”
NOT “most advanced of the consoles whose marketing as a console was substandard”
This is stupid. I’m not going to argue about this anymore. I love Nintendo, have owned virtually every single piece of hardware they’ve put out, and I didn’t think that was a controversial statement. If you still need to get your panties in a twist that anyone dare say anything negative about Nintendo, have at it.
I agree with ReticulatingSplines, 'cause it’s the truth. It’s hardly a secret that Nintendo cuts every corner on its hardware in order to keep its margins healthy. If they released a better than console than someone, it’s either because the other company was playing the same game or they launched years later. Nintendo isn’t known for having good hardware. Don’t think about it in terms of how it compared to other consoles, consider what they had to work with at the time. For example, the OPL2 chip had been out for years when the SNES launched, but the SNES used an inferior custom chip 'cause that’d help Nintendo’s bottom line.
Actually, the SNES chip is probably better than the five-year-old OPL2.
What about the stuff Reggie was saying earlier in the year about $2.99 iOS shovelware putting the squeeze on $30 Wii shovelware? Is Nintendo going to lose the casual market to the iPad and Zynga-esque software?
And I’m going to flip flop again and say the OPL2-based sound setup was better than the SNES setup. More range > Superior quality.
Nintendo doesn’t really give a shit about third party shovelware producers. And every Super Mario game sells like hotcakes, so I think they’ll be fine.
ETA: Plus, iPhone games being in competition with console games is just a fever dream of the Angry Birds CEO.
Aren’t they though? They’re both demands on the casual gamer’s time. Certainly they’re no risk to the core or whatever, but I’m not too convinced for the other side.
I don’t think anybody’s saying that the iPhone is competing with the Wii. But it absolutely is competing with the DS/ 3DS, and is catching up at a rather startling rate. Sure, lots of those games being sold on iOS are minigames like “Angry Birds,” but there are quite a few full-featured games like “Lego Harry Potter,” which are doing quite well on iOS.
(And in the end, does it really matter if a given title is a full-featured game or not? You could make a similar argument about “Wii Sports” versus “Halo: Reach,” but I doubt any modern analyst would deny that the former is unquestionably a major video game product.)
Moderator’s Note: Justin_Bailey, I’ll humbly ask if it is, perhaps, worth reflection that before opening this thread I knew you would be in the thick of it? Nevertheless, I hold you faultless in terms of the rules, of course. No warning issued.
ReticulatingSplines
While I understand that this is a heated topic for many - myself included - that is no excuse for personal attacks of the kind quoted below. I am not giving you a Warning this time, but failure to heed this will result in Warnings.