Eyemsougly

If we are talking about actually released software I agree that the 3DO appeared better, but do you seriously think 3DO games would have looked that good if they had the level of 3rd party support that the Jaguar did? It just isn't a level playing field. I remember being very impressed when I first saw Fight for Life beta but this thread inspired me to go take another look at it and it was pretty terrible so please forget I mentioned it.

Have you seen the finished Fight for Life game that was recently released? It was almost as good as Saturn's Virtua Fighter. When game makers start sticking extra chips in their cartridges, it is because the console itself is nearing it's end and the game makers are trying to max out the consoles capability. Cybermorph, IronSoldier, Superburnout and Fight for Life were done by 2nd rate developers early on in the console's life and were technically superior to the absolute best things the Genesis and SNES could produce at the end of their lives, with extra chips and the most elite game companies. Arguing that the 3DO is technically superior to the Jaguar is a legitimate (although I think probably incorrect) opinion but arguing that the Jaguar is not superior to hardware to the Genesis or SNES is not. The Jag is a legit 5th generation as even it's half assed, crappy library of games made by 3 man development teams clearly demonstrates.

No way that Iron Soldier, Superburnout, Cybermorph or Fight for Life could have been done on the SNES or Genesis without an extra chip in the cartridge and perhaps even with it. When the Jaguar was released it was the best hardware on the market until the Saturn came out 2 years later.

1. Are we also assuming that Atari had more money and a robust game division ala Sega or Nintendo? Because that is the only way I could see this working out. 2. Err... I don't think better games alone would have been enough. It would need to be marketed to hard core gamers, like the 3DO was, instead of kids and there was no way for a company as small as Atari to sell consoles at a loss and survive because the absolute ceiling for Jaguar sales can't possibly be any more than 2 million, so there is no way to recoup losses from game sales. 3. I never saw the problem with the 64 bit campaign. "64 bit" was the only way to say 5th generation and more advanced hardware than SNES or Genesis. Both claims, by the way, were categorically true. I'm the first to admit that the Jaguar was the 2nd worst 5th gen console but a 5th gen console it undoubtedly was.

As for the tech debate: As an (admittedly terrible) web developer, game programming stuff is way over my head. Can any of the game programmers here who've worked with both Jaguar and PS hardware offer their analysis of LeGrand's claims?

Exactly. The only possible way the Jaguar could have succeeded was as a niche console with a unique library of games. Games like Cybermorph and IronSoldier. If there needed to be Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racer clones, and I think that would have really helped, then Atari need to develop them in house. If Atari didn't have the resources to develop such games than it had no business selling consoles in the first place.

Honestly, I think hating on things is more fun than liking them. How anybody could say the Neo Geo was better than the Jag is beyond me. The Jaguar is obviously superior. I guess the 3DO was better than the Jaguar but the Jaguar would have been better if it had a better library. It was better hardware for less money. Also I like that it had cartridges instead of CD's. And I would like to point out that there was no 3DO "Iron Soldier". At the time there was no other home console game as cool as Iron Soldier.

Like I said earlier, I am now convinced that there was no way the Jaguar could have succeeded but I still don't see the games as a big deal if Atari actually was capable of making good first party games. The Jaguar's library could have consisted mainly of games made by Atari's game division and indy games that Atari published, like Super Burnout. Iron Soldier was probably the coolest game on any home console when it came out and it was produced by some no name company. If you aren't losing money on your console sales, I don't see why you need tremendous third party support.

does anybody have any idea of the unit production costs of a Jaguar console?

I hate all portable gaming systems except for the gameboy which I liked as a kid but now think is stupid. I don't see mobile games as the future of gaming because mobile gaming sucks. Phones are for talking and texting, not playing shitty games on a tiny screen with no buttons.

This is a little off topic, but if everybody here agrees that there was no way for the Jaguar to succeed (and now even I'm convinced) what do you think would have been Atari's best option? Some of you have suggested a sequel to the Lynx but I'm not even sure the PSP and Game Gear were profitable so I'm not sure that's the right path. Plus the Lynx was terrible. I'm not getting the love for it. Would it have been possible for Atari to just pivot to software development? Sega ended up doing the same thing less than a decade after the Jaguar was released so maybe Atari could have made it work.

My family didn't have cable and I never got video game magazines.

I have no memory of it whatsoever. All I remember is adds for SNES and Genesis. I remember the Saturn being a big deal a couple of years later cause you could play Virtua Fighter on it, at the time my favorite game. I also never heard of the Atari 2600 growing up nor did I know that Sega had an 8 bit system before they released the Genesis. I thought that the NES was the first non-pong home video game console ever built and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. For me, my consoles went like this: NES, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox360. I'll probably get a PS4 when I go back home and I assume that will be the last console I'll ever get. The end of an era.

So Microsoft was willing to do something that they knew was going to lose money just to prevent the possibility that Sony would end up using gaming to dominate the non gaming electronics market? If true that would at least make sense. I could never wrap my head around the idea that Microsoft was deliberately losing money for just "prestige".

Has Microsoft ever actually made any money in the console gaming business? I have been unable to find a clear answer on that. Sony did lose billions on the PS3, correct?

I'm unfamiliar with the betamax but the CDi wasn't really a pure console, it was sort of a console/cd player/pc hybrid. I just looked it up and despite being heavily advertised for it only sold a million units, so maybe my 2 million sales for the Jaguar is unrealistic. I would say one key difference is that 20+ years later most people think that the Jaguar was a cool system with some really good games whereas people think that the CDi basically sucked and nobody would ever waste key strokes talking about it. Also, at best the CDi as a console was a suped up Genesis in terms of capabilities but the Atari was a legit 5th gen console and more like a poor man's Saturn.

I really hated the Game Gear whereas I loved the Gameboy. I think the Lynx (which I also never heard of until the aforementioned AVGN episode) looked like a poor man's game gear. Just a bad idea.

It's true you could do a what if with any hardware but the reason I think it is worthwhile to do with the Jaguar is because the Jaguar really was a good system that was ahead of it's time, had a great brand name and still failed beyond miserably. We aren't talking like the way the Dreamcast failed where it still sold over 10 million units but rather what probably is the biggest failure in the history of gaming consoles. And like I said in my initial post, there is a wall to wall consensus now that there was no possible way the Jaguar could ever have been a commercial success. I think it could have because the Atari 7800 sold horribly and was still a commercial success. As for the European angle: growing up in America in the early 90s I actually never even heard of the Jaguar. I didn't know about it until a few months ago when I saw an old AVGN about it. But I know from reading about it that they did advertise heavily in the States, I just must have missed it, along with apparently 100s of millions of other people.

Hey guys. The consensus online seems to be that while, yeah, Atari made some mistakes with the Jaguar it was absolutely doomed to failure no matter what. I want to offer an alternative history where the Jaguar could have found commercial success as a niche console, similar to the 7800, if Atari had a different business plan. This alternate plan requires that before anything else, Atari recognizes right out of the gate it does not have the resources to compete with Nintendo and Sega head on and instead needs to carve out it's own small corner in the gaming industry but that this could still be profitable. With that in mind, here is what I think Atari should have done: 1. On the hardware front, add a dust guard to the cartridge slot and remove those stupid looking buttons from the controller. Those changes wouldn't cost the company any extra money and would be easy fixes to implement. The lack of a dust guard was just a bad design and those buttons are really lame and made the console seem like a throwback to the 2nd generation. 2. Dump the Lynx and the CD add on. There was never any room in the hand held market for anything besides the Game Gear and Gameboy so the Lynx was a terrible idea and in my plan the Jaguar is only mean to be a niche console anyway so there will never be enough sales to merit add ons. Both the Lynx and the CD add on were a waste of scarce resources. 3. Drastically reduce the advertising budget. We're not competing with Nintendo, Sega and Sony so no need to advertise on TV slots. Use (relatively) cheap adds in gaming magazines since our target market is hardcore gamers only. 4. A lot of money have been saved with less advertising and getting rid of the Lynx and CD; some of these resources can be put back in to game development. The most important thing is to develop a quality, 3d knock off of Virtua Fighter which should be sold as the system's pack in game. Virtua Fighter was huge in 93 and so many people wanted to play the game at home, even if it wasn't a perfect arcade port. It would also be a good demonstration of the systems capabilities. 5. Do not sell the system at a loss. Again, we aren't Nintendo, Sony or Sega and there is no hope of us every recouping our loss through game sales because our market just isn't big enough. We aren't fighting for market share so no need to get in to price wars. Now maybe somebody can correct my numbers but I believe that the system could be sold with a pack in at 500 dollars a unit and break even so lets go with that. 6. Since the console is selling at cost, Atari can afford to adopt a liberal licensing policy with lower fees which means a bigger library and cheaper games. Okay, so Atari does all these things, but I think the question you all will now have is "if it's selling at 500, why even buy it?". Here are the reasons: 1. When it's released it is only in competition with the 3DO and NeoGeo as 5th generation consoles. The Saturn and Playstation won't be coming out for two more years. The Jaguar is at least as good a piece of hardware as the 3DO and NeoGeo, with a better library of games and is even a tad cheaper. The 3DO and NeoGeo literally sold millions of units, no reason the superior Jaguar couldn't have taken at least half of their sales. 2. It's cool and "quirky". It is made in the US and has the iconic Atari name. 3. It has a unique library that other systems can't match. Just like today people buy inferior Nintendo hardware because they want to play Nintendo games, Atari could have done the same thing on a smaller level. Also, due to cheap licensing, the games are cheaper and more developers are willing to program for it. And since Atari doesn't have the need to be "family friendly" that the big 3 do, it can allow companies to program "adult" games like they did for the 2600. 4. There was still a strong interest in quality 2d games all the way into the late 90s, and the Jaguar as a tweener system between the 4th and 5th generation can do 2d better than the Genesis or SNES. For gamers looking for new, high quality 2d games the Jaguar will be the best option available to them. If Atari had done all of this I could see the Jaguar selling around 2 million units and being profitable for Atari although I think that Atari would probably decide to forego developing consoles and thereafter focusing on its gaming division like Sega would do less than a decade later. What do you guys think?