Could the release of Black Ice/White Noise saved the Jaguar and Atari?

[marigul]

One major thing that could have saved the Jag (and Jag CD) was no PSX being released Wipeout XL, Crash Bandicoot, Tobal #1 (640*200 goraud shaded at 60fps), Tekken, etc. it was all over.

Ironically many people who worked on/launched the Jag launched ps1 too!

[phoenixdownita]

One major thing that could have saved the Jag (and Jag CD) was no PSX being released Wipeout XL, Crash Bandicoot, Tobal #1 (640*200 goraud shaded at 60fps), Tekken, etc. it was all over.

Not sure, I bet the Saturn would have emerged as "the platform of that era" ... granted that if there was no PS1 then the Saturn itself would have been a different machine by Sega own admission .... I think I need to inhale some Jag fumes to put into perspective the chained WHAT IF.

[Otto1980]

think BIWN would gain the JagCD and also the Jag Sales at that time for sure.

 

If the final game would be good and you immediately anounce the sequel with improvements you could raise the sales

Sequel because sony, sega and nintendo would not take a lot of time to bringe an answers with their development horsepower

[Flojomojo]

One major thing that could have saved the Jag (and Jag CD) was no PSX being released Wipeout XL, Crash Bandicoot, Tobal #1 (640*200 goraud shaded at 60fps), Tekken, etc. it was all over.

 

I think Playstation brought in a lot more people outside the usual "gamer" circles. 3Dfx cards were coming of age then, too -- and were starting to get cheaper.

 

I don't think believe Jaguar would have done well regardless of the competition -- there was not enough development in the pipe, and not enough resources being thrown their way, for Atari to do much with their platform. Sony had more than games, they had a programmer's library to make it easy to develop on their system.

[phoenixdownita]

think BIWN would gain the JagCD and also the Jag Sales at that time for sure.

 

If the final game would be good and you immediately anounce the sequel with improvements you could raise the sales

Sequel because sony, sega and nintendo would not take a lot of time to bringe an answers with their development horsepower

Big IF and then segway to a sequel as if small teams have a chance to do back to back development in such short notice.

Also if you immediately announce the sequel with improvements you may alienate some buyers that just bought the damn thing .... without improvements you already knew you could put in (a "crappy" prequel basically) ... right??

 

EDIT: emphasis/coloring of Otto1980 post is OBVIOUSLY mine, added note here after he complained about it ....

[Zerosquare]

Yeah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

[Otto1980]

Big IF and then segway to a sequel as if small teams have a chance to do back to back development in such short notice.

Also if you immediately announce the sequel with improvements you may alienate some buyers that just bought the damn thing .... without improvements you already knew you could put in (a "crappy" prequel basically) ... right??

 

boy, please do not tamper sophisticate my posts anymore

(i dont post in bold red or underlined or yellowgaymargentaorange or something else)

[Stage_1_Boss]

I knew I forgot a color in my avatar's hair, gaymargenta!

[phoenixdownita]

boy, please do not tamper sophisticate my posts anymore

(i dont post in bold red or underlined or yellowgaymargentaorange or something else)

Why not, daddy?

What's a yellowgaymargentaorange aside from homophobic slur for no real reason.

 

Yeah I forgot to add "emphasis/coloring mine" about your post, I fixed that check it out.

 

Note: emphasis/coloring mine, let's be clear.

[+remowilliams]

Hey at least someone stepped up to sophisticate that stuff, it's a dirty job but someones gotta do it.

[ZylonBane]

segway

 

Sigh.

[Sapicco]

Is there a good video to this game? I found one, but it seems to be missing sound.

[Bill Loguidice]

think BIWN would gain the JagCD and also the Jag Sales at that time for sure.

 

If the final game would be good and you immediately anounce the sequel with improvements you could raise the sales

Sequel because sony, sega and nintendo would not take a lot of time to bringe an answers with their development horsepower

 

You do realize the sales numbers we're talking about here at the end of the Jaguar's life, right, just prior to clearance? The numbers are staggeringly bad, something like 150,000 units out in the wild total, with only about 125,000 of those sold. Its biggest sales YEAR was 1994, when it sold a little over 80,000 units. The other two years were only a fraction of that amount (and the CD add-on's sales were a fraction still). In any case, even with them sitting on something like an additional 100,000 consoles back in the warehouse, it's unlikely its fortunes would have been changed by a single amazing game, even in the incredibly unlikely event it actually got finished at a point when it still might have mattered. The sales numbers were just that bad. The window for the Jaguar to even remotely save itself was really within its first year, particularly when you factor in the financial position of Atari. Once that first year passed and the system didn't take off, it was just a matter of time before Atari would have to bow out.

[Video]

I remember seeing info about it way back when. The CD killed it, I still don't have one, despite most homebrew being released on CD I still don't see me getting one I would have loved to see this game release though and it may very well have been the tipping point to get me to purchase the drive. Iron soldier 2 nearly did, but that has since been reformatted to a cart.

[Swansea_Mariner]

Did the developer's estimate how complete the final build is? The video's I've seen do look quality.

[phoenixdownita]

Did the developer's estimate how complete the final build is? The video's I've seen do look quality.

Estimations are meaningless, everyone knows that the last 10% takes up 90% of the time, and then there's the last polish.

Unless the demo is the RC build reduced to play on a limited set of environments then even if they tell you 65% or 75% or 85% you're no closer to infer how much longer it would have taken.

[+madman]

Estimations are meaningless, everyone knows that the last 10% takes up 90% of the time, and then there's the last polish.

Well unless you only intend to release the least buggy version of a game.

[+remowilliams]

Well unless you only intend to release the least buggy version of a game.

 

Who's got time for that kind of effort..

[Lost Dragon]

@Bill:

 

It puts Jaguar sales into a cold light of day type scenario, when we were hearing from Sega Europe's Andy Mee, how Sega had sold 300,000 Saturn units in 7 days in America, thanks to a thanks giving deal, bundling 3 games in with the hardware.

 

The biggest tragedy with Black Ice White Noise, isn't that it might of saved the Jaguar (Atari's honeymoon period had long since past, the hardware had been on borrowed time ever since then), but that it wasn't bought out and developed on something like the Saturn...

 

With Sega's resources fully behind it.

[MightyFrog]

Just wanted to say I really enjoyed the episode, the Jag hadn't been on my mind in a while and your podcast rekindled my interest.

[Adriano Arcade]

Just wanted to say I really enjoyed the episode, the Jag hadn't been on my mind in a while and your podcast rekindled my interest.

Thanks MightyFrog for listening and your kind words! Much appreciated!

[Pete5125]

nope, biwn wouldn't of changed much of anything, arcade perfect port of mk3 on cartridge or a football game of john madden quality or higher

[leech]

What potentially could have saved the Jag is if they had released it with the CD. Everything at that point should have been CD based, so much cheaper to reproduce and can store so much data. With the exception of the N64, the Jag was the last cartridge based system released.

[+madman]

What potentially could have saved the Jag is if they had released it with the CD. Everything at that point should have been CD based, so much cheaper to reproduce and can store so much data. With the exception of the N64, the Jag was the last cartridge based system released.

Nope.

[Bill Loguidice]

Looking at the historically poor sales and Atari's weak financial standing, unless the Jaguar REALLY took off in its first year (and even then it's iffy), nothing would have changed its fate. I don't think being the penultimate cartridge-based console (if you don't consider the Switch a pure console) rather than a CD-based console made that much of a difference. In fact, the way the Jaguar and Jaguar CD worked, it seems like the CD functionality was a liability in some ways. In any case, at the time, cartridges were still the most popular console format, so it doesn't explain away the trickle of first year software and the middling quality of a lot of the games going forward. Media really wouldn't change any of those negatives (software quality, who chose to support the Jaguar, etc.) other than perhaps seeing a handful of more games released.

 

Do you know what might be fun? You know how there are those alternate history fiction novels where Germany wins the war? Someone needs to whip up some dramatic historical fiction where consoles like the Jaguar actually succeed. It might cut down on one or two of these threads.