What could have saved the Jag?

[Jag64]

3 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

... yet another case of if only ...

This is what almost every "fork" seems to boiled down to in this thread. It must be borderline maddening for the old timers. They're like, "These idiots with this sh** again?" (I'm picturing annoyed Lord of the Rings trees or something)

 

If only Argonaut Games had ...

 

If only the Lynx had ...

 

If only the distribution could've ...

 

And every "if" seems to "only" point back to the decision makers at Atari. The family name escapes me, at the moment.? Foster third-party relationships? No. Support successful products? No. The more I look at the Jaguar, and the final days of the Atari we knew, the more it looks like Sam Tramiel was stuck in a perpetual pissing contest, but hadn't taken a sip of water since 1986. *That metaphor went off the rails

 

[zzip]

4 hours ago, Jag64 said:

They managed to take the second most recognizable brand in the world, and completely run it into the ground in under 10 years. Because as we found out, Atari was dead long before the Atari Jaguar failed spectacularly. It's almost unthinkable to imagine a family or group of people so insanely inept today, that they could destroy a brand that valuable in such a short time.

What's really unthinkable is the 2nd biggest brand in the world could be taken private on nostly promissory notes and run more like a family business rather than a major corporation..    The Tramiels got lucky.  Because of the crash they snatched Atari up at extreme fire-sale prices.   in a normal situation, it would have gone to a much bigger fish.

[Lostdragon]

34 minutes ago, Jag64 said:

This is what almost every "fork" seems to boiled down to in this thread. It must be borderline maddening for the old timers. They're like, "These idiots with this sh** again?" (I'm picturing annoyed Lord of the Rings trees or something)

 

If only Argonaut Games had ...

 

If only the Lynx had ...

 

If only the distribution could've ...

 

And every "if" seems to "only" point back to the decision makers at Atari. The family name escapes me, at the moment.? Foster third-party relationships? No. Support successful products? No. The more I look at the Jaguar, and the final days of the Atari we knew, the more it looks like Sam Tramiel was stuck in a perpetual pissing contest, but hadn't taken a sip of water since 1986. *That metaphor went off the rails

 

It goes hand in hand with the personal accounts of commercial 7800,Lynx and Jaguar developers so often, they had to beg for larger cartridge space and more often than not, were refused even then... 

 

Scolded for needing bigger cartridges, Tramiel policy was to cut content till it would fit and then the consumer lost a level from the Arcade version, or a bonus sequence 

 

 

You'd have Atari marketing and P. R waxing lyrical about how big cartridges could be on Lynx and Jaguar... 

 

How titles like Steel Talons would be the first to showcase the STE hardware.. 

 

The Tramiel's loved using the games press as free advertising, who's just signed up, what titles they'd be bringing. 

 

 

But behind the scenes they were paying late, refusing to listen, cutting budgets.. 

 

We the loyal consumers got shafted. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Lostdragon

[+cubanismo]

On 4/7/2022 at 2:11 AM, Jag64 said:

It's almost unthinkable to imagine a family or group of people so insanely inept today, that they could destroy a brand that valuable in such a short time.

I dunno, give him time:

 

Seriously though, it's not like failures in the console business or larger electronics industry were unprecedented at the time. From a business point of view, it was a period of shake-out and consolidation as the business models and industry matured. Translating that to the end user experience, it was both a golden age and a frustrating time to be an enthusiast. It was the last time a lot of cool new creative design ideas were tried, and it was sad to see so many of them inevitably fail as the deep pockets (Sony, MS later) and steady hands (Nintendo) rode out the storm. Sega imploded themselves in a single console generation. Warner more or less destroyed Atari as a company, if not a brand, before the Tramiels ever got there. From the few accounts I've read from people actually working at Atari or with the Tramiels during the Jaguar time-frame, they at least tried to keep up relations with developers and weren't actively trying to run the company into the ground for their own profit like this guy. Yeah, they appear to have burned bridges with the press. Well, to the extent the press essentially amount to critics, Jay-Z got it about right in 99 Problems. Yeah, some developers bet big on the Jaguar and got burned. That sucks, and I don't want to paper over whatever impact that had on them, but you can't really blame Atari for trying to convince developers to go along with them. Hell, most people complain that they didn't do *more* of this convincing. It appears some developers may not have been paid, or at least not promptly and that's the worst. Don't want to play down the not getting paid at all part in the least, but businesses of all types tend to pay on a "when we're ready" schedule. Anyone who builds a small business that is reliant on the assumption large corporations will pay their bills this month, this quarter, or even this financial year are in for a rude awakening. Lastly, so the Tramiels didn't bet their own house on an already faltering house? So what? Good business men never put their own money in the game. Passionate ones do and brand fans love them for it, but it doesn't make the Tramiels villains. It just makes them average. [Edit: I'd be remiss not to mention that Sega only survived this period because their president forgave $730M in debts when he died. Now that's a seriously respectable move, but again, the exception, not the norm] The Tramiels did a hell of a lot more than anyone did to keep the brand alive for the next few decades.

Jumping past those decades for a moment, let's consider the latest incarnation of Atari. I have to admit I kind of like it. Yes, they are blatantly cashing in on nostalgia for the brand, but at least they're more or less open about that, and are being a little bit creative about it. They could have turned it over to a brand management agency that just skimmed 10% or whatever off a boatload of cheap T-shirts, mugs, etc., shit out a new licensed mini console iteration every Christmas, and sat on the rest. Whatever constitutes shareholders these days probably won't stand for them investing >$0 in anything ambitious, so options are likely very limited. In spite of that, they've put out another console (sort of) complete with a marketplace and some not-awful industrial design. It shipped, and AFAICT it does what they said it would do, which is more than you can say for a a lot of things. It probably won't work, but nice effort given they probably had substantially less money to work on it than old Atari had for the Jaguar. They are building and/or licensing hotels. WTF? Again, long shot, but hey, it's not a T-shirt. They were doing stuff with crypto that is at least reasonable and technically sound before everyone started climbing over each-other to offer NFTs without even knowing how blockchains work (Did Nike really benefit from this for example? It wreaks of desperation to be part of something they don't understand, and they're a "real" company).

 

I don't know if anyone can really verify it without going back in time and observing, but I like to think the Tramiels were doing the same. They took big shots with the Lynx and Jaguar. They apparently felt they needed to bet everything on them, and the technology in both was amazing, so it's not like they were betting on dead apes. That means some people's favorites got shit on, and it didn't work out, but that doesn't make them the villains of the story in my book. At least they weren't just trying to sell more 2600's rather than build something new, to the extent that the industry itself nearly died of oversaturation, while actively killing the culture that made the company great like the previous guys, or converting it into a T-shirt company. If you want to do clever financial things to be evil, you pick something less complex than a tech company. A real estate holding company masquerading as a retailer, for example. Or, you really dive in head first and just sell technology that doesn't exist (For the love of god, can someone tell me how Elizabeth Holmes still lives as if she's rich? Her company literally made nothing and died, but she seems to have profited from it somehow, which does not seem to be a one-off occurrence in the startup world.). The Tramiels had a not-sneaky out/backup plan, and they took it, but they appear to have put in a solid effort to right the ship first.

Edited April 8, 2022 by cubanismo
Props to Isao Okawa were due

[Jag64]

20 hours ago, cubanismo said:

... That means some people's favorites got shit on, and it didn't work out, but that doesn't make them the villains of the story in my book. ...

The "villainy" to me comes in the form of lying and manipulation. "A good businessman gambles others' money, not their own." You're right. We've all heard some form of that; we've all seen it in practice. It's true. And the point about most of the "bad blood" being from fans that feel like their favorite brand(s) got crapped on - also true. They're just emotionally tied to products and a time in their life when things were simpler.

 

But here's why the Tramiels (those not in Hades already) are walking piles of poo to me, and it's not because they made some bad business decisions, but because they knowingly lied to both partners and the consumer. People make bad decisions; no one is perfect. omg do I mess up a lot. And sometimes, it takes me forever to even realize it. Yet if you twist the truth to partners to benefit the consumer, at least you're not fking everybody... You manipulate the consumer a bit for sales so you help your partners, then at least you're not fking everybody.

 

You look at the Crapfells and there isn't any perspective where it doesn't always shake out that the long and short of it is, "The Tramiels knowingly and intentionally fked everybody not named Tramiel." If they did that by accident, then take away the "Good Businessman" title too. ?

[Lostdragon]

On 4/6/2022 at 10:35 PM, JagChris said:

Preliminary interest or people wanting to be notified when it was available. Whatever. Something was going on. I have trouble believing Daryl would make up stories out of whole cloth about upset parents dumping trash cans in lobbies.

Meant to include these at the time, but. 

 

 

From an old interview with Darryl

 

 

RougeTrooper

The Jaguar UK pre-official launch, hopes were for several thousand machines to be made available, but HMV and Virgin got less than 100 units each and they only reached stores in time for Xmas Eve. Store managers and people who had pre-ordered consoles were very vocal about their anger, at a time when retailers weren’t exactly swayed with confidence about Atari’s handling of past hardware. Just how much ‘damage’ do you feel incidents like this caused?

 

 

 

Darryl

To put it simply, I think the lack of supply in an area where we had built up real demand did more damage than any other factor in Jaguar’s life. I’ve covered it above, but we in the UK took the brunt of the anger, and shared much of it, if I am honest. I still do not totally know whether the US kept them all for themselves or just could not get them built…but lack of sales stateside do suggest the latter.

 

And.. 

 

 

"I think giving us the first stocks and giving us a bigger input into the software development process would have helped a lot, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure either policy would have made the difference that was needed at that time" 

 

So he did make clear the low number of machines made available for retailers, was a UK issue, not European and even if they had received far greater numbers, it  might not of done anything for the Jaguar in the long term. 

 

 

He also talked of issues with the Lynx gaining traction in the UK 

 

 

" I never felt the likes of Dixons ever really got behind it, unfortunately, and whilst we had a dedicated Atari audience we never managed to break out to the mainstream" 

 

 

Germany not wanting the Atari hardware being associated as gaming machines:

 

"That would be down to Atari Germany not wanting Atari to be seen as a games brand. They were focussed entirely on DTP and CAD/CAM and really had no interest in the console side of things. Lynx did OK in UK and France in the early days." 

 

 

 

So if Lynx only did OK in UK and France, Germany didn't want to push Atari as a gaming brand, you've really got to ask where the supposed preorder demand for Jaguar would of come from, European wise.. 

 

 

 

He's also been honest enough to admit he made mistakes when reporting on the Jaguar to the UK Press at the time, claiming it was technically on par with the Sega Saturn :

 

"I tend to lean on others and soak up like a sponge regarding the key bullet points to focus on in this area, so if I was talking bollocks at the time (and it has been known) my only defence is that I was badly advised." 

 

 

 

And he probably  did make up a few things from time to time... 

 

 

108 Stars

There are claims that at one point the Lynx outsold Game Gear in the UK. Is that true?

Darryl

I probably made those claims….not sure there was much foundation in fact, but at our peak, we would have been close I’d imagine.

 

 

[Lostdragon]

On 4/6/2022 at 10:35 PM, JagChris said:

Preliminary interest or people wanting to be notified when it was available. Whatever. Something was going on. I have trouble believing Daryl would make up stories out of whole cloth about upset parents dumping trash cans in lobbies.

I think the UK Sega Saturn side needs to be brought into perspective as well, as the Jaguar was not the only console to face shortages and upset parents. 

 

 

"Unlike the Sega Mega Drive, however, Sega Europe had a handle of the four major European markets, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain from the outset. Giochi Preziosi continued with Italian distribution and the system was catered for in smaller countries too, but the Saturn marks a period where country-wide plans converged on a single "European" strategy."

 

 

So a rather different story to Atari UK and markets Darryl Still was responsible for... 

 

 

" 5,000 units were sold in the UK during its first week of sale, though there were (potentially fabricated) European-wide shortages at first, with an estimated 30,000 initially planned to ship across the region (20,000 of which were allocated to the UK, 10,000 Saturns had been sold in the UK within two weeks, with software moving at a higher rate than the 3DO. However, many UK retailers were forced to turn customers away during the first week due to a lack of stock supplied to distributors. 

 

 

 

https://segaretro.org/History_of_the_Sega_Saturn/Release#Europe
 

 

 

 

[Jag64]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

I think the UK Sega Saturn side needs to be brought into perspective as well, as the Jaguar was not the only console to face shortages and upset parents. 

 

 

"Unlike the Sega Mega Drive, however, Sega Europe had a handle of the four major European markets, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain from the outset. Giochi Preziosi continued with Italian distribution and the system was catered for in smaller countries too, but the Saturn marks a period where country-wide plans converged on a single "European" strategy."

 

 

So a rather different story to Atari UK and markets Darryl Still was responsible for... 

 

 

" 5,000 units were sold in the UK during its first week of sale, though there were (potentially fabricated) European-wide shortages at first, with an estimated 30,000 initially planned to ship across the region (20,000 of which were allocated to the UK, 10,000 Saturns had been sold in the UK within two weeks, with software moving at a higher rate than the 3DO. However, many UK retailers were forced to turn customers away during the first week due to a lack of stock supplied to distributors. 

 

 

 

https://segaretro.org/History_of_the_Sega_Saturn/Release#Europe
 

 

 

 

If we've learned anything from the two examples here, Atari and Sega, it's to make sure you have enough units to ship at launch, or you probably won't be making consoles much longer. (And to the drooling moron that says, "PS5s hases da shortages, uh doy, George." Yes, you troglodyte. But there are games for the the thing and the demand lasted beyond the launch day. Also, Sony's president isn't known as a lying POS by every single person in the media and retail like Sammy Trammy was either.)

 

Seriously though, I wish Atari and SEGA were still making consoles, because I associate the two with my youth, and there's no other reason to have an emotional attachment to a company brand, unless I ate lead paint chips while hitting myself in the head with a brick as a kid.

 

**Kind of get a little split direction (Sega of Japan and Sega of America) tripping things up. Clearly miscommunication and differences of opinion between Atari in the US and its partners in Europe.

[MAYAman]

On 4/6/2022 at 4:45 PM, Albert said:

There was no pre-ordering back then, you went to the store and bought what you wanted, if it was available. 

 

I purchased my Jaguar at a Nobody Beats the Wiz in Framingham, Massachusetts the first day they had them in stock.  I also bought my Jaguar CD in a retail store when they first became available, although I don't recall where I purchased that.  The receipt may still be in my Jaguar CD box.  The Jaguar, Jaguar CD, and Atari Lynx are the only Atari systems I bought "new" when they came out that I still own.  All my older Atari systems (consoles and computers) were sold at some point before I got into retrogaming over 25 years ago.

 

 ..Al

This isn't true at all, it wasn't blanket policy across the industry to not do pre-orders. I worked for VGA magazine and also cyberactive publishing which owned several distributorships and video game stores.

 

For instance for mortal Kombat on both super Nintendo and Sega Genesis we took pre-orders in the hundreds that's several of our stores. That way we had an idea of how many units to buy for our retail outlets, and we encouraged the other retail outlets we supported both in the United States and Europe to do pre-orders as well.

 

When we first started carrying snk's Neo Geo we also had to do pre-orders as they were very few units available even to us, and that was even earlier. 

 

So while pre-orders weren't common practice by any stretch, pre-orders were definitely a thing. And this also included the Japanese systems that we carried months before their US release. 

 

When we started carrying PlayStation and subsequently Nintendo 64 there were most definitely pre-orders. Sam goody, FYE, and several other retailers all had pre-order programs in place for these systems. In fact I believe both babbages and electronics boutique had pre-orders for Nintendo 64.  

[Jag64]

4 hours ago, MAYAman said:

This isn't true at all, it wasn't blanket policy across the industry to not do pre-orders. I worked for VGA magazine and also cyberactive publishing which owned several distributorships and video game stores.

 

For instance for mortal Kombat on both super Nintendo and Sega Genesis we took pre-orders in the hundreds that's several of our stores. That way we had an idea of how many units to buy for our retail outlets, and we encouraged the other retail outlets we supported both in the United States and Europe to do pre-orders as well.

 

When we first started carrying snk's Neo Geo we also had to do pre-orders as they were very few units available even to us, and that was even earlier. 

 

So while pre-orders weren't common practice by any stretch, pre-orders were definitely a thing. And this also included the Japanese systems that we carried months before their US release. 

 

When we started carrying PlayStation and subsequently Nintendo 64 there were most definitely pre-orders. Sam goody, FYE, and several other retailers all had pre-order programs in place for these systems. In fact I believe both babbages and electronics boutique had pre-orders for Nintendo 64.  

Sounds like there were definitely pre-orders in the UK at the time, and we now have a first-hand account, rather than hearsay. So, with pre-orders for MK on Genesis and SNES (Sept-Dec 93) through to pre-orders of the PSone / N64 (94/96), you can verify there were Atari Jaguar (93/94) pre-orders (not asking for a number to confirm anyone else's speculation or put you on the spot, just that you know definitively first-hand that Atari Jaguar pre-orders were taken in the UK)?

[roots.genoa]

He already confirmed that "pre-orders weren't common practice by any stretch", so the 2 million pre-orders still sound dumb to me.

[Lostdragon]

Looks like the waters are getting a little muddy here. 

 

To recap.. 

 

 

It was documented at the time, that major UK retailers were only getting deliveries of machines in single digits. 

 

So your Virgin Megastore, HMV etc in say London or Glasgow takes delivery of say 6 or 8 machines.... 

 

 

A ridiculously small amount for the area and nowhere near enough to fulfil customer orders, customers who indeed did put a deposit or full whack down to reserve a machine as soon as they came in. 

 

We saw mail order firms  offering customers import machines, if you were willing to pay the extra cost. 

 

The fury from retailers was reported in the UK Press at the time and used as a told you so by them, to highlight exactly what they had been saying as soon as the Jaguar had been annouced... 

 

 

Atari will struggle to handle the machine as they simply lack the resources for such a launch in the current market, which was very different to the ST AMIGA environment and you only had to look at the Falcon fiasco to see exactly how new hardware launches by Atari went.

 

 

We also know in the case of Sega with the Saturn, who was responsible for 5 key European markets. 

 

 

Sega Europe dealt with:

 

The Uk

France

Germany

Spain. 

 

Italy was handled by  Giochi Preziosi. 

 

When it comes to Atari.. Darryl Still and his miniscule team handled just the UK. 

 

There were no Press reports from the Tramiel's stating demand for the Jaguar in Europe had reached the dizzying heights of between 2 and 2.5 million, such an event would of been the best PR they could of dreamed of and would of been essential to convince European publishers to back the platform,it was commercially viable. 

 

 

 

No such European demand has ever been documented in any Atari Corporation Annual report. 

 

 

 

Now to break down the apparent origins of the speculation about European Preorders. 

 

 

 

Talk of just how many  units Atari UK could of sold, didn't seem to even appear until after a niche community forum interview with Darryl Still, back in September 2016, was carried out.

 

 

Darryl gave  an anecdotal story about a single angry parent, dumping the contents of a rubbish bin at Atari UK, as they couldn't buy a Jaguar console for their child.. 

 

 Still  also  speculated Atari UK could of sold something like 20X the units they did initally, had more machines been made available to the UK. 

 

 

No harm in either statement 

 

 

Atari anecdotes are 10 a penny.. Jack Tramiel smashed a console up saying this doesn't fly.. 

 

A certain disgruntled HMS coder smashed the toilets up at Sunnyvale before he left, after a drunken binge.. 

 

 

Here's where it all falls apart:

 

There's been no accounts given by any European distributors, heads of retail.

 

Nobody has spoken with likes of Peter Walker, Alistair Bowdin, Bob Gleadow or anyone else involved with the Jaguar from Atari UK to get their accounts. 

 

 

 

The claim then  swirled around quarters of the Internet for a while, before appearing in late 2018 in Retrogamer Magazine's "The Legacy of the Atari Jaguar" article, as FACT. 

 

The magazine itself previously running with  Darryl Still going along with a  suggestion put to him, that the Lynx sold 3 million units (Still admitting whilst he might of known the actual figures at the time, he didn't have the details at hand now, understandable, given amount of years since he'd left Atari), as FACT. 

 

 

I know Marty Goldberg was at one time employed as the magazines Atari Proof Reader /Fact checker, no idea if this was still the case during the time both the Lynx and Jaguar articles were printed. 

 

But the facts simply remain, both articles used figures from a single source, with no documented evidence to back them up, there was little to no vetting process involved, nobody from Atari France, Germany etc used in the Jaguar article and it was speculative nonsense. 

 

But it's a throwaway when done games magazine, not a documented history of Atari at the end of the day and it's articles designed for light reading. 

 

People like Jenovi, Guru Larry took the claim at face value, used in it in their projects (Unreleased Jaguar games video and Fact Hunt Book). 

 

 

Thus has the myth spread.. 

 

[Jag64]

My favorite part of this thread is regardless of which side people land on, someone will add information about some irrelevant sht, and a bunch of toadstools will go, "Rabble rabble rabble. Yes, yes. Hurumph. That proves it." Meanwhile, we have people saying things like, "I saw a Playstation get pre-ordered in 1994," sending a group of thinly grey-hairded idiots into liking posts and going, "Yeaaa, rabble rabble, rabble. We knew it. This proves the Jaguar had pre-orders.

 

Here's the reality, on repeat, the Jaguar couldn't succeed. The Tramiels lacked the money to launch the console.

 

People saying stupid sht like, "I saw a blue car on my street," simply does not confirm the existence of red cars in your neighborhood.

 

You want a clue to identify when someone is full of sht? When you ask them direct questions, and they reply with a bunch of stupid periphery crap, hoping you forgot the original question.

 

I'll ask this in the simplest of terms: "Did anyone see Atari Jaguar pre-orders first-hand?" If anyone replies with something about other consoles being held for mothers around the same time, it means that person lacks reading comprehension skills - or they're intentionally trying to lead away from the question they can't or don't want to answer honestly.

[Lostdragon]

The 'supporting argument' I sometimes hear to back up the European Preorders claim, is that the ST was still going strong in the UK when the Jaguar was officially launched. 

 

Remind me just how much commercial development support the STE and Falcon had? 

 

How many units David Braben said Elite 2 sold... 

 

 

Talk to people from US Gold, Virgin, Core Design, Pysgnosis, Reflections, Gremlin etc and ask them what happened to all the annouced ST titles that were canned. 

 

And ask  what  Atari-specific publications  were still around to promote the Jaguar? 

 

ST Format, by then a mere pamphlet, covering Lynx and Jaguar to make the page count and not a games focused publication to start with. 

 

ST Action didn't seem to survive long.

 

The One ST falling into the same situation.

 

Gamesworld, Gamesmaster, Edge and C+VG being the multiformst publications but Edge was niche... 

 

 

 

No idea of the ABC circulation figures for any of these at their peak, but they were hyping up the 3DO at sametime as the Jaguar, along with the 32X,Atari didn't have the free press spotlight to itself by any measure. 

 

 

The French, German, Italian and Spanish Games press i have looked at, puts the Jaguar coverage behind the 3DO and other systems, so just where was the anticipation for the Jaguar being created? 

 

 

 

Bold claims have to have credible supporting evidence, to date i have seen nothing to even suggest there was huge demand for the Jaguar in Europe. 

 

It's launch was poorly handled, initial optimisim for it's commercial chances soon faded and the press turned to hyping the Saturn, PlayStation and Ultra 64.

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Lostdragon

[42bs]

Result of this longish thread: Nothing! Maybe.... ?

[Lostdragon]

9 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

He already confirmed that "pre-orders weren't common practice by any stretch", so the 2 million pre-orders still sound dumb to me.

Claims from industry figures are always open to interpretation, but you need a degree of common sense at hand before your going to take suggested claims put to likes of Darryl Still and RJ Mical as fact, when it comes to Lynx sales, but it looks like Retrogamer magazine were happy to do just that. 

 

I'm not here to ridicule anyone from the industry, the job of PR itself required a somewhat bullish response.. 

 

Darryl wasn't by far the only person to be overly optimistic... 

 

Bob Gleadow made the claim the Lynx would sell 1 million units in the first 12 months for sure, a claim even bolder than that of Sam Tramiel, who stated Atari planned to sell between 500, 000 and 700,000 in the first 12 months. 

 

 

Others like Peter Staddon, Atari UK Sales director, refused to get caught up in the numbers game, sensibly saying sales of the Lynx had been encouraging after the recent price drop. 

 

 

But going back to the Jaguar.. 

 

When Sega Japan hold a press conference and claim they will sell 2.8 million Saturn's in the first 12 months and that's including their presence in Japan North America and Europe.. 

 

 

The claim of 2 million+ Jaguars being reserved in Europe alone, with Atari's presence their being pityful, the claim really is dumb. 

 

It's just got to be held in perspective. 

 

[Jag64]

Only two things could have saved the Jag, repetitious walls of text too mind-numbing to read, and Black Ice White Noise.

 

 

*Honestly, the latter couldn't have saved it either. Only the former is true here. I just got bored.

[johannesmutlu]

On 2/7/2022 at 11:47 PM, Bill Loguidice said:

I can't tell if you're joking or serious with this. If you're serious, I can't believe anyone would think that Sony would be influenced by anything on the Jaguar. It was a non-factor in Japan and a non-starter in the USA. I don't know why it would influence anything. If any system of that generation would be influential for Sony in any way, it would be the 3DO, which had a presence in Japan and a design more like what the PS1 ended up being like, and I'd have to see some strong evidence to even believe that. 

I still think the 3D pathway was a non-starter on the Jaguar and something consumers really didn't know they wanted until the PS1, which was the first system truly optimized for such a software pipeline. The Jaguar wasn't optimized for genuine 3D worlds, period. It did just fine in some cases with the flat-shaded stuff (when you remove the driving games), but certainly wasn't suited for texture-based 3D. While I suppose they could have doubled down on flat-shaded polygonal games, I don't see how that would have provided as much wow factor as 2D games with large, detailed objects, tons of color, and expansive sound (and I know we didn't get those either). I feel like it would have had to have shown superior 2D prowess over the mature 16-bit platforms to establish itself, which, as you indicate, it didn't (mostly by-the-numbers ports and minimal upgrades). They really didn't have to worry about 3D until a few years later, although we know they certainly tried hard to push that aspect earlier (and to poor effect).

On the internet the snes is praised to be the best 2D system ever made and so i tout either too,BUT as i know better now,the snes wasn’t the best 2D system,because it has no sprite scaling,it cannot use all of it’s features atonce,such as 512x480 resolution,high-color mode,mode 7 and 4 background layers etc,,no it can only use one of those features,hence there are 8 restriction modes to choose from, i first always tout that the snes had it all and could do it all atonce,BUT due it’s limited and slow ram and slow cpu, the snes simply cannot do that all atonce (heck even the little GBA has builtin sprite scaling and it can also do multi background layers in mode 7 and it only does have 3 restriction modes),the sega saturn at the otherhand could do that because of it’s 32bit cpu and extra ram,just imagine beafed up versions of snes games on the sega saturn,

same thing with the atari jaguar,it’s very good at 2D at seeing games such as wolf3D being a beafed up version of the snes on it is amezing,vortex was also planned to be ported to the jaguar,but imagine how starfox,stint race fx and dirt trax and dirty racer etc,, would,ve be on the jaguar.

so while i be always a big snes fan and i will love those games on it,BUT at the same time it felt a bit misleading from nintendo at how they advertised the snes becouse with those specs they clearly did let us believe that the snes could do it all atonce,but nope.

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

10 hours ago, johannesmutlu said:

nintendo at how they advertised the snes becouse with those specs they clearly did let us believe that the snes could do it all atonce,but nope.

Specs are made by business accountants. With the SNES at least you can see what RAM they used, how fast the Cartridge ROM is and ( the buck ) and then they make the most of it ( the bang ) in a flexible way. It is like people who complain that on any system which uses state of the art CRT ( VGA and not TV ) you had to choose between resolution and color .. with the RAM bandwidth fixed. I would be so happy if for the Jaguar you could also just do the math of the memory and it gets the most out of it. No matter if you do 4 background layer with 8bit per pixels, or one hires layer of CRY, or many sprites, or scaling.

 

The GBA came 2001 .. 9 years later. We had GeForce at that time. The DS came only 2 years later because GBA is actually not that good. As a starter, like the Jaguar it has a single system bus. So you cannot stream in data from ROM, while running code which writes to VRAM which is displayed. It all eats into each other cycles .. on a custum chip. The CPU is off the shelf and nonetheless the best part of the GBA.

[laymanpigeon]

Reading this thread I honestly find next to nothing interesting about people's ideas and opinions about saving Jaguar.

Far more interesting were comparisons and about Sega's 32X addon for Sega Genesis that could have lived longer.

32X could have lived longer if could have been ready in summer of 1994 and Saturn not rushed by Sega of Japan.

 

Now on topic what could have saved Jaguar, we could go after or before launch, especially if someone could time travel to past.

Or what I could have done if I was in their position to do so, though there is fact of hindsight 20/20 being factor in here with such.

 

First of all I would have ordered for Motorola 68000 to be removed from Jaguar and task manager function shifted to Jerry.

Tom has 750,000 transistors while Jerry has 600,000 with both produced under same node and manufacturing process.

Size of Jerry could be increased by 150,000 to add manager co-processor along another specialized for audio.

 

Second is that I would demand dedicated expansion port for which CD-ROM Drive could be attached too.

Thus avoid one of issues that Jaguar CD had as it was connected to console through cartridge slot.

Perhaps if possible to CD-ROM Drive to be used by hardware that is already inside Jaguar itself.

Thus no need for complex motherboard nor additional chips that Jaguar CD had to operate it.

Perhaps price of that add-on could have been 100USD and ready for Winter of 1994.

 

Third is considering there weren't many Jaguar's produced in 1993 to have impact for holiday season of that year in USA.

Perhaps I would consider rather launching Jaguar only in Japan and that would have more satisfied that market.

Maybe during Winter Holidays of 1993 or during spring of 1994 when it is Golden Week in Japan.

Then hope it sells well, perhaps enough stock to satisfy demand and sell it all.

Hoping more then that Japanese developers are then interested.

 

Also that would lit even more fire up Sega of Japan's ass.

[JagChris]

I think removing the 68k would have been vailid only if Atari had good tools ready for the other chips. Like most notably a C compiler.

 

Otherwise we probably wouldn't have anywhere near what we have now. 

[laymanpigeon]

Motorola 68000 is not efficient processor for task it was given considering complexity of its architecture considering transistor count.

If there was co-processor inside Jerry for task 68000 had, it would require less transistors and be at same clock as Jerry itself.

If Jerry had transistor budget same as Tom, such co-processor would have less than half of transistors that 68000 has.

There would be well over 100,000 transistors available in budget for a dedicated audio co-processor inside Jerry.

Then Jerry's main processor could have been used for game logic and Tom fully dedicated as GPU.

Music would never get sacrificed and less severe impact of game logic on performance.

[Zerosquare]

Oh dear. Here we go again.

[42bs]

I know what would have saved the Jag. But I am not allowed to tell, else they gonna shoot me.

[johannesmutlu]

I think that had atari released the atari jagduo anyway as another optional system to the base atari jaguar system both at launch day(to also target people who wants to have the full experience asode from people on a lower budget) along with games such as cyrbermorph ,doom,wolf3D,alien vs preditor as launch title as well, the atari jaguar system would,ve a better chance to be saved from it’s grace,

also if game developers did wanted to port N64 games such as golden eye 007,doom 64 and final fantansy 7 etc,,, to the atari jaguar among other 32 and 64 bit games to it,the jaguar might could,ve fly off store shelves also since it was also much cheaper then competitor systems on the market, the fact that the atari jaguar could function as a 64bitshould but not an understatement because with it’s 2 32bit tom & jerry chips along with a bios chip to let those chips work parallel in tandem together as a 64bit system and along with a 68000 16bit cou and blitter chip along with reasonable amount of ram (wich is maybe also expandible) the atari jaguar could absolutely function like a 64bit (so long each 32bit chips are the same type of course),

but it would,ve be cool if the atari jaguar compeated against the N64 alone while the sega saturn should,ve only compeated against the playstation because that would,ve ideal just imagine that a multi bit war in 1 generation haha,

damn i really want that jagduo and controller because they really look very atracting, now just imagine a homebrew port of mario 64 and zelda and donkeykong 64 on the atari jaguar,that would be f@cking AWESOME😁