Was not releasing with CD at launch the biggest mistake Atari made with the Jaguar?

[Clint Thompson]

14 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

Likely all stemming from a Lack of Money...

You don't need a lot of money to create great games, there are endless examples of this being the case.

[JagChris]

I don't know much about the Wal-Mart deal but they needed the systems available at launch. Atari screwed that up hugely. The numbers may be in dispute as to how many UK pre-orders there were but whatever it was it was significant. They needed the systems out there to generate developer interest at launch. Atari was too narrow minded with software and support. They needed third party interest to do what they wouldn't. They needed as many units out there as they could get immediately. 95 was far too late. Their window of opportunity was gone by then.

[Pete5125]

59 minutes ago, JagChris said:

I don't know much about the Wal-Mart deal but they needed the systems available at launch. Atari screwed that up hugely. The numbers may be in dispute as to how many UK pre-orders there were but whatever it was it was significant. They needed the systems out there to generate developer interest at launch. Atari was too narrow minded with software and support. They needed third party interest to do what they wouldn't. They needed as many units out there as they could get immediately. 95 was far too late. Their window of opportunity was gone by then.

Wal-Mart wasn't carrying them, Wal-Mart then and now can make or break you.

 

They were only In small electronic stores like electronic boutique, Babbage's, software etc, and a few toys r' us.  Kay bee toys didn't carry till post liquidation if memory serves.

 

SO they were trying a big push, and they got it they were put in 400 Wal-Mart stores, Wal-Mart gave them premium shelf space next to Nintendo and sega, but they had to agree to certain advertising allowance to move product, they actually sold alot, because sony and sega ran out of stock.  But Wal-Mart had an easy return policy, so a large percentage were returned when the Atari the company kids hadn't heard of, with weird controllers, and a weird Star Fox rip off was not the same as the playstation and tekken they asked Santa for.

 

The next wave was returns of crushed systems stored in back stock rooms.

 

Atari actually had a chance to turn it around if 95 would of went differently and the unit would of sold, again better  games, including Rayman or a vs p with system could of helped 

[DragonGrafx-16]

On 7/23/2021 at 9:59 PM, sirlynxalot said:

That really would have been the bleeding edge of tech for atari to do CD from the get go. If it came out in 1993, I think that would have made it one of the first game consoles to have CD as its media.  I agree with the other comments, it would not have saved atari or the jaguar as a product, atari just didn't have the resources to support the system.

The PC Engine was the first console to have CD media... not to first to have it as standard though.

[JagChris]

44 minutes ago, Pete5125 said:

Wal-Mart wasn't carrying them, Wal-Mart then and now can make or break you.

 

They were only In small electronic stores like electronic boutique, Babbage's, software etc, and a few toys r' us.  Kay bee toys didn't carry till post liquidation if memory serves.

 

SO they were trying a big push, and they got it they were put in 400 Wal-Mart stores, Wal-Mart gave them premium shelf space next to Nintendo and sega, but they had to agree to certain advertising allowance to move product, they actually sold alot, because sony and sega ran out of stock.  But Wal-Mart had an easy return policy, so a large percentage were returned when the Atari the company kids hadn't heard of, with weird controllers, and a weird Star Fox rip off was not the same as the playstation and tekken they asked Santa for.

 

The next wave was returns of crushed systems stored in back stock rooms.

 

Atari actually had a chance to turn it around if 95 would of went differently and the unit would of sold, again better  games, including Rayman or a vs p with system could of helped 

Whatever they were doing, whether Wal Mart and pre orders they needed to do it immediately at launch for all the reasons I mentioned. By 95 Sony and Sega were arriving and it was too late. With no software by then it wouldn't have mattered when you can get a Saturn or PSX. 

[pacman000]

Still, selling the systems at $99 would’ve been better Atari Corp than liquidating them at $49.

[Spider-Dan]

13 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

When it happened, they usually were the last on the market though, like for the N64 as well. In the case of the N64, they delayed it precisely to lower the cost.

The original Game Boy was the last time Nintendo was an early releaser; since then, Nintendo is usually last to market.  (The WiiU and Switch were so late that they straddle generations.)

[Shaggy the Atarian]

On 7/24/2021 at 5:32 PM, phoboz said:

Then I guess the Jaguar would have had only about 10-20 games, becuase a lot of games are ports of Amiga games (which used the 68k).

Sony had the MIPS which has a well established set of development tools, and the 68k also has good tools. Development for the RISC processors of the Jaguar on the other hand means development in pure assembly using the propreitary MADMAC, with strange hardware bugs to care about.

In my opinion, the 68k was really what saved the Jaguar, way more important than a built in CD-ROM drive.

 

The RISC processors of the Jaguar for graphics, and sound are fine, but it would be way to time consuming to write all game logic in assembler (for a serious game) Neither does game logic normally consume so much processing power it would be worth the effort.

 

However, I really wish the would have put in the more powerful 68030 CPU instead. That would have made some difference.

Sorry to quote you from several days ago, but just noticed this thread.

 

I think it was also mentioned in the thread (didn't read all the pages, admittedly), but there were prototypes of the system using the 020 and the 030 - along with 4MB of RAM. Tursilion, not sure if he posts here anymore, but has coded on the Jaguar, said that the difference between the 000 and 020 wasn't that big of a hurdle for programmers to make, so a lot of Amiga/Genesis stuff could have been ported without much difficulty if the Jag had used it. I also recall that someone at Atari (sorry, can't remember who, so maybe this is just made up) said that had the Jag used a 020, it would've been comparable to the Saturn in power. 

 

Gamefan editor ECM once said that the biggest mistake Atari made, in his view, was halving the RAM to 2MB ("leaving half of it's brains on the table" is how he put it). Not sure if he knew about the 020/030 designs though.

 

A Jag design with the 020 was used - along with 4MB of RAM - in arcades as the CoJag hardware for Area 51 (other games used the R3000). It'd be great if there were tools to port Jag games over to that. I've often wondered what performance gains we could see in stuff like Tempest 2000 or BattleMorph if ported to the CoJag, but we'll probably never know. For devs though - that would be a way to get your homebrews into the arcade if you ever released a game on that  

 

But IMHO, to echo many others here, I think it was more about the lack of great games, particularly at launch, than the lack of powerful hardware. I do agree that the power issue was a problem, since many gamers wanted to wait for the upcoming 3D systems, and back then graphics enhancements mattered to a lot of people. Like Clint said though, you can still make great games for something where the hardware is weak. Cybermorph was cool as a 1993 tech demo, but it wasn't really a fun game. Had it been like BattleMorph instead of Pod Collecting In Space, that would've helped. Trevor McFur was crap, even a straight port of River Raid would've been better than that. If it also came with more arcade ports than Raiden (say some more Atari Games titles - Klax, Skull & Crossbones, Toobin', Road Riot 4WD - or if they could have landed Capcom stuff like Street Fighter II, that'd have been huge) and some upgraded stuff from the Lynx, then I think that would have gone a long way to building momentum for it at the beginning.  

[Leeroy ST]

17 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Your definition of commercial failure is very shaky.

My definition is established for years, it's you twisting things because you dont want the term "Commercial failure" to the PS3, when it objectively was. A financial disaster that also spread to other parts of the company.

 

The fact some use 80 million sales to try and dodge the facts prove ignorance of the term in business, hence why you're trying to spin it the other direction toward me, sorry but the facts aren't arguable.

 

Xbox 1 also a commercial failure, not as much of course but that's another console people refuse to attach a label to despite it's placement.

[Leeroy ST]

17 hours ago, agradeneu said:

They are doing it again with GamePass, not focusing on being profitable but aggressively regaining market share from leader Sony. 

 

Xbox has debunked the non-profitable gamepass myth so many times now Its insane.

 

17 hours ago, agradeneu said:

 

However , I think you are probably right the PS3 was a failure for Sony, but only compared to the PS2 and PS4. CELL technology was a commercial failure for sure. But, it was still a very popular ganing console with high software sales and big hits. They managed to turn around a struggling product, which broke even in 2010. And like I already said, it was a transformative restructuring peroid for PS that build the foundations for later successes.

It being popular overtime from a rough start isn't really relevant if no money was made, it had the worst software rate out of the 3 systems and a huge chunk of their later big sellers were expensive to make. PS3 spend it's whole second half recovering.

 

And again you aren't understanding the scope of the damage so you use irrelevant sales numbers and blame the Cell, yeah initially that was a big issue but Sony was still losing money on PS3 outside that. It took until 2010 to stop bleeding but that doesn't mean they were in the green and the lingering effects hurt the company for another two years as a whole.

 

It is often considered the worst financial disaster in gaming for a reason. That's got nothing to do with people's subjective game preferences.

 

 

 

 

[Leeroy ST]

12 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

In my case, I was more referencing being at the peak of their technical powers, where the audio-visual quality was high and the machines were well understood. The Jaguar was up against some extremely polished 16-bit games by that point and extremely beefy and diverse game line-ups. In general, the Jaguar didn't demonstrably show games that were clearly superior to those for a variety of reasons, including the trickle of releases, lower budgets, smaller development teams, and the challenges with learning the ins and outs of new hardware. In the instances where the Jaguar did avail itself very well and in a way that even the casual observer could see the difference, it already had something of a reputation and wasn't helped by many of the other games being substandard. Again, on the 16-bit side, you already had sufficient depth and breadth to minimize the impact of the dreck.

This is why Atari needed more third party interest so they would have a counter for every club drive released, avoiding rising negative reception.

 

As is Atari basically had no counters. You got Iron Soldier and AVP, then you wait and wait an there's Bubsy or Club Drive and then you wait and wait and you get more junk and then maybe after that there's a Superburnout or something.

 

You wouldn't believe how many stores had consoles but very few games with people wondering when their store is going to get a new release only to receive Checkered Flag or something and that's it.

 

Distribution was also another major issue. Really they never seemed to have a plan for that, that may have damaged perception more than the small library.

 

[JagChris]

47 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

This is why Atari needed more third party interest so they would have a counter for every club drive released, avoiding rising negative reception.

 

As is Atari basically had no counters. You got Iron Soldier and AVP, then you wait and wait an there's Bubsy or Club Drive and then you wait and wait and you get more junk and then maybe after that there's a Superburnout or something.

I agree with this. If Atari would have fulfilled the pre-orders it would have generated enough interest we probably at least have gotten Doom II. Maybe AvP II.

[Leeroy ST]

10 minutes ago, JagChris said:

I agree with this. If Atari would have fulfilled the pre-orders it would have generated enough interest we probably at least have gotten Doom II. Maybe AvP II.

Maybe more he's taking the CD addon seriously too. Sure I think they would have done better with it included hence the thread.

 

But with present Jag CD only 3 third party companies published on it and between brain dead13, Vid grid, Dragons lair, and space ace that's already around 60% of third party support on the thing and those are all fmv. 5 if you count must as that, though Atari published it.

[+madman]

Why can people not figure out the multiquote function on here? Apparently the feature is an objective commercial failure.

 

[Lostdragon]

8 hours ago, JagChris said:

I don't know much about the Wal-Mart deal but they needed the systems available at launch. Atari screwed that up hugely. The numbers may be in dispute as to how many UK pre-orders there were but whatever it was it was significant. They needed the systems out there to generate developer interest at launch. Atari was too narrow minded with software and support. They needed third party interest to do what they wouldn't. They needed as many units out there as they could get immediately. 95 was far too late. Their window of opportunity was gone by then.

It's the EUROPEAN Pre-orders being around the 2.5 Million number that has been the subject of ridicule since a certain individual made it and it was passed around as fact. 

 

 

You might be thinking it was UK pre-orders due to the fact said individual names his sole source for this claim as being Darryl Still, P. R manager at the time for Atari UK. 

 

 

To even get a best guess of just the UK situation,alone said individual would of needed to of spoken with Atari UK's MD Bob Gleadow and the earlier P. R manager handling press for the Jaguar, Peter Walker. 

 

 

 

He didn't. 

 

Then you'd need to speak to distributors, heads of retail for likes of HMV, Virgin Megastore etc as they were the ones in the press at the time saying they'd only recieved enough units for 5-10 machines per store, leaving a lot of customers, parents especially, very dissapointed. 

 

 

But even if they'd all recieved say 100 units per store and they'd all been sold in the first few weeks, your still facing the reality of Atari falling far short of the magic number Atari needed to reach before major publishers said they'd develop for the platform. 

 

 

An installed userbase of 500,000.

 

Not units shipped to stores, but in consumers homes. 

 

All the individual did was take a genuine news story at the time, UK stores left red faced with unfulfilled orders over a key retail period, due to Atari shipping so few units to them and wave the mythical Brown Wand over them and coming up with an overblown and nonsensical statement, now passed around on YT etc as fact. 

 

 

As for the later point about how we might of seen Doom II and AVP II... 

 

Don't forget, John Correll of Atari stated in a report he doubted Rebellion's ability to deliver Legions Of The Undead on time and of sufficient quality and Rebellion had stated that as being a multi-platform title. 

 

They canned both Playstation and Saturn AVP, Saturn version early on, Playstation version much later, focusing solely on the PC version. 

 

Beyond pitched the concept for AVP II on Jaguar and may well of gotten past initiall negotiations with Atari had the Jaguar been in a stronger commercial position, but Battlewheels never got past initial 3D modeling with claims from Beyond Atari wasn't really behind the project and the Jaguar not powerful enough to implement ideas they had, game finally appeared renamed on PC. 

 

Redline/Redline:Gang warfare (1999)

 

 

i.d sources at the time made clear Doom II would only appear on Jaguar if both the Jaguar platform sold well (and indeed they initially suggested it might sell around 500,000 units) and Jaguar versions of Wolfenstein and Doom fared well at retail. 

 

When it became apparent the Jaguar was a commercial failure, software sales well below expectations, they made clear they were focusing all efforts on the PC and getting titles like Quake shipped. 

 

 

Sam Tramiel signed the cancelation of Creature Shock as it was way behind schedule and what Argonaut had delivered was of poor quality. 

 

 

Soulstar was never finished as Core Design were sold and the coding team split up and put on other projects. 

 

 

There are a multitude of factors as to why so many games simply now appear on Lost Jaguar title lists and features. 

Edited July 31, 2021 by Lostdragon

[agradeneu]

3 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

 

 

It being popular overtime from a rough start isn't really relevant if no money was made, it had the worst software rate out of the 3 systems and a huge chunk of their later big sellers were expensive to make. PS3 spend it's whole second half recovering.

 

And again you aren't understanding the scope of the damage so you use irrelevant sales numbers and blame the Cell, yeah initially that was a big issue but Sony was still losing money on PS3 outside that. It took until 2010 to stop bleeding but that doesn't mean they were in the green and the lingering effects hurt the company for another two years as a whole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh really? Platform Totals - VGChartz

 

How has the PS3 "damaged" the company in the long run if they steamrolled everyone with the PS4? 

BTW Do you understand the concept of investments?

 

If PS3 was a commercial failure, what would you call WiiU, Vita, Dreamcast and Atari Jaguar?

 

Anyway, end of off topic discussion

 

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by agradeneu

[Spider-Dan]

4 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

It being popular overtime from a rough start isn't really relevant if no money was made, it had the worst software rate out of the 3 systems and a huge chunk of their later big sellers were expensive to make. PS3 spend it's whole second half recovering.

 

And again you aren't understanding the scope of the damage so you use irrelevant sales numbers and blame the Cell, yeah initially that was a big issue but Sony was still losing money on PS3 outside that. It took until 2010 to stop bleeding but that doesn't mean they were in the green and the lingering effects hurt the company for another two years as a whole.

 

It is often considered the worst financial disaster in gaming for a reason. That's got nothing to do with people's subjective game preferences.

This is a really weird way to define "failure," though.  Was the PS3 more of a failure than the WiiU?  How about the Virtual Boy?  Was the 360 also a "failure?"

 

When you have a console like Jaguar, 3DO, or Dreamcast that drag the manufacturer to the bottom of the ocean, it's hard to argue that those were less of a "failure" than, say, the OG Xbox, on which MS lost money hand over fist, but which provided a necessary stepping stone to entering the console business, as well as introducing Xbox Live.

 

edit: I think the important question to ask about "failure" is: in hindsight, would that company have been better off not releasing that console at all?

 

Atari would have been better off never releasing the Jaguar and transitioning to a software house in 1993.

Sega would have been better off never releasing the Dreamcast and transitioning to software and arcades in 1998.

Nintendo would have been better off never releasing the Virtual Boy and skipping the WiiU entirely, riding the 3DS until the Switch.
 

Sony most definitely would NOT have been better off never releasing the PS3.

Edited July 31, 2021 by Spider-Dan

[roots.genoa]

6 hours ago, Spider-Dan said:

The original Game Boy was the last time Nintendo was an early releaser; since then, Nintendo is usually last to market.  (The WiiU and Switch were so late that they straddle generations.)

Sorry but I disagree with that statement. The Wii U was released before the Xbox One and the PS4, and the Switch was released before the Xbox Series and the PS5. Being less powerful doesn't make them from a different generation. Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 were of the same generation, at least according to the most frequent acceptation for instance.

 

We are completely off topic, so I just want to say I didn't mean Nintendo has always been right or whatever. I just don't understand why people find incredible that the Lynx and the Game Boy were released at the same time. It's like when people now don't understand why a majority of people chose the Amstrad CPC while the more powerful Amiga and Atari ST were already available. It's (almost) always the same reason: price. It's no prowess to create the most powerful system in the world if it's also the most expensive.

[Keatah]

9 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

You don't need a lot of money to create great games, there are endless examples of this being the case.

And this was how it was at the genesis of this artform. Compelling games like Surround, and Combat, and Flag Capture, Demon Attack, and an ungodly amount of other hits. Don't need AAA billion dollar budget to create something gamers come back to time and time again.

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Distribution was also another major issue. Really they never seemed to have a plan for that, that may have damaged perception more than the small library.

In my neck of the woods there were two or three major stores that carried the Jag. One in the mall and two outside. They carried the console and a selection of carts. But the increased the price and made a package bundle. None of the games quite appealed to my taste at the moment, but that's ok. Eventually there titles I desired.

 

Compared to the vast library of earlier consoles, sure, there wasn't much. But it takes time get titles on shelves, in hands.

 

Thing that "pissed" me off was that Doom had no music. The soundtrack is integral to the experience, if not tactical gameplay.

[Lostdragon]

10 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

You don't need a lot of money to create great games, there are endless examples of this being the case.

I have always viewed Attack Of The Mutant Penguins as an attempt by a small European studio to produce something akin to a then modern day Lemmings... 

 

 

It failed spectacularly of course, but it was clear Atari UK were desperate to use very limited funds to produce something amazing the Jaguar could be known for. 

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

When it became apparent the Jaguar was a commercial failure, software sales well below expectations, they made clear they were focusing all efforts on the PC and getting titles like Quake shipped.

Doom, Doom2, Heretic, Hexen, and derivatives are examples of games that were a little too much for the existing consoles. Even the PC more or less needed a 66MHz processor for a good experience. And consoles are expected to provide that good experience, out of the box, with no fussing over settings.

 

And Quake is no exception. It really wanted a 2nd generation graphics chip (on PC). Something significantly more than what consoles provided. Especially with floating-point usage.

[Lostdragon]

2 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Doom, Doom2, Heretic, Hexen, and derivatives are examples of games that were a little too much for the existing consoles. Even the PC more or less needed a 66MHz processor for a good experience. And consoles are expected to provide that good experience, out of the box, with no fussing over settings.

 

And Quake is no exception. It really wanted a 2nd generation graphics chip (on PC). Something significantly more than what consoles provided. Especially with floating-point usage.

? I will never forget John Romero telling me via email Jaguar could barely handle Doom when i enquired about UK Press claims Quake was 30% complete on Jaguar. 

 

 

My console experience with Quake didn't really come into effect until the Dreamcast, never picked Quake up on the Saturn myself, had Quake II on both N64 and Playstation. 

 

 

But it was clear after seeing the comprises Lobotomy had to make for the final version of Quake on the Saturn, compared to the early preview code even if you had the best coding team, building Quake to the strengths of the current console platforms, you'd be getting a diluted version. 

 

 

I had Doom 2 on Playstation, never saw what the fuss was about and i say that as big Doom fan. 

 

Hexen fared badly on Playstation, seem to remember the team tried to port existing PC code to it, rather than adapt game for Playstation hardware, might well be wrong. 

 

 

Sure there were more, older PC titles that might have fared well on Jaguar, but going after titles that needed a Pentium PC to get the best performance from, wasn't a great idea. 

 

Bill Rehbock chasing Descent for the Jaguar... 

 

 

Bad idea Bll... 

[pacman000]

11 hours ago, madman said:

Why can people not figure out the multiquote function on here? Apparently the feature is an objective commercial failure.

 

Single quote's easier.

[Keatah]

Single quote allows for a more consistent tone across a post. 
 

But it sure can annoy administrator wannabees.