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

[ataritiger]

28 minutes ago, RetroSonicHero said:

I'm pretty sure the original had it as well actually.

@14:20 is where you can hear Larry mention it directly, in this video at least.

Yup. So 700,000 views on revised video plus who knows much on original that is like a million who heard this. Many who read it on forums, articles and Google no wonder it lasted. But because of that we found 4 versions with release dates. I posted link page ago or so.

[agradeneu]

8 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

 

 

You mean at the time it didn't exist and didn't have a demo yet? Impressive.

 

 

 

 

It was shown to the press BEFORE the N64 release, the magazines were full of previews. So Nintendo did not sold the 64 bit on promises alone like you have claimed. Nintendo is not Atari, they always sold their hardware by strong games. 

Once again your speculations contradict reality. 

[agradeneu]

9 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Had nothing to do with the CD drive and doesn't explain the other consoles.

 

Software sales would have been improved somewhat by cheaper and easier to produce CDs.

 

Sorry but you are imagining the CD tax. It wouldn't have jumped up the price was I keep seeing, we have to much evidence of this with the other consoles and CD player manufacturers.

 

Sure there's a chance it will cost more, maybe $50 or so more, but that's really a drop in the bucket since now marketing shows off more impressive games, better sound, and cheaper game prices to the consumer.

 

It would still drop in price fast by the next year anyway.

 

Atari making a stand alone drive was the much more expensive solution for themselves and the consumer. You remember how much it cost? And only for something like 10 games?

 

I'd argue that killed whatever chance the company had of surviving more than anything. Otherwise they could have went third party from a niche.

 

You mean at the time it didn't exist and didn't have a demo yet? Impressive.

 

 

 

 

Your assumptions are a bit too optimistic. A CD drive would have not fixed Ataris issues with software development. The production values for CD games are even higher than for cart games.

Also, they were very dependent on profits from hardware sales. Price drops and higher hardware production costs would have killed them even sooner.

 

Another thing: a CD system would have postponed the release of the Jaguar even further. The plan was to release the Jaguar end of 1992 or early 1993, they were already late! 

 

That would have meant the JaguarCD directly competing with Playstation and Saturn in 1995, without any meaningful headstart.  Does not sound fair.

 

However, if Atari did release a CD system in 1993, it might have been more attractive to 3rd party publishers to release (popular) games for the system. Like conversions of PC CD ROM hits (Rebel Assault, 7th Guest etc.)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by agradeneu
wording

[JagChris]

Also CD drives more complicated to produce and if they couldn't meet pre order with just a cartridge based console...

[Lostdragon]

8 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

A lot of that is fluff/empty filler. Does Primal Rage even have FMV? I don't recall there being any but its been forever. It looks like the SNES version was 2MB so I don't see any reason as to why it couldn't have been cart even if at 4MB, other than they just needed more reasons to sell the JagCD.

I've always had the impression Probe simply did Jaguar CD Primal Rage as a contractual obligigation title, so little to no optimization, Atari simply wanting a well. Known title out on the CD platform whilst there still was something resembling a commercial market for the Jaguar. 

 

 

Seem to remember one of the team. Involved in the conversion has sadly passed, i did reach out to another year's ago, but had no reply. 

 

I was curious back then who made the decision to make it a CD release for Jaguar, but had no idea of the file size. 

 

 

Looking at Larry's Revised Edition video where F. F. L is misrepresented, Larry also claims The Jaguar 2 wasn't in development... 

 

My understanding is that:

 

 

Project development began in January 1994, and working prototypes were running demos by March 1995. The Oberon graphics chip, which replaced Jaguar's Tom, was completed and was running on this prototype. His sister chip, Puck, had not completed the design by the time the project was canceled in the summer of 1995 (the prototypes used Jerry's chips).

 

 

I've also seen in the past Andrew Seed from Imagitec Design talk of Gremlin approaching them with 3 potential Playstation titles to convert to the platform and seen the W. T. R coder say he'd seen the tech specs for the hardware. 

 

 

Development might have been killed off on the project early on, but it's wrong of Larry to claim Sam Tramiel lied to the press when saying development had started on the Jaguar II. 

 

 

looks like that video itself needs a further revision or statement put out. 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Getting back onto the original thread topic at hand.. 

 

 

Imagitec Design's Andrew Seed made a very interesting and unbiased point about the Jaguar CD system, when asked what had happened to Jag CD Freelancer 2120:

 

"it got droped, when we examined what we could do with the CD it just no way
as flexible as the PC CD-ROMs and drivers available. Also the designer left
after doingthe PC version for 2 years, we had prototypes on the PC done but
running very slow, using Brender by Argonaut but with no hardware
acceleration on 33mhz 486/ For the Jag version we were going to license the
Jag Doom engine but we had a few problems getting the tools to work on the
Next machine. (we had to buy one and somebody had to learn how to use it)"

 

 

Respect to Andrew for not blaming the Tramiels as Martin Hooley did or Imagitec Design Producers as others have, he simply states the headaches the hardware threw up and what they meant for planned cross platform titles studios had in the works. 

 

 

Releasing the Jag CD with the Jaguar or making the Jaguar a CD based machine from the start, was by no means a silver bullet solution. 

 

[Pete5125]

3 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Your assumptions are a bit too optimistic. A CD drive would have not fixed Ataris issues with software development. The production values for CD games are even higher than for cart games.

Also, they were very dependent on profits from hardware sales. Price drops and higher hardware production costs would have killed them even sooner.

 

Another thing: a CD system would have postponed the release of the Jaguar even further. The plan was to release the Jaguar end of 1992 or early 1993, they were already late! 

 

That would have meant the JaguarCD directly competing with Playstation and Saturn in 1995, without any meaningful headstart.  Does not sound fair.

 

However, if Atari did release a CD system in 1993, it might have been more attractive to 3rd party publishers to release (popular) games for the system. Like conversions of PC CD ROM hits (Rebel Assault, 7th Guest etc.)

 

 

 

 

 

The thing is, by the time jag cd came out cd units had dropped in price, in 93 turbographic cd and sega cd both launched around 299.99, dropping later after they got manufacturing down.  To think Atari could get a CD based unit out for less than 500 in 93, without involvement from sony/toshiba/Phillips to get the CD unit happening. Just wouldn't happen.  It probably would be cheaper than 3d0, but would still run into same issue of a 32bit 3do or cart based 32x, producing better looking games than a 64bit Jag cd.

 

I do wonder of Atari had decided, that they were just going to give up on Jag, and be a producer of 3do machines, like goldstar/Toshiba if their 1st party games were being released on 3do, could they of survived as a straight game publisher the way studio 3do and sega did after their systems bombed.

 

[+cubanismo]

16 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

It's 233 MB. 

Yeah, that's just the soundtrack AFAICT.

 

Primal Rage has awful load times and looks, frankly, awful. Hoverstrike: UL and Battlemorph have crazy fast load times and look awesome. The drive can fill the Jag's entire 2MB of RAM in a few seconds (2MB / 300KB/s = ~7s), and that's not even using a compression scheme. Any crazy load times like Primal Rage are just bad programming. The data is probably fragmented all over the disk. They should have just duplicated it using the other 2/3 of the space they left empty to allow for fast continuous reads instead of constant seeking, which all optical drives suck at to this day.

[ataritiger]

6 hours ago, cubanismo said:

Yeah, that's just the soundtrack AFAICT.

 

Primal Rage has awful load times and looks, frankly, awful. Hoverstrike: UL and Battlemorph have crazy fast load times and look awesome. The drive can fill the Jag's entire 2MB of RAM in a few seconds (2MB / 300KB/s = ~7s), and that's not even using a compression scheme. Any crazy load times like Primal Rage are just bad programming. The data is probably fragmented all over the disk. They should have just duplicated it using the other 2/3 of the space they left empty to allow for fast continuous reads instead of constant seeking, which all optical drives suck at to this day.

Ah thank you. I heard rumors cd add on bogged down jag. But battlemorph seems legit. Then again how much better are battlemorph compared to cybermorph or iron soldier ? to iron soldier cart? The ? add on seems kinda worthless. There are even 11 to 13 great sega cd games, which is entire jag cd library. 

[ataritiger]

It is very true nintendo and others showed alot about the 16bit snescd then 32bit snescd with Mario vs bowser screenshot (but I can't find it now ;( 

 

https://kotaku.com/the-weird-history-of-the-super-nes-cd-rom-nintendos-mo-1828860861

 

#1 problem with 16 bit snescd by Sony , then 32bit Sony snescd and 32bit Philips snescd was... ? cd load times. So why even release a snescd same year as "jaguar just as cd unit only" if almost all companys has issues overall with...load times?

So many great articles cover this, type snescd in Google.

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by ataritiger

[Leeroy ST]

16 hours ago, agradeneu said:

It was shown to the press BEFORE the N64 release, the magazines were full of previews. 

There was quite a bit of time between the Ultra 64 announcement and the first (good) demos of Mario 64 and the later were not in the time frame we are discussing.

 

16 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Your assumptions are a bit too optimistic. A CD drive would have not fixed Ataris issues with software development. 

It would have attracted third parties and allow them to produce higher qualities themselves and for third parties.

 

There's no heavy optimism here, you and others keep looking at this from a "can Atari win" mindset instead of a "can Atari survive" mindset like I am. They only need the Jaguar to do enough to keep the company afloat and a CD seems to help with enough problems to get them to that finish line, imo.

 

13 hours ago, Pete5125 said:

The thing is, by the time jag cd came out cd units had dropped in price, in 93 turbographic cd and sega cd both launched around 299.99, dropping later after they got manufacturing down.  To think Atari could get a CD based unit out for less than 500 in 93, without involvement from sony/toshiba/Phillips to get the CD unit happening. Just wouldn't happen.  It probably would be cheaper than 3d0, but would still run into same issue of a 32bit 3do or cart based 32x, producing better looking games than a 64bit Jag cd.

 

I do wonder of Atari had decided, that they were just going to give up on Jag, and be a producer of 3do machines, like goldstar/Toshiba if their 1st party games were being released on 3do, could they of survived as a straight game publisher the way studio 3do and sega did after their systems bombed.

 

The Jaguar came out proper in 94, and we have several other machines and CD players busting the price myth there wouldn't be that much if a premium.

 

You are right that the disadvantages to the 3DO would still be there but more support would have helped the Jaguar in the market even if not substancially, and being able to produce more copies to sell of hit games like AVP only means more money. 

[ataritiger]

Not making avp2 for jag cart or cd hurt. It was its killer app. Even doom 2, or mk2 (wasn't that probe too who did primal rage?). But they were dead in water in 1995 basically like sega was in 2001 or 2002. What company is this...consoles with bad taste in mouth before releasing last console before company sinks as a vg leader who lost EA or etc 3rd parties.

[ataritiger]

Love this video btw,

 

Maybe the lynx to jaguar sync ? on finished unit would have been a better option? Is this true?

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by ataritiger

[Lostdragon]

Rob Nicholoson of Handmade Software made a point some years ago, about the effect Atari going with Cartridges had on their plans for the Jaguar and more besides:

 

 

"At the time we were caught with Atari believing their own marketing (that the Jaguar was an awesome console) and the reality of the limitations and bugs in the hardware. They wanted lots of high resolution and high colour graphics but ROM prices were still too high to allow this."

[agradeneu]

10 hours ago, ataritiger said:

Ah thank you. I heard rumors cd add on bogged down jag. But battlemorph seems legit. Then again how much better are battlemorph compared to cybermorph or iron soldier ? to iron soldier cart? The ? add on seems kinda worthless. There are even 11 to 13 great sega cd games, which is entire jag cd library. 

Jag CD had only 3 or 4 months I remember. In that short time frame they released 13 games which was incredible for the Jaguar. 

It defintely felt like a big improvement. 

 

[agradeneu]

26 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Rob Nicholoson of Handmade Software made a point some years ago, about the effect Atari going with Cartridges had on their plans for the Jaguar and more besides:

 

 

"At the time we were caught with Atari believing their own marketing (that the Jaguar was an awesome console) and the reality of the limitations and bugs in the hardware. They wanted lots of high resolution and high colour graphics but ROM prices were still too high to allow this."

I don't buy these excuses, especially anything from the dev of Kasumi Ninja

Blaming ROM space is the cheapest excuse for a junk game. If your game is junk at 2MB, it will be even more junk at 4 MB....

 

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by agradeneu

[Lostdragon]

4 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

I don't buy these excuses, especially anything from the dev of Kasumi Ninja

 

 

Rob only had a part role on Kasumi Ninja, Jim Gregory made nothing but excuses for it, blaming the Tramiel family for it ?and there were claims the lead coder, whilst finishing it off in Sunnyvale, hated the Tramiel family that much, he smashed the restrooms up there before leaving. 

 

 

I still die ?thinking of the planned Yeti and Eskimo characters. 

[agradeneu]

18 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Rob only had a part role on Kasumi Ninja, Jim Gregory made nothing but excuses for it, blaming the Tramiel family for it ?and there were claims the lead coder, whilst finishing it off in Sunnyvale, hated the Tramiel family that much, he smashed the restrooms up there before leaving. 

 

 

I still die ?thinking of the planned Yeti and Eskimo characters. 

I would not be surprised. Kasumi Ninja was ruined by bad design decisions.

 

Unfortunality, the high color mode of the Jag allowed many devs to include cheap photoshopped characters and backgrounds instead crafting proper artwork.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by agradeneu
wording

[Bill Loguidice]

5 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Unfortunality, the high color mode of the Jag allowed many devs to include cheap photoshopped characters and backgrounds instead crafting proper artwork.

I agree with this (and no doubt also due to smaller, resource-poor studios and budgets), though to be fair there were a lot of poor aesthetic decisions and bad renders in that era regardless of platform. It was one of those transitional periods with a lot of the stuff not aging well. I know as it specifically pertains to the Jaguar I've complained before about the chunky renders and overall blerg aesthetic in games like Defender 2000 (acknowledging that some people like that look just fine).

[Leeroy ST]

Well Kasumi Ninja was better than Way if the Warrior so there's that. I guess.

 

12 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I agree with this (and no doubt also due to smaller, resource-poor studios and budgets), though to be fair there were a lot of poor aesthetic decisions and bad renders in that era regardless of platform. It was one of those transitional periods with a lot of the stuff not aging well. I know as it specifically pertains to the Jaguar I've complained before about the chunky renders and overall blerg aesthetic in games like Defender 2000 (acknowledging that some people like that look just fine).

But then there's the other extreme with bad clashing cg backgrounds and sprites that have aged terribly imo. Lot of PS1 games did that, Capcom did it to try and make their 2D games look more 3D for example.

[Pete5125]

On 8/5/2021 at 8:15 PM, ataritiger said:

Love this video btw,

 

Maybe the lynx to jaguar sync ? on finished unit would have been a better option? Is this true?

 

The lynx was discontinued by atari at this point, it was programmed into the game (then removed) but the ratio of atari jaguar owners that also had a lynx around was small, avsp was also a planned lynx release the beta is out thier, but again Atati gave up on lynx to put all resources on the Jag.

 

 

[ataritiger]

16 minutes ago, Pete5125 said:

The lynx was discontinued by atari at this point, it was programmed into the game (then removed) but the ratio of atari jaguar owners that also had a lynx around was small, avsp was also a planned lynx release the beta is out thier, but again Atati gave up on lynx to put all resources on the Jag.

 

 

I saw footage of avp on lynx looked dope in video and link cable made it a sonar for lynx jag sync but glad just avp jag exist at least. Why was alien higher fps or speed than other characters? Like almost all jag games were 12 to 30fps lol rushed out sometimes no music oooffff

[ataritiger]

20 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I agree with this (and no doubt also due to smaller, resource-poor studios and budgets), though to be fair there were a lot of poor aesthetic decisions and bad renders in that era regardless of platform. It was one of those transitional periods with a lot of the stuff not aging well. I know as it specifically pertains to the Jaguar I've complained before about the chunky renders and overall blerg aesthetic in games like Defender 2000 (acknowledging that some people like that look just fine).

What resolution could photoshop pic backgrounds etc be on jag?

[Lostdragon]

4 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

I saw footage of avp on lynx looked dope in video and link cable made it a sonar for lynx jag sync but glad just avp jag exist at least. Why was alien higher fps or speed than other characters? Like almost all jag games were 12 to 30fps lol rushed out sometimes no music oooffff

Would of loved AVP on Lynx and Wolfenstein 3D, which was being worked on until Carmack pulled the plug after the first Milestone Payment from the Tramiel family arrived 3 months late. 

 

 

 

The beta version of Jaguar AVP was reported as running between 50-60 fps, then Jane Whittaker put in the A. I routines, which by his own admission, hammered the frame rate. 

 

 

The Alien was always supposed to have a faster movement speed, it had to rely on it's speed and claw and tail attacks, where as the Predator and Colonial Marine had all manner of gadgets and high tech weaponry at their disposal. 

 

 

As with everything else with AVP, stories do vary.. 

 

Greg: Was it really faster in a prev version than the final?
Lance: As long as there were no objects in the game, the engine was FLYING. As soon as the sprites were there…. Ugh.
K3V: Yeah it’s rumored to have been slowed down on purpose… Was that true?
Peter: I thought it was so slow because it had to calculate all those aliens running around
Lance: K3V, I don’t think that was totally true, only that the alien had faster speed, that was about it.

Source:

http://www.ataritimes.com/index.php?ArticleIDX=499

[ataritiger]

Ah ok thank you.