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

[Leeroy ST]

5 minutes ago, pacman000 said:

On Starfox, it makes sense that Argonaut would start development on the NES as a port of Starglider; Starglider came out in 1986, so it was the right time. Bringing it to the SNES makes sense, since it was near the end of the NES' life, & Jez San developing some sort of Battlezone-type game for the SNEs makes sense, since he'd need to learn the hardware. If I were to try to synthesize a story from these, I'd guess development went something like this:

 

Starglider, ported to the NES.

Nintendo says the NES is nearing it's end of life.

Argonaut gets a SNES development system, develops demos, including a Battlezone clone, to see what they can do & to get used to the new system.

Starglider is ported to the SNES, relatively quickly.

Nintendo asks for a better version; Argonaut asks to develop a 3D-chip.

The FX chip is developed; Starglider is re-worked into Starfox.

 

What's missing that makes this theory questionable is why did Jez want to port Starglider to SNES when Starglider II came out in 88?

 

Lost Dragon said Jez says he showed Star Glider 1 to Nintendo two years later in 1990.

 

It would be more impressive to show Nintendo Starglider II. Which looks closers to what SF would end up being and had similar polygon aesthetics. It would also likely require a chip since the SNES wouldn't have been able to run SGII natively. You could easily see how a game like that became SF, not SG1.

[Seedy1812]

After Imagitec I worked for Cranberry Source ( Super Match Soccer ) which was eventually bought out by Argonaut. So I worked for them between April 98 and April 99. Argonaut were on a spending spree to increase its size for the IPO ( initial public offering ). The Cranberry guys were set up as a team to work on a N64 game but no progress was happing - so I asked to be moved to another team ( I literally was sat around most days doing nothing and was really bored ) I was moved onto Kanaan  to help the lead programmer who was responsible for the lead programmer. Now the programmer had a reputation of not coming into work so not much work being done. When I looked at the code vast swaths of basic logic was missing - so I had to implement it. After a couple of months we were informed the lead programmer was not coming back . I also think the lead programmer might have been handling the network play. The landscape was made out of Bezier patches so it was never really flat and people had problems coming up with a physics model for vehicles and the programmer responsible for the vehicles said it was impossible and I was asked if I could do somethings. I  said it would have a go which was not going to be physics based but fun to play. So I knocked stuff up so you could dive a jeep around , jet bike and massive tank / troop carrier all data driven by the model. I had a map with a ravine with 2 bridge models so you could cross it normally but i change it so they were at roughly 45 degrees to create a jump. It worked a treat , go too slow and you would not make it across and fall to you death and if you hit it correctly then it made the landing. The game was going to be on PS1 and PC with 3dfx2 cards. PC had plenty of memory but in the PS1 you could not fit the the simplest level map into memory ( even sharing vertices ) In designing the game they had not considered if it would fit and spent over a year on the PS1. Well the PS1 was going to be the big money earner and as we could fit the game into the console Ubi Soft cancelled the PS1 and all the focus was on the PC version. This was going to be cut down and no multiplayer. Some of the programmers just did not care anymore and things just slipped and eventually the game got canned and a few of us got made redundant.

During this time  at least one Alien game scrapped as it was terrible and started over again.

 

It might have been just how I saw things but Argonaut did not feel like a company to make games just a place for people to have fun.

[JagChris]

@Seedy1812 Didn't Cranberry Source use to be Electric Spectacle who did Zoop on the Jag? Did you work with Aaron Fothergill?

[Seedy1812]

@JagChris Its the other way around Cranberry Source bought Electric Spectacle and they were Cranberry North but with it being broken into a number of times it was closed and the Fothergill brothers moved down south. ( Adam and Aaron )

Edited September 10, 2021 by Seedy1812

[Lostdragon]

Nintendo viewpoint on CD's from an Ex-Atari employee. 

[Leeroy ST]

So Nintendo thinks 4 year olds were smart enough to blow into and insert a cart by opening a hatch, but not smart enough to put in a CD.

 

Interesting.

 

But it also goes into the demographics they alienated, and how Sega, 3DO, and Sony brought them back and then some. They seemed to be in a bubble with NES onward, and didn't really care about the other audiences 

[Leeroy ST]

On 9/3/2021 at 1:44 PM, Seedy1812 said:

The game was going to be on PS1 and PC with 3dfx2 cards. PC had plenty of memory but in the PS1 you could not fit the the simplest level map into memory ( even sharing vertices ) In designing the game they had not considered if it would fit and spent over a year on the PS1. Well the PS1 was going to be the big money earner and as we could fit the game into the console Ubi Soft cancelled the PS1 and all the focus was on the PC version. This was going to be cut down and no multiplayer. Some of the programmers just did not care anymore and things just slipped and eventually the game got canned and a few of us got made redundant.

During this time  at least one Alien game scrapped as it was terrible and started over again.

 

It might have been just how I saw things but Argonaut did not feel like a company to make games just a place for people to have fun.

 

Sounds like they were more into trying things out/experimentation but not really push a finished product.

 

Some of their more known games always felt like Techdemos to me personally, I would say the first Croc imo, was their first real title along with the sequel, that were fully fleshed out, and not just a playable concept, or a graphical show off demo.

 

 

[Atlantis]

I’m glad Jaguar wasnt released with a cd driver in it, because then none of them would work today and only few of us with nonflickery Jags would be able to enjoy the system. I have the cd addon in mind.

[Lostdragon]

On 9/3/2021 at 5:32 PM, pacman000 said:

Reading interviews with Satoshi Tajiri & other Game Freak employees, the story of Pokémon's origin seems to change from interview-to-interview & from person to person. Was it a clone of Dragon Quest, with the ability to exchange items? Was it inspired by Ultra Seven? Bug Catching? The Gameboy's link cable? Are they contradicting themselves? No; each story compliments the other, letting us see bits & pieces of a long, difficult development. I'd take most interviews with developers the same way.

 

On Starfox, it makes sense that Argonaut would start development on the NES as a port of Starglider; Starglider came out in 1986, so it was the right time. Bringing it to the SNES makes sense, since it was near the end of the NES' life, & Jez San developing some sort of Battlezone-type game for the SNEs makes sense, since he'd need to learn the hardware. If I were to try to synthesize a story from these, I'd guess development went something like this:

 

Starglider, ported to the NES.

Nintendo says the NES is nearing it's end of life.

Argonaut gets a SNES development system, develops demos, including a Battlezone clone, to see what they can do & to get used to the new system.

Starglider is ported to the SNES, relatively quickly.

Nintendo asks for a better version; Argonaut asks to develop a 3D-chip.

The FX chip is developed; Starglider is re-worked into Starfox.

 

Of course, this could change if I got more info from other interviews. Someone should sit down with Jez & get him to lay things out, from the beginning to the end. Maybe interview other Argonaut employees, to add even more data, & to create a more complete story. Perhaps with a timeline?

 

 

Given Jez's track record of how he presented a version of events in interviews with likes of Nintendo Zone, Edge, Retrogamer and C+VG magazines, it would be preferable to try and get historical accounts from those working with Jez at the time, then using their accounts as the basis for the questions for him. 

 

 

That way Jez isn't allowed the wriggle room as it were to fabricate a timeline that suits him, something he's constantly done over the years. 

 

I would personally put the accounts of Argonaut staff over anything Jez San comes out with, any day. 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

To try and shed more on a point raised earlier in this page. 

 

In an interview of the Summer of 1994,Jez San claimed when Nintendo were shown NESGlider, they liked the technology, but not the game itself. 

 

At that point Argonaut started working with Nintendo on Starfox, but Argonaut called it Starfox in-house and it was only named Starfox towards the end of the project. 

 

 

He also talked about having to write off SNES CD game development, Jaguar shipping without a CD Drive, issues facing Atari vs 3DO 

 

 

https://archive.org/details/super-gamer-02/page/26/mode/2up

Edited October 19, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Landstalker]

On 10/19/2021 at 5:13 PM, Lostdragon said:

To try and shed more on a point raised earlier in this page. 

 

In an interview of the Summer of 1994,Jez San claimed when Nintendo were shown NESGlider, they liked the technology, but not the game itself. 

 

At that point Argonaut started working with Nintendo on Starfox, but Argonaut called it Starfox in-house and it was only named Starfox towards the end of the project. 

 

 

He also talked about having to write off SNES CD game development, Jaguar shipping without a CD Drive, issues facing Atari vs 3DO 

 

 

https://archive.org/details/super-gamer-02/page/26/mode/2up

I worked at Argonaut somewhere around 96/97 and one of their Lead Coders told me that he had been with the company for 12 years but not had one game completed and released to market.
 

[Jag64]

On 7/22/2021 at 3:11 PM, Leeroy ST said:

... Atari had when it made it's national launch in 1994...

Knew I was in for a ride from the start. So there are like 50+ of these threads on here that want to rewrite history where the mighty Atari Jaguar prevails? Cool, but we have to at least start with the correct timeline before we start mucking with space time continuums. We can debate the personal opinions and business decisions of Atari, its partners, and investors, but we can't ignore facts.

 

- Not going to bother with all the dates. wtf

- CDs were not even cheap, much less the harware

- Atari had almost no liquid assets

- No investment groups or companies trusted the Tramiels after a decade of lies

- Thus, no way to fund an imaginary Jaguar CD in 93.

 

I get why some of the older cats' replies to threads like these can seem almost a little abrasive. Regardless of their stance (and that typically depends on if they like Atari computers. Then they mostly nut over themselves for the Tramiels), they probably get tired of reading fantastical takes on What Might Have Been *heavenly harps play.*

 

But we can't act like CDs were $5 for a stack of 100 or optical drives were cheaply produced in the early 90s. I mean come on. Why not suggest something like, "Maybe Sam Tramiel should have put a Raspberry Pi in a ...." Wait, Coleco already did that.

Edited April 10, 2022 by Jag64

[zzip]

On 4/10/2022 at 8:42 AM, Jag64 said:

But we can't act like CDs were $5 for a stack of 100 or optical drives were cheaply produced in the early 90s. I mean come on. Why not suggest something like, "Maybe Sam Tramiel should have put a Raspberry Pi in a ...." Wait, Coleco already did that.

Well the price of CD-ROM drives did fall in the early 90s, but it's hard to remember exactly when.   Might have been too expensive at launch, but not a year later.

[digdugnate]

The prices of drives dropped noticeably around '93 or '94, but the range was still pretty wide; between US $200-500 retail, depending on speed.  I can't see early adoption of cd drives being any kind of success factor, especially considering the Playstation saw release in 1994.

[Bill Loguidice]

23 minutes ago, digdugnate said:

The prices of drives dropped noticeably around '93 or '94, but the range was still pretty wide; between US $200-500 retail, depending on speed.  I can't see early adoption of cd drives being any kind of success factor, especially considering the Playstation saw release in 1994.

I think ultimately the idea behind it being CD-based is driven by the lower production costs and risks associated with producing CD-based software. If the Jaguar was CD-based, it would have almost certainly seen more frequent releases and a greater volume of releases. With that said, among the big caveats is that the Jaguar is arguably not optimized for being a CD-based system, so there certainly would have had to have been some architectural considerations earlier on in the design process to better support that setup (and frankly just drop the cartridge port to simplify things and reduce costs), although I suppose the same could be said vis-à-vis memory limitations we have on the cartridge side as well. I suppose another argument for it being CD-based from day 1 is that it might have seemed more futuristic, i.e., more "64-bit," which was obviously a big push of the marketing. 

I know one of the arguments for NOT having it be CD-based from day 1 is the increased cost of the console, but we know from how things went down the "lower" cost of the actual Jaguar we got didn't exactly translate to sales anyway. So it's certainly a valid argument to say that the other benefits mentioned earlier would have outweighed a $50 to $100 premium over the initial launch price of the Jaguar, which still wouldn't have been so bad in comparison to some of the other next gen options at the time.

[Jag64]

7 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

... among the big caveats is that the Jaguar is arguably not optimized for being a CD-based system, so there certainly would have had to have been some architectural considerations earlier on in the design process ...

Guys, I think I've got. After looking over everything, the Jaguar could have easily crushed the competition if it had launched with a CD-Rom drive, and the required increase in RAM, since we're not just using CDs for storage. But I see no reason to stop the juggling. I believe with a little work, we squeeze a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in. It's the only way the Jaguar will be able to run DirectX 12.

 

I think this solves the software problem, because then devs will wAnT tO mAkE grAmez.

[laymanpigeon]

Jaguar CD was priced at 150USD that had 2x CD ROM Drive in 1995 and Atari Jaguar by itself in 1993 was 250USD.

Even if Jaguar launched with CD Drive integrated, at best 399USD and likely it would have been 450USD in 1993.

If Atari wasn't such a mess, perhaps Jaguar CD could have been ready and produced by Winter Holiday of 1994.

Then for Winter Holiday of 1995 they could done all in one unit of Jaguar and CD ROM Drive add-on for 349USD.

 

Though honestly if Atari had enough money and staff to test out and revise hardware before launch.

Solve all those hardware bugs then there would have been more success along how to reduce cost.

By 1995 they could have reduced amount of DRAM chips to single large 2MB 64bit FPM DRAM.

Another is to integrate 68000 into Jerry thus further reducing complexity of the motherboad.

Overall size and component reduction may have made possible to be priced at 299USD at best.