What is the Atari Jaguar's Biggest Design Flaw / Problem?

[+cubanismo]

When were the Linux and DOS tools released relative to the ST ones? I had just assumed any sane company at the time would have built a PC SDK from the start.

[Zerosquare]

7 hours ago, cubanismo said:

any sane company at the time

Heh, good one!

[Jag64]

9 hours ago, cubanismo said:

When were the Linux and DOS tools released relative to the ST ones? I had just assumed any sane company at the time would have built a PC SDK from the start.

I guess all those people that keep telling me Sam and Jack Tramiel were business geniuses are right. ? Like everything else with those shtbags, it looks like they saw the Jaguar as a way to unload other merch they were discontinuing. Only those corrupt morons would force developers to work on a platform they're killing the same year the Jaguar launches. lmfao.

 

Atari: Develop for this confusing hardware.

 

Devs: Cool. Got an SDK?

 

Atari: Buy this old computer stock we're liquidating. There's an SDK for that.

 

Devs: What?

 

Atari: Doesn't matter. We've burned so many bridges, no one will even carry this console until we're bankrupt and we'll sell them to European gamers that are unaware Atari died years ago.

 

Quite possibly ... a completely accurate .... word for word discussion at Atari. Just sayin. Fcking Tramiels. Lie, exploit, and make bad business decisions. That's all they did in my lifetime. What a bunch of knobs. lol

Edited April 30, 2022 by Jag64

[youxia]

17 minutes ago, Jag64 said:

Fcking Tramiels. Lie, exploit, and make bad business decisions. That's all they did in my lifetime. What a bunch of knobs. lol

C64 or ST were "bad business decision"? Hmmm.  You can dump on Tramiel(s) all you want but the fact remains that he was a major catalyst in the early Eighties computer & videogame market. Sure, they messed up a lot and probably were major assholes too, but that's about on par with all the other players in the industry at the time (or any time).

[Positron5]

I think this thread is great. The technical analysis is really fertile and with coders like BS42, Cubanismo, Cyprian , CyranoJ,

Zerosquare, laoo and others the Jag scene looks like some great things are happening.

Cheers

[Jag64]

34 minutes ago, youxia said:

C64 or ST were "bad business decision"? Hmmm.  You can dump on Tramiel(s) all you want but the fact remains that he was a major catalyst in the early Eighties computer & videogame market. Sure, they messed up a lot and probably were major assholes too, but that's about on par with all the other players in the industry at the time (or any time).

I don't know if having success early negates everything you do in life after. i.e. If I help an old woman cross the road, I'm not defined for life as a "good person." It's very much like people are (or at least should be) judged on the total sum of their life's choices. Fans and haters will cherry pick whatever elevates or tears down the subject of their focus. I can only go off what I see, hear, and read. Was the C64 cool? Darn right. Was the ST good? Yea, and they killed it. I appreciate you cementing my point. They are, and will be remembered as bad businessmen that had some luck early, then squandered it all away by burning bridges and ruining Jack and the surname's legacy by lying every time they opened their mouths from 1992 forward.

 

But the Commodore 64 was cool. I don't think anyone will argue that. And I've heard OJ Simpson was one hell of a running back; I don't really know him for that though.

[youxia]

1 hour ago, Jag64 said:

Fans and haters will cherry pick whatever elevates or tears down the subject of their focus.

How true, especially of somebody who can define whole careers by stating that all somebody ever did  was "Lie, exploit, and make bad business decisions" and that launching the most succesful micro ever, plus a pioneering 16 bit one, was an unimportant stroke of luck.

 

Conversely, I'm not a Tramiel "fan" in the slightest, I simply give him credit where it's due. I'm sorry it gets in the way of your tunnel-visioned "shtbag" narrative, but that's - thankully - not how these people are remembered in real history, and no amount of lame OJ comparisons and other mental gymnastics is going to change that.

[Jag64]

33 minutes ago, youxia said:

... Conversely, I'm not a Tramiel "fan" in the slightest, I simply give him credit where it's due. I'm sorry it gets in the way of your tunnel-visioned "shtbag" narrative, but that's - thankully - not how these people are remembered in real history, and no amount of lame OJ comparisons and other mental gymnastics is going to change that.

Rock on, brother. No one is sayin you can't like them or that you have to see things my way, lol. Pour a cup of decaf. We all view the world, and the people on it, differently. I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers - because honestly, I didn't consider how much some others might really love the Tramiels. That's on me. But I'm not going to insult you over some former videogame executives I don't like, but you do. Maybe you and I just have different experiences. We're not the same person; shocker. I'll focus on their con-artist behavior that ultimately removed them from the industry, and you focus on the "Before Before Times."

 

No harm; no foul. Let's steer this back to the hardware and design.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Jag64

[+cubanismo]

6 hours ago, Zerosquare said:

Heh, good one!

Yeah, this was certainly a bit tongue-in-cheek. I didn't mean to rip them too hard. If your company builds a computer, you're probably going to develop your tools on that computer. Makes sense. If you pull your console launch in by a year or whatever they did with Jaguar, you probably launch with the tools you have. But man, in hindsight, the tools, the tools the tools. They're so important when you're trying to attract devs, so I am curious when the SDKs for other platforms became available. Just another interesting bit of the Jaguar history where I have a knowledge gap.

[DEATH]

"What is the Atari Jaguar's Biggest Design Flaw / Problem?"

The lack of local ram or cache for the 68000 which makes it almost useless

[Chilly Willy]

On 4/27/2022 at 9:18 AM, laoo said:

I feel that the discussion diverges from the OPs intent. I think that the OP asks to point design decisions that turned out to be wrong. So bugs in RISCs and lack of good toolset aren't design decisions. Using 68000 instead of e.g. 68030 is such decision but I don't think it can be called an obvious design flaw. The system certainly would benefit from better processor (especially from caches, pipelining and 32-bit bus). We know that it was considered, and it ended being against the design philosophy where the CPU is only a supervisor to RISC processors and the increase of final cost of the box had been considered unacceptable. We don't know if the machine would be competitive with better processor.

 

I think using the 68000 actually was a design flaw. Jerry was designed to adjust its external bus to the width of the main processor, so because the 68000 was 16 bit, Jerry had to be as well. Using the M68EC020 would have made a world of difference in a few ways: first, having a 32-bit data bus would have kept Jerry's bus at 32 bits as well; second, it had a 256 byte instruction cache that would have helped tremendously in keeping it off the bus compared to the 68000; third, the instruction timing was much improved over the 68000, so it would have been much faster even at the same clock rate... but in this case, it could have been clocked at a higher rate, perhaps even the same as the JRISC processors. Yes, it was more expensive, but the price was dropping rapidly at the time as the EC020 was a favorite chip for a lot of folks at the time, be it appliances or computers.

 

Another possible contender for main processor would have been the SH1. It also had a 32-bit data bus. It also had a cache (more than the 68020). It was also a favorite in appliances of the time, and was very reasonable in price. When (if) Atari moved to the Jag2, it could have moved to the SH2/3/4, depending on when it would have released.

 

[zzip]

On 4/30/2022 at 8:11 AM, Jag64 said:

Was the ST good? Yea, and they killed it. I appreciate you cementing my point. They are, and will be remembered as bad businessmen that had some luck early, then squandered it all away by burning bridges and ruining Jack and the surname's legacy by lying every time they opened their mouths from 1992 forward.

They did a great job with the ST in a short amount of time.  But everything they did after that seemed to ship late and was less impressive than originally promised.

[Lostdragon]

27 minutes ago, zzip said:

They did a great job with the ST in a short amount of time.  But everything they did after that seemed to ship late and was less impressive than originally promised.

Well said. 

 

The ST was always going to suffer compromises, given the time scale and need to offer it as a budget alternative to the Mac and it fared better than Sinclair's attempt at something similar with the QL.. 

 

 

But the STE? announcing it as an Amiga beater and then it quietly arriving with little fanfare and being far too little, too late.. 

[agradeneu]

52 minutes ago, zzip said:

They did a great job with the ST in a short amount of time.  But everything they did after that seemed to ship late and was less impressive than originally promised.

The Tramiels put Atari back on track when they took over a struggling company. This is how Rob Zdybel put it in an interview. "Tramiel Atari was good Atari." The hired the right people and started to make money again.

 

 The homecomputers got killed by consoles and PCs, as not only the ST, but also the Amiga was loosing popularity durig the 90s.

 

Atari really fucked up their consoles, they did not understand videogames at all I think. They were all about hardware and price.

 

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by agradeneu

[zzip]

46 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

But the STE? announcing it as an Amiga beater and then it quietly arriving with little fanfare and being far too little, too late.. 

And still not quite matching Amiga specs 4 years later.

 

34 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

The Tramiels put Atari back on track when they took over a struggling company. This is how Rob Zdybel put it in an interview. "Tramiel Atari was good Atari." The hired the right people and started to make money again.

They clearly needed a turnaround and the Tramiels pulled it off.  

However it's not clear than that Tramiel way was the only way the company could be righted.

For instance, I think a turnaround that focused on the Videogame line and Game IPs and possibly scrapping the computer line might have had more long-term success, even though it would have been counter-intuitive in 84.

[42bs]

58 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

But the STE? announcing it as an Amiga beater and then it quietly arriving with little fanfare and being far too little, too late.. 

Not speaking of the bus crippled Falcon

[Chilly Willy]

On 5/2/2022 at 11:45 AM, agradeneu said:

Atari really fucked up their consoles, they did not understand videogames at all I think. They were all about hardware and price.

They didn't understand HOME video games. They were still king in the arcade, and remained so for some time to come. At one point, that was almost their only presence. To be fair, most companies have screwed the pooch a time or two (or three or four) in the home market. Look at Sega.

[Jag64]

25 minutes ago, Chilly Willy said:

They didn't understand HOME video games. They were still king in the arcade, and remained so for some time to come. At one point, that was almost their only presence. To be fair, most companies have screwed the pooch a time or two (or three or four) in the home market. Look at Sega.

Then aren't we talking about two different companies in this case? Again, I don't know an Amiga from a Commodore, but I thought at some point Warner (or maybe it was after with Jack) had sold off the assets and split the Arcade business from hardware business. That alone handicapped the company as a home console manufacturer heading into an age when in-house first-party exclusives were a must. The Arcade part of Atari gradually became Midway. Someone might be able to correct me.

[roots.genoa]

You're absolutely right. Warner sold to Tramiel the consumer division and kept the arcade one (Atari Games) that ended up being bought by Williams that fused it with Midway later on.

That being said, Tramiel was clearly a computer guy, and most Atari consoles and handhelds were designed by third party companies anyway. So I would say they didn't understand video games period, not just home video games. But that would be a caricature, of course.

[Jag64]

1 hour ago, roots.genoa said:

You're absolutely right. Warner sold to Tramiel the consumer division and kept the arcade one (Atari Games) that ended up being bought by Williams that fused it with Midway later on.

That being said, Tramiel was clearly a computer guy, and most Atari consoles and handhelds were designed by third party companies anyway. So I would say they didn't understand video games period, not just home video games. But that would be a caricature, of course.

Yea, but I came off a lot more humble and less cocky that time by acting unsure, right? I'm trying. Putting a governor on all my greatness so the some of the older farts stop getting their Depends in a bunch. .... And I blew the humility attempt.

[Lostdragon]

16 hours ago, Chilly Willy said:

They didn't understand HOME video games. They were still king in the arcade, and remained so for some time to come. At one point, that was almost their only presence. To be fair, most companies have screwed the pooch a time or two (or three or four) in the home market. Look at Sega.

And Sony.. 

 

 

PSP 

Vita

 

[agradeneu]

2 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

And Sony.. 

 

 

PSP 

Vita

 

Hm PSP sold over 80 Million. Quite a good screw up

[Lostdragon]

19 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Hm PSP sold over 80 Million. Quite a good screw up

  It's not really that simple. 

 

 

In  2003  Ken Kutaragi, claimed the PlayStation Portable  would become "the Walkman for the 21st Century".

 

Now that was a bold/arrogant claim to make given that Sony shipped a total of 150 million walkman units by 1995.. 

 

 

The name Walkman  even joined  select group of brands like Hoover and Xerox whose name defines the product.

 

UMD movies were an absolute disaster for Sony. 

 

Sony was  overly ambitious with UMD, hoping it could make a format as ubiquitous as DVD for mobile devices and using the PSP as something of a Trojan Horse for it. 

 

The system was  also hit by piracy to a point developers stopped making games for it. 

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/piracy-puts-a-stop-to-pixeljunk-on-psp

 

And the Nintendo DS absolutely hammered it, sales wise.

 

 

DS sales claimed at  154.02 million units worldwide. The original DS sold 18.79 million units. The majority of sales came from the DS Lite at 93.86 million units.

 

So not only did it not become the Walkman of it's time.. the name you'd associate with handheld gaming, it gave Sony yet another failed storage device to sit along the mini disc. 

 

So yes, it was a screw up in many ways for the company, the very ambitious plans they had for the system, falling very short. 

 

 

 

 

[Jag64]

26 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Hm PSP sold over 80 Million. Quite a good screw up

What I love, is we're calling 80 million a screw up in a comment that's quoting a complete inaccuracy. How in the fck can people spend so much time on a site devoted to Atari and not have a fcking clue which Atari was which? It's like a damn NASCAR driver not knowing their left from right. What tf have they been doing this whole time? lol

 

 

Since I almost certainly have to explain metaphors for some people, NASCAR drivers typically only turn left, thus making their inability to differentiate left from right kind of crazy.

 

5 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

  So yes, it was a screw up in many ways for the company, the very ambitious plans they had for the system, falling very short.

80 million+ units sold and over 1,350 games released during a 10-year lifespan.

 

You can come up short of your goals and still succeed. That's one reason to set lofty goals. Can't sit here and watch old obsessive compulsives try to polish the turds that are Tramiel consoles all day and then read that selling over 80 million consoles with nearly 1,500 games that keep the hardware alive and active at retail for a decade is a failure. ?

Edited May 6, 2022 by Jag64

[agradeneu]

28 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

 

 

So yes, it was a screw up in many ways for the company, the very ambitious plans they had for the system, falling very short. 

 

 

 

 

Maybe. But you put it in the same ballpark as the Vita which does not make much sense: it's 80 Million vs 16 Million.

 

While the PSP was not "the Walkman of the  21st century", it was still a very popular handheld console, especially in Japan with the Monster Hunter games.