N64 vs Playstation the FAQ By Jake Smith -CronoMaster of Centuria- Disclaimer: Much of this information is not benchmarked or tested and much less of it is confirmed, is based on rumors and actual information from news websites Ive been gathering it is incomplete, and is meant for entertainment purposes only. All registered trademarks and companies mentioned here are property of their respectful owners. What is this FAQ about? Im frequently asked by my friends, how come a huge company like nintendo apareantly lost the console battle against a non game but huge company like sony, I mean lets face it guys, PSX its outselling nintendo in every country they are on, its 1999 and with the incoming missile of playstation 2 we could easily be witnessing nintendo's final hour. Remember Atari against Nes? *Ok. so why is nintendo being outsold? Lack of games, the Playstation is beating the N64 in numbers of 10 to 1, apareantly game companies dont want to make nintendo games and choose PSX instead. Nintendo has some really cool games out there like goldeneye, and the superbly well made Zelda 64, but lack of actual variety and the low/medium quality of many of them is hurting the system... a lot. To make things even worse, most of the games are really short, due to cartridge limitations. *So why nintendo is lacking games? Well, a lot of people is grinning about nintendos "family" oriented games are the cause, other may call out cartridge low storage space but basically is cartridge price, they are at least 10 times more expensive than a CD, however the other factors mentioned also help in this. *Why nintendo has so many kiddie games, and almost no fighters, and no RPG's at all? Again nintendo "family politics" are blamed for this, but thats not the real reason, since cartridges are expensive the publishers have to lower the risk of low sales as much as they can. so they basically use washed out ideas that already worked in the system or other system (resident evil 2, v8, the horrible gt clone formula 1, etc.) and "family oriented games" because they are "low risk software" since anyone can buy them (mostly parents to their kids) and play them. Also if someone tries to pull something new or slightly original it has to be family oriented and with low production values, or relatively low prod. values (space silicon valley, etc.) you wont ever see a game like "Silent Hill", "thrill kill" or "Parappa the rapper" not even a good RPG like "Final Fantasy" in the N64 due to that. they are high risk games since only certain people buy them. *Why n64 games are good looking but short? I remember a lot of years ago when the "ultra 64" was being created that one of the programmers proudly said, "in the n64 we will have (insert your favorite 3d graphic effect here) in realtime thanks to the wonderful Silicon graphics chip, others will have to program the same function, and will use time and memory in it" Well the thing is that that speech was true, the N64 has a wonderful chip that pulls very nice effects without programming them, the bad thing is that they tried to cut expenses by leaving just 2 mb of memory, "after all with that chip what they were going to need it for anyway? right?" Obviously someone forgot the little detail called textures and 2d graphics. Also it has no dedicated sound chip, all sound is programmed, "with that marvelous chip we have plenty of time to program sound!" On top of it all, the cartridge only has only 32mb of space the biggest one having 128. it sounds like a lot, but compared to a CD with 540 mb of space is basically nothing. To make things even worse arcade developers like capcom or midway use hard drives to store their games, we are talking 1 gb at least here. So games have to be terribly compressed to fit in a CD, and they actually have to be "severely edited" to fit in the 32mb or 128mb. The inside line that no one thought in that programmers phrase was "others will need to program the effects" it simply meant one thing, someone eventually did. some PSX games have the same effects without needing the chip. *Why the big N pulled such an unadequate cartridge system? why they didnt used the CD then? The truth is that if cartridges were bad looking, CDs looked a thousand times worst back then, the long boring loading times of CD games made the lighting speed catridge, made the cartridge look like the flash!, Cartridges were extremely faster and easy to use, since nintendo had already gained a huge kid fan base, and kids dont know how to handle CDs pretty well (at least thats what they thought) a 3 year old can insert a cartridge in its place without problems. *So why did sony used the CD? Wait a minute, why did sony made the Playstation in first place? Well, a long, long time ago in a place far, far away called the super nes golden era, the super nes was "king of the world" (all right sega was around there somewhere) so they tried to use cd technology (which was on the verge) to expand its possibilities, unfortunately due to CD limitations the products were of bad quality and uninteresting, remember those interactive movie games? they were good looking but...the gameplay suck! so they finally decided not to go with it... when it was already finished. Sony who had build the machine refuted nintendo's lack of vision and create their own product based in the nintendo's CDX (Cd Extension) thats how the PSX "the Playstation" was born. (just if you havent get it, you are now reading this in a "workstation" did you get it now? I know you could.) *Ok. So come the Playstation got so big and with such cool looking games? Well, theres an "official" history and my own theory on how that happened. the official history is this one, at when the playstation got out Sony pulled a huge campaign ad, the PSX games really beat most of super nes games in a huge way, Sony pulled real arcade titles like tekken instead of "interactive movie" types (first great decision for PSX) but the loading times werent nice, besides the n64 was on the verge, and thats what everybody wanted. At the beginning the N64 hit PSX really hard and a lot of people thought sony was done for, but then sony got out more games even cooler than the first ones, the 2nd generation of PSX was at least ten times better than the first. (as a matter of fact, each generation has been awfully better than the last). And all off the sudden "it" happened, lots of developers who were developing for the n64 realized than the production cost of the 3d games were extremely high, (even nintendo said that in a conference) and the cartridge was unbearably expensive, on top of that many game companies like sierra got their games rejected because they were 2d "they dont use the N64 capabilities!" that was a huge mistake, on nintendos part. So when that happened a lot of developers started hitting their heads on the wall, trying to comply with nintendo's policies, the "family factor", censorship, low storage space, and it had to be 3d... but some others turned to sony's way, Sony treated the developers the way they did with electronic developers, they respected their work and did not censor or ask to modify them in any way. Each time Nintendo lost more and more companies, first little ones that just couldnt keep up, but then big companies like Namco, and Capcom followed, (im surprised that Akklaim still works for nintendo, although they work for sony too) the rest is history, today at least 80-90% of the console game companies work for sony. However my theory is a little bit more realistic, the official history tells you *why* developers went to sony, but doesnt explain why users bought the playstation, off course it was cheaper, but not as cheap to sale or simply throw their nintendos out the street. (which is basically what most of the japanese game fans did) Want to know the reason? simple: pirate copies. Now im not saying that they are good and you should get one right now, because they are not they damage the developers, and contribute to products high prices. But they are part of the real reason why Playstation went all the way forward to the point of crushing the big "N" and im sure sony knows that. When the first pirate copies of psx games came out, their prices were incredibly low, us $3.00 compared to nintendos $30.00 to $60.00 this hapened at a great time because PSX had a huge capcom arcade collection that kids just havent seen in their N64 so kids started buying them just to have them, but with time those games never made it to the n64 and the cartridges prices now looked too high, and the games werent actually what owners expected. But what to do? there isnt to date a pirate cheap playstation anywhere, (yes, ladies and gentlemen thats a known fact) so what they did? they bought or asked burrowed original playstations, and added the modchip to play their copies, at First just to see their games but once they tasted it, thet never went back. They sold their n64 or stopped using them, PSX win a huge userbase that way. Lots of Users + great developers = great system. Doesnt piracy hurt PSX? and benefits n64? Yes and no, Piracy makes games available for low resource people and makes them buy the console, however piracy does hurt developers since it takes away revenues from them, if piracy goes really bad developers will not be available to make high value productions anymore. N64 developers get most of their revenues intact, since the cartridge and the system to save the information is expensive pirates "almost" dont use it, however without piracy n64 games look terribly expensive againsts CDs specially pirate CDs and they are not found in low resources circles. Which finally means more sales for Playstation and playstation titles. Is nintendo in trouble now? Yes, big trouble, his userbase is going thiner and thiner by the day. and the worst is that nintendo *cant* or *wont* do nothing to help it. Take this as an example pokemon is the largest hit title nintendo has now. Did they made a *complete* game conversion to the N64? think about it really hard... Nintendo 64 is lacking resources, thats not good. What is doing nintendo about this crisis? A new "golden era" was being designed for the n64 by upgrading it and that way supporting better more resourcefull games the nintendo DD and the Memory Pack were part of this "evolution" but they both failed once they hit the market. To strike the kill hit Playstation 2 arrived and blow everything else sky high, not even SGI workstation are so Graphically advanced or as fast as playstation 2. Nintendo has decided his only solution is constructing a new bigger nintendo product which will stand against PSX2 As a matter of fact nintendo is willing to sacrifice his whole n64 userbase just to do this. Thats a terrible decision, but they are doing it, since they have to cut the cartridge out of "project dolphin" for obvious reasons it wont be backwards compatible, so n64 cartridges will be obsolete when dolphin comes out. *Ok. So why are people are buying PSX if PSX2 is coming? Playstation 2 is backwards compatible so users can safely buy their favorite titles now and finish them in their playstation 2 when it comes out. Developers are still working on PSX titles too. *What about nintendo 64 incoming new titles? Almost all nintendo 64 games are being silently killed by their developer houses and will be or are being ported to the new system project.(mainly because devlopment is cheaper) Only a couple games like perfect dark and donkey kong 64 (which were basically already finished) were released in the E3 this year, designed to keep users from knowing the truth. *What is Nintendo 64 future? None- Perfect dark and other 2 great titles from rare will be released this year perhaps this xmas but thats about it. Games that were already finished or almost finished are being rushed out. No golden era will be reached and almost no game will be released in the following months (which will hardly be noticed). the system is silently being killed, and all nintendo resources are being oriented to project dolphin. *So what about project dolphin? Little is known about the new project called n2000 and that now is called project dolphin, but is rumored that it may hit the shelves at the same time that PSX2 or a little later, perhaps even a year later. Nintendo is hoping that dolphin alone beats PSX2 but since they are losing their n64 userbase in the process and they have lost most of their game companies it wont be easy. It seems more likely that users dissapointed by the n64 general performance may be expecting or playing PSX2 instead. What is the best choice for a n64 player in this situation? Well, I cant tell you that, is hard to know what nintendo will do next, however you basically have two choices you can either keep it and play perfect dark with it for a while then sell it before it goes too cheap, and/or the dolphin comes out. Or you can change to playstation and decide if you will buy the PSX2 or the Dolphin later... Or perhaps buy a dreamcast now I dont know... However If you are asking about what I did, I did sell my n64 and bought a PSX and im happy with it (im playing Final Fantasy VII and tekken 3 now :) ) However I never saw zelda ending and I will not be abble to play perfect dark, but you just cant have anything in this life cant you? to be finished...