Best Console Design Decisions

General and high profile video game topics.
Ferf13
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby Ferf13 » April 14th, 2020, 7:35 pm

The original Or fat PS3 was nice how versatile it was as far as playing cd’s, DVD’s, Blu-rays, PS3 games PS2 games, and PS1 games. It also had 4 USB ports, memory stick slot, SD memory card slot, and CF slot. It was one of the best Blu-ray players on the market and upgradable. A lot of original stand alone Blu-ray players could not do software upgrades at the time. The hard drive was easy to replace and upgrade with certain laptop hard drives.

The 3do had a cool music player, that was fun to watch while listening to music cd’s.

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ActRaiser
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby ActRaiser » April 14th, 2020, 8:25 pm

Retro STrife wrote:As to the Wii-Gamecube though, I would point first to the PS2 backwards compatibility with PS1.

That reminds me... the PS2/PS1 compatibility was a great design decision in its own right, and worth mentioning. The PS1 was the best selling console ever at that point, so it allowed the PS2 to ride the PS1 coat tails while its game library was pretty weak for the first couple years. Another great design decision was the PS2 playing DVDs out of the box (even the Xbox needed an adapter). With most DVD players selling for like $200 back then, it was a no-brainer for many people to buy a PS2. Both of these features helped the PS2 become the best selling home console ever, and no other console has come close since.



Good catch on the PS2 with PS1 backward compatibility. I had forgotten about that one. And I definitely agree with you on the Xbox 360. It's User Interface was super simple and clean. Even after its blade refresh into whatever we call today's UI it is still hands down a better experience than the Xbox One's interface. It's a pile of poo compared to the 360 and even the PS4s.

djc
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby djc » April 15th, 2020, 12:06 am

I'm going to say the standard 9-pin joystick port which started life on the Atari 2600 and 8-bit line of computers, made its way to other computers like the Commodore series, newer consoles like the Sega Genesis, and all the way up to the 3DO and more recent Flashback consoles. A lot of versatility there and who doesn't love using a Genesis controller on a 2600 or Colecovision game?

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » April 15th, 2020, 9:17 am

Dropping the Atari 2600's frame buffer.

In a single frame, the 2600 can display 2 sprites, 2 tiny missiles, and a square ball. The primitive graphics system was intended only to play the best ports of Pong and Combat on the market, and then be replaced.

But without a frame buffer, the primitive hardware had no way of tracking what it was drawing in each scanline of the frame,much less the entire frame itself. This meant that the limits were only just polite suggestions, and a programmer could trick the the cpu into playing games like Space Invaders.

The home port of Space Invaders was what created the modern console industry.

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The Famicom's use of tile based backgrounds.

Cartridge memory wasn't cheap. And cpu speed was limited. Without the ability to break an entire world down into smaller, more manageable pieces? There's no Super Mario Bros to be entirely built around the feature. It's hard to state how much the new Nintendo house style changed the gaming industry (Sonic, DKC, Metroid series, and even Castlevania took inspiration) but consider the possibility of a world where the design lessons of world 1-1 are far more obscure.

It would look a lot like a world where Jet Set Willy is still considered an all-time classic, despite being a mechanically simple game that can't actually be beaten in its original form due to a lack of bug testing.

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The Gameboy's focus on battery life.

There was literally no other reason to own one. 4 colors and pea soup screen blur mean many action games were barely playable. But portability was the only reason to own a portable system in the first place.

Would Pokemon and Tetris be remembered today, without this common sense observation?

TheEagleXIII
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby TheEagleXIII » April 15th, 2020, 10:50 am

ThePixelatedGenocide wrote:The Gameboy's focus on battery life.

There was literally no other reason to own one. 4 colors and pea soup screen blur mean many action games were barely playable. But portability was the only reason to own a portable system in the first place.

Would Pokemon and Tetris be remembered today, without this common sense observation?


I'll second that. What makes it an ever greater decision, is they had to sacrifice something else important to make that great decision. And it was a gutsy call too when compared to the Game Gear, which looked good but had low battery life. I never ever saw anybody with a Game Gear when I was a kid, and SEGA was as big, if not bigger, than Nintendo here. I never even heard anyone talk about the Game Gear. Everyone had and knew Game Boy.

And because of that it had a very long lifespan. Even though some upgraded to a Game Boy Colour, people were still playing games with 8-bit graphics when the PS2 was nearing it's release date.

Buttermancan
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby Buttermancan » April 16th, 2020, 5:52 am

The Sega Saturn having a hard drive. At the time it was amazing and so much better than the playstation and N64 for saving games!

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Gentlegamer
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby Gentlegamer » April 16th, 2020, 11:17 am

Buttermancan wrote:The Sega Saturn having a hard drive. At the time it was amazing and so much better than the playstation and N64 for saving games!


You mean internal save battery. It was in concept cool but the battery had no more longevity than many carts.

Though I still have NES carts with 25+ year old save games.

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ActRaiser
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby ActRaiser » April 16th, 2020, 11:22 am

Buttermancan wrote:The Sega Saturn having a hard drive. At the time it was amazing and so much better than the playstation and N64 for saving games!


I'm thinking this was a late April Fool's joke and then I found this.
https://segaretro.org/Saturn_Floppy_Drive

Who knew?

Happy Thursday.

HawgWyld
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby HawgWyld » April 16th, 2020, 2:13 pm

Sony DualShock controller.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Best Console Design Decisions

Postby VideoGameCritic » April 16th, 2020, 2:58 pm

Gentlegamer wrote:
Buttermancan wrote:The Sega Saturn having a hard drive. At the time it was amazing and so much better than the playstation and N64 for saving games!


You mean internal save battery. It was in concept cool but the battery had no more longevity than many carts.

Though I still have NES carts with 25+ year old save games.


This is an interesting point. The Saturn and NES cartridges used the same type of battery - the CR2032 - and yet the cart batteries last for decades while the Saturn battery can't make it through a year!


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