OBJETIVO ESPECÍFICO Nº 3

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Leonard Herman

During the years 1977 to 1991, coinciding with the birth and death of the Atari 2600, video game console design seemed to stagnate. Graphics improved with each new generation of systems, but processing power seemed to be at a virtual standstill. Roughly all consoles introduced during those years had 8-bit processors, until the release of the SNES and Sega Genesis which had 16-bit processors.

The 16-bit systems are commonly referred to as fourth generation video game consoles. The first generation consoles (1972–1975) were nonprogrammable systems, while the second generation consoles (1976–1984) were early 8-bit programmable systems, and the third generation consoles (1985–1991 [approximately]) were more advanced 8-bit systems.

With the release of fourth generation systems, visionaries began seriously looking at the future of video game consoles. As newer and more powerful systems were introduced, and the entire concept of ‘‘bit processing’’ disappeared, the blur between one generation of systems and another seemed to fade. By this time the new systems were all lumped into one category: next generation machines.

Once Nintendo released the SNES in 1991, Nintendo was once again on solid ground to compete against Sega, which was by then leading the popularity contest with its Genesis console. Although the Genesis had a year’s head start on the SNES, the Nintendo caught up quickly. No sooner was the SNES on store shelves that Nintendo announced that it was going to release a CD drive for the 16-bit console. Although NEC’s Turbografx- CD player attachment was not breaking sales records, both Nintendo and Sega saw opportunities for the new medium. A compact disc could contain 550 megabytes of code; or 2,000 times that of the most powerful cartridge. CD-based games offered the ultimate in complexity, detail, and sound.

Nintendo had partnered with Sony to create a $700 CD add-on for the SNES. Part of the deal allowed Nintendo to use characters from movies by Columbia Pictures, the movie company that Sony owned. Sony in turn would develop a standalone unit called the

Play Station which would have a cartridge slot for SNES cartridges and play games designed for the SNES CD. However, the deal also gave Sony complete control of all the titles that would be developed for the CDs. When Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi learned this he immediately ceased all partnerships with Sony and signed Philips to create the CD format.

Philips’s approach was to make the SNES CD format compatible with its own CD-i format, which it planned to release as a standalone multimedia unit in 1991. Philips also obtained the right to use Nintendo characters such as Zelda and Mario in CD-i appli- cations.

In the end, Nintendo’s marriage with Philips dissolved, along with its plans to release a CD player for the SNES. In hindsight this may not have necessarily been a bad thing considering what happened to Sega.

Sega‘s CD player, an add-on for the Genesis, was released in Japan in late 1991 and in the United States nearly a year later under the name Sega CD. Unfortunately it was not the hit that the Sega executives expected it to be. This may have been due to the games that Sega released for the system. Rather than using the expanded storage to use for more sophisticated games, Sega used it mostly for full-motion video. At the time FMV was a novelty for games, but it really did not add anything to the play and consumers simply were not willing to spend money on games that simply were not fun.

Despite the apparent failure of CDs, nobody was giving up on them. In 1991, Trip Hawkins, the founder of software giant Electronic Arts, started a new company called 3DO. Hawkins’s aim was to create a universal console using the CD as the medium to deliver games. Rather than calling it a video game console, Hawkins sold the idea as a multimedia device similar to Philips’s CD-i and Commodore CDTV systems, both of which were introduced in 1991. A multimedia device is simply a computer without a keyboard or a mouse which played interactive software (not necessarily games) that were supplied on CDs. The units were touted as educational devices since much of the software was of the encyclopedic variety.

The CDTV and CD-i systems were not commercial successes, mainly because the public was not exactly sure what they were. Were they computers? Were they game consoles? The distinction was not clear, and the systems were not heavily promoted or explained to the public.

Commodore tried to better define the line between video game console and multimedia console when it released the Amiga CD32in September 1993. The company specifically touted the system as a CD-based, 32-bit game machine. Priced at $400, the system came onto the market with a lot of readily available software since it was compatible with the nearly defunct CDTV system.

Although the CD32was fairly successful in Europe, it could not make an impact in the North American market. And its success in Europe was short lived as well. Commodore could not meet the demand for new units because of component supply problems. When Commodore International filed for bankruptcy in April 1994, the CD32was discontinued.

The 3DO was released in October 1993, one month following the CD32. The system, which was manufactured by several companies including Panasonic and Sanyo, enjoyed a major publicity campaign. Kiosks set up in shopping malls allowed people to experience the system hands-on. Unfortunately this was not enough to make ‘‘3DO’’ as common a word as ‘‘audio’’ and ‘‘video’’ (Hawkins’s original idea was that his console was the third

logical component after aud-DO and vi-DO, hence, 3DO). Although there were many educational titles available for the 3DO, there also were many games which gave consumers the impression that the 3DO was just another gaming console. And its $700 retail price did not exactly make it affordable for most households.

If the 3DO was a multimedia console that pretended to be a video game, then the Atari Jaguar was just the opposite. Atari’s final console was released in late 1993 and cost $250. Although Atari touted the system as a 64-bit machine, purists claimed that this was inaccurate, much in the same way that the Turbografx-16 was not a true 16-bit machine. Regardless, the system was more powerful than the other gaming consoles on the market at the time and it sold pretty well initially. But developers found the system hard to program, and despite Atari’s claim that over 20 third-party developers had signed on, software was never abundant for the console. When the newer 32-bit consoles arrived from Sony and Sega, they pretty much sealed Atari’s fate.