/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1239315
Continued because I hit post length limit:

The second nail in the coffin was Sony's insistence upon not allowing full motion video games on their hardware. Instead, they pushed 3D as the big differentiator, and while it now seems obvious that 3D would last longer, at the time there was a massive transformation taking place in the technological side of the games business, and it caused everyone to freak the fuck out.

And by freak the fuck out, I mean they all went running in different directions, trying really weird ideas, backed by money directly funneled from Hollywood investors. It was the birth of SillyWood, and an era of intense invasion into games from the world of film.

This was all sparked by the CD. It was decided by Hollywood and Sillicon Valley that the next generation of consoles, in 1995, would be the first to act as a "Set-top box" for the whole family, instead of just for the kids. Atari totally lost out on this vision, as did Nintendo. The Saturn was too Japanese to notice, and the Playstation went entirely in the other direction, focusing on fun.

The 3DO, the CD-I, and the Apple Pippin, on the other hand, all tried to become some weird combination of game console and family-focus-point. It's why there are encyclopedia's on the CD-I, and why the Pippin came with a modem. The 3DO walked the line between these worlds and the actual game console world. It was a weird amalgam of both visions, but it was not designed that way: it was simply a function of what types of games people thought should go onto CD's. The 3DO really tried to get games, but when you're not sure what exactly a game is anymore because someone's got a videocamera all up in yer shit, it's easy to pick the wrong side of a forthcoming tech battle.

Thus, the 3DO had numerous FMV games, funded by clueless movie moguls, and built by burnt out developers who could care less how their products ended up. Everyone was convinced Myst was the greatest game ever... more