/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10960424
The Jaguar's problem wasn't really the architecture. That could have been managed. The big problem for Atari is they were fucking broke. The system itself is weirdly cheap. The shell has no dust cover for the cartridge port and the expansion bay is just a hole in the shell with the bare PCB sticking out. That alone tells the story: they couldn't afford to get games on the thing. You'd think Atari would have at least made a play at getting Mortal Kombat on the thing. But no, instead they made their own knockoff. There was no scenario where this was going to work.

>>10126347
Sprits Within is a good bet simply for the magnitude of that one decision. It's not like they were struggling and had to bet big. Squaresoft was one of the biggest publishers and even had a lot of growth ahead of it but decided to blow it all up by jumping to an entirely different medium and business model.

>>10126364
Pretty much. Like >>10126369 said, their computers were competitive and they probably could have succeeded had they transitioned to IBM compatibles in the 90s. Leaving consoles behind and pushing a line of Atari computers to compete with Compaq, Packard Bell, and Dell, it might have worked out.

Really Atari's problem was they were notoriously cheap. Even the original VCS had a lot of corner cutting going on. It was a rudimentary machine even by late 70s standards. It worked out because there wasn't much competition and Atari had some competent game designers but if you look at all their subsequent machines they wouldn't stop penny pinching even when it didn't make sense. The 7800 barely had any sound. They needed to stick an enhancement chip called POKEY into the cartridges to give the games music. That's for a system that was slated for a 1984 launch and came out in 1986. The fucking Jaguar didn't even have a proper shell. They didn't bother with connectors. The expansion port is just a giant hole in the back with the bare PCB sticking out.

Kind of strange how they expect so much money for this when they couldn't even get a new mold. I already know it's going to keep the Jaguar's cartridge slot with no dust flap and cartridges with handles, but I wonder if they will at least give it some decent connectors at the back.