/vr/ - Retro Games

Games. Storage.

The same reason why ever successful console was. Games.

It was cheap. The games were cheap. It was the best 3D option at the time.

because there were a bajillion games for it. and they were cheap.

Thread over.

>>667017
FFVII.

That and Resident Evil are why a lot if people got a PS1.

Kinda easy to pick up hardware and a better deal in royalties and licensing. Of course, this was what generated games that ended up being the actual gears for success.

I think the better question should be why was the PS1 so enticing for developers to make games for.

Brilliant arketing
Good games
INNOVATION
Catered to adults
CD player
wasnt a stupid shape

It was the first CD console that didn't suck.

Sega Saturn also didn't suck, but that wasn't a successful console

Games, and CDs were gaining popularity as away to distribute them, while the N64 stuck with cartridges.

EA Sports

Innovation really

Capcom at it's prime
Konami at it's prime
Sony 1st party at it's prime
Square at it's prime
Namco at it's prime
Working designs at it's prime

Etc.

>>667062
this

specially capcom

>>667049
Look at the tech docs and you'll know.

>Good games
>Better quality music than the N64
>Easier to program for than the Saturn
>Long lifespan

Just a few. I'm more of Sega fanboy, but Sony did it right with the PlayStation.

>>667017
Uh because it was fucking great? Is this going to be another Playstation vs Nintendo 64 thread? Because I'm SO fucking down for that.

Everyone else went full retard. It wasn't hard for Sony to take over.

>>667101
Don't start with that SEGA business. I'm a SEGA fanboy too so Playstation vs Saturn arguments just bum me out... But Playstation vs N64? No quarter, Motherfuckers.

>>667115
>>667101
H-hey guys..what's going on in this thread?

>>667137
Get that fucker out of here.

>>667113
The N64 did fine. It was just the PS1 became as ubiquitous as the SNES was. It's not like the N64 bankrupted Nintendo or anything.

Playstation players often had divorced parents.

The machine was literally a parent substitute/babysitter.

>>667137
>Gets fired for singlehandedly destroying Sega stateside.
> Receives $5,000,000 severance pay.

>>667158

Nintendo did shoot themselves in the foot significantly by dicking around third-parties

N64 avoided load times by using the vastly superior cartridges.

In addition, the PS1's 3D games looked absolutely abysmal. Add this to the fact that N64 destroyed PS1 in multiplayer games and you can see why N64 is clearly superior to the PS1.

>>667167
>tfw you got a playstation for christmas because your single mom could only afford shovelware
they weren't really good but I at least had a decent amount of games... thankfully my neighbor had spyro and crash.

>>667169
And your point is...?
OP asked why it was more successful, not which was better

>>667182
My point was pretty obvious and outlined pretty clearly in the last sentence.

>you can see why N64 is clearly superior to the PS1
It's a thread bout the PS1, and I can post relevant information about its' competition

Easy to pirate and cheap

the games themselves were pretty eh

the best ones got ported anyways

>>667202
What were Omega Boost, Einhander, and Gran Turismo ported to?

If you look at the cost of CDs versus Cartridge it's like tens of cents versus dollars per copy. So, N64 games, even and end of console life, were expensive. PS1 games started to get cheaper towards end life. The profit margins were far greater in the respect, and that appeals to 3rd party devs.

Also, Sega panicking didn't help when Sony introduced the PS1, trying to tack on 3d to what was possibly the best 2d platform they could make at the time. Over-complication from feature creep made development of games that bit more difficult.

Personally, I wish the Saturn had caught on better. 2d was still better in that era than most 3d.

1. Sony could manufacture all PS1 parts in-house, a huge competitive advantage
2. Open-door licensing policy unlike the numerous and silly restrictions imposed by Nintendo and Sega
3. Simplest hardware of the 5th gen consoles to program
4. Optical media was cheap and had huge amounts of space
5. Nintendo had draconian licensing policies and the N64 was expensive and hard to develop for
6. Sega only wanted arcade and sports games and the Saturn was hard to develop for

The results speak for themselves

>>667240
Neither the Saturn OR the PSX do good 3d, compared to say, the later N64. Saturn just generally looks more square, because of the way it does polygons. I can't really say it looks "worse", though, and the system doesn't run 3d at a noticeably lower framerate or anything.

>>667456
>Sega only wanted arcade and sports games

NiGHTS
Burning Rangers
Fighters Megamix
Shining Force 3
Panzer Dragoon series
Bug
Clockwork Knight
Dragon Force
Magic Knight Rayearth
Shinobi Legions

None of these are arcade or sports titles.

The elder god tier sound card, of course.

>>667240
THIS! also I had the first gen ps1 so mine crapped out from overheating 8 months in, my saturn still plays as do all my cart based systems from my 2600 up... my non /vr/ systems are also all broken... things were just right back then.

>>667501
I must be really lucky, I've never had a console fail on me.

>>667167
Again with that crap...

Is like the Nintendo fanboys saying the same shit about the Genesis.

>>667167
My parents have been married since 1985. Nice try, Nintenyearold.

>>667167
N64 players were usually molested by their own grandfather and then begged for more

1. The idea of a 'serious' piece of Sony equipment being a games console had novelty value
2. The marketing blitz was very strong financially (Sony went the whole way) and creatively, many award-winning commercials.
3. Aggressive razor-and-blades business model
4. Games

Now too many people are looking at this in a hindsight respect without analysis of why the console got games, so I shall do that.

1. The hardware was well-designed, and it was easy to get good results of it in a short amount of time (so game development was cheaper).
2. Sony's development kits were well documented and supported (good C libraries)
3. Sony's royalty fees were minuscule compared to what Sega and Nintendo were charging
4. Sony reached out to third party developers and were happy to provide them financial support in return for developing a port to the Playstation (and later, in return for exclusivity)

>>667521
Exactly. also now is a shift of mentality I hope cause kids growing up now playing games have parents that grew up playing games... the amazement on my sons face when i show him games that are not COD but immersed you into fantasy, art, and a story.

Because of this:

>>667550
When Leon was just a faggot, not an emo faggot.

because le adult super mature games

>>667539
future furies, all of them

>>667548
But Anon-san, my dad has been using computers since he was in college (during the Altair days in the 70s). He had an Atari 800 and played games on it (before my time though)

>>667569
Is that the nintenyearolds argument against every console that isn't a Nintendo console?

It wasn't, really. The sales numbers were mostly a result of the globalization of the video game console market and economic and population growth.

>>667569
>>667591
Didn't the Gamecube BMX XXX have titties while the PS2 version was censored?

>>667579
I guess in differently, I was 19 when the PS1 and Saturn came out, but so did my first kid. Their in that just right time frame where fashion and trends make a complete loop so their always coming into things they like that I liked when I was younger.

>>667607
>I guess in differently, I was 19 when the PS1 and Saturn came out, but so did my first kid

You don't have any children, silly wizard.

>>667043
but...but... it was successful in Japan ;_;

>>667017

Weakest yet cheapest to produce that gen
Lot's of 3rd party support and advertising
CD was the new thing
Saturn was too expensive

>>667613
>implying Japan matters

>>667043

I guess OP meant in American market

Saturn did kick ass in Japan

>tfw have white Saturn exterior with NTSC interior

Thank you based ebay seller selling only system cases

>>667619
If it wasn't for the Japan sales of the Saturn, the Dreamcast would have never been made.

>>667624
They only sold 10 million Saturns and 75% of that total was in Japan. N64 sold 30 million units, about 60% of them in North America. PS1 sold 100 million units and was successful in all regions.

>>667619
It mattered enough for Nintendo, since the N64 tanked in comparison.

>>667591
nope
I actually liked the Plastation much more than the N64
but I remember critics from that time complaining about games being "not mature" and even puting low scores on games just 'cause they didn't had 3D graphics, so it was kinda shitty time

>>667629
Simple. Japanese gamers go wherever the RPGs are. N64 had no RPGs, thus flop in its homeland.

>>667638
>implying the videogame journalism actually matters

>>667632

Yeah, same happened with PS2, because while it was technically weaker, it was cheap to buy and manufacture and easy to develop for

It's a shame instead of making cheap affordable quality systems Sony keeps trying to focus too much on bulky overpowered hardware that becomes outdated in a few months any ways because it isn't a PC and can't be upgraded

>>667606
I don't know if the PS2 version was censored, but I own BMX XXX on GC, and yes

tits

>>667638

>video game critics
>ever to be taken seriously

I even write my own reviews on a small website online and do my best to be as unbiased as possible but at the end of the day no review should be taken to seriously

>>667659
Whatever, man. PSP was and is amazing.

>>667670
>inb4 GYP

>>667671

I was more talking about PS3

PSP was fine and I loved having that along with my DS

But Vita has fallen in to the PS3 trap

I would love to get a Vita to compliment my 3DS but it's too damn expensive

piracy and library

I won't even bother explaining anyone with 2 braincells can get it

>>667673
It's sad that the game itself is just a crappier version of Dave Mirra BMX.

>>667676

don't even know what that is but if you want my site i can link it

>>667678
Vita isn't THAT expensive actually, it's fault is not having enough games.

>>667683
sure, lemme read your reviews. What do you do, retro or modern, or both?

Because

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8meCIT1ErPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKLrfdaaB6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7L3caPMVDA

>>667670
I-I was young... and didn't had internet then.
Now I don't even read critics

>>667690

A mix of both, I would love to do youtube vids but I need quality equipment before I attempt. I wouldn't want to make half assed stuff

Here's the link http://rawblinkreviewsandshit.tumblr.com/ Yes I know it's tumblr, it's got a lot of shitty users but for now it's simple enough for me to use

>>667685
>32Gb memory card for 100$

I wish that was not expensive in my world

>>667693

It's ok man, we all fell for those traps as a kid

>>667516
>>667521

TOYKO, JAPAN. June 1992, in a stuffy Japanese board room the fate of American families hung in the balance. After the humiliating blow dealt by Nintendo in the perservation of the nuclear family in severed partnership of Super Famicom CD, Sony plotted to overthrow healthy families everywhere with the dreaded PLAYSTATION project with promises to shatter loving families teetering on the edge, and fracturing others. Only the strongest of families would survive the relationship holocaust soon to be set forth by the entertainment mega-giant. By December 1994 it was too late as the first consoles shipped and families around the world collectively broke under the superior gameplay and immersive experience offered by Playstation. It would be many dark years before a true patriot of freedom would arise from the cold ashes of this crippled world, it's name would be XBOX.

>tfw when you got a Playstation and your parents divorced. Still prefer the PS1 over my N64.

>>667717
www.gatheryourparty.com
They're looking for people to write for them

>>667721
>wat

I had a Playstation as a kid and my parents are still married.

>>667721
My parents split up before I ever got a playstation.

>>667721
That duck should get Vs. Duck Hunt

>>667167
My parents abandoned me and my brother. We scraped together enough to buy a PSX together. By that logic, we should have acquired a NetYarouze.

And for no other reason.

>>667826

>bkn kids network

Holy shit I miss when every public station had their own cartoon line up

>>667050
I second this brah

>>667028
Actually, according to numbers, the Gamecube failed in system sales though it had tons of great games. There's got to be more to it than just games.

>>667037
stfu

>>668689
that one was due to the stupid decision to use those mini discs. This was at a time when a lot of people didnt have DVD players either so they could get a game console that could play movies too

>>668757
That wasn't really relevant after 2002. You could buy DVD players for $50 then.

>>668773
I'm gonna need a source for this. I got a PS2 in 2002, specifically because it was less than half the price of a typical DVD player (and it was still $250 or $300 at that point).

>>668757
Yeah, i'm sure that was probably a big part of it. Every other company was already moving on and expanding their consoles with online capabilities and more uses while Nintendo decided to make a somewhat awkward system that was nothing more than well...a game system. Had it been released earlier when all that mattered were the games and good marketing like the early 90's or earlier it would've probably done MUCH better.

>>668782
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=918598

>>667017
For the same reason VHS was successful. It was cheap and dirty and got the job done, despite inferior technology compared to Betamax. And by Betamax, I mean N64.

However, the N64 wasn't the flop people like to claim it was. It was a financial success, and carved out a comfortable chunk of the market. The situation is very much like the PSP and DS. The PSP was, and still is, a success. But people imagine that because the DS sold so many more units, the PSP was a flop. That's not how markets work. You don't need to sell heaps of units. You just need to sell ENOUGH units.

The PS1 did a great job of glossing over the fact the game trailers on TV were all FMV, the PS1 hardware was sometimes defective, and the system was incapable of certain basic 3D techniques.

>>668790
>nothing more than well...a game system.

that's exactly what I liked about it. though the game library is pathetic except for a few gems and almost no games.
the mini discs were something I didn't enjoy. I should have bought a ps2 instead.

Lack of a decent opponent.

>>667035
>because there were a bajillion games for it. and they were cheap.

t-this isn't the case anymore, is it? ;_;

>>667017
CDs were far cheaper than carts. They also had a much larger capacity, and the PSX is the only gen-5 console that supports disk-swapping.

Also, the N64 was a huge fucking pain in the ass to develop for compared to the PSX, to the point that a lot of later PSX games actually looked and ran as good as or better than contemporary N64 titles despite inferior hardware.

>>667017

I never even owned a PS or PS2. I was happy to learn my PS3 is able to play PS games.

>>668757
it was the disk space that ultimately fucked them over. PS2 an Xbox were no better graphically, however you don't see the xbox+ps2 multiplats like GTA and Star Wars battlefront because they just could not fit those games on the ~70% smaller mini cd.

Cheap and easy.

>ctrl-f Madden
>0 results

Madden.

Now stop having an arbitrary pissing contest, it's for sour grapes plebians who want to rationalize only having one system to enjoy.

Since we're all grown up now and have disposable income we can enjoy the relative merits of both systems like true connosieurs, even if we were poor kids back in ye day that could only afford whatever our parents deemed to get us.

Third Party Support / Library
Clever Marketing
Money (pricing, licensing fees, production costs)

Also the easy piracy had a role in making it successful worldwide.

Because Sega of Japan was being a dick when it came to the Saturn in America.

>>667017

Because you could pirate the shit out of it. Get it chipped and you could buy shittons of games for next to nothing. So naturally they sold a fuckton of consoles.

>>671162
Had a friend who had every version of DDR. Playstation is a dancing machine thanks to chips

>>671094
N64:
>Madden Football 64
>Madden NFL 99
>Madden NFL 2000
>Madden NFL 2001
>Madden NFL 2002

Is there something I'm missing here?

>Now stop having an arbitrary pissing contest, it's for sour grapes plebians who want to rationalize only having one system to enjoy.

Did you even read the thread? Practically no one is trying to turn it into a pissing contest. Most of us can own and enjoy both systems now that they're dirt cheap, but that doesn't mean we can't have a discussion about why the Playstation was so much more successful back in the day.

>>671229
>>671229
>but that doesn't mean we can't have a discussion about why the Playstation was so much more successful back in the day.
OH MY GOD IM COMMMINNNNNNNNGGGGG

>>671229
>a bunch of multiplatform ports released well after the PS1 had solidly established its base

Madden put it on the map in 97-98.

Anyway I was annoyed because I kept scrolling by this thread and seeing sour grapes shit like "it was only successful because filthy idiots bought it en masse for their kids to play shovelware because they didn't know any better" and other petty stuff and seeing that on /vr/ bothers me

>dat third party support

Capcom
Acquire
Psygnosis
Konami
Square

They were putting out games for people to enjoy back then. Today, they're putting out "cinematic" crap to push political ideology.

>>671386
more like

>Square
>Square
>Square
>Square
>Square

Every time I fucking look at my PS1 library I'm blown away by how fucking prolific they were in the PS1 era. That was the golden age of Square. They were so daring, too, they were making Final Fantasies, more experimental RPGs, action RPGs, dungeon crawlers, fighting games, all sorts of weirdass hybrid fucking crossups between fighters and dungeon crawlers and RPGs and shit...

>>671463
I really want them to have that spirit back.

they have such amazing standards for what makes a quality game. that's admirable even if today you don't really think that's the case.

>>671386
>Today, they're putting out "cinematic" crap to push political ideology.

pretty much. I was and will always be weirded out by FFX. imo that whole shit started with that game.

The N64 and Gamecube might not have been as successful as their competitors, but there were more than enough games to keep me interested during those years. I used to have a lot of brand loyalty to Nintendo back then, because despite their lower position in their market, Nintendo always managed to release enough good games.

I lost that brand loyalty with the Wii, when I had to wait many months to get a decent games for it, horrendous online service, plus the ridiculous delaying of SSBB in Europe at the time. The Wii library impoved after that, but by that point I already jumped ship.

However, I do have a great respect for the Playstation 1/2, not only for their great games but also how they had far more variety.(2D games, mature games, huge array of 3rd party)

>>671463
They were like this during their SNES era as well, but most of the experimental stuff(Romancing SaGa, Treasure of the Rudras, Treasure Hunter G, Seiken Densetsu 3) never left Japan. Square seemed to have a lot more trust in the western market after FFVII was a massive success.

>>671482
Well, back then they were more willing to put out a potentially janky or awkward game for the sake of trying something new.

It's not their fault though, it's the state of the industry. The PS1 and N64 hosted so many weird, awkward yet highly original games because they were the first true 3D console generation. All bets were off, people were still figuring out what worked and what didn't in that format, and you got a lot of wild experimentation.

By the sixth and seventh generations things had settled and solidified into tried and true play mechanics, as well as paradigms that people knew made money. Focus shifted on making specific types of games as polished as possible.

That's how we arrived at our current state of modern games that feels so plateaued. Things are just very set in their ways. Nintendo admirably keeps trying to shake things up by introducing new angles with the DS and Wii and Wii U, but they're ultimately only good for a few curiosities before things settle back into more straightforward game design.

Necessity is the mother of ingenuity...limitations require creativity. I don't know what kind of paradigm shift could result in the combination of limitations and novelty from the early third and fifth generations.

>>671546

I wonder where things started to go wrong. I'm reading through all my old EGM magazines at the moment and have made it to mid-2000. There's some signs of innovation stagnation, but there was still a lot of good stuff coming out. The Dreamcast had games like Seaman and Samba de Amigo for god's sake. Sega was even bragging that "our core audience is the 16-30 year old male. If Sony wants to sell a bunch of PS2s to 50 year old men, then have fun with that."

What happened to that spirit?

>>671546
well put, anon. 10/10 post.

>>671607
See, from my perspective, it's not "going wrong". It's a natural progression. There wasn't any other way it could go down, really. We can look to it as non-ideal and try and discover a way to recapture the magic, but we can't really look back and go "it shouldn't have come to this".

>>671631
Thank you

I'm surprised the N64 has as many good titles as it does (even if the PS1 has more) considering the circumstances.

>Cartridges
>Difficult to develop for
>Lack of documentation
>Nintendo SNES high tyranny

>>667184
It clearly states why the PS1 was more successful not superior, idiot.

Pic related, it's you.