Dr. Cossack
With all of the advocacy people show about Saturn, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, most of the reasons for these arguments, like the fued of Montagues and Capulets, have faded, and few people look at the big picture. What has happened is, the video game industry is destroying itself. Earlier in the 90s, SNES gamers (as was the terminoligy back then) had their games, Genesis gamers had theirs, and people were generally happy. Few people really yearned for the games of the other system, and most people just settled with what they had. Companies weren't always trying to merge, forge alliances, backstab, or prioritize profit over product. They just focussed on their games, which were wonderful. Today however, things are quite different. The video game industry has shrunk somewhat, and now it is more politics than games. Nintendo, Sega and Sony each have their own reasons for this:
Nintendo: Even worse than releasing the Virtual Boy and dismissing Gumpei Yokoi combined, letting the N64 become a cartrige based system is the worst marketing move Nintendo has ever made. This is not because cartriges are bad for games (they're made for games!) but because it has caused almost every 3rd party developer on the planet to forget about the N64. Without 3rd party support, Nintendo can only rely on in-house and 2nd party developers, which can only go so far.
Sega: Except for the 3 game deal, Sega's marketing in the US is still as terrible as ever. They're making PC games, which is hurting their own Saturn devlopers! In Japan, by failing to gain any major attention from Konami, Enix, Square, or the multitudes of other developers that were breaking ties with Nintendo, Sega has let PlayStation become the most currently popular game system.
Sony: Although Sony has done a good job making the PlayStation a popular system, it's stregnths are its weaknesses. With NO in-house developers, a terrible controller and fragile hardware, Sony relies 100% on 3rd party developers. Also, many of PlayStation's games are shovelware, which scares off many consumers who only base their purchases on hype. PlayStation could very easily become obsolete as fast as it has become popular as soon as something "cooler" comes along, or if Sega does a good job over the next year at pulling developers away from Sony.
With Nintendo suffering from little support, Sega trying madly to tear developers away from Sony, and Sony having loads of shovelware, the companies are trying harder to put eachother out of business rather than trying to make good games. Although the selction of games is very good right now, it is divided between the systems, and availability, such as Saturn rentals at Blockbuster, is terrible. What this leads to is, the PC game industry is destroying the video game industry. It is a shame, really. For the most part, PC games are inferior to console games. They are hard to install, usally don't work as good as the PC they're running on is supposed to when they do install, don't maintain good frame rates, are blocky, don't have good interfaces, and PCs cost hundreds of dollars every year if a consumer wants to keep the household PC running properly, let alone up to the latest standards. The only reasons that PC games are more popular than console games are because most people already have a PC, and people don't have to buy several different computers to play all PC games. With three different competing platforms all with their own must-have games constantly shifting about, it seems logical that people would rather just buy one platform and then be allowed to play all of the games for it. This was one of the reasons that the NES was so popular; it composed 90% of the video game market for the time, so whenever a game came out, it would be for the NES. Now, developers are confused about what system they should make their games for. Many take the easy way out and just make a game for several different formats, but their efforts are then divided between the platforms, so a game can never be as good as if it were intended for just one platform. Other times, developers will make a game for one platform and not another, only to annoy consumers of the neglected platform.
Something one should notice about the video game industry is that US marketing trends are usually a generation ahead in time (and behind in wisdom) of Japanese marketing trends. For example, Nintendo owned 90% of the game market in the 8-bit wars in the US and PCs were almost unheard of. In the 16-bit wars in Japan, the same followed. In the 16-bit wars in the US, Nintendo's and Sega's markets were roughly evenly divided in popularity and PCs were slowly growing in popularity. Today in Japan, Nintendo, Sega and Sony are roughly evenly divided in popularity and PCs are slowly growing in popularity. Today in the next-gen wars in the US, PC gaming has taken a tremendous toll on the video game industry, to the point of a near overshadow. In the 4th generation of Japanese gaming, this may also become a reality. The gratest fear any person who is a fan of video games as they are today could fear is that PC gaming could invade Japan and destroy the industry at its core. With the current priorities of pride and back-stabbing that the big three have today, the industry could very well face such a future. What Nintendo, Sega and Sony should do to prevent this is do something gamers have requested ever since the beginning of the 16-bit wars; swallow their pride and introduce a gaming platform standard. 3DO tried to do this back in 1993, but failed because they only cared about hardware, not software. If the big three introduce a standard for the 4th quarter of 1998 or 1999 to give their current platforms some time to break in, it would not only be a smashing success, but it would withstand the growth of PC gaming better than the current popular platforms combined. The standard should be as inflexible as other current standards such as NTSC, VHS, PAL, CD-ROM etc. and be completely updated every four or five years but be completely backwardly compatible with the old standard. Here are some basic ideas for a good gaming standard:
Controller: Identical to N64's controller, plus an earphone jack and volume control on each controller. Audio out extras of 3DO controller. Also, separate audio signals may or may not go to each controller depending on the program, with such things as split screen gaming in mind.
Modem: 28.8.
Storage mediums: cartrige ROM (with optional save RAM), DVD loading at 1 to 2 megabytes, controller pack RAM, and and entirely writable magneto-optical removable disk with a fixed load rate and size (both less than DVD to stop piracy).
Connectors: 4 or 6 controller ports, coaxial stereo/RF out, coaxial stereo A/V out, standard super VHS out, standard RGB out, standard HDTV out (when available), phone line in, phone line out, and 2 or more expansion ports.
Of course, any one of these items except for the contoller standard may be ommited with the idea of a portable standard system in mind. As far as internal tech specs go, who knows what will be ideal for a game system by 4th quarter of 1998 or '99. I think that such a standard would guarantee a larger market for software developers, and guarantee at least survival for hardware manufacturers.