Vice: PlayStation vs N64 the last console war that mattered

[mmntech]

Thought some of you retro gamers might be interested in this article that Vice had on the PlayStation vs N64, and why it was the last console war that truly mattered.
http://www.vice.com/read/playstation-vs-nintendo-64-was-the-last-console-war-that-mattered-957

I joined team N64 pretty late. I don't regret that decision but there's a lot of great stuff on the PS1 I missed.

They're right when they say the two systems were the last big rivals to offer a fundamentally different experience. Not sure I completely agree with them dismissing Nintendo since then as an outlier. The Wii did beat both the PS3 and 360 in total sales, winning last gen's console war. Mind you, Nintendo has never really directly competed with Sony or Microsoft.

 

[Lil Frier]

I suppose there's truth in there, but I'm not sure I agree with it. The differences between platforms aren't nearly as great, but we've seen elements of the PS-N64 rivalry in more-recent generations. The last generation had a not-so-interesting media platform fight with HD-DVD (which was done terribly) and Blu-Ray (which was priced terribly, but done right). It wasn't cart-CD, but there was some actual intrigue as to which would win out, while it was obvious people were going to move to CDs going forward, as opposed to sticking with the cartridges.

How we determine if a console "war," matters determines if you think one does or doesn't. In subsequent "wars," we've seen the supposed elements that made the PS-N64 generation great happen. We've seen a generation with the birth of a console company (Microsoft). We've seen the death of a console line (SEGA). We've seen media format wars (HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray). We've seen ideology wars (motion gaming). We've seen problems arise from pricing (PS3, Xbox One). We've seen a fundamental change in the driving force of many games (online multiplayer).

Now, there is truth that we see a lot more content redundancy/multi-platform availability now, so picking a side doesn't mean what it used to (even if exclusives on those platforms were often same-genre offerings with different skins, like now). I'd say that given how we feared for both Nintendo's home console division and Xbox's existence within Microsoft this generation, there was potentially more at stake now than in the PS-N64 battle.

As for the Wii's sales, they ring pretty hollow, to me. The hardware isn't the bread-and-butter of making money in gaming. The Wii sold the most consoles, but I'd be curious to see a comparison of software sales per-system (as in, not the handout games like Wii Sports). My grandma bought a Wii for my little brothers last generation, and I think they ended up with 2 or 3 games throughout its life. When I sold my 360, I think I included 35-40 games in the sale (and that's having traded in a LOT more). On top of that, Microsoft and Sony established online communities and made a lot of money through that. As we watched this generation, the Wii was a lot of flash, but not nearly as much substance, and it's why the Wii U doesn't sell well now, and it's why so many of the consoles were useless to owners after a short while.

 

[HeXen]

the CD games of the PS seemed to sometimes offer a lot more depth than anything that was on the N64 at the time. Along with a mass of new IP's and unique titles from 3rd parties on the PS, I think it was the obvious winner all around.

 

[ImpulsE69]

As a huge NES/SNES player, I got a N64 long before a PSX but I didn't keep it for long. I just didn't like it overall, the graphics, the controls, the cameras, and even today, still can't play a game from it for very long. I realize that some of the 'groundbreaking' games of the time (and still very popular) are on it, but I can't stand them.

The opposite holds true for PSX. I still play some of those games from time to time.

 

[Tweak155]

I liked both, but I played my N64 way more. So N64 > PSX.

 

[Zodiark1593]

In terms of visuals, you won some and lost some. For example, most PSX games I've played had sharper textures than the N64, but were aliased to hell, the N64 had them smoother, but looked like mush. I do miss the cartridge format though, as the CDs used for the PSX are rather prone to scratching, and are rather difficult to keep and actually use over the long term (same with the PS2, though I use original cases for those). Still, just over 60MB of space in flash storage during the 90s was expensive, and limiting compared to what CDs offered.

 

[ElFenix]

roommate had an N64 and i had a PSX.

/problem

 

[Sonikku]

All I remember from those days is

"OMG OMG N64 HAS NO ROOM/CAPACITY FOR ANYTHING!!112"

"IF FF7 WUZ ON N64 IT BE $1200 LOL"

etc. Low and behold, Resident Evil 2 comes out on the system with two PS1 cd's worth of FMV on one cart.
So much for that bullshit excuse.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I don't really agree seeing how the Wii offered a very fundamentally different experience to the 360/PS3. I'd also say the GC/Xbox/PS2 era they offered considerably different experiences (Xbox with Live).

Really their argument that it was the last time is just totally silly since any way they argue that is just wrong. Sales/popularity? The PS1 was far ahead of the N64. But they were comparable technologically? PS2/Xbox/GC was the last time we got a push for high end hardware from the competitors. They were all fundamentally different and offered considerably different experiences.

All I remember from those days is

"OMG OMG N64 HAS NO ROOM/CAPACITY FOR ANYTHING!!112"

"IF FF7 WUZ ON N64 IT BE $1200 LOL"

etc. Low and behold, Resident Evil 2 comes out on the system with two PS1 cd's worth of FMV on one cart.
So much for that bullshit excuse.

You're joking, right? They had to use a large and expensive cart (that basically killed their profit margins and the reason you didn't see hardly anyone else porting FMV heavy games to the system), and had to compress the hell out of everything and do a ton of other work. It was an impressive technical feat (and in many ways the game itself is superior, like being able to offer items changing during different playthroughs and some other things), but it's absolutely an anomaly.

 

[Sulaco]

All I remember from those days is

"OMG OMG N64 HAS NO ROOM/CAPACITY FOR ANYTHING!!112"

"IF FF7 WUZ ON N64 IT BE $1200 LOL"

etc. Low and behold, Resident Evil 2 comes out on the system with two PS1 cd's worth of FMV on one cart.
So much for that bullshit excuse.

Uh...what?

That doesn't change the fact that a vast majority of N64 titles were easily $10 more than PSX games across the board, and many ran upwards of $80. It wasn't until Nintendo's "Million Seller" line that prices began stabilizing to around $50, but that simply wasn't the case early on.

RE2 was an impressive feat, but it was done by seriously compressing the video and audio. They aren't even close, quality wise.

 

[Majcric]

all I know is the PS was a better system overall. And it started an era where we could get games for 20 bucks in the wrapper.

 

[Aikouka]

I joined team N64 pretty late. I don't regret that decision but there's a lot of great stuff on the PS1 I missed.

I was pretty much the exact opposite of you. Given that I had a Super Nintendo and a Genesis, I went for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately, while I was a huge Sonic fan, the Saturn was just way too expensive. Part of the draw of the Nintendo 64 for me and my brother is that Nintendo Power was hyping up the next Final Fantasy game. My brother and I may have played a lot of various games, but our mainstays were always Squaresoft games. (Here's an interesting article on what "Final Fantasy 64" really was: http://www.lostlevels.org/200510/.)

So, when Squaresoft announced that the next Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy VII, would release on the PlayStation, ...to quote my favorite SNES game, "Ozzie's in a pickle!" We held out for a while, but I remember walking around the top floor of our local SEARS store, which is where their entertainment sections were located (TVs were split apart from games). I was entranced by the awesome demo reel that they displayed on what seemed like every monitor in the gaming section. I. Had. To. Have. It. We ended up selling our Nintendo 64 to purchase a PlayStation, and the amusing part is that we couldn't even afford a memory card, which meant we left our console on all the time.

Honestly, as a fan of jRPGs, we probably made the best choice. The PlayStation got a TON of good jRPGs and not all of them were from Square. Although, selling the Nintendo 64 at that point did mean that we suffered one casualty... The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I've still never played that game. I feel kind of bad admitting it, but a part of me cringes at the terribly simplistic graphics. I can deal with old 2D graphics, but that era's 3D graphics were particularly cringe-worthy.

 

[Fox5]

N64 and PSX were pretty significantly different, but so was PS2 and Xbox/Gamecube/Dreamcast.
PS3 also would have been significantly different from Xbox 360, except Sony went through great expense to give the PS3 a fighting chance when running games that were optimized around the more straight forward Xbox 360 architecture.
PS4 and Xbox One are identical, and all of Microsoft's big software moves seem to have failed.

 

[mmntech]

I was pretty much the exact opposite of you. Given that I had a Super Nintendo and a Genesis, I went for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately, while I was a huge Sonic fan, the Saturn was just way too expensive. Part of the draw of the Nintendo 64 for me and my brother is that Nintendo Power was hyping up the next Final Fantasy game. My brother and I may have played a lot of various games, but our mainstays were always Squaresoft games. (Here's an interesting article on what "Final Fantasy 64" really was: http://www.lostlevels.org/200510/.)

Although, selling the Nintendo 64 at that point did mean that we suffered one casualty... The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I've still never played that game. I feel kind of bad admitting it, but a part of me cringes at the terribly simplistic graphics. I can deal with old 2D graphics, but that era's 3D graphics were particularly cringe-worthy.

I didn't really get into RPGs until fairly recently. Outside of the original Pokemon of course. KOTOR was one of the first. Even now I don't care for the grinding with JRPGS.

I was a huge Sega fanboy during the Great Console War. Oddly, I remember completely ignoring the Saturn when it came out. In hindsight, it was a steaming pile of crap. Was more expensive than the PlayStation, and the games for it looked like garbage.

I do remember poo pooing the PS1 when it came out, but it quickly fell off my radar. I had gotten big into the GameBoy around that time, then the PC. A friend of mine had an N64 though, so I used to play a lot of GoldenEye at his house. Coming from Doom and Wolfenstine, it was a huge leap for FPS games. So in 1999, I saved up my money and bought one. Came with Episode 1 Racer, which is probably the only decent thing to have come out of that movie. I got Ocarina of Time with it as well. Sank a lot of hours into that game. Then Majora's Mask.

Those early 3D console games were pretty ugly. Just limitations of the technology. The N64 was technically more powerful than the PS1. It had better polygons but muddier textures. A lot of that probably has to do with lack of space on the cartridges. I find the PS1 tends to suffer from blockier polygons and bad aliasing.

I think what really made the fifth generation though was the experimentation. Nobody knew how to make 3D games, so you got a lot of fresh and innovative concepts coming out. Even if they were rough around the edges. Today's games all descend from those. Mainstream gaming hasn't changed all that much since the PS2 days. Games have gotten more complex but their core mechanics are still the same.

 

[Ichinisan]

Nothing on the PSX ever came close to Super Mario 64.

Back in that day, other people looked at games like Zelda or Goldeneye and said the graphic quality was "great." To me, the frame rate was a much bigger consideration than texture detail. To me, none of these games ever looked as good as Super Mario 64.

Trying to add more detail than 240p could properly render seemed pointless and stupid (nearly all these games were half the resolution of 480i). In Zelda, for example: A tree is a nasty mess of noisy pixels until you're standing right next to it. Why not design games with shapes and colors that allow the player to comprehend what we're looking at? Why must grass be brown instead of fantasy green as it was in Zelda 3 for SNES? Why must it have textures that just look like noise unless you're character looking straight down? Why does the entire game have to look drab *and* have an awful frame rate for people to think the graphics are "good?" There's more than that. The amount of polygons to render crude stair steps is insignificant, but Zelda just used flat slopes with a flat texture in almost every case. WHY? Even the enhanced 3DS version still does this. Then you have countless interiors scenes that have a fixed camera perspective with invisible 3D models (mostly for clipping) overlayed on a 2D pre-rendered background that looks like complete garbage. Why not just build a scene using the basic textures and gemetry you already have in the ROM data? The amount of data would be insignificant (actually less data than the large pre-rendered 2D background). Notice how the few indoor scenes that were actually rendered in 3D are some of the best looking areas in the game? These have fast frame rates and full detail textures because it's the only thing loaded in RAM (and the power of a cartridge is that it can swap between ROM/RAM in a relative instant).

I was as hyped as anyone could possibly be for Zelda:OoT, but I was always unhappy with it. My favorite was the black-and-white Game Boy (Zelda: Link's Awakening), closely followed by Zelda 3 (SNES). I didn't enjoy OoT nearly as much. Quite the opposite, in fact. It felt tedious, boring, and stupid.

Because everything looked even worse on Playstation, N64 was the clear winner in my book.

Too bad it didn't get FF7, but at least it had:
Super Mario 64
Super Mario Kart
Star Fox 64
Star Wars Shadows of the Empire / Rogue Squadron
Goldeneye 007
Super Smash Bros.
Zelda: OoT
Banjo-Kazooie

 

[Zodiark1593]

I felt the Spyro series had pretty detailed textures and environment for it's time as well, even compared to the N64, no doubt the art style helped too. Then there's Silent Hill, being blessed as a horror game, developers could effectively use fogging to allow greater detail close up in exchange for not rendering anything far away. I find it worked much better than Resident Evil. Enemies looked butt ugly though, but then again, you don't want to see their ugly faces if you can avoid it.

I should also give a mention to the Tomb Raider series. Even though it was effectively that gen's Call of Duty, the levels usually did not fail to impress, though the poly density was low, expanse was almost certainly unmatched, and textures did the job. There was definitely a lot of work put into designing those levels, perhaps so much so that it seems gameplay was largely neglected as it remained largely the same (and relatively clunky) over the course of 5 games.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Nothing on the PSX ever came close to Super Mario 64.

Back in that day, other people looked at games like Zelda or Goldeneye and said the graphic quality was "great." To me, the frame rate was a much bigger consideration than texture detail. To me, none of these games ever looked as good as Super Mario 64.

Trying to add more detail than 240p could properly render seemed pointless and stupid (nearly all these games were half the resolution of 480i). In Zelda, for example: A tree is a nasty mess of noisy pixels until you're standing right next to it. Why not design games with shapes and colors that allow the player to comprehend what we're looking at? Why must grass be brown instead of fantasy green as it was in Zelda 3 for SNES? Why must it have textures that just look like noise unless you're character looking straight down? Why does the entire game have to look drab *and* have an awful frame rate for people to think the graphics are "good?" There's more than that. The amount of polygons to render crude stair steps is insignificant, but Zelda just used flat slopes with a flat texture in almost every case. WHY? Even the enhanced 3DS version still does this. Then you have countless interiors scenes that have a fixed camera perspective with invisible 3D models (mostly for clipping) overlayed on a 2D pre-rendered background that looks like complete garbage. Why not just build a scene using the basic textures and gemetry you already have in the ROM data? The amount of data would be insignificant (actually less data than the large pre-rendered 2D background). Notice how the few indoor scenes that were actually rendered in 3D are some of the best looking areas in the game? These have fast frame rates and full detail textures because it's the only thing loaded in RAM (and the power of a cartridge is that it can swap between ROM/RAM in a relative instant).

I was as hyped as anyone could possibly be for Zelda:OoT, but I was always unhappy with it. My favorite was the black-and-white Game Boy (Zelda: Link's Awakening), closely followed by Zelda 3 (SNES). I didn't enjoy OoT nearly as much. Quite the opposite, in fact. It felt tedious, boring, and stupid.

Because everything looked even worse on Playstation, N64 was the clear winner in my book.

Too bad it didn't get FF7, but at least it had:
Super Mario 64
Super Mario Kart
Star Fox 64
Star Wars Shadows of the Empire / Rogue Squadron
Goldeneye 007
Super Smash Bros.
Zelda: OoT
Banjo-Kazooie

The problem here is you said "everything looked worse on the PSX". I would beg to differ greatly, not only that gameplay wise it offered much more variety.

I got the N64 for SM64, OOT and Castlevania. I couldn't stand any of them. Now, two of these games I am referring to when I say they are popular now as they were then, but I just can't get past the graphics and cameras so I know I'm in the minority when it comes to not liking them, but it doesn't make the N64 better because their catalog overall just wasn't that great.

There were some PSX games that I felt the same way about (Xenogears as an example), but because there was such a variety of styles and not everything was 3D all the time.

 

[Ichinisan]

I felt the Spyro series had pretty detailed textures and environment for it's time as well, even compared to the N64, no doubt the art style helped too. Then there's Silent Hill, being blessed as a horror game, developers could effectively use fogging to allow greater detail close up in exchange for not rendering anything far away. I find it worked much better than Resident Evil. Enemies looked butt ugly though, but then again, you don't want to see their ugly faces if you can avoid it.

I should also give a mention to the Tomb Raider series. Even though it was effectively that gen's Call of Duty, the levels usually did not fail to impress, though the poly density was low, expanse was almost certainly unmatched, and textures did the job. There was definitely a lot of work put into designing those levels, perhaps so much so that it seems gameplay was largely neglected as it remained largely the same (and relatively clunky) over the course of 5 games.

Tomb Raider, Spyro , and even FF7 were all examples that remind me of how "shaky" and loose polygons and textures appeared on most Playstation games. The polygons wouldn't stay together securely as they moved (or as the perspective moved) -- or textures would jump and distort as if it was using strange imprecise math shortcuts to make it possible to run at all.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Tomb Raider, Spyro , and even FF7 were all examples that remind me of how "shaky" and loose polygons and textures appeared on most Playstation games. The polygons wouldn't stay together securely as they moved (or as the perspective moved) -- or textures would jump and distort as if it was using strange imprecise math shortcuts to make it possible to run at all.

I remember that too, but as a kid, I paid it no mind.

Yeah, lack of precision definitely played a role in the polygon judders, more specifically, I think the PSx lacked floating point hardware altogether, in addition to a lack of z-buffer.

The N64 had options for either a high precision polygon mode, but slow, or fast poly output, but low precision. It would seem most opted for the high precision mode. Some developers, I think Rare, (not so) simply wrote their own microcode for an in-between mode.

 

[Newell Steamer]

As 'crappy' as the PSX graphics were, it's library blew the N64 out of the water.

The PSX library propelled video game content into the next level. We had darker themed video games with movie theater like stories - all thanks to the storage capacities of a CD.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The only games I played on N64 were the wrestling titles, Mario 64, Zelda OOT, and Conker's Bad Fur day.

 

[Fallen Kell]

As for the Wii's sales, they ring pretty hollow, to me. The hardware isn't the bread-and-butter of making money in gaming. The Wii sold the most consoles, but I'd be curious to see a comparison of software sales per-system (as in, not the handout games like Wii Sports). My grandma bought a Wii for my little brothers last generation, and I think they ended up with 2 or 3 games throughout its life. When I sold my 360, I think I included 35-40 games in the sale (and that's having traded in a LOT more). On top of that, Microsoft and Sony established online communities and made a lot of money through that. As we watched this generation, the Wii was a lot of flash, but not nearly as much substance, and it's why the Wii U doesn't sell well now, and it's why so many of the consoles were useless to owners after a short while.

Well, lets get one thing straight, the Wii U didn't sell well because it was a complete and utter botched launch. The majority of people out there thought it was simply an add-on to the Wii. The branding and marketing was an utter disaster and the people involved should have all been fired. The second issue had to do with Nintendo themselves not being more behind the console with tons of their first party content ready to go at LAUNCH. There should have been a Super Mario game, a Metroid, a Zelda, a Donkey Kong, a Smash Bro's, a Mario Kart all within the first year of release, not spaced out over the first 3 years. They should have been on sequels for many of those games by now not just finally getting them out the door...

Anyway, in terms of money, the fact that Nintendo turns a profit on the hardware is a HUGE factor in determining the winner in the generation. Royalties from games to the console creator are typically in the $2 range per game. While Nintendo made on average $54.35 per console sold. For Microsoft and Sony the numbers are harder to get (since unlike Nintendo, it isn't a profit, so they try to obscure the losses so that shareholders don't freak out). Sony has stated a few times across the platform how much they lose per console, starting at approx $280 at launch and ending at around $18 towards mid 2014. Microsoft didn't lose as much in the beginning at around $125 per console and ending at around $15.

Even at the best, that means Sony needed to sell each 167 games to each person who bought a launch console to make up the difference in price of the hardware with game royalties vs Nintendo's profits just from the hardware sale. Microsoft had to sell 87 games to the people who bought their console's at launch to make the same profit that Nintendo had for just selling the console... The truth was in the numbers. Microsoft lost an average of $2 BILLION a year, every year over the 360's lifespan from the console. They never turned a profit. Sony lost similar amounts. Nintendo turned a profit each year, every year until 2012 when they were heavily developing the Wii U for launch and incurring the R&D price of development, and marketing for launching a new console.

 

[Lil Frier]

Well, $167, minus the sales of PS Plus, PS Camera, and other accessories. Nintendo doesn't have that subscription service to help with profits.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, $167, minus the sales of PS Plus, PS Camera, and other accessories. Nintendo doesn't have that subscription service to help with profits.

Except that Nintendo sold millions of Wii fitness boards, Wiimotes, Wiimote+'s, Wii steering wheels, Wii gun adaptors, Wii classic controllers, etc., etc., all at huge markups. And remember, multiplayer on the Wii typically meant with other people on the same system, which meant most people were buying 4 controllers, 4 nunchuks, replacing some of the wiimotes with wiimote+, etc. But most PS3 and Xbox360 owners just bought 1-2 controllers, possibly a camera, and possibly their Kinect/Move system, but that didn't bring anywhere near the profit Nintendo received from all their peripheral sales.

Also the PS Plus and Xbox Live have actual operating costs associates with them. It is why Sony had to start charging on the PS4 because they were losing money on the PS3 with their PSN services. Microsoft does make a profit on their Live network, (financials said $1 billion in 2010), but the gaming division still lost $2 billion as a whole, even with that $1 billion in profits from the Live services... Still not enough to make up for the losses in the hardware.

 

[Lil Frier]

I don't agree with that. There were, like, 5 of us who played our Wii, yet we only had 1 controller and Wii Sports. I was the only one who REALLY played my 360, and I got at least half a dozen controllers over its life. My brother-in-law had a couple of controllers, despite playing mostly by himself on his console as well.