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Microsoft may buy Sega... | by rapido75 | 2006-11-19 12:55:59 |
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EWW | by MikeCDN | 2003-04-24 08:37:28 |
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It costs more money... | by rapido75 | 2003-04-24 09:06:38 |
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thats an Idea, | by pecosdave | 2003-04-24 09:09:27 |
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They don't want to do that... | by rapido75 | 2003-04-24 09:56:11 |
| In the console video game industry, |
by pecosdave |
2003-04-24 10:28:16 |
different standards it good. It locks in your customers. Some of the first home video game lawsuites delt with issues such as competitors to Atari building their hardware to run Atari's games. I think Coleco was the manufacturer in question. You realize we're almost to that point again, only with emulation. How hard would it be for someone to make emulators for the X-Box that would play PS/2 (or at least 1) or Game Cube games? It's probably doable in a buggy fashion anyways.
What I haven't figured out is lack of backwards compatibility, on purpose. The Super Nintendo was basically an upgraded 8 bit Nintendo. Sort of like moving from an 8088 to a 286. There were actual black market adapters made that would allow an American SNES to not only play NES games, but Famicom and SuperFamicom games as well. I don't see where making the cartridge slot accept NES games with a sides extension (sorta like they did for FX chip games anyways) would have hurt them. Production cost maybe, but I still think they could have managed that and ticked less parents off. I know mine where in the "But you have to buy all new games." Mindset that I couldn't explain away. Fortunately my paper route could eventually afford an SNES. (After affording a $230 13" Magnavox TV, times have changed, the equivelant TV can now be bought for about $65). If you think about it, leaving Coleco alone on the compatibility bit may have won Atari more buisness as long as they continued to produce good games. Maybe not hardware buisness, but games anyways. The next step would have been a new Atari system more powerfull than the Coleco that would not only play 2600 games, but Coleco games as well. There's now way Coleco would have won a suite against Atari if they would have pulled that in turn.
Personally, I think that mindset may have prevented the game industry crash that occured in the early 80s.
I've been coming up with my own idea. The trick is making it an industry standard. In the end everyone would benefit, no one would truely have an upper hand. My concept: a stackable component standard with only one required component. The one requried component would be the equivelent to a stereo reciever (It would actually be a stero reciever in most cases). This would be the piece that had the infra red reciever, the logic unit, and all of the output jacks. Each device would simply "stack" with it. No brains required, set it on their and lock it down. A game system wouldn't be more than a processor and a logo, and maybe a cartridge slot but cartridges are dead so unlikely. You would have one media drive. Probably a disk changer. This would hold DVDs, CDs, and games, the pass through to everything else would be simular to FireWire. There would be a piece, probably built into the required peice but not necessarily that would supply USB or simular port. This is where the game controls will go. Audio and video data would pass through the stack eaither as fiber optics using a protocol again simular to USB or FireWire, or possibly as dumb switching copper pass throughs. Each device would supply minimal interface options in a BIOS simular to CSS to be controlled by the logic unit. Even grandma could install her own VCR by just dropping it on the stack, the time would already be set because the main unit would already have it, but you will probably still have to help her set the timer. Only the Audio and video out devices wouldn't be physically connected to the stack (except wires). Yes, I know there would be wars in the same way Microsoft tried making HTML and JAVA theirs, but I think it could work, as long as new revisions remain backwards compatible. |
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[ Reply ] |
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If there was a industry-standard system... | by rapido75 | 2003-04-24 20:34:03 |
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