If things happened differently...

[kainemaxwell]

How you think the console wars and video gaming now would have played out if:

Sony and Nintendo did come out with a cd-based system for the SNES?

Sega didn't jump the gun with the Saturn or cut out of hardware shortly after the Dreamcast came out?

The Atari Jaguar didn't suck (except for the few good titles)?

[Oobgarm]

We'd still have the Xbox. No doubt that M$ would want in since there's money to be had.

We'd see the Nintendo Cubestation 2 selling insane amounts of hardware and software, and it would cater to nearly every genre and age group. A nice thought, actually.

Sega would dtill be in the same situation they're in now. The Nintendo/Sony 1st gen Playstation would still crush the Saturn, regardless of when it came out.

Atari would be making a follow-up to the XE if the Jaguar sold well. LOL They'd packge Air Cars 2 with it! LOL LOL

Great topic, BTW. I'd like to what everyone else says!

[portnoyd]

How you think the console wars and video gaming now would have played out if:

Sony and Nintendo did come out with a cd-based system for the SNES?

Sega didn't jump the gun with the Saturn or cut out of hardware shortly after the Dreamcast came out?

The Atari Jaguar didn't suck (except for the few good titles)?

A lot depends. Which 3D chip would the Sony powered Nintendo 64 / Nintendo Playstation use? The crappy, but effective PS1 chip, or the Fogmatic 9000 in the N64? Could make the difference. Assuming the Sony 3D chip...

Assuming the Saturn had the 3D it had in real life, I fell that the Saturn would have enjoyed a SMS existence, there, but on the backburner to the market leader. In turn, this would strengthen the Dreamcast launch, and it would have lasted a lot longer.

The Sony powered GameCube / Nintendo Playstation 2 would have muscled in like it did, and the Dreamcast would have been the eye to eye competitor to the NPS2.

XBox would come in and things regarding it, wouldn't change. I feel it'd be in worse situation without the Sega support at this point, but still alive.

So basically, if Sony and NOA made their joint system, the result, I feel, would be the DC would be alive today.

If the Saturn had the 3D power of the PSX, it may have muscled the PSX out of the way.

If the DC still had support, assuming everything happened as it did, it'd be forced out, somehow. 4 systems would hurt the market IMO.

If the Jag didn't suck? In what way? Games, controller, visuals?

If EVERYTHING mentioned happened, it'd be DC vs NPS2 vs XBox, with , with the Jag2 being the quiet one, SMS style, hitting the niche audience.

dave

[NvrMore]

I agree with Oobgarm, MS are just too greedy, they would still be trying to buy into the market.

The Playstation X (SNES CD, hence where the PS1's nickname PSX came from) probably wouldn't have done much better than Sega's add-on attempts (See the less than astounding performance of the satellaview and 64DD) and Nintendo, still having the same problems with the CD format, would have moved back to the Cart based system. Sony's increasing greed would have led them to break away anyway.

Sega would have messed up and bombed out of the hardware market somehow, they were too eager to make money through new peripherals and core hardware and kept letting their fanbase down by dropping support too soon in favor of persuing another hardware project.
Besides that, if Sega hadn't messed up with the Saturn, they may not have learned the lessons they did which in turn led them to develop the Dreamcast, which despite it's tragically unfair and untimely demise was/is a great system.

If the Atari Jaguar didn't suck.. too far from reality, I can't help you there.

[Raedon]

Jaguar was a 16 bit system at it's heart.. If it had come out with the Genesis, SNES, and tg16 it would have ruled all rather quickly. But good ol Atari didn't ever get the business model right which is, loose money at first, make money at the end, break even on the console and sell the license and Atari brand games. I remember when the Jaguar came out a roomate at the time got it on the release. It was a cool system for sure (he had Tempest 2000 which blew me away for audio) but screen shots of the Playstation and Saturn were already out and being an SNES boy I was reading all the cool goods on Nintendo's 64 bit system.

As for Sega, if they had released Saturn in the place of the 32x and the 32x became vapor AND Virtua Fighter hadn't been all buggy at the launch then I think the Saturn would have had more sell in.

[ubersaurus]

The bandai satellaview was a huge success...it lasted until what was it, 1999? 2000? Not bad at all for an add-on.

[IntvGene]

Assuming the Saturn had the 3D it had in real life, I fell that the Saturn would have enjoyed a SMS existence, there, but on the backburner to the market leader. In turn, this would strengthen the Dreamcast launch, and it would have lasted a lot longer.

I think that portnoyd brings up an interesting point here. To me, it begs the question, that if the Saturn would have really been 3-d capable, would we have seen such great 2-d platformers and shooters come out for it? To me, they're what attracted me to the system. If it was just another 3-d capable console, I wouldn't have cared at all...

[Kid Fenris]

I think that portnoyd brings up an interesting point here. To me, it begs the question, that if the Saturn would have really been 3-d capable, would we have seen such great 2-d platformers and shooters come out for it? To me, they're what attracted me to the system. If it was just another 3-d capable console, I wouldn't have cared at all...

Given that the Saturn had its 2-D abilities in addition to improved 3-D skills, I'd say that Sega's system would still have seen excellent 2-D titles like Radiant Silvergun and Keio Yu Gekitai. Unless there existed some better 2-D console, companies would have been just as likely to develop hand-drawn Saturn games as they did polygon titles.

Me, I wonder what would have happened if the PC-FX had taken off like the PC Engine did . . .

[kainemaxwell]

Heck, if the TG-16 stayed alive in the States would been a nice 3 way race with the SNES, genesis and TG-16..