Why did the Super Nintendo CD never come out, anyways?

[Anthony1]

I know that Nintendo was working with Sony on a Super Nintendo CD player known as the "Playstation", and then at the last minute Nintendo ditched Sony and signed a deal with Phillips to make a Super Nintendo CD player instead.

Of course we all know that the Phillips SNES CD player never ever came out. But does anybody know the reason specifically why it never came out? Did it ever get to the stage where they actually sent out development systems, or they displayed actual games at any trade shows?

I'm just curious why Nintendo never did release a CD add on.

[Bratwurst]

Maybe they saw how badly the Sega CD was bombing and decided the competition didn't justify coming out with the hardware. Nintendo had an ugly habit of not innovating unless something serious threatened their money flow.

[Anthony1]

It was probably a situation in which Nintendo didn't want to split up their user base and add any confusion. Plus the fact that the Sega CD didn't really blow anybody away, it didn't really force their hand.

And then they had Donkey Kong Country on a cartridge, so that made them think that they would be fine with sticking with carts. Plus the Super FX chip.

Of course, I'm sure that piracy had nothing to do with them never releasing it, yeah right!

These are my guesses.

[omnedon]

Piracy wasn't an issue then. CD burners were non existent.

[Dobie]

Nintendo's general outlook on peripherals has been that they don't sell well. Though the company has researched or developed several different "attachments" and such for their systems, they hardly ever make it to market in the US.

As Sega so aptly demonstrated, too many attachments causes confusion among customers and casual gamers, and spreads out money and resources used to develop games between two (or more) game systems. Recipe for disaster.

Though, I have to admit, I would have loved to see an NES modem. You know, the one the were developing for the Minnesota lottery? If they could have pulled it off, online gaming would be a standard feature by today's generation. Though the technology for multiplayer online games didn't exist back then, how cool would it have been to play SMB multiplayer over a modem? Wishful thinking, I know.

[SoulBlazer]

Both Kent's 'History of Video Games' and Herman's 'Phoenix' go into a lot of detail on this.

To add to waht has been said, its been reproted that Sony very craftily wote their deal with Nintendo so they would reap the majority of the profits, which Nintendo balked at. Then they tried to get Philips to go along with it, but that finally fell through as well, although Nitendo allowed Philips to use some of their charcters for their CD-I games.

Prototypes of both systems are susposed to exist, but all I've seen are pics.

[Jorpho]

Well, there was the Teleplay NES Modem, but that might not count.
________
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[Stamp Mcfury]

I know this may be off Topic but there was also the Snes/Philips plan for a Snes CD. There plan was a CDI that attached to the SNES.

The main reason I've heard the Sony/Nintendo SNES CD didn't come out was that Sony wanted royalties on the CD add on. They left Sony and then went to Philips who got the right to use Nintendo's Characters to make a few crappy games like "Were is Mario" and "Link Faces of Evil".

Nintendo also had just came out with games like Starfox, were they used things like the Super FX chip to enhance what they could do with a cart, something they could not do with a CD. Infact they felt that useing a CD attachemnet would hinder the graphics they could use.

This is a quote from the January 1993 issue of Nintendo Power

But the CD-ROM has some disadvantages that can't be ignored. Number one, CD-ROMs are inherently slower than ROM chips. ROMs access information thousands of times slower, wich can lead to lengthy pauses in game play. Another misconception is that CD-Rom graphics are superior to the graphics of cratrige based games. The limiting factor in this is not whether game data is stored on disk or ROM chips, but how good the console is at creating and displaying graphics. If a video game system can only display 16 colors at a time, wich in the case of some 16-bit systems, hooking up a CD-ROM will not result in superior graphics

At the time the future of CD gameing seemed hazy almost all the games were cinematic games like "The 7th Guest", "Sherlock Holmes", "Time Gall", and "Dragon's Lair" or games that were CD versions of cart games with CD soundtracks. Most people were not willing to pay $40.00 to play a semi interactive movie, Or pay for a $200ish add on just to play the same game in better sound but with long load times.

There were however some good examples from the 16bit CD era though the best one I can think of would be Lunar 1 & 2. The Lunar games were a great example of what the CD Rom could do with a game.

So Nintendo decided to not make a CD add on for the SNES they even decided to make the next system cart based (the N64). That was a the first in a series of huge mistakes that still haunt Nintendo today.

[Buyatari]

I have a controller for the Playstation X system

Very cool.

It looks like a cross between a SNES and a Playstation 1 controller.

Thanks again Jerry.

Adam

[Buyatari]

err the old Playstation X system

not the new one. Whats that going to be called PSX?

The would-be Nintnedo/Sony child.

Adam

[nildem]

I have a controller for the Playstation X system

Very cool.

It looks like a cross between a SNES and a Playstation 1 controller.

Thanks again Jerry.

Adam

pics?

[Kevin Listwan]

Their is a good article in Business 2.0 from this month, with the fish on the cover that takes a look at the history of nintendo and its current state. In the article this issue is brought up, and some of the reasoning why nintendo has never played well with others, such as when developing a new system or add ons.

Check it out!

[Buyatari]

I don't have a website to post these pics but last year the ENTIRE SYSTEM was at CGE in the museum and someone posted some pics.

Adam

[SoulBlazer]

Nintendo had good reasons for keeping the N64 cart based -- too long to go into detail here, but again, any good book or website will explain the factors behind that. And I agree with them. Most important that till the Saturn and PlayStation every CD system had VERY limited sales. Some died horrible deaths. I don't see the N64 as cart based as a 'fatal mistake'. Even if it was CD based I suspect Sony would have taken the lead in the market.

[Buyatari]

The biggest "problem" from a marketing standpoint about cart based systems is that they last forever.

I know many people who were on their 2nd 3rd and 4th PSone by the time PS2 rolled around. Now PS2s seem to have an even greater "break down rate".

Adam

[The Manimal]

Hehe.....2600 STILL GOING STRONG



I worry about the longevity of disc based systems. I better download emulators at least, in case there's a working system shortage down the road. A large non-playable library of games would be devastating.

[Jorpho]

I thought the big reason for the N64 being cart-based was that Nintendo had already made big investments into "chip-fabs" that it could not give up.
________
Marijuana Seeds

[Kevin Listwan]

One major problem with carts is cost. They cost much much more to produce and eat in to the profits of both Nintendo and the game developers. This means that third parties would be more likely to go the way of disc systems. Nintendo "charges" more to produce games for their system as well. Also one of the major problems with early disc systems was in quality of the games and poor publicity, both of which Nintendo could have over come as Sony did. Plus Nintendo has not been third party friendly, they want to make as much money on the system as possible NOT on selling games for the system, another reason for small third party development. If Nintendo does not change with the "next next gen consoles" they may have to go the way Sega is going now.

[Stamp Mcfury]

Nintendo had good reasons for keeping the N64 cart based -- too long to go into detail here, but again, any good book or website will explain the factors behind that. And I agree with them.

I'm not saying that Cart based games have some advantages over Disk based games. But I still think it was a mistake by Nintendo to go cart based with the N64 for a few reasons.

CD's were cheaper to print than Carts so less money had to go to building the game and more into programing it. A CD Rom that had been out for a few years on the PSX could be re-released as a Greatest hits for $15 and still make the publisher money. Plus games that took adavantage of the CD Rom storage capacity became mainstream like the PSX Final Fantasy series, Metal Gear, ect ect. When Resident Evil 2 was released for the N64 for over it was being sold on the PSX for a 1/4 of the price.

Thats just my opinion mind you