Systems that hit their prime early in a generation vs systems that hit their prime later in the generation

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

Some systems see their greatest success early in their generation, and some are "late bloomers".

We saw this during the last generation (Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3). This generation started in 2005 and is coming to an end. I'll call the core generation 2006-2014. This was the period where all three consoles were on the market.

The Wii was the ultimate "early bloomer" - it peaked early in that 2006-2014 timeframe. Around 2006-2009, the Wii was selling like hotcakes, with an abundance of third party support. The Wii began to lose momentum at the middle of the generation, with sales slowing by 2010. The last year the Wii moved any significant number of consoles was 2011; after that year the Wii was largely dead, superceded by the Wii U in 2012. So the Wii was wildly successful the first 3 years, still successful in the middle 2 years, and virtually dead by the last 2 years.

The Xbox 360 enjoyed strong sales throughout the generation, although it lagged behind the Wii early on. I'd call the 360 a "balanced" console, pretty well peaking at the middle of its generation and strong throughout its generation, living to see the finish.

The PS3 was the "late bloomer" - it sold relatively slowly through the 2006-2008 period, due to high price and smaller game library than the 360, while having to contend with the novelty of the Wii. Around 2009, with the game library picking up and lower prices, the PS3 gained momentum, and hit its peak in 2010-2013. Maligned at launch, the PS3 went on to be a very successful console as well.

The previous generation (circa 2001-2007) was pretty well dominated by the PS2. The generation prior to that (circa 1996-2001) was dominated by the PS1, although the N64 was stiff competition during the earlier parts of the generation, but declined after 1999.

The 16-bit generation provides us with a perfect example of a system war without a clear winner, but the early part had a winner and the late part was won by the other console. In this case, Sega won the early part and Nintendo won the later part. The 16-bit generation's "main part" was from 1991-1996. At the beginning of this period, Sega's Genesis was very strong, bolstered by the launch of Sonic. The Genesis also had far more games than the SNES early on (1991-1993). It wasn't until about 1993 that the SNES had a game library that could compete with the Genesis. But around 1994, the Genesis began to lose momentum (thanks in large part to Sega doing stupid shit) and a lot of the SNES best games came out in 1994. So 1994-1996 belonged to the SNES.

It seems that the systems sold on novelty win early on, and the ones that have the best game libraries peak later.

[Tanooki]

Perhaps it's not just novelty but first adopter theory. You eat the press that's shoveled to you. You look at what you own and how it's aging, then see this waggled in front of your eyes and start feeling bad for some reason and get that pokemon-esque 'gotta catch em all' mentality and go for it. Sega created that feeling with it's somewhat lying and definitely manipulative ad campaigns against the SNES, mind you the NES was fairly well fair game. Genesis which I do own is a crusty looking and sounding system compared to other 16bit stuff, it always felt to me almost like a hybrid with the rougher audio(especially sound samples like voices/sfx) and low color much like the TG16. But the thing is, you listen to what the NES did and the colors outside of few games (like Kirby and Castlevania III) it felt horribly dated. They ramped up the hype train and all the early adopters went for it, and then it grew from there. Those who waited then had a choice, and those who just didn't drink the kool-aid of the ads bought something else like the SNES. The ads were not cool, but they did work in suckering quite a few people into jumping ship early, and also stopping some SNES sales too which was legit saying tiny library though how fair is that being on the market for weeks vs 2 years? Or the fact they claimed stuff on screen moves incredibly slow doing Sonic vs Mario Kart which was a lie and made no sense -- Road Runner Death Valley Rally blazes fast without issues but they couldn't dare show that one. SNES did have slowness issues earlier on primarily but once people figured out how to code on it better stuff that happened in games like Gradius III vanished. Once coders and Nintendo got their shit together that's when they overtook Sega and then twisting the knife deeper was Donkey Kong Country among others which Sega tried to rip with Vectorman to a somewhat of a failure in presentation quality (good game though.) And then there was the $50 Starfox vs $100 Virtua Racing setup, Sega wasn't good at making affordable special chip games either.

[SparTonberry]

Well, the SVP (Virtua Racing) was the only enhancement chip Sega made, and they said it was deliberately made only for Virtua Racing, so it's not too surprising Sega overpriced it since they needed to make their money back on that one game alone.
I don't see anything necessarily "misleading" about Sega's ads. Now that was before Nintendo got banned from their third-party-monopoly licensing policy. So Sega needed to get their name out there quick or risk getting buried again. You couldn't play Altered Beast on the NES (at least in America, it was released on the Famicom but Sega allowed that to happen). The only real misleading ad I'd say was of course Sonic 2's "Blast Processing" hype. Sega made the one Game Gear magazine ad (the "dog" ad) that basically implied Game Boy owners are legally retarded, but compared Tetris to Sonic the Hedgehog. Even then, wasn't Tetris pretty much a sales gold mine? (my parents bought me a Game Boy. Honestly if I had picked a console based only on those two games, I'd probably have picked Sonic as the cooler pack-in but I'd say ultimately Nintendo made the best choice picking Tetris).

[segarocks30]

After reading Console Gamers, it really made me realize how incredible the early marketing was for the Genesis. They basically sold a lesser console as something to be a change in the times and made you feel uncool if you bought an SNES. It really was brilliance, if not a bit shady.

[AbnormalMapping]

After reading Console Gamers, it really made me realize how incredible the early marketing was for the Genesis. They basically sold a lesser console as something to be a change in the times and made you feel uncool if you bought an SNES. It really was brilliance, if not a bit shady.

Considering the Genesis wasn't being strangled to death by an 8-bit databus, I'm not sure where the "It's an inferior system" fantasy is coming from. Old Nintendo advertising that claims you can run the SNES's high resolution mode with a full palette? Because that's way more misleading than Blast Processing. RPM racing was the only game to run in high resolution mode, and it was limited to 16 colors like an Atari ST.

The SNES couldn't run Road Rash, and Panorama Cotten shows what happens when you're not limited to Mode-7 anymore. Just watch the SNES break when it tries to handle Wrestlemania arcade...

Is there anything on the SNES that can keep up with the crystal clear beats of a Streets of Rage?

Unfortunately, many ports were made with the SNES in mind, meaning that the Sega games were just SNES games with less colors and badly adapted music. I myself prefer SNES by a large margin. But that's because it plays to what I want in a gaming experience - the limitations often forced a slower, deeper exploration of the game world...or at least, it felt like it at the time. Of course, that advantage went away once I bought a Sega CD...

[Tanooki]

I'd love to see evidence of Nintendo running ads lying about using high res and a full palette. That doesn't even sound like something they'd advertise as Sega was the one trying to convince adults and teens with MEG totals and other so called facts to encourage sales. There are more games that used the high res mode and with more than 16 colors too such as Spriggan for Super Famicom which is a crazy good space shooter (used to own it in the later 90s.)

Streets of Rage has great music, but you need a hearing aide if you think the audio on that system is crystal clear. I'm not trying to play favorites, I own both.

The SNES didn't 'break' running a wrestling game, it was bad/halfassed work by the design team. There are more impressive better off wrestling titles on SNES that don't have those problems. SNES could handle speed, it just wasn't notable for it -- watch Road Runner Death Valley Rally as that gets quick (as does that crappy Bubsy game too.) Ever tried out the SFC version of Cotton 100%? I had that back in the day too and it was stunningly well made and ran just fine.

I think you need to realize with any system you'll get people who are lazy asses or just have a minimal clue and the effort shows with speed problems, graphics glitching, or other crap, but once people learn a system or attempt to do it right the first time you get some amazing results. Konami is a good example of learning - Gradius 3 had both the drop out on huge objects and speed problems, but then you have something like Axelay which has a lack of those issue and some stages run in that high res mode (like the lava one) which has a really nice detailed background layer that uses the effect well.

[SparTonberry]

I could swear I read an ad somewhere that compared system stats, particularly resolution. SNES has a higher POSSIBLE resolution (512x448) but that was rarely if ever used, the standard resolution (256x224) was equal and lower to the Genesis' two standard resolutions (256x224 and 320x224).

I know there's a comparison in Nintendo Power volume 49 (June 1993), but it's mostly meaningless stats and non-comparison (things that are number of active lines and frames per second, which are identical anyways and therefore pointless, aren't those figures of the NTSC video standard and therefore useless to compare anyways?)
And controller response time. You'd have a pretty lously console if the hardware itself (and not other factors like game programming) was responsible for input lag.
Another Nintendo ad with a bunch of statistical questions: "Which system gives you the deepest game play?" Yeah, that's a real quantifiable response.

[Tanooki]

Please find the ad I'd love to see it, that would annoy me they did it. The only thing I know they did, I have physical evidence of it still (kept it) they did a study side by side of both systems and their max capabilities stock on hardware and they had a textual analysis breaking things down on both in comparison, Booz-Allen did it, and anyone who called/wrote could get it from NOA and I think it was bandied around between game reps to stores. It wasn't a lie though, they did pay for it, but it was an independent analyst contractor. I think that NP article used pieces of it, but wasn't really on the level obviously not wanting to flaunt the faster clock speed of the Genesis main CPU.

The SNES though did use the higher resolution mode in some games, some very effectively like the couple I noted, and others was just a cheap parlor effect for menus such as the cool background/menus of the game and some of the stills which looked stunning. I think Uniracers used it on the bikes in the game too but not with the background to better animate/design them. Another were stills taking photos of other junk like the Indiana Jones game with some very colorful snaps from the original film with popup text to lead in/out of various moments such as the start of the films but it wasn't a regular thing that was done.

[tom]

The Atari VCS 2600 of course, the only console with an early killer-app, Space Invaders. Super prime.

The Sony PlayStation, of course, a huge success from the start and a killer of the 16-bitters, 3DO and the N64. All the early PSX games floored everything else.