32/64 bit era: PS, Saturn or N64?

[StarMist]

Starmist, that is a lot of great work as it is. I wouldn't mind knowing which games won't save to a RAM cart. But then I would try to figure out where that post is the next time I need it and wouldn't be able to find it.

Thank you kindly. Don't worry about the latter though, I've more games than that and will make another list someday. The holdup is actually deciding whether to pursue certain Saturn forms of games I own on PS, some of which are impossible to find on ISO (even before all those Megaupload links disappeared)...and regardless how flush I am I've always been reluctant to spend cash on VG redundancies.

Initially, this was true for me. Over the years, though, I have begun to miss the N64. Not only do I miss the AAA titles like Goldeneye, Star Fox, Wave Race and Mario 64, but some of the funky ones like Extreme G and Doom 64. I've slowly pared down all my retro consoles to just the Genesis in recent years, but I do ponder reentering N64 collecting. There wouldn't be a bunch of games to get for it, granted, but there are some classics there.

Hell, if I thought I could scare up the people I used to play its multiplayer games with I'd buy another too. That was its strength. I always thought the graphics looked like painted paper bags though. And the sound sucked (I think that was Obviously who made the excellent observation about its lack of voicing). Of course Goldeneye and a few others were strong exceptions to those paper bag graphics.

Heaven forbid people should have differing opinions...

Twasn't an earnest statement. Oddly enough re your earlier post I thought I had seen you way back earlier on, perhaps you just didn't vote (which can be checked in this poll). Or it was the N64 vs PS poll I'm confusing.

[sketch]

Hell, if I thought I could scare up the people I used to play its multiplayer games with I'd buy another too. That was its strength. I always thought the graphics looked like painted paper bags though. And the sound sucked (I think that was Obviously who made the excellent observation about its lack of voicing). Of course Goldeneye and a few others were strong exceptions to those paper bag graphics.

The N64 did shine for multiplayer. The introduction of 4 built-in controller ports really encouraged developers to focus on multiplayer. I spent many hours playing Goldeneye DM and Mario Kart 64 with friends.

Twasn't an earnest statement. Oddly enough re your earlier post I thought I had seen you way back earlier on, perhaps you just didn't vote (which can be checked in this poll). Or it was the N64 vs PS poll I'm confusing.

Ah, I didn't sense the sarcasm It's possible I piped up earlier in this thread (I'm too lazy to look), but I hadn't participated in the poll (as it let me vote). The poll seemed familiar to me too, so I'm probably confusing this one with another as well. There are quite a few similar polls floating around the forum. Of course, I'm a sucker and vote every time I see one.

[sheath]

IDK how true that is but I do no that my 5 in 1 cart doesn't always work the first time I put it in. Sometimes I have to do that NES style cart blowing on it. I did noticed that the official carts have 2 metal prongs on them and the actual pcb board seems a tad smaller than the 5 in 1 cart.

Ack, missed this. Cart blowing causes cartridge pin corrosion and that corrosion gets in the cart port pins as well. A much better solution is to use a q-tip with rubbing alcohol on the cart pins until the q-tip doesn't get dark anymore, then use a dry q-tip to get the remaining liquid off the cart pins. If a cart port has definitely been exposed to spit/blowing (same thing) it needs to be carefully cleaned as well.

[Da_Shocker]

Ack, missed this. Cart blowing causes cartridge pin corrosion and that corrosion gets in the cart port pins as well. A much better solution is to use a q-tip with rubbing alcohol on the cart pins until the q-tip doesn't get dark anymore, then use a dry q-tip to get the remaining liquid off the cart pins. If a cart port has definitely been exposed to spit/blowing (same thing) it needs to be carefully cleaned as well.

Thanks for the tip 20 year habits are so hard to break.

[kool kitty89]

All of which can be done with the Backup RAM cart (or GS/PAR) as well, only most users would only ever need to buy one, rather than three to five Memory Cards.

At lower cost effectiveness and with greater conflict with other peripherals used through the cart slot.

I agree on the argument over the limited capacity of PSX memory cards (that is genuinely unfortunate), but not the other aspects.

I consider all of these systems inconvenient to manage in comparison to the internal save memory of the Sega CD and Saturn. Even if these systems only allowed you to save two games in internal memory it would be better than nothing at all. The Sega CD and Saturn can save at least a dozen normal games and have cartridges to back up to for the games that take up more space. I'm not sure why so many Saturn games won't save directly to the RAM cart, that just seems like developer stupidity to me, or maybe they were trying to minimize save file corruption.

Again, this specific argument on convenience is moot if a memory card comes pack-in. (and if it doesn't, that's a management/marketing issue rather than a design one -more like if the Saturn had omitted the save battery as standard)

The DC and PSX certainly had constrained memory card limits to the points of similar inconvenience as the Saturn or MCD (for the time, the DC was the worst), but the GC and PS2 have large enough capacities to only need 1 or 2 cards for most users (we have almost all out GC stuff on a single 4x card . . . and some on a partially corrupted Nintendo brand 8x card -3rd party ones go up to 16x or 32x -8 or 16 MB) PS2 is 8 MB standard, of course. (neither are as good as the massive flexibility of the Xbox's HDD, though they're convenient for taking to friend's houses -though you could get a card for the Xbox for the same reason)

It should also be noted that the N64 controller Paks are pretty inefficient too . . . they use 32 kB (256kb) SRAM+Battery (more expensive to manufacture -so higher prices and/or lower profits, while limited to similar capacities as the Saturn's onboard RAM).

How is that a trade-off? PSX cards were cheaper, yes, but they were also much smaller. Saturn memory cartridges weren't that expensive.

I was speaking more on manufacturing costs than consumer pricing. (the latter is dependent on management/marketing -and thus profit margins- so it certainly could be that Sony was selling their cards at higher profits than Sega was their carts -which should have been several times more expensive to manufacture due to the use of SRAM and the large/higher pin count PCB)
And, of course, there's the issue with the Sega cart slot being needed for other peripherals.

Uh, no they didn't. Saturn can do larger save file sizes than PSX can. One silly example of this is Hexen; the Saturn version's save file is larger than an entire PSX memory card. (It's a silly example because the game's on PSX too and they managed to squeeze down the save file to 15 blocks.) MTV Music Generator is one example of the PSX memory card size being limiting; it would've been interesting to see that on the Saturn.

True, and that aspect of the PSX memory card (128k bank limit) is the one area that I explicitly criticized on the PSX. (it really should at least have allowed 512k banks -that would have allowed most users to have all their saves on just 1 or 2 cards, and potentially leave those plugged into the base system most of the time -which is exactly what we did/do with the GC)

And in that respect (not swapping cards out), the Saturn would have an edge for sure with 32k+512k vs 128k+128k (only comparing 1st party products), though there's still the issue of dying batteries (and the much lesser concern of corrupt flash).

[StarMist]

Starmist, that is a lot of great work as it is. I wouldn't mind knowing which games won't save to a RAM cart.

This question is tricky because many games that will save to the cart once the player actually reaches a savepoint will initially warn him there's not room on IM. Loaded (Blood Factory) is an example of this. It's also superbly compressed: using only 12 blocks it allows up to 16 saves--or perhaps more, I've never tested going beyond the 16 slots that appear on-screen.
What I find much more annoying is the inability of some games to load from external memory, meaning the save has to be transferred to IM which first usually necessitates transferring stuff from IM to cart--and the stuff on IM in the first place is usually of the type that won't load from cart.

I agree on the argument over the limited capacity of PSX memory cards (that is genuinely unfortunate), but not the other aspects.

There's no fortune involved, nor was it any sort of technical failing, it was entirely a decision on Sony's part to limit their MCs' size in order more would have to be purchased. It actually was a bit of a financial pain, at least for RPGers who mostly prefer to keep a bunch of files on their current game--I dedicated a whole card to FF7 when that came out and each Suikoden got at least 5 saves--to the extent that they ought to have included coupons for them with certain games such as RPGs and high profile titles capable of exhausting them like Gran Tourismo.

[kool kitty89]

There's no fortune involved, nor was it any sort of technical failing, it was entirely a decision on Sony's part to limit their MCs' size in order more would have to be purchased. It actually was a bit of a financial pain, at least for RPGers who mostly prefer to keep a bunch of files on their current game--I dedicated a whole card to FF7 when that came out and each Suikoden got at least 5 saves--to the extent that they ought to have included coupons for them with certain games such as RPGs and high profile titles capable of exhausting them like Gran Tourismo.

This doesn't make sense. Sony could have sold higher capacity memory cards for similar prices as multiple smaller cards (ie 512k for 4x the price of 128k) and made substantially higher profits (a single 512k card should have been much cheaper to manufacture and distribute than 4 128k cards -so higher margins even if sold at significantly less than 4x the price).


And more so than jut coupons, those games (using at or near 15 blocks) should have included memory cards bundled as standard. (as a few GC games did -like Animal Crossing, which uses nearly the full capacity of a 1x card)

[StarMist]

This doesn't make sense. Sony could have sold higher capacity memory cards for similar prices as multiple smaller cards (ie 512k for 4x the price of 128k) and made substantially higher profits (a single 512k card should have been much cheaper to manufacture and distribute than 4 128k cards -so higher margins even if sold at significantly less than 4x the price).

I disagree. Shipping must have been negligible on the comparatively small # of such small objects (as opposed to controllers eg) so that area of distribution wouldn't matter; neither would advertising as they're a stock component bordering on a necessity so they never needed it--though the introduction of a new model MC would. Nor do I see any substantial manufacturing cost in the plastic of the cards, it could scarcely have cost them less. Are you saying the chipboard that composes a MC is the principal cost rather than the RAM attached to it? Because if they're even the higher profit would still rest with smaller cards and if the RAM is in advance of the chipboard the smaller cards' profit margin would be even greater (because the board would be relatively less). Selling things in part only ever makes any kind of company less profit than selling them in bulk when the packaging or the shipping for individuals costs much more. Furthermore there's the customary mental hook side to selling in part, ie the customer is more likely to buy the cheaper thing as needed than to buy the more provident deal.

And more so than jut coupons, those games (using at or near 15 blocks) should have included memory cards bundled as standard. (as a few GC games did -like Animal Crossing, which uses nearly the full capacity of a 1x card)

This is of course true except that I don't recall any free memory card pack-ins so coupons would've been more realistic. Yet I never bought many games new so whatever pack-ins there were would've been missed. All the same those pack-ins most likely would've come with special stickers as several Saturn carts have, or even coloured and moulded shells, not one of which I can recall ever seeing.

[kool kitty89]

I disagree. Shipping must have been negligible on the comparatively small # of such small objects (as opposed to controllers eg) so that area of distribution wouldn't matter; neither would advertising as they're a stock component bordering on a necessity so they never needed it--though the introduction of a new model MC would. Nor do I see any substantial manufacturing cost in the plastic of the cards, it could scarcely have cost them less. Are you saying the chipboard that composes a MC is the principal cost rather than the RAM attached to it? Because if they're even the higher profit would still rest with smaller cards and if the RAM is in advance of the chipboard the smaller cards' profit margin would be even greater (because the board would be relatively less). Selling things in part only ever makes any kind of company less profit than selling them in bulk when the packaging or the shipping for individuals costs much more. Furthermore there's the customary mental hook side to selling in part, ie the customer is more likely to buy the cheaper thing as needed than to buy the more provident deal.

While distribution costs would have been minor, the issue of manufacturing cost and overall profit margins would most certainly NOT be.

Single higher density cards would have been considerably cheaper to manufacture than the sum of smaller cards of comparable capacity, and on top of that, the margins eaten up at the retail level would be proportionally higher as well, but the main point is sheer manufacturing cost and pricing.
So again, they could have sold "4x" capacity memory cards at somewhere less than 4x the SRP than "1x" cards (perhaps somewhere around 3x) and still made at least moderately greater profits. Or, they could have sold them at exactly (or approximately) 4x the price and made even more profits. (and it would still be attractive to consumers due to convenience of having fewer cards -or for that reason, they could charge an even higher premium for the added value of said convenience, but that would limit it more to users really needing the higher capacity and limit impulse purchases)

Or going even further, they could have discontinued the cheaper (lower profit) memory cards entirely and forced consumers to only buy the (still nominally higher priced) high density versions. (thus pushing profits even further and consolidating manufacturing around high density models)
This would be especially significant as market-wide prices fell in general and the low-density cards had slimmer and slimmer profit margins.

[StarMist]

Single higher density cards would have been considerably cheaper to manufacture than the sum of smaller cards of comparable capacity, and on top of that, the margins eaten up at the retail level would be proportionally higher as well, but the main point is sheer manufacturing cost and pricing.

How so cheaper? That's what I asked. Also this was Sony, don't base it on the workings of some small corporation that had to outsource or buy off the shelf. If you can't demonstrate this according to the cost of chip components I won't see any reason to agree with you as the Playstation flourished ample time for Sony to recognise more profit on MCs could be made were that the case; the PSOne release would've made a particularly effective time to release a new model MC. Yet if the disparity's as glaring as you make it out they probably would've recognised it much earlier, in which case the only reason not to switch immediately would've been a surplus of 1x MCs already manufactured. Again, this wasn't some incompetent like Sega or Atari, this was a giant, solvent corporation, so I have a hard time believing they'd miss such an obvious cash cow.

[kool kitty89]

How so cheaper? That's what I asked. Also this was Sony, don't base it on the workings of some small corporation that had to outsource or buy off the shelf. If you can't demonstrate this according to the cost of chip components I won't see any reason to agree with you as the Playstation flourished ample time for Sony to recognise more profit on MCs could be made were that the case; the PSOne release would've made a particularly effective time to release a new model MC. Yet if the disparity's as glaring as you make it out they probably would've recognised it much earlier, in which case the only reason not to switch immediately would've been a surplus of 1x MCs already manufactured. Again, this wasn't some incompetent like Sega or Atari, this was a giant, solvent corporation, so I have a hard time believing they'd miss such an obvious cash cow.

If you want actual industrial manufacturing costs for components (let alone the internal costs of Sony's own manufacturing -not open market values), I can't give you those.

However, it's common sense for anyone with even a vague understanding of ICs and electronics manufacturing in general to understand that higher density chips will be cheaper than multiple lower density ones (at least once the higher density chips become practical to manufacture in volumes -which always happens and is only a matter of time . . . and for 128k to 512k NAND flash RAM in the late 90s, this was a non-issue), and then you have the considerable cost of PCB and case manufacturing, assembly, packaging, and then distribution on top of that. (all things that will tend to be pennies on the dollar at the industrial level, but very substantial in terms of eventual retail pricing -and profit margins for retailers and the source manufacturers; and then warehouse/storage costs on top of all that)
So even for a time when 128k density chips were less than 1/4 the price of a 512k chip, it would still be cheaper to manufacture a memory card with multiple 128k chips than 4 separate cards with 1 chip each. (and if that 512k chip was only moderately more expensive, it may still be cheaper to use due to the added costs of a larger/more complex PCB with more traces/solder points for the 4x 128k chips)

Also understand that almost all retail electronics get a substantial chunk of their prices from the retailers/distributors themselves, and NOT manufacturing. (of hand, I happen to know that the Atari 7800 sold to retailers for about $25-30 for most of its market life, but was sold at retail for around $80 for much of that time -and don't think those retailers are pocketing massive profits either since they have tons of expenses as well -from storage/maintenance of stock, to customer service, etc, etc -and the actual prices/margins on a specific product will depend on a variety of things beyond the base price/cost for the retailer: like physical size of the item/packaging, weight, perceived saleability, need for customer support, etc)

And even in the absolute extreme case of Sony's manufacturing costs being roughly equal for 1 512k capacity card vs 4x 128k cards (which realistically wouldn't happen for the reasons above), they could at still at least break even on profits by selling those cards to retailers at 4x the price of the 128k cards.




Now, one possible real technical reason for supporting only 128k densities could simply have been for cost saving measures in general: limiting capacity to only 128k could mean moderately simpler/cheaper control/interface logic for the memory card ports as well as any logic onboard the cards themselves, plus a possible modest reduction in physical pin count on the card PCBs and cart slots on the system. (the latter would be more significant as you could always design cards that supported partial pinouts for lower densities where the slots themselves would always need the full pinout)

That could have had a small, but still meaningful savings on the system's manufacturing cost (again, those pennies add up), though it would definitely be one of those cases of a company "cheaping out" on very minor cost issues that could have been very attractive in the long run. (there's far worse cases of that across history though, including design flaws that lead to high failure rates -PSX, PS2, 360, and to some extent PS3 all suffered from being too cheap in certain areas and either lacking comprehensive quality testing or going ahead in spite of known problems -almost certainly the latter case, and something that happens all too often in the fast-paced computer/electronics hardware and software world -and sometimes companies get away with it for the better -due to the advantage of an earlier release- while in other cases the negative PR and/or warranty/recall costs are far higher than any benefits -and obviously, intentionally pushing out a flawed product like that is dishonest, but when has big-business ever been consistently honest?)

[StarMist]

@ PP1 = Well I don't know anything about IC's and electronics.
@ PP2 = I do understand retail markups.

I think we've got carried away with the hypothetical value of 4x. At 4x your assessment would be blatantly true. At somewhere twixt 2x and 3x Sony's attitude makes sense when combined with that consumer mentality I pointed out a couple posts back, ie that the majority of consumers will always go for immediate savings over the long term perspective, so that if a 3x OEM MC cost $50 most consumers would shy from it and purchase only a single $20 card every 18 months (ie as needed)...and of course end up scrimping on saves with the cards they already owned rather than using 3 or 5 saves every game and having to buy another card all the time.
Though Sony may have been more off than I originally reckoned: a 4x (whatever) card would've done well to combat 3rd party cards wich were always cheaper and whose royalties must not have equated to their own MCs' profits. Sales might have been furthered by the bad press from Performance's MCs which crashed enough to make all 3rd party cards suspect--early on at least.

[kool kitty89]

@ PP1 = Well I don't know anything about IC's and electronics.
@ PP2 = I do understand retail markups.

As to the electronics manufacturing issue . . . a simpler analogy might be to cartridge based games:
For example, it would always be cheaper to manufacture a single 8 Mbit (1MB) game (like Phantasy Star II) than 2 4 Mbit (512k) games (like Afterburner II) due to the sheer cost of PCB manufacturing and assembly (let alone packaging and distribution costs after that). Even in the case of lower density ROM chips being the cheap market standard, it would be cheaper to use multiple chips in 1 cart than fewer chips in more carts (to similar combined density).

This is also why you never see multi-cart games in the way multiple disk/disc games are made. There's simply no practical or technical reason to split a game across multiple carts for a single release (it's always significantly cheaper to use 1 PCB with more memory on it).
And, yes, there are a handful of cases where expansions were released on separate carts (especially Sonic 3&K), but those are rare and not single releases either (but later expansions -or sequels in some respects), though it would certainly have been considerably cheaper to manufacture a single 4 MB S&K combo cart than the 2 separately. (and Sega definitely could have sold it for much less than the combined prices of those games while still retaining a similar margin, but I digress)

I think we've got carried away with the hypothetical value of 4x. At 4x your assessment would be blatantly true. At somewhere twixt 2x and 3x Sony's attitude makes sense when combined with that consumer mentality I pointed out a couple posts back, ie that the majority of consumers will always go for immediate savings over the long term perspective, so that if a 3x OEM MC cost $50 most consumers would shy from it and purchase only a single $20 card every 18 months (ie as needed)...and of course end up scrimping on saves with the cards they already owned rather than using 3 or 5 saves every game and having to buy another card all the time.
Though Sony may have been more off than I originally reckoned: a 4x (whatever) card would've done well to combat 3rd party cards wich were always cheaper and whose royalties must not have equated to their own MCs' profits. Sales might have been furthered by the bad press from Performance's MCs which crashed enough to make all 3rd party cards suspect--early on at least.

That reminds me of another point of explicitly limiting capacity:
not allowing formatting above 128k would prevent 3rd parties from making cheap/competitive higher density cards to compete with Sony's (hypotnetical) higher priced high density cards.


You could argue that they could have developed security measures to prevent this, but that's further added cost and complexity (and still not foolproof) . . . or you could argue that 1st party brand recognition (and potential reliability issues of 3rd party products -or at least perceived quality) would be enough to make that moot anyway and allow Sony to charge premiums on all densities regardless of lower priced competition.
--There's tons of historical examples where the high margin big-name manufacturer managed to retain their market share -even a majority market share- in spite of technically competitive competition at far better values: Intel's hold on the x86 market was like that for well over a decade in spite of heavy competition from the likes of Cyrix and AMD . . . and even after the market was broken into a fair bit, Intel still retained market leadership for much longer in spite of considerably poorer values on most of their flagship products. (the PS2 is a bit like that too . . . Sony commanded a relatively hefty price for quite a while because they could afford to do so and consumers were buying it at those prices -not because it was more expensive to build, especially with Sony's vertical integration and massive economies of scale; likewise, Several of Intel's competitor's designs were nominally more expensive to manufacture -like the 6x86 and K5 vs Pentium Classic- but prices were considerably lower than Intel's -especially for Cyrix- due to Intel's comparatively massive profit margins -and market position to push those sorts of margins, at least for a time)