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Cacodemon345

what happened to the 5th generation of consoles?

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What was the reason behind so many problems that happened to the 5th generation of gaming consoles?

I found storage problems,piracy problems etc.

Edit:It -is- PSX\N64 era I am referring to.

Edited by Cacodemon345

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There were problems with the 5th generation of consoles?  My Sega Genesis was one the most reliable consoles I've ever owned.  It still works today.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by storage and piracy problems.  The games tended not to have any storage, and I'm pretty sure piracy wasn't a big issue as who can copy a game cartridge?

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Huh, well today I learned if you type "4th generation consoles" into Google, you get the exact same list as if you type in "5th generation consoles".

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The Dreamcast had huge piracy problems because it was made extremely easy to do it, making it one of the huge problems with the console's failure.

 

I didn't know about any issues about the other consoles though

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34 minutes ago, dethtoll said:

The Dreamcast was also a garbage system that wasn't worth spending too much money on. 

Its amazing how many people praise it now after getting trashed for a decade. Its like The Empire Strikes Back.

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I can't speak to the greater success or failure of the generation as a whole, but those (specifically PSX and N64) were the consoles that kind of turned me off to console gaming; I never had them myself but a friend did and most of my fond memories of them were more about screwing around with said friend than the games themselves.  I remember thinking the blocky polygons were very ugly compared to the prior generation's sprites (perhaps even more back then than I do now) and I also found the controls on the 3D games to be awkward.  So I stuck with PC from then on with only exception of Gameboy Advance since it was more like the old systems I'd liked, and even with PC gaming I lost interest for a while when more and more of it started going the 3D accelerator route as well.  Nowadays I've more so made my peace with 3rd-person 3D games, and might enjoy some of the games of that era more than I did back then, but I never did get back onto the console scene beyond picking up a NES and Genesis in the past few years.

 

At the very least, I know I'm not the only person who was less than thrilled to see formerly-2D franchises make a shoddy transition to 3D in that era.

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3 hours ago, dethtoll said:

Funny, I never saw anyone trash the Dreamcast. I've always been in the minority.

The dreamcast was fucking awesome.  It was the first time I played Unreal Tournament online, and the first time I'd ever considered a console going online.  You could join PC servers in Quake 3, too.  And anytime you did, you're ass was handed to you. Dat mouse.

 

Good times.

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PC also had to roll back their point release if they wanted to play against DC players.

Jeff Gerstmann from Giantbomb always talks about how he loved Quake 3 on DC because it had its own keyboard and mouse accessory he used to wipe the floor with players online

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1 hour ago, Flesh420 said:

The dreamcast was fucking awesome.  It was the first time I played Unreal Tournament online, and the first time I'd ever considered a console going online.  You could join PC servers in Quake 3, too.  And anytime you did, you're ass was handed to you. Dat mouse.

 

Good times.

I thought Dreamcast belonged in the 6th generation?

Anyways, the 5th generation of consoles had HUGE problems with piracy. My dad has 10+ games for the PSX and none of them are genuine.

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Could have sworn the reason the Dreamcast bombed was because it was insanely easy to pirate, the Ps2 being a cheap DVD Player drove people to it (Which is largely why it sold more units than Gamecube/Xbox), and Sega already being in a good amount of debt beforehand thanks to their poor business decisions. It was the perfect storm of unfortunate events, even though I hear the Dreamcast actually had the more powerful GPU compared to the Ps2, or at least it had hardware support for Bump Mapping and the Ps2 didn't.

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The Dreamcast could, on somewhat rare occasion, look better than a lot of PS2 games.

 

My father owned a SEGA Genesis and a PSX, but I never really bothered with them too much. Too busy playing Command & Conquer and DOOM. The only console I ever owned and actually built a huge library of games for was the PS2. Even had some rare and hard to find games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

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Compact discs, as revolutionary as they were, were much easier to copy than a cartridge. Hence the piracy.

 

Bootleg NES cartridges were dirt cheap, but as the consoles evolved they probably became too sophisticated. I haven't heard much about N64 pirating, for example.

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Something I only learned recently was that the Gamecube was actually stronger than the PS2, if only slightly. I knew Xbox was more powerful, but didn't know that about the Gamecube.

One thing I find fascinating about the N64 is how Mario 64 was the launch game yet it's the highest selling out of all N64 games. That hasn't really ever happened and launch games actually got a bad rap the past few generations.

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Nobody talked about the Saturn with its 2 CPU's and problematic programming due to them?

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2 hours ago, wheresthebeef said:

Something I only learned recently was that the Gamecube was actually stronger than the PS2, if only slightly. I knew Xbox was more powerful, but didn't know that about the Gamecube.

In terms of GPU power, the Gamecube actually seemed to be a lot closer to the Xbox than it was to the Ps2. Certain games like Factor Five's Star Wars games really showed off its power when it came to things like shader effects and one great example of the Gamecube vs the Ps2 is Resident Evil 4, which had to have its graphical effects almost completely neutered in the Ps2 version due to its GPU lacking hardware support for such effects.

 

Spoiler

 

 

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As for the reason, I think that that the technology of that time was new.

So companies developed consoles by their own mind I think,without thinking about the consequences and problems that would happen.

Resulting in PSX/N64/Saturn to be laced with problems.

(Though PSX had very few problems)

16 hours ago, tracermemes said:

Anyways, the 5th generation of consoles had HUGE problems with piracy.

That was the problem of CD discs, in fact a modchip was developed for the PSX to bypass protections.

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First time I ever heard of a modchip was a friend of mine got a PS1 for his birthday from one of his older cousins and some Japanese imported games. He got a really cool DragonBall Z game and when I borrowed it, it wouldn't work on my PS1 since it was region locked.

To this day I haven't played that game and I really want to.

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As someone who went from a Sega Megadrive to a PSX I was blown away by the jump and I think to today we have still yet to see such a significant jump in graphics especially. The launch line up was incredible and in my opinion has yet to be matched: Destruction Derby , Ridge Racer , Wipeout , Tekken to name just a few.

With that being said (as someone stated earlier here) certain beloved 2D franchises did not transition well into 3D at all. 3D Lemmings on PS1 was just awful and Fade To Black- A game that was a sequel to flashBack - was an absolute blocky mess. The Playstation was a doddle to "Chip" and play pirate games on or if you didn't fancy voiding your warranty Disc swapping was pretty easy if you could get the technique down.

 

The Sega Saturn just wasn't up to scratch for 3D programming as Sony's machine and I hear was a nightmare to code for. Streets of Rage was supposed to get a 3D fourth instalment on this system but it never got off the ground (and still hasn't)

 

Nintendo were a little late off the starting grid for the 5th generation of consoles with the N64  not being released until 96/97 but with Mario 64 being THE launch title , it soon caught up.

Though the N64 had its own issues being cartridge based , memory and sound being the main two. Ninty obviously knew memory constraints would be an issue from the get go as they made room for the "expansion bay" which was sold separately ( imagine Sony or Microsoft trying to pull a fast one like that these days)

The sound on the 64 was often substituted for almost midi style tracks in ports of games that were on the PSX or Dreamcast. One that sticks to mind was WWF Warzone. 

 

Well thats how I remember  the 5th gen consoles , I don't think there was any main problem with all that went on ( Maybe Sega would differ in opinion on that lol) It was a major transitional period in gaming and a major learning curve for developers.

 

Oh, and the Dreamcast? Thats gotta be more generation 5.5 right? Sega being very quick ( maybe too quick) to get the jump on the PS2.

 

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One thing that helped the N64 was having a couple of features that neither of the other two had, things we take for granted nowadays. Perspective Correction and Trilinear Filtering. Consequently, it's probably the only one whose Doom game is rendered by the hardware since Carmack forbid use of the Saturn's GPU (And presumably, the Ps1's GPU) due to Affine Texturing. Also helped that Nintendo still had some influence with their First Party Games like Zelda, Mario, and Star Fox.

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23 minutes ago, MetroidJunkie said:

it's probably the only one whose Doom game is rendered by the hardware since Carmack forbid use of the Saturn's GPU (And presumably, the Ps1's GPU) due to Affine Texturing.

For a genius like Carmack it was a poor decision.

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