[chongli]

I say exclusive because a lot of the non-exclusive games (ports) had severe compromises which meant they were way better on other systems (PS1 or PC). Compare any of the sports games on the N64 to their PS1 counterparts and the difference is stark.

[chrisco255]

NBA Courtside and MLB w Ken Griffey Jr were fantastic sports games. NFL Blitz was also more fun on the 64 with 4 players.

[eru]

But why would you expect the non-exclusives to be better on console A instead of console B?

[chrisco255]

At the time the hardware differences were more significant than they are in modern systems (we're also in an era of diminishing returns on graphical improvements). Playstation 1 had larger storage space and could take advantage of prerendered graphics and full motion pre-recorded video, but the actual real-time graphics were more limited on the PS1 than the N64. The N64 had also created the analog thumbstick, and although Sony would later copy and improve the design with the Dual Shock controller, initially N64 was a far superior platform for games with twitchy 3D gameplay like platformers and even first person shooters. Another factor was multiplayer. For party games, N64 was a superior experience, as up to 4 players could play at once vs. PS1's two controller ports.

At any rate due to these factors you'd have to make various trade-offs when porting a game from PS1 to N64 or vice versa (cut back on multiplayer, reduce textures, adjust controls, compress audio, etc). There was also no such thing as a universal game engine like Unity or Unreal that could cross-compile for both platforms. On each system you'd have to bake an engine from scratch.

[eru]

Yes. So I'm saying that concentrating on exclusives for comparison might not be a good idea. A game that's available on both PSX and N64 might be better on the former or on the latter. You'd have to look at the specific game.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

most consoles had their own build chain, most development studios had tools to use the different build chains.

starcraft made it onto that console, that in and of itself negates most of what is being talked about here

https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/StarCraft_64

[chrisco255]

StarCraft 64 came very late in the N64's lifespan.

It was pretty awful as a console game (as most RTSes would be). It also lacked significant features like online gameplay, voice over cinematics, and significant changes were introduced to make it easier to play with a controller, although none of it worked well enough to make up for the clunkiness of the port itself.

The exception does not disprove the rule. The PS1 had almost 4x more games than N64. If it was trivial to port games then, it would have happened. But of all the generations of consoles past the 16 bit era, that generation in particular probably has the smallest venn diagram overlap of ports available on multiple systems.

Nowadays even indie devs creating experimental games can cheaply port their games to all consoles using a cross-platform engine like Unity or Unreal. Those tools weren't around for that console generation

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

That it wasn't great doesn't matter, the claim is refuted by its existence.

[chongli]

How does StarCraft 64, a game almost no one plays (despite the original PC version being an absolute classic), refute my claim that ports to the N64 were hobbled by severe compromises? Seems to me that it provides overwhelming support for my claim. The game is absolute trash and not worth playing whereas the PC version holds up extremely well.

[scott_w]

>> At any rate due to these factors you'd have to make various trade-offs when porting a game from PS1 to N64 or vice versa (cut back on multiplayer, reduce textures, adjust controls, compress audio, etc). There was also no such thing as a universal game engine like Unity or Unreal that could cross-compile for both platforms. On each system you'd have to bake an engine from scratch.

> starcraft made it onto that console, that in and of itself negates most of what is being talked about here

Your statement does not in any way negate the statement you're responding to. Or much of anything in the thread for that matter.

The core of what people are responding to is that you state "console exclusives are a scam," which, at the point in time in history we're talking about, is verifiably not the case. You can point to agreements between companies (Final Fantasy VII being the most famous example) but these are not console exclusives in the modern sense. They were agreements, which had a mixture of commercial and technical factors, to make a game on that console. Once that decision was made, it wasn't really necessary to contractually enforce exclusivity because, until the PS4/XB1 era, porting to a different console was really, really hard.

Did companies do it? Yes. Was it planned in as part of the regular flow of developing a video game? At this point in time? No. It was a decision taken later.

[PaulHoule]

Today there are a lot of games that come out for PS4, PS5, XBOX One, XBOX Series One and the Switch. The Switch is quite capable but it is a a much less capable platform than the others so games get "dumbed down" for it or sometimes use radical methods. For instance Control has hardware requirements way too high so it is streamed to the Switch

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/28/21538173/control-cloud-v...

As for the Sony-Microsoft duopoly though there really is no major difference between XBOX and PS today or between those platforms and the PC platform. I have mixed feelings about that because a lot of games on the XBOX (say Numantia) come across more like a PC game than a console game these days with font sizes that make them not at all cozy from my couch.

[scott_w]

Because games back in the 90s weren't developed the same way they are today. The consoles were so different that you had to make significant changes to the games to fit within the limitations of different consoles. This usually meant the game was better on the original than the port (since they'd deliberately designed around that console).

There's plenty of stuff on YouTube showing the differences for different games. Avalanche Reviews did a good video of Resident Evil 2 ports across different consoles and generations.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

No, most AAA studios had their own engine which was designed to port to the different consoles.

The only real difference between something like Unreal Engine and what they used back then is that UE won and is the de factor standard whereas back then most were rolling their own still.

[scott_w]

I've flagged two MAJOR games studios that were the exact opposite of what you claim: Capcom and Squaresoft. One ported games (PORTED, not designed cross-platform) with some major issues doing so. The other outright didn't.

All you've posted in response is a small number of games that were obviously ported AFTER released (in one case 10 years after).

Unreal Engine has nothing to do with this. It was first released in 1998 as a PC engine, not appearing on consoles until the Playstation 2 era in the 2000s. The 2000s happened after the 1990s.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

as stated in another response to you, stop being dishonest in your replies. This distinction of ported vs planned is one that doesn't exist when discussing exclusivity to a console.

It's also not relevant when discussing studio's adding support for multiple consoles to their in-house game engines.

[scott_w]

The distinction is relevant when YOU YOURSELF call console exclusivity a “scam.” Your words.