[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.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

The original claim is that exclusives somehow decided the quality of the console rather than the overall quality of the games available for the console.

The conversation then derailed into whether or not multi-platform was a thing back then. The answer is that it was, SC64 is a counter-example to the claim that it wasn't a thing.

There are lots of other games that can be brought up as well, such as Tony Hawks pro skater, as another counter-example.

That generation was the first generation where multi-platform started becoming common. It happened in the earlier generation as well (Street Fighter and Kirby are two easy examples), but that generation is where it started becoming common. It only got more common as time went on.

The mistake people are making is confusing "not as common as it is today" with "not common at all". You can literally find listicles of cross platform games for that generation.

[anthk]

I was there, I was born in 1987, so I lived thru it. And most of the time the "ports" were just new games up to the point of shifthing the genre because of some really limited platforms.

[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.