Sony PlayStation

PSX: A machine for the masses

When Sony first entered the market, the move was met with trepidation by gamers. After almost 6 years of complete dominance over the home market by Sega and Nintendo, Sony appeared to be fighting a very difficult battle. The Phillips CD-I and the 3D0 had proved what could happen to inexperienced companies seeking a slice of the pie.

Sony however, was not a failure. Thanks to excellent marketing, a well designed and powerful console and many stunning games, the PSX has emerged the victor of the home 3D wars. With an installed base of over 30 million Playstations, Sony has become, in just 3 and a half years, one of the most powerful companies in videogaming.

The intoduction of the Playstation breathed new life into a stale industry. It opened up a new market of twentysomething gamers that had previously been put off by the under-14 image of the 16-bit machines. If videogames today have a more positive image, you have Sony to thank for that. Perhaps in response, developers have been quick to embrace the machine and consequently there are now over 800 games available.

The PSX may have done well up to now, but can it survive in the face of increasingly stiff competition from Nintendo, and the soon to be released 128-Bit Dreamcast from Sega?

The feeling seems to be a positive one, and can be bolstered by the incredible amount of developer support for the machine. Most major publishers have pledged their support for the format indefinitely and a forthcoming range of incredible titles such as Metal Gear and Tekken 3 bode well for the retention of consumer interest. The game that secured the PSX's dominance in Japan, and perhaps the PlayStations greatest triumph, was Final Fantasy 7. Not only was the game utterly incredible, but all 6 previous Final Fantasy games were exclusive to Nintendo formats. The game quickly became the fastest selling PSX game in history, and has amassed total sales of over 7 million. The game also represents a figurative victory: it would have been impossible on the N64.

Technically, though, the Playstation is beginning to look less bright. The Nintendo 64 and PC are now the current benchmarks for 3D performance, and while the PSX looked like a dream come true four years ago, it is now beginning to show it's age. An absence of dedicated Z-buffering and mip-mapping hardware, along with it's lack of RAM, are cited by developers as it's most serious deficiencies. Most agree there is still potential in the format, however.

1997 has been the PSX's best year yet, with sales of 19.2 million units. Sony predict that by the end of this year they will have an installed base of 50 million. The real question, though, is the machines future after 1998. The Dreamcast is launched in October, and by the end of the year the N64 will play host to titles such as Zelda, Turok 2, Banjo-Kazooie, F-Zero X, and Mission:Impossible. VideoGames.co.nz predicts that sales will slow in 1999, with development slowing off towards the end of that year. The PSX 2 is due to be launched late 99/early 2000.

Currently however, the Playstation is ahead. Consumers new to gaming would be best advised to go with Sony's machine, and current gamers would be crazy not to have one by now. While both Raja and I are Nintendo 64 fans, we freely admit that the Playstation is currently riding a wave of success it fully deserves. Sony has done extremely well, and we look forward to future developments with fevered anticipation.

Specifications:

CPU: 32 Bit Custom R3000A Risc chip operating at 33Mhz
30 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)
Bus bandwidth: 132 Mb per second
4K Instruction Cache
1K Data Cache

Memory: 16 Mbits Main RAM
8 Mbits V-RAM
4 Mbits sound RAM
256K CD-ROM Buffer RAM
4 Mbits OS ROM
128K removable memory cards for game saves

Graphics: 66 MIPS Geometry Transfer Engine
24 bit colour
Resolution: 256 x 224 to 640 x 480
4000 8x8-pixel sprites maximum
Sprite-scaling hardware
Full range of alpha-channel effects
Proprietry MDEC Data Decompression for high quality video playback

Sound: 16 bit sound chip
ADCPM with 24 channnels of sound
44.1Khz sampling frequency
PCM audio source

CD-ROM Drive: 660 Mb Maximum Capacity
150K/sec or 300k/sec Data transfer rate

Star Games:
The Tekken Series (Namco)
Tomb Raider 1 and 2 (Core Design)
Resident Evil 1 and 2 (Capcom)
Gran Turismo (Sony)
Final Fantasy VII (SquareSoft)


Nintendo 64

N64: The troubled beauty

When the world was first introduced to the N64 at Shoshinkai in 1995, the videogaming industry stood still for a moment. The reason? An early demo of Super Mario 64 shocked the world with it's incredible graphics and breathtaking originality, and it was clear that upon release, the Nintendo 64 would have one of the worlds greatest videogames to sell itself with. It seemed assured at this early stage that Nintendo would remain a major player in the dynamic and unforgiving videogame market.

Three years later, and Nintendo is in a difficult time. While Shigeru Miyamoto has churned out his share of classic games, third-partys have been scrambling to meet his standard, and, with a few notable exceptions, have failed to do so. The Nintendo 64 has a smaller market share in Japan than the now dead Saturn, and of the top 100 selling Niponese games of last year, only 6 were N64 titles. The situation in the west, particuarly America, is somewhat brighter, but Nintendo is still second to Sony, at least in market share.

The N64 has of course an advantage over the Playstation with it's 64-Bit architecture. A quick comparison of 1080 with Cool Boarders or Mario with Gex will confirm this to any potential doubting thomases. It is also aided by it's excellent, revolutionary analogue controller, which, as it has come standard with the machine since day one, has provided a satisfying and advantageous interface to N64 owners. Can you imagine playing Mario 64 without an analogue joypad?

Controversy surrounds the Nintendo 64 software line-up. While many argue (including myself and industry leading magazine Edge) that their are as many classics in Nintendo's small line up as there is in the entire 1000+ Playstation catalogue, an equal faction disagrees. Nintendo software is infamously slow in getting to the shops, and while it is excellent, many players are sick of waiting for a limited range of titles and would rather be playing games on their PSX right now. The N64 also is lacking in three of the most important and popular genres: the RPG, the car-based Racer, and the Fighter. Gran Turismo has sold over 10,000 copies in New Zealand (a ratio of 1:10 with PSX's), and this is a market which Nintendo is not tapping. How will Nintendo fare in the face of Tekken 3?

The future is murky for Nintendo. It appears that many of the forthcoming release are incredible, with such titles as Banjo-Kazooie, Zelda, F-Zero, and Perfect Dark on their way. Raja's boss was at E3, and he has brought back news of Zelda's utter brilliance, and he says that people will but N64's for this game. But will one game, no matter how amazing, be able to turn Nintendo's fortunes? The 64DD, also, has been much maligned and now it's release looks in doubt. If it is released, it's success is far from assured, and it may turn out to be a case of too little, too late.

Perhaps the one thing that can save Nintendo is the strength of NCL's internal development team. Coupled with the talents of Rare, these two powerhouses of gaming talent may be able to convince the gaming world that quantity does NOT equal quality, and that the N64 is a viable option, and indeed an essential one.

Many die-hard Nintendo fans such as myself will never ditch Nintendo, but the general gaming public could at any moment. Nintendo is currently in one of it's most difficult times, and VideoGames.co.nz will be very interested to see where it stands by this time next year.

Specifications:

CPU:
MIPS 64bit RISC custom R4300 running at 93.75 Mhz
64bit RISC processor running at 62.5 Mhz
Built-in RSP (graphics and sound processor) and RDP (pixel drawing processor)

Memory: 36 Mbits Rambus-designed 9bit DRAM (4.5 Mb), maximum transfer rate: 4500 Mbits/sec

Graphics 256x224 (standard) or 640x480 with flicker-free interlace support
Maximum 16.8 million colours, 32 bit RGBA pixel-colour frame buffer support
Standard 21 bit colour output

Sound: Stereo 16bit PCM
64 Channels at 44.1 KHz

Benchmarks: Main CPU clocked at 125 MIPS (millions of instructions per second)
Graphics coprocessor clocked at 100 MFLOPS (millions of floating point
operations per second)
100,000 polygons/sec with all hardware features turned on

Star Games: Super Mario 64 (Nintendo)
Pilotwings 64 (Nintendo)
WaveRace 64 (Nintendo)
Starfox 64/Lylat Wars (Nintendo)
Goldeneye 007 (Rareware)
Diddy Kong Racing (Rareware)
International Superstar Soccer 64 (Konami)


Messages to the VideoGames.co.nz Board seem to confirm the Playstation's popularity - in the public eye, the machine seems to rule over the Nintendo 64. Feedback is always welcome, so keep it coming!