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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
Here's one game specifically unable to fit on a cart - Final Fantasy 7. It's the reason Square jumped ship.
Wrong, wrong, and WRONG...People are misinformed on this...The reason Square left was because there was a LOT of tension between their head and Yamauchi...Square did a LOT of software bloating to make it seem like FFVII was much too big for cartridges, because Square was behind the Sony philosophy that "more discs so the game is better"...I mean come on, Square used WAV files for the music! WAV FILES!
I disagree. When I was working retail about a decade ago before Final Fantasy VII was released, the N64 was outselling the PSX from month to month. I knew it because I monitored the sales of all consoles by looking at a nationwide database of a major videogame retailer. I was (and still is) a loyal Nintendo fan and I thought the N64 would take over just like the SNES. However, when Final Fantasy VII hit the scene with its gorgeous CG FMV, the PSX would go on to outsell the N64. The only way the N64 was ever able to outsell a PSX on a given week was when there was a shortage of PSX's.
More examples for you Bill. Sports games for the PSX were better because of the added storage space. Once NFL Gameday was able to upgrade to running polygons, it became a much better sports game along with all of the commentary. The ability to point out player names and having more to say than just "BOOM", "What a tackle", "Number 8 throws the ball", OR "Touchdown" without having to worry about having enough space to fit in-game speech. It was so bad that we were surprised at how much voice work Starfox 64. As a matter of fact, Nintendo fans (including myself) were bragging about how much voice acting was in Starfox 64...that was really pathetic. Before someone points out that in-game speech was never a Nintendo necessity, then why did they try to put it in the game instead of the "bleeps" and "boops" of the original SNES title. Hell, they allowed it for Banjo Kazooie and even the GCN's Animal Crossing. WTF!
The cartridge medium also cost Nintendo all of the third-party support it enjoyed from the SNES era because it was too expensive compared to CDs. Major companies like Konami, Capcom, Enix, and EA found the PSX a much better investment with the larger installed base, cheaper medium (CD's), and more storage space to load their FMV crap.
I did hear that the Squaresoft and Nintendo executives had a falling out. I'm not sure, but I think I may still have a hardcopy of Next Generation magazine that shows that the falling out happened after Squaresoft moved their Final Fantasy series over to Sony's Playstation because Square's developers touted that they had ordered Silicon Graphics tools to create their beautiful CG sequences and pre-rendered backgrounds. Let me get back to you on that hardcopy so I can cite the references.
Yet, regardless if this falling out happened before or after Squaresoft jumped ship, you can't ignore the fact that Nintendo messed up with their decision to go with the cartridges...in retrospect. Despite all of the groundbreaking games that were available for the N64 (some of the greatest of all time), the lower storage capacity of the cartridge was the sole reason why Nintendo is where it is today.
Getting back to topic: Nintendo should learn from the XBOX 360 developers who are complaining about the lack of space. Nintendo has heard it with their past two consoles. I hope they don't repeat their mistakes...as history has shown that they have.
Oh yeah...and the music on WAV files Bill?: I remember that Nintendo wanted to demonstrate that MIDI tracks were able to give the games dynamic music. Nintendo was bragging how RARE was demonstrating how music would change underwater or when enemies were encountered in Banjo Kazooie. My only problem was that while that was great for the 5 seconds that I noticed it, there wasn't enough space to put out a decent MIDI game soundtrack with plenty of variation. Turok, anyone?
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