> Don’t get me wrong, the Switch is great, but it’s very boring on the inside.
That's been their strategy almost every console generation since the NES—that was a 8-bit console when 16-bit processors were common. I think maybe the N64 had some exciting hardware on the inside (at the time), but that's pretty much it. They look for excitement in the controller.
No, that wasn’t really true during the third and fourth generations (NES, SNES). Other consoles contemporary to the NES also used 8-bit processors. The definition of 8-bit depends on how you look at it, but I think we can agree that the Z80 is pretty similar to a 6502.
The SNES and Genesis continued the trend. You took a decent but cheap processor (65C816 or 68000), made a custom chip to draw sprites on the screen, and paired the whole thing with a dedicated processor to handle audio. You might call the 68000 a “32-bit processor” but however you label it, it’s not so different from a 65C816 which both have 16-bit ALUs and 24-bit address busses.
It wasn’t until later that we got people adding MORE CHIPS to make it go MORE FAST, and Nintendo stepping back from the race.
I did a homebrew project for the NES and before I started, I spent a long time sitting down analyzing how these consoles worked so I could choose the console I liked. The 6502 and Z80, despite their design differences and different clock speeds, end up being fairly similar in terms of performance (although I think the SMS is slightly faster).
You're right about the controller, but I don't know ... IMHO N64 is where they started to get less exciting as far as their internal hardware, but capabilities were getting more exciting overall.
The NES's CPU was a 6502 without decimal mode and certainly not exciting, but it's PPU wasn't too usual. 64 sprites, 56 colors, and a 2x2 screen virtual tilemap. I don't think any system had a big virtual tilemap quite like that at the time
SNES is definitely unique. Rotation and other transforms on a huge tilemap in hardware. No programmable sub-CPU or DSP is pushing pixels at all, you literally program 8 registers on the video chip to set the scaleX, scaleY and other parameters and the graphics chip outputs transformed pixels.
32x brought similar capability to the Genesis but it had some SH-1's performing transforms on textures I think, it was more similar to SuperFX than the SNES.
IIRC N64 was pretty much an upgraded PS1 polygon engine (hardware was SGI dervied like the PS1): one with a higher clock rate and a separate DSP for calculations instead of the GTE, but hamstrung by cramped cartridge ROM instead of a CD and really low texture cache.
After that Nintendo started using ATI for graphics hardware and adopted an IBM-designed PowerPC-arch CPU (as did Xbox 360) that lasted until the Will U.
The N64's RSP was quite exciting for the era because of the high degree of programmability. As it turned out, though, almost nobody did anything to program it. They used the microcode that shipped with the devkit. And since the N64 was the odd one out of the pack in other respects, it never really took off in terms of developer support.
So Nintendo's biggest lesson from the N64 was, in fact, that they needed to make boring hardware, because weird stuff wasn't going to be adopted anymore.
Sony learned the same thing almost a decade later with the PS3.
Education is funny. Sony should have learned that they had a killer feature with the PS2 if not ballooning price. And hanging the value add that old games would still work! Just amazing.
I dunno, the NES was pretty unique due to CPU selection, but generally in line with other 8-bit computers and systems of the era. Key developers even ported lots of games almost 1:1 from some home computers like the MSX.
The SNES was basically a mid-range Apple II with some slightly different hardware. The scaling and rotation hardware was getting to be pretty common in arcades and had been around for quite a while in Sega and Taito games. Nintendo focused on tilemaps instead of sprites, and later games quickly added more hardware in the carts to overcome the limitations beyond what F-Zero and Pilotwings could do.
I agree with you on the N64.
Sega had a completely different philosophy, theoretic backwards compatibility all the way back to the beginning. The SG-1000 was a spec revision of the Coleco and MSX specs, the Mark III was a rev of the SG-1000. The Genesis/Mega-drive had the same hardware, but then added an entire other console's hardware around it (IIR Master system compatibility was just a pin adapter). The Sega-CD was a console wrapped around the Genesis. The 32X was a console plugged into that.
The Saturn dropped the 8-bit stuff, but kept theoretic compatibility with the Mega Drive (it had a 68000 in it and a cartridge slot and was rumored to be geared up to be fully compatible at one point IIR).
Sony more or less followed suit for a while as well. The PS2 basically contained a PS1 in it.
> The SNES was basically a mid-range Apple II with some slightly different hardware.
I assume you mean the IIgs with the 65816 like the SNES.
This made me dive into what the IIgs video hardware was like. I know it had an Ensoniq chip for 32-voice sound but didn't know too much about the graphics. Looks like it could do 640x200 with 256 colors.
The Wolfenstein 3d port is interesting even if it does need an accelerator card to run decently. I'm not sure how that was pulled off on the SNES (I don't think Wolf3d had the SuperFX).
This high-level difference is really interesting, thank you. Do you know of any good more in-depth resources? Or even a book? I have tried to search but my DDG-foo just gives me dodgy emulator websites with none of the type of content I'm after.
That's been their strategy almost every console generation since the NES—that was a 8-bit console when 16-bit processors were common. I think maybe the N64 had some exciting hardware on the inside (at the time), but that's pretty much it. They look for excitement in the controller.