Forum > Gaming Discussion > Innovations in Gaming (Hits and Misses)
Innovations in Gaming (Hits and Misses)
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Fri, 01 Mar 2024 03:43:22
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Nominate your hits and misses over the course of console history.  I'll start with the recent history of Sony and MS. But feel free to go throughout gaming history.

Sony

PS4 Haptic Controls - Hit

PSVR - Miss, fumbled the initial hardware then made good, then soft-launched PSVR2 and have failed to support it.

BlueRay disc storage - Hit

PS Portal - Hit

MS

XBLA - Hit

XBLive - Hit

Kinnect - Miss

Hololens - Miss

Xbox "Series" Generation Launching with 2 SKUS - 2 price points - Hit (not as big as PS5, but both SKUs have sold well with neither being withdrawn)

Controller Support for PC's - Massive Hit

XPlay Subscription - Hit

Nintendo

Switch dockable console - Hit

Labo augmented reality - Miss

Wii U short-range remote tablet shell - Miss

3DS portable 3D - Hit (the 3D part was a hook, but I think ultimately a miss, but the DS form factor continuing was a Hit).

Revival - bringing over almost all of the Wii U first-party games to a new platform, not through backward compatibility but by putting a new wrapper on them - Hit


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Fri, 01 Mar 2024 16:21:43
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Atari Lynx was the first handheld console wth a color backlit screen - Hit

Hmm, I'll have to think about this...more to come.

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Fri, 01 Mar 2024 21:32:13
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NES gave us the D pad/cross controller that looks strange at first, but pretty much went on to be a standard part of home consoles for close to 40 years. - Hit

The N64 controller - big ole miss
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Fri, 01 Mar 2024 22:13:41
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The N64 controller gave us analogue sticks though...  Sure, the rest was a bit excentric, but that's gotta count for something.  I miss the octogonal cutout. Oh, and the rumble pack, or did Sony get there first?
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Fri, 01 Mar 2024 22:28:20
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Nintendo did rumble first.

Edited: Fri, 01 Mar 2024 23:50:04

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Fri, 01 Mar 2024 22:46:17
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Good point. The Rumble pack for the N64 controller was a big deal. I guess I'll begrudgingly give them credit for the analog stick, though that seemed more like an inevitability than an innovation. You're make 3-D games? Well you better have the right controller, so use what worked for PC controllers.

Though I suppose a lot of console innovation came from PC, and that just opens up another can of worms.
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Wed, 20 Mar 2024 04:40:34
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Dreamcast built in modem - hit???? The system failed but that was incredible. NFL2K1, PSO, Chu chu rocket, unreal tournament, and so on. Being able to play these games online on a console was so ground breaking. PS2 and GC had their addons. Xbox did it like DC built in.

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Tue, 23 Apr 2024 21:41:06
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Dvader said:

Dreamcast built in modem - hit???? The system failed but that was incredible. NFL2K1, PSO, Chu chu rocket, unreal tournament, and so on. Being able to play these games online on a console was so ground breaking. PS2 and GC had their addons. Xbox did it like DC built in.

Yeah that was definately a hit. It was so exciting to go online with a console. Ad the thing is, even on a dial up it actually bloody worked well!

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Tue, 23 Apr 2024 22:27:26
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Modem in the Dreamcast was a hit, but I don't recall using it much. I messed around with the web browser disk and played Chu Chu Rocket online once or twice.

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Thu, 25 Apr 2024 03:05:16
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You know what was a huge innovation? Being able to pause your game anywhere by closing the DS. It took consoles another generation to be able to pause at any point.
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Thu, 16 May 2024 04:03:40
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I'd call Dreamcast modem a miss. It wasn't even picked up for general use until a couple of generations later, and it didn't really add many numbers to the Dreamcast userbase.

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Thu, 16 May 2024 08:39:39
Foolz said:

I'd call Dreamcast modem a miss. It wasn't even picked up for general use until a couple of generations later, and it didn't really add many numbers to the Dreamcast userbase.

Maybe in Australia? In States at launch the DC had a modem built in (not ethernet, that first went to XB).

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Thu, 16 May 2024 12:33:16
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aspro said:

Maybe in Australia? In States at launch the DC had a modem built in (not ethernet, that first went to XB).

It was built-in here too, I believe. I just meant it was a failure, albeit due to being ahead of its time.

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Thu, 16 May 2024 12:53:43
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I don't believe the Dreamcast modem was a failure in the US. There were lots of games that took advantage of it for online gaming and it worked pretty well from what I understand. I mean DC had Quake 3, Unreal tournament and Fantasy Star Online. All popular games of the time.

Sega released an optional ethernet adapter too.

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Fri, 17 May 2024 05:09:59
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Oh, I agree there were lots of great online games for the Dreamcast, that worked well, too. But SEGA died, and online console gaming didn't become much of a thing until two generations later.

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