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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1783625" data-attributes="member: 151">Yup, it was all tied together.  There wasn't really any greater difficulty in creating a game for cartridge versus CD, per se.  The issue was that cartridges were much more limited in storage capacity and only Nintendo could manufacture them.  So not only were third-party developers required to get a license from Nintendo, they had to get Nintendo to manufacture their game and respond to Nintendo's content control policies, which were much stricter than Sony's policies.  The largest cartridge available for the N64 was 64MB.  CDs could hold more than 10 times that amount of data, allowing games with FMV and actual recorded dialogue (consider games like Resident Evil or Final Fantasy).  CDs were cheaper and faster to produce, and many companies, like Square, finished their commitments and left for Sony, instead.  That meant that there were few 3rd-party games and licenses.  Capcom wasn't releasing Resident Evil 2 on the N64...it was practically impossible under the limitations of the cartridge format.Heh.  The moment I saw Trevor, I knew I'd found my new Avatar.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />The Gamegear had several fatal flaws that doomed it in the handheld market.  First, it was bigger and heavier than the gameboy.  The gameboy's success was a big suprise to everyone, including Nintendo, who underestimated how popular the device would turn out to be.  It's portability cannot be understated.  Worse, one of the GG's best features was also it's biggest liability: it's screen.  Ahead of its time, the screen featured backlighting, something the gameboy didn't get for years.  However, the reason the gameboy didn't have the backlighting was simple: power.  The gamegear used 6 AA batteries, for a playtime of about 6 hours...the gameboy only used 4 AA batteries, and could go up to 35 hours.  Gamegear was also late to market, being the third of the handhelds.  By the time it came out in June 1991, the gameboy had been out for two years, and sold 3.2 million units or so.  The GG only sold 140,000 or so by the end of 1992, while the GB had sold nearly 5 million.  Being more expensive didn't help it, either.  Sega's attempt to remedy the situation, by releasing a rechargable power pack that was essentially a heavy belt (weighing more than the gg itself) not only looked silly, but only gave two more hours of game time.  Add into that the fact the form factor for the gg was just bulky...unlike the GB, it didn't slide into a pants pocket that well.  Essentially, the game gear was doomed by being a portable game system that really wasn't terribly portable, due to power restrictions, weight and size.  Some folks claim it didn't have a good game selection, but I couldn't say either way, honestly.</blockquote>

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