When I was younger I wondered why the Atari Jaguar games console failed to succeed. Now I'm older I understand what happened. It was too advanced. The thing was released in the first half the '90s but it had a 64 bit data bus and 5 processor chips. It was very hard to manufacture and games developers never used all the chips, they just used the Motorola sprite chip used for backwards compatibility. The console could probably play games like 'Zelda and the ocarina of time' or Spiro the dragon but the system was underused. They couldn't make it fast enough so it was always sold out in the shops. Very few people were able to get their hands on it. Doing too much can get you trapped.
These days I find it hard to choose things. If I go on netflix or I want to play a podcast while I do chores, I spend 10 minutes just choosing something to play. In the old days there was less choice. You would turn on the radio and pick from a few stations. I was wondering if they have a similar problem to Atari, they put out too much stuff and make their own trade difficult.
I often wonder what would have happened if atari managed to sort out the manufacturing problems and made a development kit that abstracts games developers from the hardware. If they made it easy for games developers to use the hardware fully.
Balance and simplification are essential. Do not do too much with too little. And keep it as simple as possible.
