Why did Nuon fail?

zbandito · Post by **zbandito** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 4:46 pm 0

Hopefully nobody takes this thread personally, but why did Nuon fail? Granted, compared to the Nintendo or PSX game library the Nuon left a little to desire (besides T3K, of course). So as a dedicated console without many games, it is obvious it would have a difficult time in the market.

But the other day I went into a store and saw shelves just full of various DVD players, and none of them offered any interactive features -- no games, no web or email access, no computer capabilities, nothing. Given that VM Labs wanted to slipstream the Nuon platform into the marketplace through DVD players, why did Nuon fail? Particularly when the Nuon chipset was supposed to be significantly cheaper than any other MPEG2 decoder chipset available at the time, I'm wonder if there are other factors we haven't heard much about -- personal/business differences, intellectual property issues, royalty demands, lack of production capability... Was there anything in particular?

SimonB · Post by **SimonB** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 4:47 pm 0

Well, I never saw one in a shop. That might be a clue...

Ahchay · Post by **Ahchay** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 4:59 pm 0

I think that any failure was a business one rather than a technical one. They needed to get more DVD manufacturers on board - Toshiba produced one player (presumably to test the market), Samsung produced two (Extiva and lumping the N501/4&5 together) and there were/are a small smattering of other boxes (all minority players). Without widespread support from the manufacturers, it was obviously difficult to persuade people to write Nuon content, without Nuon content there's little benefit in owning a Nuon player, and without the subsequent demand from consumers manufacturers would have no particular reason to include Nuon in their players...

Bit of a vicious circle really

It would have helped if any of the Nuon content (in DVDs rather than games) was any good. If they'd managed to get the producers of Buffy or the Simpsons or Star Trek et al DVDs on board, there would have been a huge incentive to buy - and those are *exactly* the sort of thing were Nuon could have offered a huge advantage in content terms. Being able to call up scripts/annotations/cross-references/whatever while you are watching an episode is exactly what your more "die-hard" fan wants on a DVD. Be honest, "viddies" were never going to change the world were they?

And I'm not sure that the relative cheapness of the Nuon chip, while probably true when first envisioned, would really hold in todays market.

Cheers
Chris

zbandito · Post by **zbandito** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 5:22 pm 0

Ahchay wrote:And I'm not sure that the relative cheapness of the Nuon chip, while probably true when first envisioned, would really hold in todays market.

Well current non-nuon chipsets are undoubtedly cheaper and more refined than they were back then, but doesn't it seem like if Nuon was cheaper in the past and had been adopted then the same effects of volume production and product refinement would end up with an even cheaper Nuon chipset today? Still remaining cheaper than the competing non-nuon alternatives? (if all that makes any sense..)

I suspect some manufacturers didn't want to get into writing web browsers and such, but had they simply adopted the chipset back then perhaps the software and further new features would have eventually shown up?

Kinda pathetic and disappointing..I dunno, maybe I'm digressing over somewhat painful territory but I have to wonder if maybe a couple of sales meetings went bad or there was some lamentable decisions in marketing the chipset to manufacturers. Or maybe the cheapness of it was only a projected cheapness, already [and hopefully] taking into account volume production and whatnot...

hairy_pete · Post by **hairy_pete** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 5:30 pm 0

The EU taxing the thing as a games console rather than a DVD player certainly was a nail to the coffin.

p-saurus · Post by **p-saurus** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 6:00 pm 0

It probably had something to do with the reluctence of manufacturers to inclide progressivr scan in NUON players too. I'll probably be buying a new player that supports it when I finally get around to upgrading my TV. I'll be a shame to have to drag the NUON out whenever I want to play T3k or use the VLM.
Also, the N501 had some early firmware issued and still has some compatability issues with DVDs. As much as I love mine, it's not the most well designed piece of consumer electronics ever.

gravy · Post by **gravy** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 6:17 pm 0

All of the companies who licensed the tech could drop out of Nuon with no cost to themselves, no major loss of business or face.

Same sort of thing with 3DO and MSX.

To make Nuon REALLY big would mean a concerted marketing effort for any of the manufacturers using Nuon as a hardware platform.

That would mean not only marketing their particular machine but the Nuon platform as a whole and indirectly spending money marketing dollars on competitors products.

The long term reward wouldn't be a business model where the manufacturers make money from software sales as is the case with current hardware vendores. Nuon manufacturers would have to make money from hardware sales in a low volume commoditised market (major differentiation is price) in competition with loads of other big companies. This means razor thin margins while VM labs would scoop in the majority of lolly though software licensing fees.

Which isn't really all that appealing.

dr_memory · Post by **dr_memory** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 6:27 pm 0

Also, not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but the damn thing shipped a year too late and at nearly twice the optimal price point, at least in the states.

I remember reading Wired magazine's original writeup on VM Labs (god, when was it, 1996?) and getting really excited. VML's business strategy was great: build DVD decoder chipset that was cheaper than the available alternatives and just happened to include a next-gen video console in the bargain. If they'd actually pulled it off, it would've been brilliant: a come-from-nowhere coup like this industry had never seen.

Then it slipped. And slipped. And slipped again. By the time the first Nuon player in the states shipped (the Toshiba one), it was priced at over $400 (when low-end DVD players were edging into the $200 range), and all the game companies had sold their souls to Sony.

Best laid plans, etc.

Stone · Post by **Stone** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 8:55 pm 0

I got unjustifiably angry at an ad on TV the other day...

'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the first EVER DVD-game!'

No it's bloody not!

Marketeers are such arsebadgers

Stone

dr_memory · Post by **dr_memory** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 9:14 pm 0

Stone wrote:Marketeers are such arsebadgers

(badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger)

Stone · Post by **Stone** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 9:32 pm 0

dr_memory wrote:
Stone wrote:Marketeers are such arsebadgers
(badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger)

Mushroom mushroom!

[oh gods, I've done it again

]

Stone

Rambozo · Post by **Rambozo** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 10:31 pm 0

Well for one thing, the Nuon touted itself as a 128 bit machine (which perhaps technically it was), when it's graphics weren't much better than those of a Playstation 1. Meanwhile everyone had taken Dreamcast's graphics for granted, so they weren't very well going to purchase a system that was such a step back. I realise graphics should be unimportant, but all of the 3D Nuon games (and some of the 2D ones) had significant framerate issues. It just couldn't cut it when compared to the Dreamcast.

It's kind of a repeat of the Jaguar......we were promised 64 bit technology, and while it was technically true, the actual performance of the machine was a huge disappointment to consumers.

dr_memory · Post by **dr_memory** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 10:34 pm 0

Rambozo wrote:Well for one thing, the Nuon touted itself as a 128 bit machine, when it's graphics weren't much better than those of a Playstation 1. Meanwhile everyone had taken Dreamcast's graphics for granted, so they weren't very well going to purchase a system that was such a step back. I realise graphics should be unimportant, but all of the 3D Nuon games (and some of the 2D ones) had significant framerate issues. It just couldn't cut it when compared to the Dreamcast.

Yeah, that was the other big problem: IIRC, the Nuon didn't have any kind of dedicated polygon engine, just a Really Fast Pixel-Pusher and some 3D software libraries. The VM Labs guys seemed to be pretty sure that dedicated 3D hardware was just a passing fad. Oops.

Post by **Snakey** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 10:37 pm 0

lardygaz wrote:To make Nuon REALLY big would mean a concerted marketing effort for any of the manufacturers using Nuon as a hardware platform.

That isn't what they were going for, though.

I had a long chat with a guy from VM labs years ago, at GDC in the states, when they were first showing Nuon Tech. The plan sounded excellent. They would sell entire DVD chipsets, or the licenses to manufacture them, to various companies. These would cost less than any currently available chipset. DVD players everywhere would be popping up with Nuon chipsets in them. Very little fuss would be made about this - people would go out and buy a DVD player with Nuon in it, and not neccessarily even realise it was there. Then, once a large percentage of the market had them, there would be no good reason for companies to not include little Nuon features into DVDs.

It all sounded like it was going to work well. Dunno what happened to be honest.

hairy_pete wrote:The EU taxing the thing as a games console rather than a DVD player certainly was a nail to the coffin.

Ah. You probably hit the nail (hehe) on the head there.

Stone wrote:I got unjustifiably angry at an ad on TV the other day...

'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the first EVER DVD-game!'

No it's bloody not!

Marketeers are such arsebadgers

Too right. Even if it were not for the Nuon, surely the various Dragons Lair DVDs count as games ?

But lay off the badgers

Stone · Post by **Stone** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 11:14 pm 0

Snakey wrote:Too right. Even if it were not for the Nuon, surely the various Dragons Lair DVDs count as games ?

But lay off the badgers

Nah, Dragon's Lair's not a game, it's a cruel and unusal punishment

And I like badgers!

Stone