When thinking of failed game systems there are a few that always come to mind such as the Dreamcast, Virtual Boy, and Atari Jaguar. Those all are examples of large, established companies that dropped the ball on a console in the public limelight, but what about a console that was born to little fanfare and died in a puff of smoke yet had the potential to be a top competitor? The NUON, developed by VM Labs was just that, a DVD player that also functioned as a 3D game console and gave enhanced experiences in viewing DVDs. What was an incredible technology ahead of its time and could have been a household name was left in the mud due to a slew of problems.
Founded in 1995 by Richard Miller, the previous VP of Atari Co., VM Labs focused on being a semiconductor platform. In creating VM Labs, Miller was looking to learn from the mistakes of the Atari Jaguar, a system which commercially failed, and create a new gaming system. “Miller knew how to design systems and build platforms” as he had developed many before, and “[h]e realized that it wouldn’t cost much to install a smarter, more powerful processor in place of a DVD player’s basic video decoder.” (Moss) The digital media landscape was changing at the time. We had already seen the industry’s transition from cartridge based games to CDs in the PlayStation and other Gen 5 consoles (though Nintendo didn’t get the memo till Gen 6). Now with the release of DVD in 1996 alongside MPEG-2 compression, the industry was about to see another shift and Miller recognized that. Just as CDs revolutionized music listening then video games, DVDs would revolutionize movies first, then video games. “VM Labs would leverage the analog[(VHS)] to digital shift by building a platform around its chip and establishing a two-tiered licensing model. The chip would be licensed to manufacturers, while the software technology would be licensed to content creators and publishers.” (Moss).
This model of licensing the technology to manufacturers is quite different from the normal model we see in gaming, where the company develops, manufactures, and produces games for their system. Strange as it may seem, this model has been done quite a few times before, like the 3DO and more recently the Steam Box, though all approaches to this model had failed in the past and would continue to fail after VM Labs. A major reason for that was that manufacturers only made their money off the systems, not the games that sold on them, so the systems ended up being more expensive than the competitor’s, as they didn’t follow the razor model. For VM Labs, however, it could have worked. Since they were adding the technology to DVD players, consumers would theoretically be more willing to buy a NUON system that
bundled the player and a game console as opposed to buying both a player and console separately. Alongside this they had the technology to back it up. “As early as 1996, the in-development chip could already demonstrate basic ray tracing… ‘Nothing else would do that at the time,’ former VM Labs Senior Software Engineer Ken Rose said.” As well, “It was a parallel processor not unlike the PlayStation 3 that came several years later.” (Moss). This technology was impressive for the time, and manufacturers took notice. Samsung and Toshiba were both on board with the concept and excited to manufacture these systems. And beyond the hardware, they had Jeff Minter, creator of Tempest 2000, a beloved sequel to the arcade game Tempest for the Atari Jaguar, come on and create Tempest 3000 for the system. It seemed like things were looking bright for VM Labs’ NUON, so what went wrong?
The NUON systems were set to release in 1998 for the Christmas season which would have put it as the first Gen 6 console on the market, predating the Dreamcast’s 1999 US release. This would have been a huge boon to the system, attracting developers wanting to bring new games to market and consumers looking for DVD players and game consoles. However, due to a lack of software and manufacturing issues, the console came out in 2000. The late release was even more exacerbated by Sony’s PlayStation 2, where they had “made a strategic shift. ‘Ken Kuturagi [PlayStation’s chief architect] looked at what Toshiba was going to do, [with the NUON]’ Ram said. ‘He looked at what Samsung had announced. And I think there was a big fear within Sony that NUON would basically pull the rug out from under Sony.’ Kuturagi decreed that the PlayStation 2 would have DVD playback functionality. Sony’s home entertainment division was furious and fought to stop the move for fear that it could cannibalize sales of Sony-branded DVD players, but they were powerless to stop Kuturagi and his growing computer entertainment division.” (Moss). Sony saw what NUON was trying to do, and they were actually worried. They recognized that bundling the console with a DVD player would be a game changer, and they scrambled to shove one into the PS2. On top of that, time has proven them right, with the PS2 having sold over 155 million units.
If the NUON had been released on time they may have been a genuine competitor to the juggernaut that was the PS2, but having to compete with them led to a fall into obscurity. By coming out around the same time, they had to try and get their name out into a market that didn’t know them with similar offerings to the PS2. What helped even less was the pricing. Since pricing was left to the manufacturers, the NUON systems retailed from $300-$350. For a DVD player this wasn’t terrible, definitely more expensive, but justifiably so given the better features it provided. But the PS2 was $200. When faced with a $100 difference, but the cheaper one has more games and DVDs like the other, consumers basically had their choice made. Yet another nail in the coffin was the marketing. The system was marketed as an enhanced DVD player with the game playing aspect forgotten. As well, it appeared primarily in DVD consumer publications, instead of gaming magazines where the target audience was. With all this VM Labs began hemorrhaging money, being bought out by Genesis Microchip in 2002 and produced NUON until 2004 when it was discontinued and the brand shuttered with only 8 games on the system.
But despite all of that, the NUON is a great reminder of the importance of fans when it comes to video games and their history and preservation. In researching the NUON I came across a small but dedicated community of fans for this bygone console. A website, NUON-Dome, contains a trove of articles, interviews, game artifacts, and more all dedicated to the NUON. Then there is a subreddit, r/NUON, with people posing questions, asking for help, and even creating new games for the system. As well, there is an active Discord server that focuses on NUON, where I had asked some questions and got responses relatively quickly. It’s amazing that there is a passionate community around this system despite its obscurity. Without these fans, a system like this may be lost to time. Early 2000s were a very different time. The
internet, though mainstream, was still not the main way of life, so outside of a few advertisements the NUON would have barely any digital footprint. But thanks to the fans the documents and history live on, allowing others to experience it for themselves.
The NUON is an interesting case of an idea that could have turned a failed formula into something massive, but due to bad timing and poor marketing became a footnote of history. Yet despite that, it continues to hold a place in many’s hearts, with a small but continued fanbase.
The post The PlayStation 2 Killer That Never Was appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.
