Description

The Jaguar was Atari’s last console and a successor to the Atari 7800. The console will go down in the history books as highly anticipated, but one that could not live up its high expectations and its historical fame. Although it pretended to be the first 64 bit console, the two processors, named Tom and Jerry, were both limited to 32 bit. They couden’t output the power that was needed to differentiate itself from the competition. The multi-processor was also complicated and difficult to use by developers. Third party support was lacking. The console also lacked sufficient titles. Especially of good quality. Only 80 games were released for the system and the majority by Atari itself. The small library of games, limited retail presence and little third-party support all added to the consoles demise.

Atari later introduced peripheral ‘Jaguar CD’ did not save the console, due to being to expensive and also, or maybe therefore, wasn’t embraced by third party developers.

In the early days of 3D gaming, the console was unable to acquire sufficient market share. The focus was insufficiently on the release of qualitative and exclusive games. The Jaguar sold fewer than 150,000 units before it was discontinued in 1996. This means that the Jaguar belongs in the same list as the Philips CD-i, 3DO and Apple / Bandai Pippin. CD and cartridge based consoles that couldn’t impress and almost initiated a ‘second video game crash’ in the mid 90’s. The arrival of the Playstation marked the end of not only the Atari Jaguar, but also the other aforementioned consoles.

The failure of the Jaguar marked the end of Atari as a company, which effectively ceased operations and sold off its assets.