I'm wondering why the console CPU wasn't running at 4x the clock rate to begin with, if the cartridges could easily and cheaply include one so much better. I guess that's just how fast CPUs were improving back then. A CPU from just a few years prior was that obsolete. Crazy!
Unlike modern chips with cache hierarchies and the like, the 65816 is designed to run in lock step with the memory it’s accessing. A faster CPU would have necessitated faster RAM in the system and faster ROMs on the carts too. Games were expensive enough as it was, then.
I also wonder why they couldn't provide a second cartridge slot for the enhancements. Sell enhancement carts separately or bundled with some of the games that require it (mostly the first game to feature such enhancement) and then all other developers could consider using them too, without worrying about the cost of their own cart.
I imagine this would add to much cost or complexity to the console, making it simpler to just bundle the chips in a single cart anyway.
It would result in a situation where nobody could depend on the expansion module, if they wanted their game to have the largest possible market.
It would also cause a lot of confusion, where clueless older relatives would buy games for kids, not realize that an accessory was required (or have no idea if the kid actually had that accessory), and then the game wouldn't run.
We see this sort of problem happen a lot with computers of the 8-bit era as well, where add-on modules would fix a lot of the issues with the base system... then be supported by almost no software for these exact reasons.
> It would result in a situation where nobody could depend on the expansion module, if they wanted their game to have the largest possible market.
The SegaCD-32x problem. The Genesis sold tens of millions of units, the SegaCD only ones of millions of units, and the 32x under a million units.
There were a couple 32x games that required the 32x and a SegaCD. Being that the SegaCD and 32x didn't have 100% overlap, those games had a smaller TAM than even solely 32x games.
I feel bad for the studios that decided (or were told) to make those games. There was just no way they were going to make a game that would sell well on an uncommon configuration of a dead-end console/accessory.
The difference here being that those enhancement carts would likely cost less then 20$ to manufacture and would either cost a little more then that when sold individually or cost a little bit above the price of a full game when sold bundled with a game.
I can see how this would create some confusion when buying games (which may be a deal-breaker for nintendo), but I also see more potential in this approach since these carts would be "seeded" by Nintendo's own high volume and highly sought after games, thus getting much more traction than the big console accessories of the competition, which cost around (not 100% sure) 150$. Also, as another poster noted, the n64 had the expansion pak (not too far from the idea of an enhancement cart) introduced a few years into it's life which would end up being bundled with a few games and get fairly wide support on many newer releases, tough most of the games opted for optional support to unlock extra features.
sort of yea, it seems originally they wanted to use a 68000 but late 1980s chip shortages and other costs made it difficult so they went with a 6502 derivative [1]
