130
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
130 points (84.2% liked)
RetroGaming
19561 readers
63 users here now
Vintage gaming community.
Rules:
- Be kind.
- No spam or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
You need a CD flap, and that's the biggest visible feature of the console, so best to make it the centrepiece, and design around it. And CDs are circular so yeah, let's follow that in the design.
You need two buttons, one for power and one for open. Symmetry is always appealing, so make them symmetrical and balanced on both sides.
Very much an example of "form follows function"
This post made me realize just how few consoles had a CD flap. Is it just the Playstation, Dreamcast, Saturn, and Gamecube? Kind of weird how that was the default for CD players pretty much forever, but not many consoles went with that. PS2, Xbox, and everything after those had some kind of tray or slot. Maybe it was because they could visually stand apart from their competitors more that way.
Cost. I think all of the 5th generation were top loaders. On the cd audio side nice stackable separates were tray or slot. Cheap stand-alones were top.
6th was a split but then I think the perception of slot or tray loading being more prestigious moved everyone to slot/tray.
Plus I think top loaders might have been less secure. I certainly remember a number of physical mods or swap techniques that defeated top loader security very easily.
Same thing happened with videos as well. Started with manual top loaders and then moved to slot.