DVD or CD?
Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:13 am
I'm a little bit confused as regard to the M2's software medium. I've found magazines from mid-1996 pretty firmly declaring that the M2 would use DVDs, but I'm now reading an interview with Trip Hawkins in the October 1996 issue of Next Generation in which he says that a DVD game system would not be possible until 1998, and that Panasonic would undoubtedly be launching the M2 in 1997 with a CD-ROM drive. Searching the forums here, I gather that the existing M2 prototypes include both models with CD drives and models with DVD drives.
So if I understand correctly, then, Panasonic was going to launch the M2 with a CD drive and introduce a DVD-based model later. What has me confused, though, is I don't see how that would work. Wouldn't CD-based and DVD-based consoles necessarily be incompatible with each other? Even assuming there isn't a more fundamental compatibility issue than the reading of the disc, surely a DVD game made for the M2 wouldn't play on a unit which doesn't have a DVD drive. At best, it sounds like Panasonic was essentially going to launch a platform which they were already planning to make obsolete in a year or two. What am I missing here?
So if I understand correctly, then, Panasonic was going to launch the M2 with a CD drive and introduce a DVD-based model later. What has me confused, though, is I don't see how that would work. Wouldn't CD-based and DVD-based consoles necessarily be incompatible with each other? Even assuming there isn't a more fundamental compatibility issue than the reading of the disc, surely a DVD game made for the M2 wouldn't play on a unit which doesn't have a DVD drive. At best, it sounds like Panasonic was essentially going to launch a platform which they were already planning to make obsolete in a year or two. What am I missing here?