Daddy System

A situation in which both a "next-gen" console and its predecessor are both still being made, sold, and developed for concurrently. Companies then have to decide when and whether to kill releases for the older one in order to push sales for the new, or if they should take advantage of the Daddy System's (usually) larger install base. There is usually a big jump in technology, but many designers realize that some games don't need to use that jump. Companies may even demand games for the newer system must utilize the updated technology for marketing purposes, meaning a company's lower tech game being shipped out on the older system for a lower price, such as "classic"-style games or quirky budget games. Other designers rationalize that an older system in its golden years usually has all its technology worked out by programmers, resulting in a smooth-running game. This results in some systems having a much longer shelf life than the casual gamer might expect.

Backwards compatibility is largely seen as a solution for this, a way to get around Daddy Systems and convince gamers to buy new systems.

Examples of Daddy System include:

• The Sega Dreamcast, which even after its corporate "death" in 2001 was still popular because the arcade hardware based on it outlasted the system. Ports from this hardware were the source of most of the post-death Dreamcast games. The fact that the system is homebrew-friendly resulted in a second group of games published even later.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a notable example—originally announced as a Gamecube game, it was repeatedly delayed, with much speculation that it would be moved to the next Nintendo system—eventually, it was released on both Gamecube and Wii. Apart from controls, resolution, and the need to flip everything backwards for the Wii version to make Link right-handed (inconveniencing left-handed players), the games are exactly the same.
• Sony has recently received flack for cutting back on the PS3's Backwards Compatibility, as well as supposedly discouraging big name publishers from making PS2 games despite that system's huge install base, enough that the newest Persona game (Persona 4) being on the PS2 surprised gamers.
  • Many popular current-gen franchises (namely Mercenaries and Guitar Hero) are still pushing out PlayStation 2 versions of their games. Most of this stems on the fact that PS3 suffered badly from its initial price point and the fact that it's easy to port from the PS2 to the Wii and PSP, which are more successful than the PS3. Also, most people would rather have an Xbox 360 than a PS3, as they generally get the same big-name games. It doesn't help that Sony took out PS2 Backwards Compatibility completely out of the PS3. Sony firmly has the Idiot Ball, apparently.
  • Much to the relief of its fans, the console releases of Beatmania IIDX remain on the PS2; its latest installment was released December 2008, 25 months after the release of the PS3 in Japan. To move the series to the PS3 would spell disaster for those not wanting to shell $600 on a new system, and even more due to having to use a PS2-to-PS3 converter or a new, fully-PS3-compatible controller.
    • For the last few releases, Konami has collected arcade score data and included it in the console releases, basically acting as a database of virtual rivals. In May 2009, Konami announced that it was collecting rival data for over 200 songs. Since previous games have pushed the limits of a single DVD with 95 songs, this briefly reignited speculation that the series will finally make the leap to a current-generation system. However, it was eventually announced the next installment of the game would simply be a 2-DVD PS2 game slated for an October 2009 release, nearly 3 years after the release of the PS3.
  • Sony's excuse is that the PS3's PS2 compatability was always at least partly hardware-based, and that they must dump the remaining PS2 parts from new PS3s to make them cheaper. Fine enough, except when you remember the XB360's fully software-based emulation, especially the fact that the XB360 is (supposedly) slower than the PS3 and the XB was faster than the PS2. Though the fact that the PS2 is a notoriously complex architecture, while the Xbox is a garden variety X86, may have something to do with it.
    • IIRC, the reason for this was that the PS2 used the emotion engine which was quite different to the CPU used in the PS3, and hence for backwards compatibility they needed to include another CPU. this was quite costly and hence to drop the price, they removed the emotion engine and hence backwards compatibility.
  • There's also the fact that only around half of the Xbox games work on 360, and even less than half work for those outside of North America, and the ones that do often have glitches of some kind. Sometimes it's something minor, like a lens flare being visible through walls, or a once-muffled voice no longer having the muffled after-affect added. Sometimes, it's... Well, let's let the official bug notes for Silent Hill 2 speak for themselves:

Has an issue where the light from the flashlight shines behind the character as well as in front. Textures can frequently load in wrong areas (such as door textures on the floor) or not load at all displaying only gray space. This includes the "picture" views. Later levels lose music and sound effects audio. Many "game over" events render the game unplayable, as game will not reboot once it has been shut off. One method to avoid corrupted saves is to only save to the first slot, and rewrite it on every save. Never save in more than one slot.

• Nintendo originally declared that the Nintendo DS would be a "third pillar" system along with its consoles and Game Boy Advance, likely so that if the DS flopped, the Game Boy brand wouldn't be affected. Once the DS became a hit, however, Nintendo dropped this attitude and the GBA (although the original DS did still play GBA games). Interestingly, when they intoduced the DSi (which removed GBA functionability), they used the same "third pillar" speech. Again... no.
  • Generally speaking, Nintendo's strategy with updating its hand-held systems seems to be "start as a Daddy System, then drop the old one if it's successful". Probably because they've consistently been on the top of the hand-held market and want to make sure they don't screw up. So far, it's worked. Not even Virtual Boy was able to bring them down (to the point where few would call it a handheld, ever if intended as such.)
• The Atari VCS was rebranded as the Atari 2600 upon the release of the Atari 5200, which was originally intended to take over after the 2600 but wound up dying away quietly. The 2600 lived on for a total of up to 14 years; in its later life, it was the Daddy System to the Atari 7800, which featured backwards compatibility.
• Madden NFL 08 was put out on a bunch of systems, including the now-dead Nintendo GameCube. In August of 2007. It was the last game released for the system. This was repeated with Madden 09 and Madden 12 serving as unofficial goodbyes to the Xbox and PlayStation 2 respectively.
• The Sega Genesis/Megadrive acted like this to the Sega Saturn in Europe and America (with games such as Sonic 3D being released on both), but in Japan Sega tried to quickly drop the Megadrive and push the Saturn, as the Megadrive had never sold well there.
  • In turn, the Megadrive's predecessor, the Sega Master System, served as the Daddy System to the Megadrive in some markets (mostly Brazil and Europe), receiving its own versions of Megadrive hits such as Sonic the Hedgehog well into the nineties.
• Played with in the PC game market. The closest thing the PC platform has to generations is 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit, and each lasts over a decade through incremental yet vast improvements. Still, PCs from the Pentium 4 era act as the "daddy system" to PCs with a newer Core i series CPU. Intel's power-sipping Atom CPU, used in netbooks (entry-level laptops with a relatively small screen) and nettops (ultra-small desktop PCs), is roughly as fast as the power-guzzling Pentium 4 CPU found in gaming PCs built several years earlier, and they initially ran the same Windows XP operating system. Some PC game developers continue to make games that are less demanding of CPU and GPU resources so that they can target both older PCs and new Atom-powered netbooks.
• Sega's handheld systems (Game Gear and Nomad) were compatible with games for its previous-generation consoles (Sega Master System and Mega Drive/Genesis respectively) and could be seen as a facelifted daddy system being sold alongside the later consoles, just as low-end PCs are sold alongside gaming PCs.