Spatial Audio came back later (late 90s) in a standardized way with Microsoft DirectSound.
Before that, most spatial audio was either some very specific codec of the soundcard vendor a game had to explicitly support, or some psychoacoustic post-processing which added little benefit and was mostly there for the wow-effect in bundled demo apps...
I vaguely remember CreativeLabs pushing a custom 3D Sound API with "EAX" to justify their dedicated HW, with dedicated logo and everything, and several games supporting it.
It worked well for a while but gaming was a much smaller market back then so it probably wasn't sustainable to target a niche of an already small market...
It's the typical story of an industry where providing the mainstream needs funded development for providing the exceptional, and then someone came along to undercut by providing only the mainstream needs
Before that, most spatial audio was either some very specific codec of the soundcard vendor a game had to explicitly support, or some psychoacoustic post-processing which added little benefit and was mostly there for the wow-effect in bundled demo apps...
I vaguely remember CreativeLabs pushing a custom 3D Sound API with "EAX" to justify their dedicated HW, with dedicated logo and everything, and several games supporting it.
It worked well for a while but gaming was a much smaller market back then so it probably wasn't sustainable to target a niche of an already small market...
It's the typical story of an industry where providing the mainstream needs funded development for providing the exceptional, and then someone came along to undercut by providing only the mainstream needs