It was certainly a coffin nail but come on now. There is no fricking way on earth that was the difference. Saturn being an expensive sprite machine that was mangled and coerced into half of PS1's 3D output was half of it. Sony having frick-you talent buying money and better console engineers was the other half. Nintendo gave up the 'hardcore' market and games that needed the multimedia capabilities of CDROM. Sony just made a better machine for that shit.
https://i.imgur.com/urbTCUR.jpeg
Even high level Sega staff blame the 32X as the reason the company went under.
I know you're shitting but imagine paying for a new cartridge and system expansion just to get Kroger brand Euroslop Mario Kart. lmao even
Yes the 32X was a bad idea and they should have just focused on the Saturn but ultimately I don't think it would have made much of a difference given the Saturn's inability to compete against the PlayStation in the west.
The confusion and shifting priorities between the 32X and the Saturn caused a lot of western publishers to abandon the platform for the Playstation.
The technical differences wouldn’t have mattered as much if the Saturn had software support.
>The confusion and shifting priorities between the 32X and the Saturn caused a lot of western publishers to abandon the platform for the Playstation.
It wasn't just that, Sony had a lot of weight to throw around being the electronics king of the 80s and 90s and made very compelling arguments to get publishers to support Playstation, independent of their already-existing ties to Sega at the time. I'd also like to reiterate that, while we look back at the ugly ass first batch of 3D console games coming out at the time with disdain, back then people loved that shit because it had a new "Wow" factor to them and wanted to buy up whatever 3D games were available instead of 2D ones. PS1 might have been weaker than the Saturn but it was a lot easier getting 3D games up and running by comparison.
The 32X sounded like a cooler idea on paper to a kid than it was in practicality. They should have scrapped the 32X before it even entered the R&D phase and just redesigned the Saturn to accommodate backwards compatibility with the Genesis and if possible Sega CD games.
Eh they could have easily been the playstation if they'd played their cards right. The psx wasn't some crazy loss leader play like the Xbox that only a galactic megacorp could afford
This. Sony was going to frick shit up no matter what Sega did.
>The confusion and shifting priorities between the 32X and the Saturn caused a lot of western publishers to abandon the platform for the Playstation.
It wasn't just that, Sony had a lot of weight to throw around being the electronics king of the 80s and 90s and made very compelling arguments to get publishers to support Playstation, independent of their already-existing ties to Sega at the time. I'd also like to reiterate that, while we look back at the ugly ass first batch of 3D console games coming out at the time with disdain, back then people loved that shit because it had a new "Wow" factor to them and wanted to buy up whatever 3D games were available instead of 2D ones. PS1 might have been weaker than the Saturn but it was a lot easier getting 3D games up and running by comparison.
No it isn't. Saturn was highly successful in Japan until Sega or Gaijin announced they were already making a new console, then sales immediately plummeted in 1997. Sega of Gaijin failed.
The Saturn sold great in Japan from launch up until the "Saturn is not our future" statement and at one point it even outsold the PlayStation. Enough with the revisionism, zoomy.
theyre the ones that frickin released it lol just shifting the blame to the device instead of themselves.
>So then the N64 also did great in Japan, right?
No, the N64 did awful. >Sales were roughly equal. Yet people routinely call it a failure in Japan.
The Saturn was released in November 1994 in Japan and it had healthy sales up until the "Saturn is not our future" comment which was in early 1997. It was on the market for only 2 years and a couple of months before Sega of Gaijin killed the Japanese market.
The N64 was on the market in Japan from 1996 until 2002. Yes, the N64 - which took 6 years to sell what the Saturn did in 2 - is a failure.
You make this argument every time the Saturn is discussed and this is explained to you every single time. I sincerely hope you are trolling because otherwise you need to get an IQ test ASAP.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
The Saturn selling well out of the gate and rapidly shitting itself is not the strength you pretend it is.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>The Saturn was released in November 1994 in Japan and it had healthy sales up until the "Saturn is not our future" comment which was in early 1997.
99% of the public never heard that comment. Saturn sales plummeted because the Sony PlayStation was a massive success in every country. The PS1 was a perfect machine for the time and place of its release and was so strong the newcomer shoved the juggernaut Nintendo into a corner and practically killed Sega.
You can come up with all kind of hypothetical perfect launches for the Saturn and I still think the PlayStation dominates. Sony was just a much better run company that knew how to get shit done and had proven that for decades by building their name to be well known for high quality electronics. Sony had some real geniuses working there both in the tech side of things and the business side.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sony actually wanted to work with Sega on a collaboration to make a console together. Tom Kalinske tried to make it happen too, but Sega of Japan said absolutely not. Ironic that Sony killed Sega.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
And Nintendo too right? There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there. Yeah it's funny that Sony apparently first tried to work with both Nintendo and Sega on some sort of collaboration but both companies turned Sony down and then Sony goes solo and crushes them both.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
And Nintendo too right? There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there. Yeah it's funny that Sony apparently first tried to work with both Nintendo and Sega on some sort of collaboration but both companies turned Sony down and then Sony goes solo and crushes them both.
it's exactly this
[...]
now THAT's mental illness.
[...] >There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there.
yeah, it was their CD-ROM addon >but both companies turned Sony down
not quite. Nintendo realized Sony were only using Nintendo to get their foot in the door of the console world and eventually make a competing system. Nintendo decided to deal with the threat to their market dominance by dumping Sony - and in public - and partnering up with Philips. Nintendo seriously believed at the time that one of the biggest electronics corporations on earth didn't know anything about building a games console and their efforts would be nowhere as good as Nintendo's.
>Nintendo seriously believed at the time that one of the biggest electronics corporations on earth didn't know anything about building a games console and their efforts would be nowhere as good as Nintendo's.
That shit was hilariously moronic, in retrospect. Especially since Sony actually built a lot of componentry that went into other companies' game consoles, so their engineers had a decent understanding of what bits should go where.
Also they had that old Toshiba-designed 3D workstation prototype chip.
Tom Kalinske was a moron
Sega would be owned by Sony today if that were to happen
Love how you sonyggers conveniently ignore that Sony tried to play dirty by sneaking into he contract the stipulation that only they would get 100% profit of software sales and that Nintendo's lawyers caught those israelites red-handed
have a nice day you worthless Sonytroons
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Sega would be owned by Sony today if that were to happen
Is that worse than the position that they're currently in?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Honestly, yes. They'd be stuck contributing to the AAAslop landscape instead of doing their current plans to attempt to revive classic Sega franchises.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>99% of the public never heard that comment.
"Saturn is not our future" is one of the most misunderstood statements, I think, because people don't necessarily know the context. The impression seems to be that it was made at E3 or something where Stolar stood up in front of a crowd and unprompted declared Saturn dead. But that's not how it went down. This is the context. It was a print interview with EGM in the September 1997 issue. And he was responding to the interviewer's sentiments that the Saturn was already toast. Which in late 97 it absolutely was. Stolar was trying to ensure the Dreamcast's future by pointing out that they learned from their mistakes because if everyone had thought they were just staying the course nobody would have supported the thing.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>In recent years, Sega has gone from being an industry powerhouse to an ailing giant struggling to regain ground.
Interesting anon thanks for that. You can tell by the tone of this interview Sega is down bad and everyone knows it, you can feel the sense of relief from the interviewer and readers when he proclaims there will be another console. FF7 had already been out in Japan for 9 months by the time this interview came out, PS1 was rolling and the writing was on the wall.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Exactly. I think there's a misunderstanding that Stolar showed up when the Saturn was just getting going and then arbitrarily shit on it out of the blue. The reality is that Stolar was addressing the elephant in the room. His whole statement was pointing out that the Saturn still was going to get support for the time being but it wasn't their long term strategy and there was a new system on the horizon. There was no way to turn the Saturn's fortunes around by then and trying to argue as much would have been 1) laughable, and 2) alienated consumers and publishers for the upcoming Dreamcast. A lot of the Bernie Stolar criticism comes from Vic Ireland who had an axe to grind since Working Designs was still making games for it and didn't like that Stolar effectively pulled the plug. But Working Designs was, frankly, slightly insane. Magic Knight Rayearth didn't come out until December '98 because it got delayed like crazy due to massive amounts of data needing to be rebuilt. But pretty much nobody else gave a shit about Saturn by then. Retailers barely had any shelf space for it. So Ireland's gripes, though perhaps valid as far as his own personal self-interest was concerned, hardly represents the larger issues at Sega or among other publishers. If you're Bernie Stolar are you really going to prioritize Working Designs over all else? Most people would say no, obviously. But since Vic Ireland was particularly vocal and few people other than Vic Ireland ever talked about Bernie Stolar, it was his perspective that got parroted.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>99% of the public never heard that comment.
Devs/Publishers heard it and they pulled out of the Saturn you fricking moron.
Sega's so-called ''FF7 killer''' Panzer Dragoon Saga only released like 300 copies in the US as a result.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Devs were not suddenly pulling out in September 1997 because of that statement. That ship had already sailed. Acting like the Saturn was doing fine but then everything fell apart after "Saturn is not our future" is counterfactual. Especially considering you can read the whole interview above where its clear there was an accusatory tone from the start of what Sega was going to do now that the Saturn was done.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Devs were not suddenly pulling out in September 1997 because of that statement. That ship had already sailed.
Because Stolar was a Sony plant who was sent to Sega to sabotage them
He made sure of that by disallowing JRPGs in the US when the goddamn genre was booming
Then this rat pressured SoJ to kill off the Saturn and launch the Dreamcast early
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sony didn't need to send anyone to sabotage Sega. It was already a disaster when Stolar got there. You Saturn apologists go too far sometimes.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>It was already a disaster when Stolar got there.
No it wasn't you little snoy pos
Stop revising history
Stolar fricked up the Saturn in the US good
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
July 1996. That's when Stolar jumped from Sony to Sega. He was there for only about two months when Nintendo and Sony dropped monsters like Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. The Sonic X-Treme debacle was already underway, the 32X had come and gone, and the Saturn was rapidly losing ground when he came aboard and major arcade hits like Virtua Fighter 3 were locked to the arcade because they were impossible to port with adequate fidelity. Even shit that did get ported like House of the Dead ended up seeing serious downgrades. You can act as if I'm the one revising history but fact is you're just not seeing reality for what it is. There was zero...yes a ZERO...chance of turning that ship around.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sega lord x has videos proving you wrong
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sega Lord X engages in entertaining hypotheticals. If you want to argue the Saturn could have been handled BETTER, then fine. I agree. But it was absolutely a sinking ship by the time Stolar joined up. And keeping it barely afloat would have only hurt the Dreamcast. Starting from square one to give the Dreamcast it's best chance not only made sense but was proven to have worked since the launch was actually quite good. Things fell apart later on but that wasn't Bernie's fault.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Also, just to be clear, Sega didn't have Sony's infinite money. They couldn't just throw everything into both the Saturn AND the Dreamcast all willy nilly. Remember that at one point the CEO had to straight up give the company a personal loan just to keep the lights on.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Lard X
You are really gonna use him as an argument?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Devs/Publishers heard it and they pulled out of the Saturn you fricking moron.
No evidence of that.
[...]
[...]
[...]
Tom Kalinske was a moron
Sega would be owned by Sony today if that were to happen
Love how you sonyggers conveniently ignore that Sony tried to play dirty by sneaking into he contract the stipulation that only they would get 100% profit of software sales and that Nintendo's lawyers caught those israelites red-handed
have a nice day you worthless Sonytroons
>Love how you sonyggers conveniently ignore that Sony tried to play dirty by sneaking into he contract the stipulation that only they would get 100% profit of software sales and that Nintendo's lawyers caught those israelites red-handed
Myth.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Myth.
Anon was being hyperbolic but game sale royalties were undoubtedly the reason Nintendo broke off the Sony partnership. There's literally no other plausible reason that isn't just ridiculous Snoy fanfiction about Nintendo's head honchos having massive egos or some other cringe comic book tier shit.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sony was being disingenuous. They tried to pretend they were like Philips and only wanted to make gaming accessories or do partners. But Sony didn't just want to make an add-on. I think everyone knew Sony was trying to eventually break into the game industry and get a big slice of the pie with their own console. Nintendo and Sega saw no reason to help Sony.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Anon was being hyperbolic but game sale royalties were undoubtedly the reason Nintendo broke off the Sony partnership.
In which direction? Nintendo could of asked for a unfair deal and there are a million reasons a business deal falls through you have no idea what happened behind closed doors. Anyone who says they know what happened or that this company screwed that company is lying and gamers do it all the time.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sony was being disingenuous. They tried to pretend they were like Philips and only wanted to make gaming accessories or do partners. But Sony didn't just want to make an add-on. I think everyone knew Sony was trying to eventually break into the game industry and get a big slice of the pie with their own console. Nintendo and Sega saw no reason to help Sony.
>Anon was being hyperbolic but game sale royalties were undoubtedly the reason Nintendo broke off the Sony partnership.
In which direction? Nintendo could of asked for a unfair deal and there are a million reasons a business deal falls through you have no idea what happened behind closed doors. Anyone who says they know what happened or that this company screwed that company is lying and gamers do it all the time.
Sony tried to pull off another HudsonSoft-NEC deal, where most of the software royalties went to them. People at Nintendo figured it out, and SoJ already knew how things were going at NEC, given that they had occasionally partnered with them for some arcade boards (which used NEC V-series CPUs).
Unfortunately for both Nintendo and Sega, Sony already had enough tech backlog they could use as starting point for a complete console.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Why are you using the actual discontinuation date for N64 while using the date when Bernie made some comment in an interview on the other side of the Pacific to mark the point when Saturn died in Japan? That's just disingenuous. Saturn was discontinued in 2000 in Japan, it was on the market for roughly the same amount of time as N64. >but Dreamcast
Gamecube also released in 2001, not 2002. No one forced Sega to release the Dreamcast in Japan that early to cannibalize the Saturn market. It would have made more sense if they released it in USA first.
Was literally in your shoes a few weeks ago. Japanese Saturns can be had for cheap. Get yourself a Saroo for game loading and a GBS-Control so you can hook it up to your modern TV without it looking like total shit and you're good to go for about $300 if you play your cards right.
Why are you acting like a doormat? Do you think she'll respect a man that is afraid to do something because his mom-, I mean, GIRLFRIEND, might get angry? Jesus Christ, your balls have receded so far up your ass they're now lying on the dark side of Moon.
Don't listen to them buddy
They probably never had a gf, or they live in one of those huge american homes that are made of scrap wood, they shatter at the first wind, but we must admit there's a lot of space for a lot of silly stuff (CRTs, guns, Nascar trucks, and so on)
"Build" your own corner, if you can't have a whole room, and decide what you want to keep.
I eventually started giving away stuff because I hoarded too many and not only I wasn't using it, it was really starting to mess with my mind, I couldn't get stuff done because all the drawers, cabinets, were full of things that I never used
Still might buy an 8-string guitar tho
That's like saying the PC Engine was sucessful in Japan. That's just not enough to carry a console maker through multiple generations of console war. The 32x was a momentary mistake, but the saturn was a generational disaster that they were forced to parade and support all the way through the generation and it even sunk the Dreamcast along with it. Doesn't matter if a few hardcore neet japs were satisfied with their 2d jarpigs and fighting games and barebones arcade ports. The industry was headed in the opposite direction.
Another thing people don't realize is that Sega of Japan spent a TON of money over-designing and over-engineering the Saturn. Way more money than they should have spent making a game console, and way more they should have spent as a game company. It was irresponsible spending. This was money that came from sales and profits from Western markets. Not from Japan.
Sega basically took nearly all the money they earned from selling 40 million Sega Genesis units in America and Europe. Then dumped the money into Saturn, and made a console only the Japanese would like without any consideration for the Western markets that made Sega rich in the first place. No gratitude to the West. What a huge middle finger.
When Saturn failed, it was such a huge blow financially to Sega. They had over-invested in Saturn way too much with the expectation Saturn was going to be a huge hit. Sega never fully recovered financially from this failure.
The CEO refused to admit their failure and demanded they make another console. Truthfully, They didn't have the money to make another console. That's how badly Sega of Japan messed up. The financial situation was so bad that Japanese Executives pushed back and tried to say they should exit the console race and just make games. But the CEO pushed hard for another console to be made. Sega had to take out loans from Japanese banks to pay for developing another console. But the Banks only gave them a limited amount in loans because of Sega's track record for wild spending.
That's why the Dreamcast was built on a limited budget, and was far more conservative in their design. Sega needed Dreamcast to be an even bigger hit than Sega Genesis in order to pay back their loans and get back into a good financial position. This was a very unrealistic dream and it never happened. Dreamcast sold respectably during its 2 years, but Sega ran out loan money and the company collapsed.
just add that US Sega spent alot of dumb money too. Wasn't just a SOJ problem.
>99% of the public never heard that comment.
"Saturn is not our future" is one of the most misunderstood statements, I think, because people don't necessarily know the context. The impression seems to be that it was made at E3 or something where Stolar stood up in front of a crowd and unprompted declared Saturn dead. But that's not how it went down. This is the context. It was a print interview with EGM in the September 1997 issue. And he was responding to the interviewer's sentiments that the Saturn was already toast. Which in late 97 it absolutely was. Stolar was trying to ensure the Dreamcast's future by pointing out that they learned from their mistakes because if everyone had thought they were just staying the course nobody would have supported the thing.
this. Lots of driveby's without actual context acting like he did some kinda vindictive anti Japanese sabotage plan.
We can Monday morning quarterback Bernie Stolar's individual decisions all day but it's undeniable that when he joined Sega he walked into a house fire. His key angle was to stop throwing good money after bad and blow everything away so the company could start fresh with the Dreamcast. Which given Sega's then current situation, was not indefensible. And in fact the plan did work for a brief period of time given how good the Dreamcast launch was.
>just add that US Sega spent alot of dumb money too. Wasn't just a SOJ problem.
Sega's main market was the US and Europe. They bought 40 million Genesis consoles. So the spending on US and Euro marketing was at least justified there.
Sega of Japan just wouldn't let it go because of their pride. They wouldn't accept that they were failures in their home country. That Japan belonged to Nintendo and Sony.
Why spend hundreds of millions trying to market Sega Genesis when it only sold like 2 million in Japan.
Why spend hundreds of millions marketing Sega Saturn in Japan when Genesis sold so poorly in Japan? Selling 6 million Saturns in Japan doesn't justify the cost.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>So the spending on US and Euro marketing was at least justified there.
no. no it wasn't. It wasn't justified at all.
At the time developers were still fricking complaining about lack of documentation(in english) and support for the Saturn, do you know what they were spending money on?
> Segaworld in London. Took 2 years to build, opened in 96 and cost $50 million.
thats just one example in Europe, Certainly another anon can post some of the dumb corporate/business expenses SOA was blowing money on from another thread... instead of a fricking fulltime translator or two to get the documentation out of Japan that might've helped more games get thru.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>no. no it wasn't. It wasn't justified at all.
Your words don't line up with reality. The Western Market is what made Sega the VAST majority of their money. Japan was pocket change for Sega in terms of profit.
>Segaworld in London. Took 2 years to build, opened in 96 and cost $50 million.
Sega didn't spend $50 million themselves on Segaworld London. That's ridiculous. Sega partnered with other companies to create Segaworld London
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Sega didn't spend $50 million themselves on Segaworld London.
the year sega opened it, they posted a $340millon worldwide loss.
you want to mince about how much of $50 million was their share?
and this is just one example. we've seen in other 32-x/saturn threads this year some of the dumb shit the west was spending money on that didnt equate to games released.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>ega's main market was the US and Europe. They bought 40 million Genesis consoles. So the spending on US and Euro marketing was at least justified there.
There was absolutely no reason for Sonic to have his own water park.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Why not? Nintendo has their own theme park. SEGA doesn't pay for the park. SEGA lends their IP and brand name to a partner...who then gets investors to pay for construction of the park. Then the profits are divided among everyone.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
For whatever reason Sega seemed way less competent at doing that kind of thing than Nintendo and when you put your name on too many things at once and several of them fail it can tank your brand.
>That's like saying the PC Engine was sucessful in Japan.
But it was, and it had a seven-year run with great third-party support.
Megadrive third-party support in Japan was always pretty small and died off early.
No it isn't. Saturn was highly successful in Japan until Sega or Gaijin announced they were already making a new console, then sales immediately plummeted in 1997. Sega of Gaijin failed.
now THAT's mental illness.
And Nintendo too right? There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there. Yeah it's funny that Sony apparently first tried to work with both Nintendo and Sega on some sort of collaboration but both companies turned Sony down and then Sony goes solo and crushes them both.
>There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there.
yeah, it was their CD-ROM addon >but both companies turned Sony down
not quite. Nintendo realized Sony were only using Nintendo to get their foot in the door of the console world and eventually make a competing system. Nintendo decided to deal with the threat to their market dominance by dumping Sony - and in public - and partnering up with Philips. Nintendo seriously believed at the time that one of the biggest electronics corporations on earth didn't know anything about building a games console and their efforts would be nowhere as good as Nintendo's.
>Nintendo seriously believed at the time that one of the biggest electronics corporations on earth didn't know anything about building a games console and their efforts would be nowhere as good as Nintendo's.
That shit was hilariously moronic, in retrospect. Especially since Sony actually built a lot of componentry that went into other companies' game consoles, so their engineers had a decent understanding of what bits should go where.
Also they had that old Toshiba-designed 3D workstation prototype chip.
Super Game Boy
Game Boy Player
Sega CD
Master System adapter for Genesis
SNES Multitap
Playstation Multitap
>That's like saying the PC Engine was sucessful in Japan.
But it was, and it had a seven-year run with great third-party support.
Megadrive third-party support in Japan was always pretty small and died off early.
Yes it was and that was not enough. NEC left the hardware market.
>Tom Kalinske denies it
He never denied anything.
He said that he desperately wanted to keep the Genesis going.
The guy was clueless. It was his pathetic cowardice of not wanting to move on from the Genny that led to the 32x.
part of me wonders if it was because they overproduced Genesis consoles in the US.
Maybe some anon could tell me if I'm wrong, but my headcannon is that Kalinske pushed for a Genesis peripheral, hoping it would push more MD consoles out and prolong its life enough to sell those units so they wouldn't return from retailers.
>part of me wonders if it was because they overproduced Genesis consoles in the US.
Anon...The Genesis factories were in Japan. Not America
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I worded that poorly, I meant that they had too many Genesis stocked in then US, atleast going by the quotes from Irimajiri
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Well Japan operates differently than America.
Japanese game companies produce items in small batches, and companies can "hold back" quantity to generate hype and artificial scarcity (Sega did this with the Saturn and held back units in Japan to generate scarcity and hype) . Lots of smaller indie electronics stores across Japan.
American retail is different. Walmart, Target, K-Mart, etc...dont play that way. They don't tolerate how Japan does it.
To sell with major retailers you must agree to provide a certain amount of stock to all stores across the nation, and you agree to carry a reserve stock at all times in case demand spikes. So Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Microsoft, etc all have reserve stock held in warehouses for their items sold in stores.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
This 100%. Japan has some screwy retail rules that give a lot of power to the manufacturer. They can hold back stock and do a lot of shenanigans in Japan while pretending there is a shortage.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
What if the XBOX and Game Cube are not selling very well? What happens to the stock?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
there is usually a buy-back clause for inventory under certain conditions where the manufacturer is obligated to take stock back.
usually it coincides with a retailer who doesnt pay for the inventory it takes from a manufacturer so the retailer has less risk exposed.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Several things can happen in America.
1. The item at retail gradually gets discounted as time goes on. 25% off. 30% off. 50% off. 75% off. Until its thrown into clearance at super deep discount like 90% off. I remember seeing a new Gamecube + 2 controllers combo being sold for like 25 dollars at a local Walmart. And Gamecube games were like $5 dollars each.
This was right when the Nintendo Wii came out and the shelves were transitioning to the new generation and they wanted all the old stock out ASAP .
2. Retailers sell it to Secondary "discount stores". Places like Big Lots, Ross, Marshalls, etc. Basically these are stores that sell a variety of goods at deep discounts. Lots of Clothing that is "last season's" fashion, overstock shoes in various sizes, electronics that aren't the latest anymore, and even food. Ever wonder what happens to leftover holiday food like Valentines chocolates when Valentines is over? They go to discount stores. This gives the chance for bargain hunters to buy stuff on a deep discount. Need a new pair of jeans, and you don't care that it's jeans from last season? Go to a discount store. I saw some old boxed consoles here.
Imagine your family is low income, and you can't buy your kid the latest stuff. But maybe you can buy them an old (but still new in box) Gamecube with a bunch of games and new extra controllers. Imagine this is 2007, and you give your 2 sons a new Gamecube system and a bunch of games to play. They finally have their own system even though it's old.
3. Send it off to auction. Ever go to an auction and see a random pallet of old sealed electronics? Retailer probably sent it there.
2. Even if it were true (HIGHLY doubt it), then Sega of Japan are fools for listening and trusting such a dumb request. SoJ bears responsibility here.
Either way, Sega of Japan loses this argument. There's no way you can spin this as a positive.
Neither of this is fully right or wrong. It was a joint effort at frickery.
Both SoJ and SoA were eyeing the 3DO and Jaguar suspiciously, plus Sony had presented the Playstation. Remember that this is Winter '93-'94, the failure of the first two wasn't yet readily apparent. The Saturn is *at best* one year away, and 1994's outlook is kinda dodgy. Both Kalinske and Nakayama agreed this was a genuine problem, but the initially proposed solutions were wildly different. Kalinske's outline won out, which we know in retrospect was the wrong call. However it sort of made sense in context, which is why he was able to persuade Nakayama.
If you want total frickups that were 100% on SoJ, try the SVP chip saga, or their refusal to use the passthrough cartridge for other games.
Not that anon. In theory, the 32X seems like it could have worked. And if there were more games and they were a little better in quality, I think it could have had a real shot. But it wasn't executed well, and that falls on the shoulders of everyone involved, including Japan.
Announcing Saturn's Japanese release date as the same time of the North America 32x launch date was a HUGE blunder. Sega basically unintentionally signaled to every game developer that the 32x's days were numbered, and Sega had no long term plans for 32x. That it would be a waste of time to make games for 32x. That it would be best to wait since Saturn is just around the corner and to devote resources to that.
>In theory, the 32X seems like it could have worked.
There's a reason why that would've been unlikely. Namely, from a purely technological standpoint, the 32X was no better than the 3DO or Jaguar. Sure, it didn't have the Jaguar's design flaws, or the 3DO's shitty CPU, but it was fundamentally incapable of generating visuals that would've been distinctly above those from the other two's best efforts. It lacked a real graphical accelerator unit, it did everything via software brute-force (and blended the output with whatever came out of the base console's hardware). They needed a clean slate, away from the "sorta-3D-ish" attempts of the early-90s.
>Announcing Saturn's Japanese release date as the same time of the North America 32x launch date was a HUGE blunder.
That was a case of SoA (the tail) wagging the dog. While the US side wasn't great going into '94, Japan was catastrophic. Mega Drive straight-up fricking died in late-93. It had been treading water since '91, hence all the weird 3rd party collab shit they pulled at some point or another (the limo/airline unit, the modular laserdisc, the hybrid MD/PC thing etc.). They desperately needed to launch something that was *not* MD-related in '94, 32X or no 32X. Kalinske most likely failed to grasp the seriousness of the issue, probably because Nakayama completely failed to impress the situation upon him (Asians in general tend to suck at conveying unfavorable information in a clear and concise manner).
>There's a reason why that would've been unlikely. Namely, from a purely technological standpoint...
I understand where you are coming from. It's valuable info, but You are coming from the technical side. I would counter from the customer perspective. In 1994, the average customer didn't know all the tech data you mentioned. They only see what's on screen, and the price of the unit. It becomes a question of "value". How good does the 32x look on the TV, and how much does it cost?
- Assuming a game is made that pushes the 32x to its maximum power, can the 32x achieve 80% to 90% of the graphical fidelity of 3D0/Jaguar/Saturn?
- Can the customer look at that game and think "Wow the 32x is pretty close to these other systems, and is only half the price. I'm gonna buy it" ?
(and that's me not even mentioning "Sega 32x CD" games)
If the answer is yes, and you can support 32x for about 2 to 3 years it's a pretty good hit. Of course that didn't happen for various reasons, but the 32x succeeding was a possibility.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>can the 32x achieve 80% to 90% of the graphical fidelity of 3D0/Jaguar/Saturn?
The mass-market issue is, 32X doesn't fight just against 3DO Corp and Atari. It also fights against Sony and Nintendo. And, even when coded properly, its output is absolutely below the latter two, very noticeably so. And it stands to reason it would be, those two are dedicated polygon-churners. There's also another snag. If you want a 32X, you can't just buy one; you also need to buy a Genesis (plus a nest of cables, including two separate power adapters), and that inherently makes it less attractive.
>Sega 32x CD
An absolutely unholy monstrosity which barely worked at best of times. The base console was uniquely unsuitable for expand-ons due to its architecture, and having to make *two* of them work together was a near-sisyphean task. I suspect folks, tasked with making CD-32X games run adequately, started getting suicidal ideations at some point in the dev flow. Worse, the optical drive in the Sega CD was an audio-player derived one, instead of a CD-ROM grade one, which meant that, even though it conformed to the 1x speed standard on paper (which, by 1993, was slow as shit, with 2x being the norm), it had worse random seek/read times, and lower reliability, compared to an actual 1x CD-ROM.
And therein lies another problem. Cartridges were absolutely shit in terms of capacity. Sure, the 32X can physically run Tomb Raider code and display it on a screen. But it cannot run *the game*, as a standalone product. Even without prerendered cutscenes, even with compressed, downgraded visuals and sound/music, the game needs about 100 MB of space. The largest N64 cartridge was 64 MB, and the N64 never actually got a Tomb Raider port. I somehow doubt Sega would've even gone that high (largest 32X cart was 32 MB IIRC), or that buyers would've been inclined to pay that much (especially when a superior PS1 port would exist).
The only way the 32X would have worked is if there was a significant amount of time between it and the Saturn's launch dates, because unlike Nintendo's dual pillar strategy Sega was not going to support both of those pieces of hardware concurrently.
>Sega was not going to support both of those pieces of hardware concurrently.
Third parties dumped the 32x as fast as they adopted it. The 32x actually did sell well initially at launch, but things got really shaky when Sega announced an early Saturn launch for the NA market. retailers were dumping the 32x at fire sale prices at retail to make room for the Saturn. Or they were just boycotting Sega altogether. There were a lot of games cancelled for the add-on in a very short time.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>full 360 degree first person racer >on 32x, with those graphics
Fricking kek. The developers probably wanted to rope once they realized what they were working with.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
...hardware that was an order of magnitude more powerful than the PCs of the era they were already developing 3d games for?
>Sega is still in business last I checked
You don't know how to check anything. Sega was bought out in the early 2000s when they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
sega cd and 32x were both mistakes. i say that as someone who had and liked the sega cd (but didnt get a 32x). i think they both cheapened sega's mindshare but the saturn never had a chance in the west regardless.
SG-1000 (Mark 1, Mark 2, and Mark 3)
Master System
Sega CD
Sega Mega Karaoke
Sega Mega PC
Sega Mega Jet
Sega Mega Teradrive
Sega Pico
Sega Pico Advanced
Sega Laser Active
Sega Nomad
Sega Game Gear
Sega CDX
Sega Mega CD 32x
Sega HiSaturn
...and like 10 others.
Arguably this shitshow happened because they talked with each other too much. If Sega of Japan just disappeared until 1995 and handed Sega of America the Saturn none of this would happen.
Pretty much. All Sega of Japan needed to do was focus on Japan. Let the other branches of the company handle America and Europe. Then Sega of Japan gives the Saturn to other branches in 1995, and tells them to sell it however they see fit. Just make money. Would have done better.
>If Nakayama told SoA to shut the frick up like Yamauchi did to NoA none of this would happen.
Fixed that for your deluded SoA mutt
If only Sega of Japan had a Chad like Yamauchi as the President
>If only Sega of Japan had a Chad like Yamauchi as the President
Lolno. SoJ were just as capable of mega-moronation as SoA.
SoJ bungled all its home consoles prior to MD (the only reason MD wasn't bungled was thanks to the western branches, it was a dud in Japan), it launched that pointless Game Gear, it believed that an overdesigned add-on (Sega CD) which was more expensive than the base console would reanimate sales, it completely fricked what could've been a very useful component (SVP), it refused to adopt a very promising piece of tech (passthrough cartridge), it underestimated home user appetite for 3D games, it kept its home and arcade divisions rigidly siloed away from one another etc.
>it launched that pointless Game Gear
Come on now. It had battery life problems but calling the Game Gear pointless as if there were no justifiable reason for it's existence is absurd. Having a handheld counterpart to your home console conferred a huge marketing benefit back then. It also held it's own for a spell.
Except:
1. The SMS failed in most regions, so few people cared about it;
2. SMS games were not really cross-compatible (even with the cartridge adapter), because they had been designed to be played on a TV, rather than a 3-inch LCD;
3. Battery life was *the* most important part of a handheld console: the Lynx, Game Gear, and TurboExpress were more advanced, from a tech standpoint, than the Game Boy; however their play times were 4-6 hours, compared to the GB's 10-12.
Sure, people who coded SMS games were already familiar with the internals, but that devteam synergy was not sufficient. The GG badly overshot the capabilities of handheld tech in the early-90s. Maybe if they went a more low-tech route (non-backlit high-clarity grayscale display) they could've clawed a bigger piece of the pie.
You forget the context, SEGA split a frick ton of internal R&D to make 32X software and convincing a bunch of third parties to sign up for the system, instead all of this effort could have gone to making sure the Saturn had a good launch lineup.
Knuckles Chaotix could have been a proper finished game, Virtua Racing, StarWars arcade etc should have all been launch titles or early games.
>Nintendo who already had way more money than Sega at their peak due to the NES and gameboy. >2 of those failed consoles sold over twice as much as Sega's flops.
Dishonest
We all knew this. Many sega fans truly dislike the 32x.
I bought one for my tower of power but the 32x is a shit console. The few kids I know who did have one looked at it with disdain after it was revealed support was canceled..
I just got it to play blackthorn on an everdrive..
Even if you wanted it to play super scalers, the better versions of these can be found on the saturn.
Operation: Force Sega out of the hardware business >Bernie Stolar becomes President >Hires Roger Moore >Stolar fricks up the Saturn >Forces SoJ to pull the plug on the Saturn and rushes the Dreamcast >SoA fires him but his crony Roger Moore is still there >Roger Moore pulls the plug on the Dreamcast >Roger Moore leaves for Microsoft in 2003 >Bernie Stolar had suggested that Sega sells themselves to Microsoft
If you went back in time and prevented Sony from releasing the PlayStation, or stopping Nintendo from even bringing up the idea of the SNES CD add-on, do you think Sega would've not crashed and burned as hard as they did? Would they still be in the console business today?
Nah. Your story doesn't make sense. If it were up to the Americans, they would have just stayed with just Sega Genesis for another 1 to 2 years. Americans loved Genesis.
That's what people who are telling us to listen to the amerifat side of the story are doing. There's literally no reason to do so when all they'll do is lie and try to shift the blame when it clearly is on them.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
You have no interest in the truth just low iq tribalism.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
We already know the truth. Literally the only group left defending SoA are americans. There's your actual low iq tribalism.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>We already know the truth.
We don't.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sega of Europe stories and interviews confirm what Sega of America was saying. That Sega of Japan shut them out of discussions, and that Sega of Japan didn't listen to the other branches.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Sega of Japan shut them out of discussions
If only.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>That's what people who are telling us to listen to the amerifat side of the story are doing. There's literally no reason to do so when all they'll do is lie and try to shift the blame when it clearly is on them.
This is like reading some subhuman claiming at the 7 seas that the Black person with the gun who shot some random bystander just because is innocent and that we have to listen to his side of the story
Sega of Japan was indeed foolish to listen to amerifats. Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets, Gen 5 goes much better for them, and they may still be around making consoles.
>Tom Kalinske: I felt that we were rushing Saturn. We didn’t have the software right, and we didn’t have the pricing right, so I felt we should have stayed with Genesis for another year. I recognize that our volumes would have gone down, but I think we would have been a much healthier company. We would have been more profitable, and I think the folks who appreciated video games would have appreciated that we were still doing a lot of great product on the 16-bit hardware
Tom wanted to stay with the stock Genesis for another year.
>>Tom Kalinske: I felt that we were rushing Saturn. We didn’t have the software right, and we didn’t have the pricing right, so I felt we should have stayed with Genesis for another year. I recognize that our volumes would have gone down, but I think we would have been a much healthier company. We would have been more profitable, and I think the folks who appreciated video games would have appreciated that we were still doing a lot of great product on the 16-bit hardware
Tom Kalinske was right. Saturn was rushed. The software wasn't ready. The games weren't ready. The dev kits weren't ready. It had 1 good game as a launch title that was Virtua Fighter. But it didn't have anything else. Sega should have waited until 1996 (just like Nintendo) to launch Saturn in America and Europe. That's when the software and games were truly ready.
Saturn would be far behind in hardware if it released in 1996 when it was already available in japan by late 1994.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Saturn was rushed to market in 1994. It wasn't ready yet. The games weren't ready yet. It relied on Virtua Fighter (an arcade port) just to sell. The dev kits also sucked. 1996 was more realistic.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Agreed. Late 1995 for Japan. 1996 for the rest of the world.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Saturn was rushed to market in 1994
Not at all, the Saturn is the way it is because they tried to add a 3D machine on top of a 2D and no amount of time would have made that cluster frick better, they'd need to start the machine from scratch. >It relied on Virtua Fighter (an arcade port) just to sell
This was NEVER a problem before, in fact the only issue here is that they imported the vanilla port to the west instead of the remix from the get go. >The dev kits also sucked
Dev mits overall sucked before Sony decided to grab the market by the balls.
It's wasn't much of Saturn issue and more of a "Sony outdid us again!"
you're leaving out the part where SOA was watching what the pricepoint of the 3d0 and the Neo Geo did in terms of going to market and where SOJ wanted to launch the Saturn's pricepoint at. SOA was right that it was going to be a bloodbath of sticker shock compared to previous 2 generations going from $150 to $250 with pack-in games.
You're leaving out the part where SOJ said "we dont care about any of that because the Genesis (and sega CD) is a dead platform now, and we can't bring "nothing" to the market for 2 years. That is not an option SOA is allowed to have, so come up with something else. Meanwhile SOJ is going to do exactly what we said we were going to do. Come to market first and for $400." This was why SOA was in the position to 'convince' SOJ the 32-x would work in the first place, because SOJ put them there.
The one thing you could reasonable, but only in hindsight, leverage against SOA in this was that they were using sus inventory practices which mean that they had a vested interest in continuing with the Genesis because there was a metric frickton of inventory still out in the wild with retailers. But even then, they knew if they fricked up the arrangement they had with retailers when it came to stocking Genesis's that nobody would carry their shit in variace like they had been meaning Sega would have to keep those assets on-hand and therefore taxable and not leveragable which is partly how they made money. And then the Saturn launched and retailers got fricked up the way SOJ ran things.
Finally, like everyone else who wears blinders, you're leaving out the part where SOJ was in charge.
In a weird way Sega was a victim of their own prior success. They just couldn't resist the urge to wring more money out of it between console generations and so we got all these half-assed intermediate quasi-consoles when what would have worked best was just nothing until the next one was ready. Sony ended up getting it right just by default; not having any other consoles or existing user base they had a clean start and the PS1 was their sole focus.
I still don't know why the frick Sega and NEC both decided to make their first forays into CD games as essentially accessories to their previous consoles. If you're moving off cartridges why the frick does the thing have to run through a cartridge-based console? I assume piggybacking off the existing hardware made the add-ons slightly less expensive but the key word here is 'slightly.' They were still expensive enough to scare off most people, and by making them add-ons you introduce all the other problems that doomed the whole thing like dividing your user base and not being able to sell to new adopters. If the Sega CD is its own separate console with Sonic CD as a launch title I think it does much better. Same with the Duo.
>I still don't know why the frick Sega and NEC both decided to make their first forays into CD games as essentially accessories to their previous consoles.
As far as I understand, the whole thing was started off by NEC (then Sega and Nintendo took notice). They made most of their money off hardware, because HudsonSoft took a big cut out of game royalties (hence the reason why NEC kept shitting out all sorts of random-ass PC-Engine variations throughout the years). The CD-ROM^2 wasn't very expensive to manufacture, since it was just a drive and some extra RAM. It was priced relatively high because NEC wanted dat moola.
Sega CD, OTOH, was very costly, due to all the processors that went inside it. It also used a motorized tray (the first gen, at least) which was costlier than the CD-ROM^2 top loader (and broke down a lot). So, while its price was high, Sega didn't actually make that much profit off it. They had to put a bunch of chips inside it since the drive would otherwise be unusable by the base console. Which, in retrospect makes one wonder whether Sega would've been better off either making the SCD into a standalone console, or not bothering with a CD drive add-on in the first place.
>I still don't know why the frick Sega and NEC >piggybacking off the existing hardware made the add-ons slightly less expensive >key word here is 'slightly.'
it's all marketing planning, an slightly less difficulty time selling an slightly less expensive addon to parents slightly less inclined to buy their kids yet another console goes a long way in keeping the cash flow constant.
It's not like companies could crap new tech every six months, these things took time to move from the planning phase all the way to retail shelves.
Do you have quotes or interviews from sources besides of Sega of Japan? There's a big conflict of interest here.
Add it to list of horrible hardware failures SoJ made.
[...]
>Tom Kalinske: I felt that we were rushing Saturn. We didn’t have the software right, and we didn’t have the pricing right, so I felt we should have stayed with Genesis for another year. I recognize that our volumes would have gone down, but I think we would have been a much healthier company. We would have been more profitable, and I think the folks who appreciated video games would have appreciated that we were still doing a lot of great product on the 16-bit hardware
Tom wanted to stay with the stock Genesis for another year.
In retrospective Kalinske was right, Sega got scared of the PSX, fear potentially compounded by Nintendo's massive PR shilling around the N64, and moved the american Saturn release forward almost a year eating up into the nascent 32x market, that left literally everyone feeling screwed and the rest is history.
The 32x was the issue but is not where the fault lies.
you're leaving out the part where SOA was watching what the pricepoint of the 3d0 and the Neo Geo did in terms of going to market and where SOJ wanted to launch the Saturn's pricepoint at. SOA was right that it was going to be a bloodbath of sticker shock compared to previous 2 generations going from $150 to $250 with pack-in games.
You're leaving out the part where SOJ said "we dont care about any of that because the Genesis (and sega CD) is a dead platform now, and we can't bring "nothing" to the market for 2 years. That is not an option SOA is allowed to have, so come up with something else. Meanwhile SOJ is going to do exactly what we said we were going to do. Come to market first and for $400." This was why SOA was in the position to 'convince' SOJ the 32-x would work in the first place, because SOJ put them there.
The one thing you could reasonable, but only in hindsight, leverage against SOA in this was that they were using sus inventory practices which mean that they had a vested interest in continuing with the Genesis because there was a metric frickton of inventory still out in the wild with retailers. But even then, they knew if they fricked up the arrangement they had with retailers when it came to stocking Genesis's that nobody would carry their shit in variace like they had been meaning Sega would have to keep those assets on-hand and therefore taxable and not leveragable which is partly how they made money. And then the Saturn launched and retailers got fricked up the way SOJ ran things.
Finally, like everyone else who wears blinders, you're leaving out the part where SOJ was in charge.
So lets run the thought experiment. They didn't listen to SOA when it came to the Japanese market and did exactly what they wanted without any consideration for the 32-x.
>caught off guard by competition with a superior machine and a lower to-market price >added features and rushed to market to be first, but at a higher pricepoint. >had the benefit of one must-have ultra popular title, VF >saturn outsold PSX about 1.7:1 in 1994 for about 45 days >by 1995 end, Sony was completely fricking eating Saturn's lunch. by 1996, they were eating Nintendo's too. The only thing that was a threat to Sony was the revised Gameboy and frickin Pokemon juggernaut.
SOJ was in charge, and they shouldn't have listened to themselves either. They had already lost the shirt on their back by 1995, and were only able to continue with their business decisions because they were still flush with the cash the north american genesis sales afforded them.
>SOA in this was that they were using sus inventory practices which mean that they had a vested interest in continuing with the Genesis because there was a metric frickton of inventory still out in the wild with retailers.
Proven false. This is just how American retail operates. You must have surplus inventory . Japan doesn't understand this.
no it hasn't, and this was not how Nintendo did retail either.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, just because it can be done doesn't make it something to be done.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>no it hasn't, and this was not how Nintendo did retail either.
This is exactly how nintendo operated in America. Same with Sony. This is how every company that sells at major retail stores operates. It's standard operating procedure. You must have surplus inventory available to send to retail stores if requested.
Even though i'm a weeb, Sega of American's faults are also partially SoJ's faults since they are technically the ones who own the branches.
No matter how you look at it, the nips at sega will never be innocent in this story.
>Sega of American's faults are also partially SoJ's faults since they are technically the ones who own the branches. >No matter how you look at it, the nips at sega will never be innocent in this story.
Correct.
1. If Sega of America wanted the 32x, then Sega of Japan was foolish for approving such a request. They are the home office and have ultimate authority and responsibility.
2. If Sega of America didn't want the 32x, then Sega of Japan was foolish for not listening to Sega of America.
Either way, Sega of Japan bears responsibility here.
Sega of Japan was indeed foolish to listen to amerifats. Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets, Gen 5 goes much better for them, and they may still be around making consoles.
>Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets, Gen 5 goes much better for them, and they may still be around making consoles.
So you want to NOT sell Sega Saturn in America? Lmao.
>Saturn architecture being a mess.
it blows my mind how sega were one of the early pioneers of 3d arcade gaming but could never find a way (or will) to make it cheap enough for their consoles. they were making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and they still sat back and did nothing until it was too late. the japs gave up, so we got the saturn.
Sega of Japan was indeed foolish to listen to amerifats. Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets, Gen 5 goes much better for them, and they may still be around making consoles.
>, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets
the only thing they got right was the custom audio chip produced by yamaha (that still hasn't been completely exploited to this very day). if they had included more ram and pushed it as a 2d console (which it's excellent at) it probably would have had more success.
you're leaving out the part where SOA was watching what the pricepoint of the 3d0 and the Neo Geo did in terms of going to market and where SOJ wanted to launch the Saturn's pricepoint at. SOA was right that it was going to be a bloodbath of sticker shock compared to previous 2 generations going from $150 to $250 with pack-in games.
You're leaving out the part where SOJ said "we dont care about any of that because the Genesis (and sega CD) is a dead platform now, and we can't bring "nothing" to the market for 2 years. That is not an option SOA is allowed to have, so come up with something else. Meanwhile SOJ is going to do exactly what we said we were going to do. Come to market first and for $400." This was why SOA was in the position to 'convince' SOJ the 32-x would work in the first place, because SOJ put them there.
The one thing you could reasonable, but only in hindsight, leverage against SOA in this was that they were using sus inventory practices which mean that they had a vested interest in continuing with the Genesis because there was a metric frickton of inventory still out in the wild with retailers. But even then, they knew if they fricked up the arrangement they had with retailers when it came to stocking Genesis's that nobody would carry their shit in variace like they had been meaning Sega would have to keep those assets on-hand and therefore taxable and not leveragable which is partly how they made money. And then the Saturn launched and retailers got fricked up the way SOJ ran things.
Finally, like everyone else who wears blinders, you're leaving out the part where SOJ was in charge.
>SOJ was in charge.
CSK Corporation was in charge. they owned Sega at the time.
>Pay 400 dollarydoos in muttrica (even more overseas) just to play some shitty kusoges, one (1) game that you can already play by putting quarters in a machine, AND no one Even fricking knows it existence and see you as the weirdo, not even mentioning the fact that the mediocre games cost a lot because they are chinks and are just VNs >Instead of just paying 300 dollarydoos, CHIPPING THAT MOTHERFRICKER SO YOU CAN PLAY WHATEVER THE FRICK YOU WANT PIRATED, and having access to absolute bangers left and Right, some of which are nearly identical to the arcades in your home, and ALSO is the cool Kids console for playing some vidyas with your Friends, instead of that kiddie nintendo with Mario
Yeah, i can see why the Play 1 was a success after all, while also don't downplaying the N64, tho
Piracy on PS1 didn't start until a few years after launch. There wasn't much to pirate in its first couple years either so that wasn't a factor until later, after the Saturn already kicked the bucket.
>The 32X was released on November 21, 1994, in North America, in time for the holiday season that year.[2] As announced, it retailed for $159.99, and had a reasonably successful launch in the marketplace.[1] Demand among retailers was high, and Sega could not keep up with orders for the new system.[2] Over 1,000,000 orders had been placed for 32X units, but Sega had only managed to ship 600,000 units by January 1995.[12] In the United States, nearly 500,000 units were sold by Christmas 1994,[14] exceeding Sega's initial sales projection.[15] Launching at about the same price as a Genesis console, the price of the 32X was less than half of what the Saturn's price would be at launch.[7] Despite Sega's initial promises, only six games were available at its North American launch, including Doom, Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and Cosmic Carnage. Although Virtua Racing was considered strong, Cosmic Carnage "looked and played so poorly that reporters made jokes about it".[2][16] Games were available at a retail price of $69.95.[13] Advertising for the system included images of the 32X being connected to a Genesis console to create an "arcade system". Japan received the 32X on December 3, 1994.[17] The PAL release came in January 1995, at a price of £169.99, and also experienced initial high demand.[1]
Sounds like it was initially successful in all regions to the point Sega could not keep up with demand. The market was there and hungry for more 16bit (32?) goodness but Sega botched it like usual. Sega of America was on the right track.
I thought this was common knowledge by now? All of the effort was supposed to go to the Saturn and then eventually Dreamcast but 32X royally fricked them over forever tarnishing consumer trust. I could imagine it destroyed profits as well.
But if they had to release 32x, then they should have done a worldwide release in Japan, North America, and Europe in 1994. Then release Saturn in late 1996. Thars 2 years of support for 32x.
That would show the public that Sega is committed to the 32x product. Releasing it in North America and Europe only was a mistake because it told everyone that Sega was not committed to their own products
>they should have done a worldwide release in Japan, North America, and Europe in 1994.
It would've completely bombed in Japan, due to low Mega Drive install base. Remember that MD was basically dead there, had been since late '93. And it was a distant third to the PC-Engine in terms of sales.
The only winning move was not to play. Avoid the 32X entirely. Let SoA and SoE drag out the 16-bit gen for another year and a half (but have them set up infrastructure to support the Saturn), release Saturn in Japan late-'94 as intended, then release it in US/Europe mid-late '95, after a more sizable launch lineup had been put together.
>release Saturn in Japan late-'94 as intended
No. That's what killed the hype for 32x. Game studios know that once a console gets released in Japan, then it will be out in another year for the rest of the world. That's why studios didn't feel like supporting 32x.
32x didn't kill the company. It was Sega of Japan releasing so much pointless hardware.
Sega SG-1000 Mark 1
Sega SG-1000 Mark 2
Sega SG-1000 Mark 3
Sega Master System
Sega CD
Sega Mega Karaoke
Sega Mega PC
Sega Mega Jet
Sega Mega Teradrive PC
Sega Pico
Sega Pico Advanced
Sega Laser Active
Sega Nomad
Sega Game Gear
Sega CDX
Sega HiSaturn
Sega HiSaturn Navi
Sega Saturn Karaoke
Sega JVC V-Saturn
Sega Skeleton Saturn
Sega PriFun
Sega Saturn Arcade Hotel
Almost none of these sold well except for the original Mega Drive. Yet you want to blame 32x? Lmao. Sega of Japan is a joke.
I feel like the Dreamcast had a better chance at succeeding than the Saturn but I don’t know how Sega could get through 5th gen in a decent enough standing in terms of it’s financial situation and brand health for them to support the Dreamcast enough for it to actually survive. The Saturn, regardless of how you view it in hindsight, completely missed the mark on what consumers wanted during that era. It would need to be an entierly different system. The Dreamcast could have succeeded if it was released by a healthier company.
Even if the Dreamcast did twice as well, I can’t imagine them releasing another console. It’s difficult to imagine a timeline where Sega survives in the console market.
If Sega of Japan wanted to survive, they needed a cheaper to produce system. Sega Saturn drained too much of the company's resources.
Sega was never going to win head2head against Sony's billions of dollars.
Sega of Japan needed a system that used cheaper hardware, and to focus on the Western Market since that's how Sega made their real big money.
They should have just went all in on the Sega 32x or the Sega Neptune. The 32 bit games won't look as good, but it's much cheaper and less expensive. They can alsk sell the Sega Neptune in Japan since the Mega Drive install base was so low.
Nintendo has proven that what matters isn't top of the line hardware. It's the franchises and games. That's what Sega needed to do.
>The 32 bit games won't look as good, but it's much cheaper and less expensive.
You'll end up with games which are uglier (lower processing power), decontented (mix of shorter, worse sound/music, no cutscenes etc. because of capacity constraints), and cost as much as PS1 games (due to cartridges being more expensive to manufacture).
90s gamers did care about graphics and performance, storage is something almost nobody even considered into the equation and sound quality didn't really mattered as long as it still could do catchy music.
It's almost like the 64 was a far better machine at 3D which was heavily pushed at the time.
The Neptune won't have that advantage, in fact it'd be even worse than the Saturn.
The difference between 32x and Saturn is small. The cheaper Neptune will allow Sega to save money, and survive the generation. The point is for Sega to change their strategy and not try to fight Sony head on.
The only other alternative is for Sega to adapt their Sega Model 1 arcade board for 5th generation. That's the only 2 options without coming up with a completely new console.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>The difference between 32x and Saturn is small.
Is it?
>Even if the Dreamcast did twice as well, I can’t imagine them releasing another console. It’s difficult to imagine a timeline where Sega survives in the console market.
Basically, for Sega to succeed as a console company, they need to sell at least 30 million consoles for each generation to earn a healthy profit to fund the next console. That means marketing the console to the West and making a console that appeals to Western countries. Japan is too small a market to be the main focus.
Sega also needs pay much more attention to their franchises. Every game needs to be polished, and they need to make proper sequels for each franchise like Nintendo. That means Sonic, Streets of Rage, Crazy Taxi, After Burner, Out Run, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Virtua Universe (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Virtua On, etc), all need to be well made.
Nintendo does it, but Sega seems to struggle with this idea.
nah, the 2 dont work together very well. Just putting them in one box wouldn't help.
Saturn CD drive isn't fast enough. Not even Playstation CD drive was fast enough.
people don't understand without experience how slow a doublespeed drive is, and the likelyhood on knowing a singlespeed is even less.
>Saturn was rushed to market in 1994
Not at all, the Saturn is the way it is because they tried to add a 3D machine on top of a 2D and no amount of time would have made that cluster frick better, they'd need to start the machine from scratch. >It relied on Virtua Fighter (an arcade port) just to sell
This was NEVER a problem before, in fact the only issue here is that they imported the vanilla port to the west instead of the remix from the get go. >The dev kits also sucked
Dev mits overall sucked before Sony decided to grab the market by the balls.
It's wasn't much of Saturn issue and more of a "Sony outdid us again!"
>Dev mits overall sucked before Sony decided to grab the market by the balls.
SOA (since SOJ didnt seem to care) could have mitigated it by hiring a damn full time translator to completely translate the documentation that actually was available in Japanese. Its not like they didn't have money to keep one on the payroll.
Sega jap complains at sega burger.
Sega burger makes a 32x whilst sega jap doesnt tell burger their working on the saturn and plan to release it early.
Sega burger makes plans for 32x and gets devs/publishers onboard.
Sega jap tells these devs/pubs not to work with the 32x because the saturn is coming out.
Release saturn early screwing over retail store plans.
No sonic for the launch nor other franchises people were expecting.
Sega US argue with Jap again.
32x ends up being abandoned with one of the worst game library's in history.
Saturn is marketed badly outside of japan.
Is only really a success in japan because they treated it right there and released games like darkstalkers 3, kof and others.
Had nicer better looking models you could buy in Japan whilst everywhere else had the crap black saturn.
We all know the real problem is sega USA and Japan are both morons that argued and fought with each other constantly.
Just look at the shit storm that happened with streets of rage 2.
It's both their fault the 32x got made and canned and it's both their fault the saturn was handled so badly
>Sega jap is more responsible because they are the leader office and supposed to set an example
I agree to a point but sega usa did a lot of moronic shit and a fair amount of backstabbing themselves.
Look up on the history of sor2 and why the characters on the box don't look like how they do in the game and the shitty fax messages sent from US/Jap over the whole process.
Neither side can complain or blame the 32x when both just abandoned the megacd after its initial launch
>Why? Because chinks in japan land prefer a shitter console (snes) with censored and downgraded games? >Japan has a history of doing dumb shit with consoles but these 2 really should have worked together instead of acting like 2 sub human apes.
Because Sega of Japan keeps making the same mistake again. They rush launched Mega Drive with almost no games. The marketing was weird too. The whole thing was rushed.
I don't know why Sega of Japan is obsessed with rushing products to market when they aren't ready.
>Look up on the history of sor2 and why the characters on the box don't look like how they do in the game and the shitty fax messages sent from US/Jap over the whole process.
>Sega sends devkits of Sega CD to developers >developers have to learn how to make games for the new hardware >A year later, Sega sends devkits of Sega 32x to developers >developers have to learn how to make games for the new hardware >6 months later, Sega sends devkits of Sega Saturn to developers >developers have to learn how to make games for the new hardware
Sega pissed off devs the most. No one wanted to develop for the Saturn by that point and retailers were tired of the wasted shelf space from their previously unsupported hardware.
>But they will never talk.
Because they're more honorable thanks to their culture. American business culture encourages public backstabbing and throwing others under the bus
Even when they talk, they do it moderately without big claims. Meanwhile the americans are all like "UHHH THOSE PESKY JAPANESE DID IT! THEY RUINED SEGA! USA USA USA USA!"
>Even when they talk, they do it moderately without big claims.
Saying they lost the gen because of the 32x is a big claim though and conveniently out of all of Sega's horrible hardware failures of which there are many, the 32x is the only one Japan wants to talk about. >Meanwhile the americans are all like "UHHH THOSE PESKY JAPANESE DID IT! THEY RUINED SEGA! USA USA USA USA!"
weeb nonsense.
Saturn needed to be a 3D focused machine, not $100 more than the PlayStation and a kickass Sonic 4 on launch or close to it and the Saturn would have hit the ground running in NA.
The truth is, even if Sega made all the right moves, it would still be in a lot of trouble trying to compete with everyone else. At best, it might be a less successful Nintendo, today. I say this as a Sega fanboy.
Sorry, i cant hear nip whining over the banging sounds of me playing B.C. Racers.
>Sorry, i cant hear nip whining over the banging sounds of me playing B.C. Racers.
Which is sadly worse than the Sega CD port of the game, overall.
*B.C.E. Racers
You tell em, science sis *high-fives u*
It was certainly a coffin nail but come on now. There is no fricking way on earth that was the difference. Saturn being an expensive sprite machine that was mangled and coerced into half of PS1's 3D output was half of it. Sony having frick-you talent buying money and better console engineers was the other half. Nintendo gave up the 'hardcore' market and games that needed the multimedia capabilities of CDROM. Sony just made a better machine for that shit.
I know you're shitting but imagine paying for a new cartridge and system expansion just to get Kroger brand Euroslop Mario Kart. lmao even
(You)s transposed while I was editing
Yes the 32X was a bad idea and they should have just focused on the Saturn but ultimately I don't think it would have made much of a difference given the Saturn's inability to compete against the PlayStation in the west.
This. Sony was going to frick shit up no matter what Sega did.
The confusion and shifting priorities between the 32X and the Saturn caused a lot of western publishers to abandon the platform for the Playstation.
The technical differences wouldn’t have mattered as much if the Saturn had software support.
>The confusion and shifting priorities between the 32X and the Saturn caused a lot of western publishers to abandon the platform for the Playstation.
It wasn't just that, Sony had a lot of weight to throw around being the electronics king of the 80s and 90s and made very compelling arguments to get publishers to support Playstation, independent of their already-existing ties to Sega at the time. I'd also like to reiterate that, while we look back at the ugly ass first batch of 3D console games coming out at the time with disdain, back then people loved that shit because it had a new "Wow" factor to them and wanted to buy up whatever 3D games were available instead of 2D ones. PS1 might have been weaker than the Saturn but it was a lot easier getting 3D games up and running by comparison.
Not true
The reason the ps1 won was simple
>we won't frick you with fees like Sega and Nintendo, plus CDs are huge and are cheap as frick to make
The 32X sounded like a cooler idea on paper to a kid than it was in practicality. They should have scrapped the 32X before it even entered the R&D phase and just redesigned the Saturn to accommodate backwards compatibility with the Genesis and if possible Sega CD games.
Eh they could have easily been the playstation if they'd played their cards right. The psx wasn't some crazy loss leader play like the Xbox that only a galactic megacorp could afford
/thread
anon, that's just sega of japan trying to push their own failures onto sega of gaijin
No it isn't. Saturn was highly successful in Japan until Sega or Gaijin announced they were already making a new console, then sales immediately plummeted in 1997. Sega of Gaijin failed.
>Saturn was highly successful in Japan
It wasn't HIGHLY successful in Japan. It did okay.
The Saturn sold great in Japan from launch up until the "Saturn is not our future" statement and at one point it even outsold the PlayStation. Enough with the revisionism, zoomy.
Blame Tom Kalinske.
So then the N64 also did great in Japan, right? Sales were roughly equal. Yet people routinely call it a failure in Japan.
>So then the N64 also did great in Japan, right?
No, the N64 did awful.
>Sales were roughly equal. Yet people routinely call it a failure in Japan.
The Saturn was released in November 1994 in Japan and it had healthy sales up until the "Saturn is not our future" comment which was in early 1997. It was on the market for only 2 years and a couple of months before Sega of Gaijin killed the Japanese market.
The N64 was on the market in Japan from 1996 until 2002. Yes, the N64 - which took 6 years to sell what the Saturn did in 2 - is a failure.
You make this argument every time the Saturn is discussed and this is explained to you every single time. I sincerely hope you are trolling because otherwise you need to get an IQ test ASAP.
The Saturn selling well out of the gate and rapidly shitting itself is not the strength you pretend it is.
>The Saturn was released in November 1994 in Japan and it had healthy sales up until the "Saturn is not our future" comment which was in early 1997.
99% of the public never heard that comment. Saturn sales plummeted because the Sony PlayStation was a massive success in every country. The PS1 was a perfect machine for the time and place of its release and was so strong the newcomer shoved the juggernaut Nintendo into a corner and practically killed Sega.
You can come up with all kind of hypothetical perfect launches for the Saturn and I still think the PlayStation dominates. Sony was just a much better run company that knew how to get shit done and had proven that for decades by building their name to be well known for high quality electronics. Sony had some real geniuses working there both in the tech side of things and the business side.
Sony actually wanted to work with Sega on a collaboration to make a console together. Tom Kalinske tried to make it happen too, but Sega of Japan said absolutely not. Ironic that Sony killed Sega.
And Nintendo too right? There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there. Yeah it's funny that Sony apparently first tried to work with both Nintendo and Sega on some sort of collaboration but both companies turned Sony down and then Sony goes solo and crushes them both.
Tom Kalinske was a moron
Sega would be owned by Sony today if that were to happen
Love how you sonyggers conveniently ignore that Sony tried to play dirty by sneaking into he contract the stipulation that only they would get 100% profit of software sales and that Nintendo's lawyers caught those israelites red-handed
have a nice day you worthless Sonytroons
>Sega would be owned by Sony today if that were to happen
Is that worse than the position that they're currently in?
Honestly, yes. They'd be stuck contributing to the AAAslop landscape instead of doing their current plans to attempt to revive classic Sega franchises.
>99% of the public never heard that comment.
"Saturn is not our future" is one of the most misunderstood statements, I think, because people don't necessarily know the context. The impression seems to be that it was made at E3 or something where Stolar stood up in front of a crowd and unprompted declared Saturn dead. But that's not how it went down. This is the context. It was a print interview with EGM in the September 1997 issue. And he was responding to the interviewer's sentiments that the Saturn was already toast. Which in late 97 it absolutely was. Stolar was trying to ensure the Dreamcast's future by pointing out that they learned from their mistakes because if everyone had thought they were just staying the course nobody would have supported the thing.
>In recent years, Sega has gone from being an industry powerhouse to an ailing giant struggling to regain ground.
Interesting anon thanks for that. You can tell by the tone of this interview Sega is down bad and everyone knows it, you can feel the sense of relief from the interviewer and readers when he proclaims there will be another console. FF7 had already been out in Japan for 9 months by the time this interview came out, PS1 was rolling and the writing was on the wall.
Exactly. I think there's a misunderstanding that Stolar showed up when the Saturn was just getting going and then arbitrarily shit on it out of the blue. The reality is that Stolar was addressing the elephant in the room. His whole statement was pointing out that the Saturn still was going to get support for the time being but it wasn't their long term strategy and there was a new system on the horizon. There was no way to turn the Saturn's fortunes around by then and trying to argue as much would have been 1) laughable, and 2) alienated consumers and publishers for the upcoming Dreamcast. A lot of the Bernie Stolar criticism comes from Vic Ireland who had an axe to grind since Working Designs was still making games for it and didn't like that Stolar effectively pulled the plug. But Working Designs was, frankly, slightly insane. Magic Knight Rayearth didn't come out until December '98 because it got delayed like crazy due to massive amounts of data needing to be rebuilt. But pretty much nobody else gave a shit about Saturn by then. Retailers barely had any shelf space for it. So Ireland's gripes, though perhaps valid as far as his own personal self-interest was concerned, hardly represents the larger issues at Sega or among other publishers. If you're Bernie Stolar are you really going to prioritize Working Designs over all else? Most people would say no, obviously. But since Vic Ireland was particularly vocal and few people other than Vic Ireland ever talked about Bernie Stolar, it was his perspective that got parroted.
>99% of the public never heard that comment.
Devs/Publishers heard it and they pulled out of the Saturn you fricking moron.
Sega's so-called ''FF7 killer''' Panzer Dragoon Saga only released like 300 copies in the US as a result.
Devs were not suddenly pulling out in September 1997 because of that statement. That ship had already sailed. Acting like the Saturn was doing fine but then everything fell apart after "Saturn is not our future" is counterfactual. Especially considering you can read the whole interview above where its clear there was an accusatory tone from the start of what Sega was going to do now that the Saturn was done.
>Devs were not suddenly pulling out in September 1997 because of that statement. That ship had already sailed.
Because Stolar was a Sony plant who was sent to Sega to sabotage them
He made sure of that by disallowing JRPGs in the US when the goddamn genre was booming
Then this rat pressured SoJ to kill off the Saturn and launch the Dreamcast early
Sony didn't need to send anyone to sabotage Sega. It was already a disaster when Stolar got there. You Saturn apologists go too far sometimes.
>It was already a disaster when Stolar got there.
No it wasn't you little snoy pos
Stop revising history
Stolar fricked up the Saturn in the US good
July 1996. That's when Stolar jumped from Sony to Sega. He was there for only about two months when Nintendo and Sony dropped monsters like Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. The Sonic X-Treme debacle was already underway, the 32X had come and gone, and the Saturn was rapidly losing ground when he came aboard and major arcade hits like Virtua Fighter 3 were locked to the arcade because they were impossible to port with adequate fidelity. Even shit that did get ported like House of the Dead ended up seeing serious downgrades. You can act as if I'm the one revising history but fact is you're just not seeing reality for what it is. There was zero...yes a ZERO...chance of turning that ship around.
Sega lord x has videos proving you wrong
Sega Lord X engages in entertaining hypotheticals. If you want to argue the Saturn could have been handled BETTER, then fine. I agree. But it was absolutely a sinking ship by the time Stolar joined up. And keeping it barely afloat would have only hurt the Dreamcast. Starting from square one to give the Dreamcast it's best chance not only made sense but was proven to have worked since the launch was actually quite good. Things fell apart later on but that wasn't Bernie's fault.
Also, just to be clear, Sega didn't have Sony's infinite money. They couldn't just throw everything into both the Saturn AND the Dreamcast all willy nilly. Remember that at one point the CEO had to straight up give the company a personal loan just to keep the lights on.
>Lard X
You are really gonna use him as an argument?
>Devs/Publishers heard it and they pulled out of the Saturn you fricking moron.
No evidence of that.
>Love how you sonyggers conveniently ignore that Sony tried to play dirty by sneaking into he contract the stipulation that only they would get 100% profit of software sales and that Nintendo's lawyers caught those israelites red-handed
Myth.
>Myth.
Anon was being hyperbolic but game sale royalties were undoubtedly the reason Nintendo broke off the Sony partnership. There's literally no other plausible reason that isn't just ridiculous Snoy fanfiction about Nintendo's head honchos having massive egos or some other cringe comic book tier shit.
Sony was being disingenuous. They tried to pretend they were like Philips and only wanted to make gaming accessories or do partners. But Sony didn't just want to make an add-on. I think everyone knew Sony was trying to eventually break into the game industry and get a big slice of the pie with their own console. Nintendo and Sega saw no reason to help Sony.
>Anon was being hyperbolic but game sale royalties were undoubtedly the reason Nintendo broke off the Sony partnership.
In which direction? Nintendo could of asked for a unfair deal and there are a million reasons a business deal falls through you have no idea what happened behind closed doors. Anyone who says they know what happened or that this company screwed that company is lying and gamers do it all the time.
Sony tried to pull off another HudsonSoft-NEC deal, where most of the software royalties went to them. People at Nintendo figured it out, and SoJ already knew how things were going at NEC, given that they had occasionally partnered with them for some arcade boards (which used NEC V-series CPUs).
Unfortunately for both Nintendo and Sega, Sony already had enough tech backlog they could use as starting point for a complete console.
Why are you using the actual discontinuation date for N64 while using the date when Bernie made some comment in an interview on the other side of the Pacific to mark the point when Saturn died in Japan? That's just disingenuous. Saturn was discontinued in 2000 in Japan, it was on the market for roughly the same amount of time as N64.
>but Dreamcast
Gamecube also released in 2001, not 2002. No one forced Sega to release the Dreamcast in Japan that early to cannibalize the Saturn market. It would have made more sense if they released it in USA first.
Sega of Japan failed with the Sg-1000, Master System, and Mega Drive. All Failures in Japan. Saturn lost to PS1 in Japan.
Sega of Japan don't know good business sense.
Man, I wish I had a Saturn. Fricking love Sega Rally.
Getting a Saturn and a CRT TV is a tall ask when living with gf in small apt though. Both price and space wise.
Get a really small CRT like 5 inches to 14 inch screen...max.
Was literally in your shoes a few weeks ago. Japanese Saturns can be had for cheap. Get yourself a Saroo for game loading and a GBS-Control so you can hook it up to your modern TV without it looking like total shit and you're good to go for about $300 if you play your cards right.
Why are you acting like a doormat? Do you think she'll respect a man that is afraid to do something because his mom-, I mean, GIRLFRIEND, might get angry? Jesus Christ, your balls have receded so far up your ass they're now lying on the dark side of Moon.
Don't listen to them buddy
They probably never had a gf, or they live in one of those huge american homes that are made of scrap wood, they shatter at the first wind, but we must admit there's a lot of space for a lot of silly stuff (CRTs, guns, Nascar trucks, and so on)
"Build" your own corner, if you can't have a whole room, and decide what you want to keep.
I eventually started giving away stuff because I hoarded too many and not only I wasn't using it, it was really starting to mess with my mind, I couldn't get stuff done because all the drawers, cabinets, were full of things that I never used
Still might buy an 8-string guitar tho
That's like saying the PC Engine was sucessful in Japan. That's just not enough to carry a console maker through multiple generations of console war. The 32x was a momentary mistake, but the saturn was a generational disaster that they were forced to parade and support all the way through the generation and it even sunk the Dreamcast along with it. Doesn't matter if a few hardcore neet japs were satisfied with their 2d jarpigs and fighting games and barebones arcade ports. The industry was headed in the opposite direction.
>saturn was a generational disaster
This.
Another thing people don't realize is that Sega of Japan spent a TON of money over-designing and over-engineering the Saturn. Way more money than they should have spent making a game console, and way more they should have spent as a game company. It was irresponsible spending. This was money that came from sales and profits from Western markets. Not from Japan.
Sega basically took nearly all the money they earned from selling 40 million Sega Genesis units in America and Europe. Then dumped the money into Saturn, and made a console only the Japanese would like without any consideration for the Western markets that made Sega rich in the first place. No gratitude to the West. What a huge middle finger.
When Saturn failed, it was such a huge blow financially to Sega. They had over-invested in Saturn way too much with the expectation Saturn was going to be a huge hit. Sega never fully recovered financially from this failure.
The CEO refused to admit their failure and demanded they make another console. Truthfully, They didn't have the money to make another console. That's how badly Sega of Japan messed up. The financial situation was so bad that Japanese Executives pushed back and tried to say they should exit the console race and just make games. But the CEO pushed hard for another console to be made. Sega had to take out loans from Japanese banks to pay for developing another console. But the Banks only gave them a limited amount in loans because of Sega's track record for wild spending.
That's why the Dreamcast was built on a limited budget, and was far more conservative in their design. Sega needed Dreamcast to be an even bigger hit than Sega Genesis in order to pay back their loans and get back into a good financial position. This was a very unrealistic dream and it never happened. Dreamcast sold respectably during its 2 years, but Sega ran out loan money and the company collapsed.
just add that US Sega spent alot of dumb money too. Wasn't just a SOJ problem.
this. Lots of driveby's without actual context acting like he did some kinda vindictive anti Japanese sabotage plan.
We can Monday morning quarterback Bernie Stolar's individual decisions all day but it's undeniable that when he joined Sega he walked into a house fire. His key angle was to stop throwing good money after bad and blow everything away so the company could start fresh with the Dreamcast. Which given Sega's then current situation, was not indefensible. And in fact the plan did work for a brief period of time given how good the Dreamcast launch was.
>just add that US Sega spent alot of dumb money too. Wasn't just a SOJ problem.
Sega's main market was the US and Europe. They bought 40 million Genesis consoles. So the spending on US and Euro marketing was at least justified there.
Sega of Japan just wouldn't let it go because of their pride. They wouldn't accept that they were failures in their home country. That Japan belonged to Nintendo and Sony.
Why spend hundreds of millions trying to market Sega Genesis when it only sold like 2 million in Japan.
Why spend hundreds of millions marketing Sega Saturn in Japan when Genesis sold so poorly in Japan? Selling 6 million Saturns in Japan doesn't justify the cost.
>So the spending on US and Euro marketing was at least justified there.
no. no it wasn't. It wasn't justified at all.
At the time developers were still fricking complaining about lack of documentation(in english) and support for the Saturn, do you know what they were spending money on?
> Segaworld in London. Took 2 years to build, opened in 96 and cost $50 million.
thats just one example in Europe, Certainly another anon can post some of the dumb corporate/business expenses SOA was blowing money on from another thread... instead of a fricking fulltime translator or two to get the documentation out of Japan that might've helped more games get thru.
>no. no it wasn't. It wasn't justified at all.
Your words don't line up with reality. The Western Market is what made Sega the VAST majority of their money. Japan was pocket change for Sega in terms of profit.
>Segaworld in London. Took 2 years to build, opened in 96 and cost $50 million.
Sega didn't spend $50 million themselves on Segaworld London. That's ridiculous. Sega partnered with other companies to create Segaworld London
>Sega didn't spend $50 million themselves on Segaworld London.
the year sega opened it, they posted a $340millon worldwide loss.
you want to mince about how much of $50 million was their share?
and this is just one example. we've seen in other 32-x/saturn threads this year some of the dumb shit the west was spending money on that didnt equate to games released.
>ega's main market was the US and Europe. They bought 40 million Genesis consoles. So the spending on US and Euro marketing was at least justified there.
There was absolutely no reason for Sonic to have his own water park.
Why not? Nintendo has their own theme park. SEGA doesn't pay for the park. SEGA lends their IP and brand name to a partner...who then gets investors to pay for construction of the park. Then the profits are divided among everyone.
For whatever reason Sega seemed way less competent at doing that kind of thing than Nintendo and when you put your name on too many things at once and several of them fail it can tank your brand.
>That's like saying the PC Engine was sucessful in Japan.
But it was, and it had a seven-year run with great third-party support.
Megadrive third-party support in Japan was always pretty small and died off early.
>Saturn was highly successful in Japan
Correction, the home port of Virtua Fighter was highly successful in Japan.
it's exactly this
now THAT's mental illness.
>There's that weird snes looking playstation prototype out there.
yeah, it was their CD-ROM addon
>but both companies turned Sony down
not quite. Nintendo realized Sony were only using Nintendo to get their foot in the door of the console world and eventually make a competing system. Nintendo decided to deal with the threat to their market dominance by dumping Sony - and in public - and partnering up with Philips. Nintendo seriously believed at the time that one of the biggest electronics corporations on earth didn't know anything about building a games console and their efforts would be nowhere as good as Nintendo's.
>Nintendo seriously believed at the time that one of the biggest electronics corporations on earth didn't know anything about building a games console and their efforts would be nowhere as good as Nintendo's.
That shit was hilariously moronic, in retrospect. Especially since Sony actually built a lot of componentry that went into other companies' game consoles, so their engineers had a decent understanding of what bits should go where.
Also they had that old Toshiba-designed 3D workstation prototype chip.
>sega of gaijin
What do you mean?
Thread should have ended here
Imagine being the guy who suggested releasing the 32X on the same day as the PlayStation
Grim. He probably had to commit soduku with a katana.
theyre the ones that frickin released it lol just shifting the blame to the device instead of themselves.
name one meme hardware that was actually good. No game genie.
Virtual Boy
sonic 2 as knuckles was a great addition. S&K would have been pretty lame if only worked with S3. Wish it worked with S1, but oh well.
Super Game Boy
Sound and timing is off.
Fixed in the Super Game Boy 2, and if you're really autistic, you can frick around with swapping crystals in the original.
Goalposts
Super Game Boy
Game Boy Player
Sega CD
Master System adapter for Genesis
SNES Multitap
Playstation Multitap
Yes it was and that was not enough. NEC left the hardware market.
PC Engine CD
Then why did the very same high level Sega staff insist upon the 32X in the first place?
They didn't; Tom Kalinske and the other higher ups at SoA begged for it.
1. Tom Kalinske denies it.
2. Even if it were true (HIGHLY doubt it), then Sega of Japan are fools for listening and trusting such a dumb request. SoJ bears responsibility here.
Either way, Sega of Japan loses this argument. There's no way you can spin this as a positive.
>Tom Kalinske denies it
He never denied anything.
He said that he desperately wanted to keep the Genesis going.
The guy was clueless. It was his pathetic cowardice of not wanting to move on from the Genny that led to the 32x.
part of me wonders if it was because they overproduced Genesis consoles in the US.
Maybe some anon could tell me if I'm wrong, but my headcannon is that Kalinske pushed for a Genesis peripheral, hoping it would push more MD consoles out and prolong its life enough to sell those units so they wouldn't return from retailers.
anon they made the 32x because every american household already had a genesis
>part of me wonders if it was because they overproduced Genesis consoles in the US.
Anon...The Genesis factories were in Japan. Not America
I worded that poorly, I meant that they had too many Genesis stocked in then US, atleast going by the quotes from Irimajiri
Well Japan operates differently than America.
Japanese game companies produce items in small batches, and companies can "hold back" quantity to generate hype and artificial scarcity (Sega did this with the Saturn and held back units in Japan to generate scarcity and hype) . Lots of smaller indie electronics stores across Japan.
American retail is different. Walmart, Target, K-Mart, etc...dont play that way. They don't tolerate how Japan does it.
To sell with major retailers you must agree to provide a certain amount of stock to all stores across the nation, and you agree to carry a reserve stock at all times in case demand spikes. So Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Microsoft, etc all have reserve stock held in warehouses for their items sold in stores.
This 100%. Japan has some screwy retail rules that give a lot of power to the manufacturer. They can hold back stock and do a lot of shenanigans in Japan while pretending there is a shortage.
What if the XBOX and Game Cube are not selling very well? What happens to the stock?
there is usually a buy-back clause for inventory under certain conditions where the manufacturer is obligated to take stock back.
usually it coincides with a retailer who doesnt pay for the inventory it takes from a manufacturer so the retailer has less risk exposed.
Several things can happen in America.
1. The item at retail gradually gets discounted as time goes on. 25% off. 30% off. 50% off. 75% off. Until its thrown into clearance at super deep discount like 90% off. I remember seeing a new Gamecube + 2 controllers combo being sold for like 25 dollars at a local Walmart. And Gamecube games were like $5 dollars each.
This was right when the Nintendo Wii came out and the shelves were transitioning to the new generation and they wanted all the old stock out ASAP .
2. Retailers sell it to Secondary "discount stores". Places like Big Lots, Ross, Marshalls, etc. Basically these are stores that sell a variety of goods at deep discounts. Lots of Clothing that is "last season's" fashion, overstock shoes in various sizes, electronics that aren't the latest anymore, and even food. Ever wonder what happens to leftover holiday food like Valentines chocolates when Valentines is over? They go to discount stores. This gives the chance for bargain hunters to buy stuff on a deep discount. Need a new pair of jeans, and you don't care that it's jeans from last season? Go to a discount store. I saw some old boxed consoles here.
Imagine your family is low income, and you can't buy your kid the latest stuff. But maybe you can buy them an old (but still new in box) Gamecube with a bunch of games and new extra controllers. Imagine this is 2007, and you give your 2 sons a new Gamecube system and a bunch of games to play. They finally have their own system even though it's old.
3. Send it off to auction. Ever go to an auction and see a random pallet of old sealed electronics? Retailer probably sent it there.
Neither of this is fully right or wrong. It was a joint effort at frickery.
Both SoJ and SoA were eyeing the 3DO and Jaguar suspiciously, plus Sony had presented the Playstation. Remember that this is Winter '93-'94, the failure of the first two wasn't yet readily apparent. The Saturn is *at best* one year away, and 1994's outlook is kinda dodgy. Both Kalinske and Nakayama agreed this was a genuine problem, but the initially proposed solutions were wildly different. Kalinske's outline won out, which we know in retrospect was the wrong call. However it sort of made sense in context, which is why he was able to persuade Nakayama.
If you want total frickups that were 100% on SoJ, try the SVP chip saga, or their refusal to use the passthrough cartridge for other games.
Not that anon. In theory, the 32X seems like it could have worked. And if there were more games and they were a little better in quality, I think it could have had a real shot. But it wasn't executed well, and that falls on the shoulders of everyone involved, including Japan.
Announcing Saturn's Japanese release date as the same time of the North America 32x launch date was a HUGE blunder. Sega basically unintentionally signaled to every game developer that the 32x's days were numbered, and Sega had no long term plans for 32x. That it would be a waste of time to make games for 32x. That it would be best to wait since Saturn is just around the corner and to devote resources to that.
>In theory, the 32X seems like it could have worked.
There's a reason why that would've been unlikely. Namely, from a purely technological standpoint, the 32X was no better than the 3DO or Jaguar. Sure, it didn't have the Jaguar's design flaws, or the 3DO's shitty CPU, but it was fundamentally incapable of generating visuals that would've been distinctly above those from the other two's best efforts. It lacked a real graphical accelerator unit, it did everything via software brute-force (and blended the output with whatever came out of the base console's hardware). They needed a clean slate, away from the "sorta-3D-ish" attempts of the early-90s.
>Announcing Saturn's Japanese release date as the same time of the North America 32x launch date was a HUGE blunder.
That was a case of SoA (the tail) wagging the dog. While the US side wasn't great going into '94, Japan was catastrophic. Mega Drive straight-up fricking died in late-93. It had been treading water since '91, hence all the weird 3rd party collab shit they pulled at some point or another (the limo/airline unit, the modular laserdisc, the hybrid MD/PC thing etc.). They desperately needed to launch something that was *not* MD-related in '94, 32X or no 32X. Kalinske most likely failed to grasp the seriousness of the issue, probably because Nakayama completely failed to impress the situation upon him (Asians in general tend to suck at conveying unfavorable information in a clear and concise manner).
>There's a reason why that would've been unlikely. Namely, from a purely technological standpoint...
I understand where you are coming from. It's valuable info, but You are coming from the technical side. I would counter from the customer perspective. In 1994, the average customer didn't know all the tech data you mentioned. They only see what's on screen, and the price of the unit. It becomes a question of "value". How good does the 32x look on the TV, and how much does it cost?
- Assuming a game is made that pushes the 32x to its maximum power, can the 32x achieve 80% to 90% of the graphical fidelity of 3D0/Jaguar/Saturn?
- Can the customer look at that game and think "Wow the 32x is pretty close to these other systems, and is only half the price. I'm gonna buy it" ?
(and that's me not even mentioning "Sega 32x CD" games)
If the answer is yes, and you can support 32x for about 2 to 3 years it's a pretty good hit. Of course that didn't happen for various reasons, but the 32x succeeding was a possibility.
>can the 32x achieve 80% to 90% of the graphical fidelity of 3D0/Jaguar/Saturn?
The mass-market issue is, 32X doesn't fight just against 3DO Corp and Atari. It also fights against Sony and Nintendo. And, even when coded properly, its output is absolutely below the latter two, very noticeably so. And it stands to reason it would be, those two are dedicated polygon-churners. There's also another snag. If you want a 32X, you can't just buy one; you also need to buy a Genesis (plus a nest of cables, including two separate power adapters), and that inherently makes it less attractive.
>Sega 32x CD
An absolutely unholy monstrosity which barely worked at best of times. The base console was uniquely unsuitable for expand-ons due to its architecture, and having to make *two* of them work together was a near-sisyphean task. I suspect folks, tasked with making CD-32X games run adequately, started getting suicidal ideations at some point in the dev flow. Worse, the optical drive in the Sega CD was an audio-player derived one, instead of a CD-ROM grade one, which meant that, even though it conformed to the 1x speed standard on paper (which, by 1993, was slow as shit, with 2x being the norm), it had worse random seek/read times, and lower reliability, compared to an actual 1x CD-ROM.
And therein lies another problem. Cartridges were absolutely shit in terms of capacity. Sure, the 32X can physically run Tomb Raider code and display it on a screen. But it cannot run *the game*, as a standalone product. Even without prerendered cutscenes, even with compressed, downgraded visuals and sound/music, the game needs about 100 MB of space. The largest N64 cartridge was 64 MB, and the N64 never actually got a Tomb Raider port. I somehow doubt Sega would've even gone that high (largest 32X cart was 32 MB IIRC), or that buyers would've been inclined to pay that much (especially when a superior PS1 port would exist).
The only way the 32X would have worked is if there was a significant amount of time between it and the Saturn's launch dates, because unlike Nintendo's dual pillar strategy Sega was not going to support both of those pieces of hardware concurrently.
>Sega was not going to support both of those pieces of hardware concurrently.
Third parties dumped the 32x as fast as they adopted it. The 32x actually did sell well initially at launch, but things got really shaky when Sega announced an early Saturn launch for the NA market. retailers were dumping the 32x at fire sale prices at retail to make room for the Saturn. Or they were just boycotting Sega altogether. There were a lot of games cancelled for the add-on in a very short time.
>full 360 degree first person racer
>on 32x, with those graphics
Fricking kek. The developers probably wanted to rope once they realized what they were working with.
...hardware that was an order of magnitude more powerful than the PCs of the era they were already developing 3d games for?
Ok and what about the 15 other hardware failures Sega released?
If we can conveniently ignore those and focus on a few, and constantly make up excuses, we can rewrite the past and sega will release another console.
Because of this, I'm going to appreciate my 32X even more. I can't let Sega's sacrifice be in vain.
>went under
Sega is still in business last I checked
Sammy bought Sega in 2004. If Sammy or somebody else hadn't bought them, Sega probably wouldn't be around anymorer.
>Sega is still in business last I checked
You don't know how to check anything. Sega was bought out in the early 2000s when they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
sega cd and 32x were both mistakes. i say that as someone who had and liked the sega cd (but didnt get a 32x). i think they both cheapened sega's mindshare but the saturn never had a chance in the west regardless.
So what about...
SG-1000 (Mark 1, Mark 2, and Mark 3)
Master System
Sega CD
Sega Mega Karaoke
Sega Mega PC
Sega Mega Jet
Sega Mega Teradrive
Sega Pico
Sega Pico Advanced
Sega Laser Active
Sega Nomad
Sega Game Gear
Sega CDX
Sega Mega CD 32x
Sega HiSaturn
...and like 10 others.
....????
Lmao.
>No. Let's blame only the 32x!
Lmao.
No they didn't have a fricking sonic game during THE mascot era
Sega should have tard wrangled naka and co better
Weren't there like 2 different Sega companies, and they didn't even talk to each other?
That went well!!!
Arguably this shitshow happened because they talked with each other too much. If Sega of Japan just disappeared until 1995 and handed Sega of America the Saturn none of this would happen.
Pretty much. All Sega of Japan needed to do was focus on Japan. Let the other branches of the company handle America and Europe. Then Sega of Japan gives the Saturn to other branches in 1995, and tells them to sell it however they see fit. Just make money. Would have done better.
>If Nakayama told SoA to shut the frick up like Yamauchi did to NoA none of this would happen.
Fixed that for your deluded SoA mutt
If only Sega of Japan had a Chad like Yamauchi as the President
>If only Sega of Japan had a Chad like Yamauchi as the President
Lolno. SoJ were just as capable of mega-moronation as SoA.
SoJ bungled all its home consoles prior to MD (the only reason MD wasn't bungled was thanks to the western branches, it was a dud in Japan), it launched that pointless Game Gear, it believed that an overdesigned add-on (Sega CD) which was more expensive than the base console would reanimate sales, it completely fricked what could've been a very useful component (SVP), it refused to adopt a very promising piece of tech (passthrough cartridge), it underestimated home user appetite for 3D games, it kept its home and arcade divisions rigidly siloed away from one another etc.
>it launched that pointless Game Gear
Come on now. It had battery life problems but calling the Game Gear pointless as if there were no justifiable reason for it's existence is absurd. Having a handheld counterpart to your home console conferred a huge marketing benefit back then. It also held it's own for a spell.
Except:
1. The SMS failed in most regions, so few people cared about it;
2. SMS games were not really cross-compatible (even with the cartridge adapter), because they had been designed to be played on a TV, rather than a 3-inch LCD;
3. Battery life was *the* most important part of a handheld console: the Lynx, Game Gear, and TurboExpress were more advanced, from a tech standpoint, than the Game Boy; however their play times were 4-6 hours, compared to the GB's 10-12.
Sure, people who coded SMS games were already familiar with the internals, but that devteam synergy was not sufficient. The GG badly overshot the capabilities of handheld tech in the early-90s. Maybe if they went a more low-tech route (non-backlit high-clarity grayscale display) they could've clawed a bigger piece of the pie.
>IT'S THE FAULT OF THOSE FRICKING AMERICANS
>AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! FORGIVE ME, ZANZ- I MEAN, ANCESTORS! I FAILED!!
Tbh that add-on looks like a gnome toilet. It's entire worth is that of a small piece of shit.
If a half price console "add-on" failing to sell is able to destroy your company, then your company is in serious trouble and run by monkeys.
Sorry Yosuke Okunari. This article only makes you looks worse.
You forget the context, SEGA split a frick ton of internal R&D to make 32X software and convincing a bunch of third parties to sign up for the system, instead all of this effort could have gone to making sure the Saturn had a good launch lineup.
Knuckles Chaotix could have been a proper finished game, Virtua Racing, StarWars arcade etc should have all been launch titles or early games.
>Nintendo launches Virtual boy. It fails.
>Nintendo brushes it off and moves on. No worries.
>Sega launches 32x add on. It fails.
>Sega supposedly can't handle it, and the whole company collapses and Saturn fails.
Hmm...methinks something isn't right with Sega.
it's not about the number of fails, it's about the amount of money lost in your fail.
>it's not about the number of fails, it's about the amount of money lost in your fail.
Anon...Virtual Boy cost more than Sega 32x. Try again.
The virtual boy also was a live for less years and had less games.
it's not really a mystery by this point, only the most moronic burgers still defend the 32x.
32x was only 1 bad move and it was optional
saturn was the huge blunder and NOT having a mainline sonic title
at least 32x had chaotix
the virtual boy, n64, and gamecube were all massive failures but you don't see nintendo turning into a shovelware company
>n64
It sold 35 million units. How is that a failure?
because I didn't buy one
Fair enough.
You don't have any friends who owned an N64?
you know I'm not allowed to have friends
I bought a Playstation and my friend bought an N64. We would hang out at each other's houses and play each other's games. It was a fun time.
None of us had ever heard of Sega Saturn.
>None of us had ever heard of Sega Saturn.
they were the weird boxes you saw in the rental section with the cool box art
>Nintendo who already had way more money than Sega at their peak due to the NES and gameboy.
>2 of those failed consoles sold over twice as much as Sega's flops.
Dishonest
>passively cooled 3d without any fans
i want to go back
We all knew this. Many sega fans truly dislike the 32x.
I bought one for my tower of power but the 32x is a shit console. The few kids I know who did have one looked at it with disdain after it was revealed support was canceled..
I just got it to play blackthorn on an everdrive..
Even if you wanted it to play super scalers, the better versions of these can be found on the saturn.
Hypothetically, is it possible to develop games for the Sega 32x in modern days? I mean including making the cartridge work in an official 32x.
Genuine 32X blank cartridges are no longer available, IIRC. The guy porting Tomb Raider to the 32X is doing it via an EverDrive Pro.
Sega failed because it was two different companies trying to be one.
Nintendo survived by the heads in Japan having all final power over the company.
The thing is that Nintendo's japanese division is way more finacially competent than Sega will ever be.
Well yeah, they got there by doing horrible things to their partners.
Operation: Force Sega out of the hardware business
>Bernie Stolar becomes President
>Hires Roger Moore
>Stolar fricks up the Saturn
>Forces SoJ to pull the plug on the Saturn and rushes the Dreamcast
>SoA fires him but his crony Roger Moore is still there
>Roger Moore pulls the plug on the Dreamcast
>Roger Moore leaves for Microsoft in 2003
>Bernie Stolar had suggested that Sega sells themselves to Microsoft
It's so fricking obvious
If you went back in time and prevented Sony from releasing the PlayStation, or stopping Nintendo from even bringing up the idea of the SNES CD add-on, do you think Sega would've not crashed and burned as hard as they did? Would they still be in the console business today?
Americans will never own up to this ever since it was revealed that SoJ didn't want to go through with it but trusted SoA's judgement
And weebs will blame everyone but the Japanese.
Nah. Your story doesn't make sense. If it were up to the Americans, they would have just stayed with just Sega Genesis for another 1 to 2 years. Americans loved Genesis.
They did love Genesis, which is why SoA convinced SoJ that the American market would buy into a 32-bit add-on to the Genesis.
Do you have quotes or interviews from sources besides of Sega of Japan? There's a big conflict of interest here.
Americans aren't trustworthy to begin with, their word is utterly meaningless regarding their responsibility for the 32X fiasco.
Oh so you're arguing in bad faith.
That's what people who are telling us to listen to the amerifat side of the story are doing. There's literally no reason to do so when all they'll do is lie and try to shift the blame when it clearly is on them.
You have no interest in the truth just low iq tribalism.
We already know the truth. Literally the only group left defending SoA are americans. There's your actual low iq tribalism.
>We already know the truth.
We don't.
Sega of Europe stories and interviews confirm what Sega of America was saying. That Sega of Japan shut them out of discussions, and that Sega of Japan didn't listen to the other branches.
>Sega of Japan shut them out of discussions
If only.
>That's what people who are telling us to listen to the amerifat side of the story are doing. There's literally no reason to do so when all they'll do is lie and try to shift the blame when it clearly is on them.
This is like reading some subhuman claiming at the 7 seas that the Black person with the gun who shot some random bystander just because is innocent and that we have to listen to his side of the story
Add it to list of horrible hardware failures SoJ made.
>Tom Kalinske: I felt that we were rushing Saturn. We didn’t have the software right, and we didn’t have the pricing right, so I felt we should have stayed with Genesis for another year. I recognize that our volumes would have gone down, but I think we would have been a much healthier company. We would have been more profitable, and I think the folks who appreciated video games would have appreciated that we were still doing a lot of great product on the 16-bit hardware
Tom wanted to stay with the stock Genesis for another year.
>>Tom Kalinske: I felt that we were rushing Saturn. We didn’t have the software right, and we didn’t have the pricing right, so I felt we should have stayed with Genesis for another year. I recognize that our volumes would have gone down, but I think we would have been a much healthier company. We would have been more profitable, and I think the folks who appreciated video games would have appreciated that we were still doing a lot of great product on the 16-bit hardware
Tom Kalinske was right. Saturn was rushed. The software wasn't ready. The games weren't ready. The dev kits weren't ready. It had 1 good game as a launch title that was Virtua Fighter. But it didn't have anything else. Sega should have waited until 1996 (just like Nintendo) to launch Saturn in America and Europe. That's when the software and games were truly ready.
Saturn would be far behind in hardware if it released in 1996 when it was already available in japan by late 1994.
Saturn was rushed to market in 1994. It wasn't ready yet. The games weren't ready yet. It relied on Virtua Fighter (an arcade port) just to sell. The dev kits also sucked. 1996 was more realistic.
Agreed. Late 1995 for Japan. 1996 for the rest of the world.
>Saturn was rushed to market in 1994
Not at all, the Saturn is the way it is because they tried to add a 3D machine on top of a 2D and no amount of time would have made that cluster frick better, they'd need to start the machine from scratch.
>It relied on Virtua Fighter (an arcade port) just to sell
This was NEVER a problem before, in fact the only issue here is that they imported the vanilla port to the west instead of the remix from the get go.
>The dev kits also sucked
Dev mits overall sucked before Sony decided to grab the market by the balls.
It's wasn't much of Saturn issue and more of a "Sony outdid us again!"
In a weird way Sega was a victim of their own prior success. They just couldn't resist the urge to wring more money out of it between console generations and so we got all these half-assed intermediate quasi-consoles when what would have worked best was just nothing until the next one was ready. Sony ended up getting it right just by default; not having any other consoles or existing user base they had a clean start and the PS1 was their sole focus.
I still don't know why the frick Sega and NEC both decided to make their first forays into CD games as essentially accessories to their previous consoles. If you're moving off cartridges why the frick does the thing have to run through a cartridge-based console? I assume piggybacking off the existing hardware made the add-ons slightly less expensive but the key word here is 'slightly.' They were still expensive enough to scare off most people, and by making them add-ons you introduce all the other problems that doomed the whole thing like dividing your user base and not being able to sell to new adopters. If the Sega CD is its own separate console with Sonic CD as a launch title I think it does much better. Same with the Duo.
>I still don't know why the frick Sega and NEC both decided to make their first forays into CD games as essentially accessories to their previous consoles.
As far as I understand, the whole thing was started off by NEC (then Sega and Nintendo took notice). They made most of their money off hardware, because HudsonSoft took a big cut out of game royalties (hence the reason why NEC kept shitting out all sorts of random-ass PC-Engine variations throughout the years). The CD-ROM^2 wasn't very expensive to manufacture, since it was just a drive and some extra RAM. It was priced relatively high because NEC wanted dat moola.
Sega CD, OTOH, was very costly, due to all the processors that went inside it. It also used a motorized tray (the first gen, at least) which was costlier than the CD-ROM^2 top loader (and broke down a lot). So, while its price was high, Sega didn't actually make that much profit off it. They had to put a bunch of chips inside it since the drive would otherwise be unusable by the base console. Which, in retrospect makes one wonder whether Sega would've been better off either making the SCD into a standalone console, or not bothering with a CD drive add-on in the first place.
We all know how Nintendo's attempt ended up
>I still don't know why the frick Sega and NEC
>piggybacking off the existing hardware made the add-ons slightly less expensive
>key word here is 'slightly.'
it's all marketing planning, an slightly less difficulty time selling an slightly less expensive addon to parents slightly less inclined to buy their kids yet another console goes a long way in keeping the cash flow constant.
It's not like companies could crap new tech every six months, these things took time to move from the planning phase all the way to retail shelves.
In retrospective Kalinske was right, Sega got scared of the PSX, fear potentially compounded by Nintendo's massive PR shilling around the N64, and moved the american Saturn release forward almost a year eating up into the nascent 32x market, that left literally everyone feeling screwed and the rest is history.
The 32x was the issue but is not where the fault lies.
you're leaving out the part where SOA was watching what the pricepoint of the 3d0 and the Neo Geo did in terms of going to market and where SOJ wanted to launch the Saturn's pricepoint at. SOA was right that it was going to be a bloodbath of sticker shock compared to previous 2 generations going from $150 to $250 with pack-in games.
You're leaving out the part where SOJ said "we dont care about any of that because the Genesis (and sega CD) is a dead platform now, and we can't bring "nothing" to the market for 2 years. That is not an option SOA is allowed to have, so come up with something else. Meanwhile SOJ is going to do exactly what we said we were going to do. Come to market first and for $400." This was why SOA was in the position to 'convince' SOJ the 32-x would work in the first place, because SOJ put them there.
The one thing you could reasonable, but only in hindsight, leverage against SOA in this was that they were using sus inventory practices which mean that they had a vested interest in continuing with the Genesis because there was a metric frickton of inventory still out in the wild with retailers. But even then, they knew if they fricked up the arrangement they had with retailers when it came to stocking Genesis's that nobody would carry their shit in variace like they had been meaning Sega would have to keep those assets on-hand and therefore taxable and not leveragable which is partly how they made money. And then the Saturn launched and retailers got fricked up the way SOJ ran things.
Finally, like everyone else who wears blinders, you're leaving out the part where SOJ was in charge.
Yes SoJ was in charge, they shouldn't have listened to the americans during 5th gen.
So lets run the thought experiment. They didn't listen to SOA when it came to the Japanese market and did exactly what they wanted without any consideration for the 32-x.
>caught off guard by competition with a superior machine and a lower to-market price
>added features and rushed to market to be first, but at a higher pricepoint.
>had the benefit of one must-have ultra popular title, VF
>saturn outsold PSX about 1.7:1 in 1994 for about 45 days
>by 1995 end, Sony was completely fricking eating Saturn's lunch. by 1996, they were eating Nintendo's too. The only thing that was a threat to Sony was the revised Gameboy and frickin Pokemon juggernaut.
SOJ was in charge, and they shouldn't have listened to themselves either. They had already lost the shirt on their back by 1995, and were only able to continue with their business decisions because they were still flush with the cash the north american genesis sales afforded them.
>SOA in this was that they were using sus inventory practices which mean that they had a vested interest in continuing with the Genesis because there was a metric frickton of inventory still out in the wild with retailers.
Proven false. This is just how American retail operates. You must have surplus inventory . Japan doesn't understand this.
>Proven false.
no it hasn't, and this was not how Nintendo did retail either.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, just because it can be done doesn't make it something to be done.
>no it hasn't, and this was not how Nintendo did retail either.
This is exactly how nintendo operated in America. Same with Sony. This is how every company that sells at major retail stores operates. It's standard operating procedure. You must have surplus inventory available to send to retail stores if requested.
Even though i'm a weeb, Sega of American's faults are also partially SoJ's faults since they are technically the ones who own the branches.
No matter how you look at it, the nips at sega will never be innocent in this story.
>Sega of American's faults are also partially SoJ's faults since they are technically the ones who own the branches.
>No matter how you look at it, the nips at sega will never be innocent in this story.
Correct.
1. If Sega of America wanted the 32x, then Sega of Japan was foolish for approving such a request. They are the home office and have ultimate authority and responsibility.
2. If Sega of America didn't want the 32x, then Sega of Japan was foolish for not listening to Sega of America.
Either way, Sega of Japan bears responsibility here.
Sega of Japan was indeed foolish to listen to amerifats. Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets, Gen 5 goes much better for them, and they may still be around making consoles.
>Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario
Sega dies in 4th gen.
>Ultimately, if you remove the americans from the scenario, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets, Gen 5 goes much better for them, and they may still be around making consoles.
So you want to NOT sell Sega Saturn in America? Lmao.
The 32X, + SEGA of America's crap games, +Saturn architecture being a mess.
>Saturn architecture being a mess.
it blows my mind how sega were one of the early pioneers of 3d arcade gaming but could never find a way (or will) to make it cheap enough for their consoles. they were making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and they still sat back and did nothing until it was too late. the japs gave up, so we got the saturn.
>, SEGA focuses entirely on the Saturn in all markets
the only thing they got right was the custom audio chip produced by yamaha (that still hasn't been completely exploited to this very day). if they had included more ram and pushed it as a 2d console (which it's excellent at) it probably would have had more success.
>SOJ was in charge.
CSK Corporation was in charge. they owned Sega at the time.
Sega Saturn - $399
PlayStation - $299
>Pay 400 dollarydoos in muttrica (even more overseas) just to play some shitty kusoges, one (1) game that you can already play by putting quarters in a machine, AND no one Even fricking knows it existence and see you as the weirdo, not even mentioning the fact that the mediocre games cost a lot because they are chinks and are just VNs
>Instead of just paying 300 dollarydoos, CHIPPING THAT MOTHERFRICKER SO YOU CAN PLAY WHATEVER THE FRICK YOU WANT PIRATED, and having access to absolute bangers left and Right, some of which are nearly identical to the arcades in your home, and ALSO is the cool Kids console for playing some vidyas with your Friends, instead of that kiddie nintendo with Mario
Yeah, i can see why the Play 1 was a success after all, while also don't downplaying the N64, tho
Piracy on PS1 didn't start until a few years after launch. There wasn't much to pirate in its first couple years either so that wasn't a factor until later, after the Saturn already kicked the bucket.
Bruh you're grossly overestimating the amount of people who chipped their playstation. I'd guess it was maybe 5% of PS1 owners
>The 32X was released on November 21, 1994, in North America, in time for the holiday season that year.[2] As announced, it retailed for $159.99, and had a reasonably successful launch in the marketplace.[1] Demand among retailers was high, and Sega could not keep up with orders for the new system.[2] Over 1,000,000 orders had been placed for 32X units, but Sega had only managed to ship 600,000 units by January 1995.[12] In the United States, nearly 500,000 units were sold by Christmas 1994,[14] exceeding Sega's initial sales projection.[15] Launching at about the same price as a Genesis console, the price of the 32X was less than half of what the Saturn's price would be at launch.[7] Despite Sega's initial promises, only six games were available at its North American launch, including Doom, Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and Cosmic Carnage. Although Virtua Racing was considered strong, Cosmic Carnage "looked and played so poorly that reporters made jokes about it".[2][16] Games were available at a retail price of $69.95.[13] Advertising for the system included images of the 32X being connected to a Genesis console to create an "arcade system". Japan received the 32X on December 3, 1994.[17] The PAL release came in January 1995, at a price of £169.99, and also experienced initial high demand.[1]
Sounds like it was initially successful in all regions to the point Sega could not keep up with demand. The market was there and hungry for more 16bit (32?) goodness but Sega botched it like usual. Sega of America was on the right track.
I get the feeling that this "Saturngay" is just a shitposter falseflagging.
I thought this was common knowledge by now? All of the effort was supposed to go to the Saturn and then eventually Dreamcast but 32X royally fricked them over forever tarnishing consumer trust. I could imagine it destroyed profits as well.
The smart play would been to not release 32x.
But if they had to release 32x, then they should have done a worldwide release in Japan, North America, and Europe in 1994. Then release Saturn in late 1996. Thars 2 years of support for 32x.
That would show the public that Sega is committed to the 32x product. Releasing it in North America and Europe only was a mistake because it told everyone that Sega was not committed to their own products
>they should have done a worldwide release in Japan, North America, and Europe in 1994.
It would've completely bombed in Japan, due to low Mega Drive install base. Remember that MD was basically dead there, had been since late '93. And it was a distant third to the PC-Engine in terms of sales.
The only winning move was not to play. Avoid the 32X entirely. Let SoA and SoE drag out the 16-bit gen for another year and a half (but have them set up infrastructure to support the Saturn), release Saturn in Japan late-'94 as intended, then release it in US/Europe mid-late '95, after a more sizable launch lineup had been put together.
>release Saturn in Japan late-'94 as intended
No. That's what killed the hype for 32x. Game studios know that once a console gets released in Japan, then it will be out in another year for the rest of the world. That's why studios didn't feel like supporting 32x.
>No. That's what killed the hype for 32x.
In my proposed scenario there wouldn't be a 32X.
>Avoid the 32X entirely.
32x didn't kill the company. It was Sega of Japan releasing so much pointless hardware.
Sega SG-1000 Mark 1
Sega SG-1000 Mark 2
Sega SG-1000 Mark 3
Sega Master System
Sega CD
Sega Mega Karaoke
Sega Mega PC
Sega Mega Jet
Sega Mega Teradrive PC
Sega Pico
Sega Pico Advanced
Sega Laser Active
Sega Nomad
Sega Game Gear
Sega CDX
Sega HiSaturn
Sega HiSaturn Navi
Sega Saturn Karaoke
Sega JVC V-Saturn
Sega Skeleton Saturn
Sega PriFun
Sega Saturn Arcade Hotel
Almost none of these sold well except for the original Mega Drive. Yet you want to blame 32x? Lmao. Sega of Japan is a joke.
I feel like the Dreamcast had a better chance at succeeding than the Saturn but I don’t know how Sega could get through 5th gen in a decent enough standing in terms of it’s financial situation and brand health for them to support the Dreamcast enough for it to actually survive. The Saturn, regardless of how you view it in hindsight, completely missed the mark on what consumers wanted during that era. It would need to be an entierly different system. The Dreamcast could have succeeded if it was released by a healthier company.
Even if the Dreamcast did twice as well, I can’t imagine them releasing another console. It’s difficult to imagine a timeline where Sega survives in the console market.
If Sega of Japan wanted to survive, they needed a cheaper to produce system. Sega Saturn drained too much of the company's resources.
Sega was never going to win head2head against Sony's billions of dollars.
Sega of Japan needed a system that used cheaper hardware, and to focus on the Western Market since that's how Sega made their real big money.
They should have just went all in on the Sega 32x or the Sega Neptune. The 32 bit games won't look as good, but it's much cheaper and less expensive. They can alsk sell the Sega Neptune in Japan since the Mega Drive install base was so low.
Nintendo has proven that what matters isn't top of the line hardware. It's the franchises and games. That's what Sega needed to do.
>The 32 bit games won't look as good, but it's much cheaper and less expensive.
You'll end up with games which are uglier (lower processing power), decontented (mix of shorter, worse sound/music, no cutscenes etc. because of capacity constraints), and cost as much as PS1 games (due to cartridges being more expensive to manufacture).
Loading times will be better than Playstation. Imagine Mario 64 but with Sonic. That's a system seller.
You're more likely to get that on Saturn hardware than on a 32x.
Saturn CD drive isn't fast enough. Not even Playstation CD drive was fast enough.
With your logic, I'm sure Sega Saturn crushed Nintendo 64 right? All that superior sound and storage?
Oh wait N64 sold 7 times as much Sega Saturns.
Lel
90s gamers did care about graphics and performance, storage is something almost nobody even considered into the equation and sound quality didn't really mattered as long as it still could do catchy music.
Different hardware won't suddenly make every dev design a good game for it though.
It's almost like the 64 was a far better machine at 3D which was heavily pushed at the time.
The Neptune won't have that advantage, in fact it'd be even worse than the Saturn.
The difference between 32x and Saturn is small. The cheaper Neptune will allow Sega to save money, and survive the generation. The point is for Sega to change their strategy and not try to fight Sony head on.
The only other alternative is for Sega to adapt their Sega Model 1 arcade board for 5th generation. That's the only 2 options without coming up with a completely new console.
>The difference between 32x and Saturn is small.
Is it?
Yeah, it's about 32x.
It's. Not. Always. About. Hardware. It's. About. The. GAMES!
>Even if the Dreamcast did twice as well, I can’t imagine them releasing another console. It’s difficult to imagine a timeline where Sega survives in the console market.
Basically, for Sega to succeed as a console company, they need to sell at least 30 million consoles for each generation to earn a healthy profit to fund the next console. That means marketing the console to the West and making a console that appeals to Western countries. Japan is too small a market to be the main focus.
Sega also needs pay much more attention to their franchises. Every game needs to be polished, and they need to make proper sequels for each franchise like Nintendo. That means Sonic, Streets of Rage, Crazy Taxi, After Burner, Out Run, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Virtua Universe (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Virtua On, etc), all need to be well made.
Nintendo does it, but Sega seems to struggle with this idea.
Sega Saturn should have been a combination of Sega CD and 32x. Not some brand new system.
nah, the 2 dont work together very well. Just putting them in one box wouldn't help.
people don't understand without experience how slow a doublespeed drive is, and the likelyhood on knowing a singlespeed is even less.
>Dev mits overall sucked before Sony decided to grab the market by the balls.
SOA (since SOJ didnt seem to care) could have mitigated it by hiring a damn full time translator to completely translate the documentation that actually was available in Japanese. Its not like they didn't have money to keep one on the payroll.
Sega jap complains at sega burger.
Sega burger makes a 32x whilst sega jap doesnt tell burger their working on the saturn and plan to release it early.
Sega burger makes plans for 32x and gets devs/publishers onboard.
Sega jap tells these devs/pubs not to work with the 32x because the saturn is coming out.
Release saturn early screwing over retail store plans.
No sonic for the launch nor other franchises people were expecting.
Sega US argue with Jap again.
32x ends up being abandoned with one of the worst game library's in history.
Saturn is marketed badly outside of japan.
Is only really a success in japan because they treated it right there and released games like darkstalkers 3, kof and others.
Had nicer better looking models you could buy in Japan whilst everywhere else had the crap black saturn.
We all know the real problem is sega USA and Japan are both morons that argued and fought with each other constantly.
Just look at the shit storm that happened with streets of rage 2.
It's both their fault the 32x got made and canned and it's both their fault the saturn was handled so badly
Sega jap is more responsible because they are the leader office and supposed to set an example. Not backstabbing other branches like a petty child.
>Sega jap is more responsible because they are the leader office and supposed to set an example
I agree to a point but sega usa did a lot of moronic shit and a fair amount of backstabbing themselves.
Look up on the history of sor2 and why the characters on the box don't look like how they do in the game and the shitty fax messages sent from US/Jap over the whole process.
Neither side can complain or blame the 32x when both just abandoned the megacd after its initial launch
When Sega of America sells 30 million Sega Genesis and Sega Japan can only sell 1 million...you listen to Sega of America.
Why? Because chinks in japan land prefer a shitter console (snes) with censored and downgraded games?
Japan has a history of doing dumb shit with consoles but these 2 really should have worked together instead of acting like 2 sub human apes.
Why when it's a fact?
>Why? Because chinks in japan land prefer a shitter console (snes) with censored and downgraded games?
>Japan has a history of doing dumb shit with consoles but these 2 really should have worked together instead of acting like 2 sub human apes.
Because Sega of Japan keeps making the same mistake again. They rush launched Mega Drive with almost no games. The marketing was weird too. The whole thing was rushed.
I don't know why Sega of Japan is obsessed with rushing products to market when they aren't ready.
>Look up on the history of sor2 and why the characters on the box don't look like how they do in the game and the shitty fax messages sent from US/Jap over the whole process.
Do you have a link to the fax messages somewhere?
>hey boss check out this proposal
>whoa sounds good I'll sign off on it
>WTF WHY DID I SIGN OFF ON THIS THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT
>Sega sends devkits of Sega CD to developers
>developers have to learn how to make games for the new hardware
>A year later, Sega sends devkits of Sega 32x to developers
>developers have to learn how to make games for the new hardware
>6 months later, Sega sends devkits of Sega Saturn to developers
>developers have to learn how to make games for the new hardware
Sega pissed off devs the most. No one wanted to develop for the Saturn by that point and retailers were tired of the wasted shelf space from their previously unsupported hardware.
cringe and low iq take
>Personal account from SoJ executive
:
>Personal account from SoA executive
:O
That SoJ Executive isn't the one you should be asking. There are much better SoJ executives you should ask. But they will never talk.
SoA CEO carries more weight.
>But they will never talk.
Because they're more honorable thanks to their culture. American business culture encourages public backstabbing and throwing others under the bus
OP's pic says otherwise.
Even when they talk, they do it moderately without big claims. Meanwhile the americans are all like "UHHH THOSE PESKY JAPANESE DID IT! THEY RUINED SEGA! USA USA USA USA!"
>Even when they talk, they do it moderately without big claims.
Saying they lost the gen because of the 32x is a big claim though and conveniently out of all of Sega's horrible hardware failures of which there are many, the 32x is the only one Japan wants to talk about.
>Meanwhile the americans are all like "UHHH THOSE PESKY JAPANESE DID IT! THEY RUINED SEGA! USA USA USA USA!"
weeb nonsense.
Saturn needed to be a 3D focused machine, not $100 more than the PlayStation and a kickass Sonic 4 on launch or close to it and the Saturn would have hit the ground running in NA.
>Even high level Sega staff blame the 32X as the reason the company went under.
Didn't Sega make 30 different pieces of hardware for Mega Drive and Saturn? Why would 32x failing be the one thing that sunk Sega?
I, too, enjoy posting replies to long threads without reading them first
>32x
Nope. It was the Sega Saturn Karaoke system that killed Sega. Ultra expensive and didn't sell well.
The truth is, even if Sega made all the right moves, it would still be in a lot of trouble trying to compete with everyone else. At best, it might be a less successful Nintendo, today. I say this as a Sega fanboy.
Truth.
Sega was a 1 billion dollar company.
Sony was a 50 billion dollar company (probably way more today).
The amount of money Sony could bring to the fight was massive.
No amount of Sega business strategies could beat Sony when Sony could just throw money at game studios and buy exclusive games for Playstation.
Yeah because it's obvious