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[Team Andromeda]

KoF '96 plays a lot differently. Rolls instead of dodges (has recovery rolls), running instead of dashing, throw breaks, and aerial guard (neutral or backwards jump).

And if you mixed the fighters and stages in Mega Mix you could have matches that played differently to the standard FV or VF2. No enclosed walls stages, which was different from the standard FV gameplay and you could do the reverse for VF2 gameplay and hell you could make VF2 play a lot more like Tekken using the infinite plane of the VPD2 so there were no ring outs , you even had the dodge move from VF3 in there too

The clue was in the name of the game, you could mix it up

... and?

Is there some point you're going to get to in the future? Does using a digital controller on a PC suddenly give it magic capabilities to replace a fully analog mouse for horizontal *and* vertical mouselook in first person shooters? Because the verticality of the levels was one thing that was fresh about Duke and Quake, and that's why I wanted them to play on a system with mouse controls.

And it just means you're making excuses. You couldn play the likes of Tomb Raider 2, Colin McRae on the PC with digital controls via a Pad, it wasn't just a keyboard.

Megamix was literally using the engine from an earlier game (FV) and adding content from another earlier game (

Rather silly that (again) you mean to say SNK wasn't using the same engine with its KOF games? Anway you can use the same engine and have completely different games. Not all RE Engine games play the same or games that use Unreal 4 or 5.

So don't pretend like it was some innovative new experience.

Innovative not for a sec, but you could have a new experience in Mega Mix to that of playing either VF2 or FV on their own, Thanks to how you could mix fighters, ring outs, walls Ect

As for KOF '94, that game was never available for regular home consoles

I had it on my Neo Geo CD.

Did this somehow get me more interesting Saturn games to play in '97?

I doubt you ever were that interested in Saturn in the 1st place. Any game people list you hit back and call out with various excuses. In the same way I might look to make fun of the last year of the Cube gaming wise, in a thread on how it failed.

LOL! Its lousy quality was the final nail in the Saturn's coffin.

The gameplay was ace. The only nail in the coffin is you making yourself out to be fan of Saturn.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

I like the Saturn but I would like it more if Sega had chosen not to release it
If they had stayed from 1995 to 2001 making games for PS1 and PC, it would have been cool, better than having participated in the 5th gen with an outdated console.

 

[NeverYouMind]

And if you mixed the fighters and stages in Mega Mix you could have matches that played differently to the standard FV or VF2. No enclosed walls stages, which was different from the standard FV gameplay and you could do the reverse for VF2 gameplay and hell you could make VF2 play a lot more like Tekken using the infinite plane of the VPD2 so there were no ring outs , you even had the dodge move from VF3 in there too

I absolutely love playing Fighters Megamix. Half the time I play it by Fighting Vipers high juggle with aerial recovery rules and the other half I play by Virtua Fighter rules. With VF3 move sets and unique balancing I cannot understand how anyone could think it plays anything like Virtua Fighter 2.

 

[Alexios]

If you want a racer with a longer solo mode on Saturn, there is Choro Q Park. NFS, WipEout XL, Drift King '97 etc. too. Maybe Code R & Touge 2 among others. Street Racer has a couple dozen (bite sized) tracks, Hang On GP has 6 plus mirror versions (with 20 bikers each race I'd say it rivals Ridge Racer visually, a bit more pop in maybe, but like Ridge Racer is worse than Sega Rally this one's a less exciting if still underrated for how early it released game - a sequel with some better animations, improved controls for all devices, not just the wheel, and extra hype in atmosphere would be rad).


Whichever float your boat. Sega Rally is still the one to get most play time without being a "long" game, to perfect runs and/or go back years/decades later because of arcade goodness, fun and style that is not even superseded by later generation sequels and competitors, unlike other games ​

Some Touge 2 footage showing the CRT transparencies, though the quality isn't as nice as above, a glimpse of Hang-On GP with the wheel though Justin shows the (PAL) game better above and more Choro Q Park with speedy cars & driver!

Rewatching the previous cleaner Touge 2 footage they've even got some fake side view mirror effect for the third person view car models, it shifts around as the cars move in relation to the camera even though it's just a handful of pixels, lol.​

 

[Team Andromeda]

I absolutely love playing Fighters Megamix. Half the time I play it by Fighting Vipers high juggle with aerial recovery rules and the other half I play by Virtua Fighter rules. With VF3 move sets and unique balancing I cannot understand how anyone could think it plays anything like Virtua Fighter 2.

I enjoyed it because it was a bit of fun and different from the seriousness of VF 2 - I can still remember one of my friends pissing himself laughing when the Daytona car was doing a tire spin against his characters head, but it was never one of my fav fighting games on the Saturn. I was super impressed with the intro mind, it was when AM#2 started to start to get up to Namco sort of standards for a nice CGI intro plus it was full screen and top quality too.

 

[Crayon]

I remember megamix being 30fps? Or am I trippin?

 

[Alexios]

I remember megamix being 30fps? Or am I trippin?

Trippin.

Yeah, would have been rad to get a VF3 port on Saturn, it was still VF3 when playing on the several flat arenas in the arcade and most people disliked the uneven arenas anyway, hence they ditched them for VF4 (and Tekken 4 copied them from VF3 but 5 ditched them for the same reason, lol).

Not that anyone would expect a 32bit console to match the Model 3 in every way so if removing the 3D arenas meant also removing all the extra animations for those surfaces and the game logic that went with them making the port possible, yes, obviously people would glady take the game.

But I doubt it'd be hailed as amazing by the usual detractors if it didn't come with Namco-like extras and bonus modes and what not yet Sega wasn't doing that back then (only finally gave single player a thought with VF4 Evo on PS2, in a different way still), it'd be treated much like Last Bronx.

Though Master System/Game Gear Virtua Fighter Animation was a neat effort adapting the anime storyline, lol. Maybe one of the first fighting games to ditch the common format of opening/character ending, incorporating all characters going through a cinematic connected storyline instead?

 

[Crayon]

Trippin.

That means they could have done a decent version of vf3. Just with flat floors and the stages simplified a bit.That would be so nice to have. Having the almost-vf3 versions of the characters was such a tease. But it was closest we ever got on saturn.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

That means they could have done a decent version of vf3. Just with flat floors and the stages simplified a bit.That would be so nice to have. Having the almost-vf3 versions of the characters was such a tease. But it was closest we ever got on saturn.

You're removing a key aspect of VF3's gameplay there. It's no longer VF3 at that point.

VF3 was truly a next-gen game.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Saturn is embarrassing in full 3D department.

That's why it didn't last long on the market, Sega tried to avoid it but made the same mistake it made with the SG 1000.

castle is the market; Sony taught the formula for conquering the castle and also taught how to protect their castle.

- Find the company with the best cpu , gpu (LSI/Toshiba) and make a deal.
- Position the console at the same price as the lower-end consoles.

Microsoft did this in 2001, what went wrong?

- Sony increased spending on games, GT3 looked as good as PGR, in 2002 the power of the Xbox was a reality but games like Kingdom Hearts were good enough on ps2, in 2003 the PS2 had Jak 2 and Silent Hill 3, in 2004 Gran Turismo 4, in 2005 well Microsoft started the 7th gen.

What should Sega have done?
- Better games
- especially avoiding 3D and avoiding racing games.
- Many games that we know from Saturn would need to cease to exist.
- Make many clones of Duke Nukem, Guardian Heroes and Pandemonium, with so many games at some point one of them would be a success.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

That's why it didn't last long on the market, Sega tried to avoid it but made the same mistake it made with the SG 1000.

castle is the market; Sony taught the formula for conquering the castle and also taught how to protect their castle.

- Find the company with the best cpu , gpu (LSI/Toshiba) and make a deal.
- Position the console at the same price as the lower-end consoles.

Microsoft did this in 2001, what went wrong?

- Sony increased spending on games, GT3 looked as good as PGR, in 2002 the power of the Xbox was a reality but games like Kingdom Hearts were good enough on ps2, in 2003 the PS2 had Jak 2 and Silent Hill 3, in 2004 Gran Turismo 4, in 2005 well Microsoft started the 7th gen.

What should Sega have done?
- Better games
- especially avoiding 3D and avoiding racing games.
- Many games that we know from Saturn would need to cease to exist.
- Make many clones of Duke Nukem, Guardian Heroes and Pandemonium, with so many games at some point one of them would be a success.

You (and apparently many ITT) don't actually understand the Saturn's architecture at all. The biggest problems with the Saturn's design were the two CPUs having to share the 32-bit external bus when each CPU's external bus was 32-bit wide on the data side (and presumed address side, though since these systems didn't need 4 GB of address space some of those bits might've been disabled), the lack of documentation for the SCU DSP, no option for SCU DSP programming outside of assembly (because of the VLIW nature of its design for up to 6x 16-bit instructions per clock), no local off-chip RAM for the SCU DSP (the SH2s had to micromanage allocation of data to it), SCU DSP's access to only the slower WRAM of the SH2 CPUs, lack of a hardware divider in the SCU DSP, and the VDP1's forward texture mapping.

The thing is, all of these had counterbalances to various levels and programmers who either weren't lazy or weren't rushed could've found ways to deal with them, since SEGA generally provided tons of documentation on almost every aspect of the system aside the SCU DSP. The SH2s had a much more sophisticated & efficient on-chip cache than the R3000A in the PS1, which didn't actually have a cache but rather scratchpad memory on-chip at size of 1 KB. Each SH2 has 4 KB of L1$; smart programmers are always going to prioritize working with data in the cache vs. constantly accessing slower off-chip memory, so as long as the caches for the SH2s were filled, neither would go hungry and waste cycles while the other went to fetch data from system RAM. They both also ran at the same clock so in that aspect synchronization was rather painless. It would have been preferable if the SCU had a way to pack 32-bit data into 16-bit format to then feed both SH2s concurrently, but that would've required both SH2s to integrate on-chip decompression engines, which wasn't common back then or even feasible in consumer-level processors.

Alternatively, they could've baked in some software decompression routines on off-chip ROM for programs to access through a function call, but SEGA probably deemed that not worth the cost to them, because in this case you'd want very fast MROMs that way no need to copy the data to RAM (the whole point here being to alleviate accesses to system RAM as much as possible since it'd be shared by both SH2s). Letting programs run their own software decompression routines would've only been feasible if both SH2s had their own off-chip RAM blocks. SCU DSP documentation would've remained a problem regardless unless SEGA provided full documentation, but programming it in assembly or some low-level proprietary language wasn't in itself an issue. Many DSPs functioned like this, especially those with VLIW architectures. The SCU DSP still had 4 KB of on-chip cache either way. The SCU DSP not having a hardware divider isn't a major bottleneck since 3D math operations are much more reliant on multiplies, plus it was faster to just multiply by a reciprocal to do division that way for optimal fixed point calculations & results. 3D geometry data was always going to feed back to the SH2s anyway where you were expected to continue operations before sending things off to the VDP1 & VDP2 (or back to the SCU DSP for yet further calculations where it could then send off to VDP1 & VDP2).

As far as VDP1's forward texture mapping, well the main thing that broke was transparency effects, but you could dither pixels and let the natural blending of CRTs soften those for a "good enough" transparency effect if needed. There are bigger issues related to VDP1 such as overdraw due to wasted cycles for forward rendering that'd be worth focusing on, but the PS1 had similar overdraw issues even without forward rendering because it and Saturn (and N64 to a lesser degree) did immediate mode rendering. It wasn't until Dreamcast that a console got around that with tile-based deferred rendering, though Saturn's VDP2 avoided overdraw because of its tiled architecture and on-the-fly rendering (like pre-5th gen systems or how the Atari Jaguar did its rendering).

So if you wanted the most out of Saturn for 3D, you'd balance your rendering load between VDP1 and VDP2, because the VDP2 could do Mode 7-style 3D plane rotations for two planes, among some other things, to integrate with 3D generated by VDP1. Now if VDP2 could've done per-pixel color math blend operation, that'd have virtually eliminated the issue of VDP1's transparency breaking due to overdraw caused by its forward texture mapping, but the technology for that wasn't possible yet, not in a home console aimed at consumer homes in the mid '90s. Even most N64 games ditched using the system's Z-buffering hardware because it was computationally expensive and used a lot of memory, which was made worst by the ridiculously high latency of its RDRAM.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

VDP-1 (the Saturn's 3D engine) is simply too weak, representing 50% to 66% of the power of the PS1's Toshiba GPU.

No need to know anything more.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

And what is the Toshiba GPU in PS1, exactly? Because AFAIK, it's not a GPU; it's a rasterizer.

None of the consoles that gen had geometry T&L integrated into the graphics chip directly, that's what DSP cores (either specific ASICs of their own, or integrated into larger ASICs (SCU DSP, RSP), or integrated into the CPU (GTE, SH2 MACs & DIVU)) were there for.

 

[cireza]

VDP-1 (the Saturn's 3D engine) is simply too weak, representing 50% to 66% of the power of the PS1's Toshiba GPU.

No need to know anything more.

VDP-1 is too weak for full 3D games. This argument can be "acceptable" maybe, even if we do have some full 3D games performing quite well on the console for the time. Please put some context otherwise it doesn't mean anything.

As soon as you start filling the screen with pixels from VDP-2, which is how the Saturn was designed, you get absolutely stunning games that most of the time could not be made on PS1 because VDP2 was an absolute monster at pushing backgrounds and layers.

 

[Team Andromeda]

VDP-1 is too weak for full 3D games. This argument can be "acceptable" maybe, even if we do have some full 3D games performing quite well on the console for the time. Please put some context otherwise it doesn't mean anything.

As soon as you start filling the screen with pixels from VDP-2, which is how the Saturn was designed, you get absolutely stunning games that most of the time could not be made on PS1 because VDP2 was an absolute monster at pushing backgrounds and layers.

While I agree, Games like Daytona USA CE and Sega Rally show the brute force grunt of the SH-2's and VDP1 since the VDP2 was basically relegated to the hud display and bonnet view (in Daytona)

 

[cireza]

While I agree, Games like Daytona USA CE and Sega Rally show the brute force grunt of the SH-2's and VDP1 since the VDP2 was basically relegated to the hud display and bonnet view (in Daytona)

It was enough for 95/96/97 I think, it would have needed some advancements to fare well in 98/99. Maybe these could have been made under different circumstances.

But again, many of the most successful games of that gen were NOT full 3D games. Final Fantasy and Resident Evil games, for example.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It was enough for 95/96/97 I think, it would have needed some advancements to fare well in 98/99. Maybe these could have been made under different circumstances.

But again, many of the most successful games of that gen were NOT full 3D games. Final Fantasy and Resident Evil games, for example.

While the game was disappointing in that it didn't look or play like Daytona USA . I can't think of any PS1 or N64 game that had 40 cars on the same track, running full screen and a stable 30 FPS like in Daytona CE and that game was pure VDP1 and the SH-2's and no doubt the DSP chip

Like you say mind the Saturn wasn't meant to be used like that, when you used the VDP2 and VDP1 along with the SH-2's you got these level of graphics

 

[StreetsofBeige]

For gamers that didnt even care about the increased price or FF or MGS or tons of Sega arcade ports (where VF was their big game with a million variations), Saturn was still doomed.

PS1 had better 3D, transparencies which were a cool thing at the time, cinema clips looked smoother, and their first party and third party games were simply better. Their first party games were fresh IPs and had more meat to them. And their first party sports games destroyed the junk Sega Sports were, where Sega could only make 1 shitty NFL game and then bailed. They didnt even bother making annual sports games for the key sports like Sony did. And 3D games had better frame rates on PS1 too.

But to top it off, add in the advantages PS had from my first paragraph as extra nails in the coffin. With $100 more expensive being a huge no-no. At that time consoles were $200 US. PS1 with CD drive is $300. And Saturn comes out at $400. wtf? lol. Even now in the 2010s and 2020s, someone trying to do a $100 price gap is nuts. Just imagine it for lots of gamers and families in 1995. Insane business, product and gaming strategy.

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

Checks in...Shrug...Goes back to playing Sega Saturn games...

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

But to top it off, add in the advantages PS had from my first paragraph as extra nails in the coffin. With $100 more expensive being a huge no-no. At that time consoles were $200 US. PS1 with CD drive is $300. And Saturn comes out at $400. wtf? lol.

Do you know why the price difference didn't kill the Saturn in Japan?
Two reasons: Virtua Fighter was a phenomenon driven by innovation and a strong marketing campaign that lasted exactly 12 months. And because, in stores, the console was sold below the list price, for the same price as the PlayStation.

Everything was very new, so Sega took advantage by selling the Sega Saturn as a 64-bit console, but after some time the difference in power became apparent. In America, it was stillborn due to the price-to-performance ratio I mean people read magazines, and any lie was put to the test by commentators. (In the only market where Sega had relevance man losing America meant bankruptcy for Sega. you were quite accurate not much analysis is needed.

 

[cireza]

their first party

Wow, I don't think I can list a single first party game outside of Gran Turismo. Everything was third parties being bought by Sony as exclusives or marketing deals. So I have no clue how they were better than SEGA's.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Do you know why the price difference didn't kill the Saturn in Japan?
Two reasons: Virtua Fighter was a phenomenon driven by innovation and a strong marketing campaign that lasted exactly 12 months. And because, in stores, the console was sold below the list price, for the same price as the PlayStation.

Everything was very new, so Sega took advantage by selling the Sega Saturn as a 64-bit console, but after some time the difference in power became apparent. In America, it was stillborn due to the price-to-performance ratio I mean people read magazines, and any lie was put to the test by commentators. (In the only market where Sega had relevance man losing America meant bankruptcy for Sega. you were quite accurate not much analysis is needed.

I never owned it but rented Wipeout on PS. Good game but I don't care for sci fi racers so never bought it.

Then when wipeout came out for Saturn it was on demo tv in a game store I went to. It looked like dog shit.

BUT, I remember my issue of Gamefan bragging the Saturn version looked better. What a giant lie that was.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Wow, I don't think I can list a single first party game outside of Gran Turismo. Everything was third parties being bought by Sony as exclusives or marketing deals. So I have no clue how they were better than SEGA's.

Man, I get so annoyed when I read this. In the gaming business, it's the third-party developers who pay the manufacturers, not the other way around. Enough of this nonsense, or I'll post that gif.

 

[cireza]

or I'll post that gif

The gif of the girl in the bus ?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Wow, I don't think I can list a single first party game outside of Gran Turismo. Everything was third parties being bought by Sony as exclusives or marketing deals. So I have no clue how they were better than SEGA's.

Off the top of my head 989 sports were way better and frequent than Sega sports, twisted metal was crazy fun.

And ya Gran turismo was the granddaddy IP that came from nowhere. Sony makes a great playing and content heavy racer which got better reviews than any shallow Saturn arcade port Sega churned out.

Problem with Sega is they had a weird view that if you just port tons of quarter muncher arcade games with barely any extra content people will buy it up like the old days of dig dug or donkey Kong or 16-bit golden axe. You got to get with the times and add some extra value.

A GT game probably had more tracks, cars and content than 5 Sega racers combined. And it looked great and play better too.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

For gamers that didnt even care about the increased price or FF or MGS or tons of Sega arcade ports (where VF was their big game with a million variations), Saturn was still doomed.

PS1 had better 3D, transparencies which were a cool thing at the time, cinema clips looked smoother, and their first party and third party games were simply better. Their first party games were fresh IPs and had more meat to them. And their first party sports games destroyed the junk Sega Sports were, where Sega could only make 1 shitty NFL game and then bailed. They didnt even bother making annual sports games for the key sports like Sony did. And 3D games had better frame rates on PS1 too.

But to top it off, add in the advantages PS had from my first paragraph as extra nails in the coffin. With $100 more expensive being a huge no-no. At that time consoles were $200 US. PS1 with CD drive is $300. And Saturn comes out at $400. wtf? lol. Even now in the 2010s and 2020s, someone trying to do a $100 price gap is nuts. Just imagine it for lots of gamers and families in 1995. Insane business, product and gaming strategy.

Sony's 1P on PS1 was not particularly great at the beginning, if we're going by 1P = games from studios the platform holder owned. Because back in 1994 and 1995, Sony did not own Naughty Dog, or Insomniac, or even Polyphony Digital. They never owned studios like Thinking Rabbit either, who made the Jumping Flash games. Meanwhile, SEGA did own AM1, AM2, AM3, and Sonic Team, among others. While Sony did technically own Psygnosis by PS1's launch, many of Psygnosis's games early on still appeared on platforms like the Saturn oddly enough, so at best games like Destruction Derby and Wipeout were timed exclusives on PS1 before going to Saturn and/or Windows PC.

Now if you expand 1P to equal games also made by 3P in a 2P-capacity published by the platform holder, then the distinction between whether PS1 or Saturn had better 1P early on becomes a lot harder. For Sony I already mentioned games like Jumping Flash and stuff like Destruction Derby & Wipeout, but you also had stuff like Crime Crackers, Motor Toon Grand Prix (granted, the 1st wasn't great and more of a tech demo), and various other Sony-published exclusives done by 3P studios like Arc System Works (Exector) etc. At the same time, SEGA had things with System Sacon (Lunacy), WARP (Enemy Zero), Camelot (Shining the Holy Ark) etc, where in some cases like Shining, SEGA owned the IP rights. IMO 1P for both between 1994-1996 strongly comes down to tastes/personal preference. I don't think Sony's 1P started more routinely outpacing SEGA's on Saturn until sometime in 1997, when you had goliaths like Gran Turismo show up. At the same time, SEGA of Japan were clearly winding down focus on Saturn to get ready for Dreamcast, hence their drop in Saturn releases (at least from internal studios) 1P-wise.

As for pricing....honestly the $299 vs $399 meant almost nothing. Like this video goes into, that $299 E3 moment for Sony was not televised or streamed, and only got a brief mention in magazines of the day. Very likely no one outside of the person who filmed that VHS tape and some buddies even saw the thing until many years later after the whole gen was over. By the time the Saturn's normal launch window came around, SEGA actually lowered its price to $299, so it was basically the same price as PS1. Cheaper, actually, because it had some built-in storage and a free game; with PS1 you needed to buy both separately. So the $399 pricing's impact on early Saturn sales is largely exaggerated; limited supply in the May - August period had more an impact on early Saturn NA sales than the price, since most hardcore gamers (who were buying the Saturn in that period) didn't care for price and some were paying even more to import Saturns from Japan earlier than that.

FWIW, NA sales for PS1 and Saturn in 1995 were pretty close. If the PS1 had a lead, it wasn't a large one. SEGA doing the "3 free games" deal for Holiday 1995 also helped push sales. Saturn's biggest problems in NA early on were actually: limited pre-September stock, pissing off certain retailers due to the early launch (they wouldn't carry Saturn stock to sell that whole gen), overestimating America's interest in Virtua Fighter, and a lukewarm advertising campaign. I'd also throw PS1 having timed exclusivity on the only 32-bit gen version of MK3 to be a factor against Saturn, but not as much as the others. Also I can't recall if Saturn had a football game for America at the surprise launch or in '95 that wasn't Quarterback Club, because that would've been a bigger factor against it than lacking MK3 during the '95 holiday season.

Excusing VF, and lack of answers to MK3, NFL GameDay (arguably) and 1Xtreme, the Saturn's early library in the West was more or less on par with PlayStation's in terms of general market appeal and software quality. Some would argue it was better because of exclusives like Astal and Daytona. But the missing things I mentioned there plus a poor initial showing for Daytona, alongside a weak advertising campaign, are what actually hurt Saturn the most in NA early on vs PS1. And one last thing I'd throw in there is some retailers refusing to stock it due to the bungled surprise launch. In terms of objective (i.e going by review scores and generally matching library genre offerings) quality and price, Saturn was competitive and basically even to PS1 in the early period, and arguably cheaper from a pricing POV due to the built-in storage & free game (and the "3 Free Games" or "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" promos SEGA ran on and off between '95 and '96).

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

In the gaming business, it's the third-party developers who pay the manufacturers
In flat-earth , manufacturers pay the third parties.

Where did the money for the PS1 come from?

Sony made its first game, Motortoon in 1994, but had already been developing GT and Omega Boost since 1994.

Sony had a talent scouting program based on the music industry in 1995; that's how they deal with MediaVision, Matrix Software, and SingleTrac. At no point did Sony invest in renowned developers like EA or Enix, but spent money only on Psygnosis, which, as everyone knows, remained third-party.

Sony bought the exclusivity of MK3 for $20 million, waste of money . But where did that $20 million come from ? Did it come from slush funds ? No, it came from the damned royalties, because third-party developers pay royalties to manufacturers. simple.

 

[cireza]

989 sports

Never heard about them lol. But their first games were in 1998, so that's late in the gen. They were not competing with Saturn sports games.

 

[Krathoon]

Anyone have a good list of games to play on the Saturn? A list including japanese and American gems?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Never heard about them lol. But their first games were in 1998, so that's late in the gen. They were not competing with Saturn sports games.

Fair enough. Then which ever first party studios made PS1 sports before 989. Way better than Sega Sports. And more annualized too. Sega couldnt even get off an NFL game until NFL 97 which came out in Nov 96. And it was a trainwreck.

What helped make Genesis popular were sports games. All Sega had to do is keep making good Saturn versions on time when Sony had to make all their new sports IPs from scratch. And Sega fumbled it.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Sony when you compare there's no comparison

 

[Team Andromeda]

Wow, I don't think I can list a single first party game outside of Gran Turismo. Everything was third parties being bought by Sony as exclusives or marketing deals. So I have no clue how they were better than SEGA's.

That's being a little unfair mate. SEGA also did exclusive deals and SONY did make some nice In-House games. Wipeout showed the power of the PS very well, Ape Escape was a wonderful little platform game that also helped to bring in dual analogue controls and GT was a game changer. The PS1 was a brilliantly designed console and SONY was spot on with its PR, unlike SEGA. A SEGA that was so sure the 32X would crush all the rest, they never stopped for a 2nd to think that it might be an add-on too far...

What I hate is how SONY to this day look to hide the fact that do deal and look to have the studios involved make bullcrap excuses: - be that the Saturn couldn't handle Tomb Raider 2 or the XBox couldn't handle Black Myth Wukong when. I also hate the double standards from the SONY fans over issues on the Saturn that they use to bash it completely, look over them for the PS2 on its launch. Like we see with this bullcrap over sports games, when SONY had none ready for the USA launch on the PS2 infact come to think of it, SONY didn't have any In-House or 1st party game ready for the PS2 launch in the USA *rollseyes*

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

In the gaming business, it's the third-party developers who pay the manufacturers
In flat-earth , manufacturers pay the third parties.

Where did the money for the PS1 come from?

Sony made its first game, Motortoon in 1994, but had already been developing GT and Omega Boost since 1994.

Sony had a talent scouting program based on the music industry in 1995; that's how they deal with MediaVision, Matrix Software, and SingleTrac. At no point did Sony invest in renowned developers like EA or Enix, but spent money only on Psygnosis, which, as everyone knows, remained third-party.

Sony bought the exclusivity of MK3 for $20 million, waste of money . But where did that $20 million come from ? Did it come from slush funds ? No, it came from the damned royalties, because third-party developers pay royalties to manufacturers. simple.

Motor Toon was technically Polyphony's first game, as Sony were funding the development on some level but didn't own the IP rights (to my knowledge) or Polyphony yet. Development on GT probably did not begin in 1994, but yes, Kazunori did have a vision for the game by that point. Actual main development on GT likely started after they were done with Motor Toon Grand Prix 2.

We don't know exactly where the $20 million for timed MK3 exclusivity came from. It could've came from another Sony division but, considering some of the other divisions at Sony were not friendly to PlayStation at the start, then yes it's likely the $20 million came from the royalties they had been receiving from Japanese 3P on PS1 between 1994 and the system's Western launch in late 1995.

Anyone have a good list of games to play on the Saturn? A list including japanese and American gems?

Shining Force III Scenarios 1-3 & Premium Disc

Shining the Holy Ark

Dragon Force 1 & 2

Panzer Dragoon Zwei

Panzer Dragoon Saga

Virtua Fighter 2

NiGHTS

Radiant Silvergun

Silhouette Mirage

Kieo's Flying Squadron 2

Guardian Heroes

Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers

Lunacy

Enemy Zero

Darius Gaiden

DonPaChi

Lunar SSS & EB remakes

Dark Savior

Beyond Oasis

Sonic Jam

Bulk Slash

Deep Fear

Street Fighter Zero 3

Groove-On Fight

Zero Divide

Speed Kings

 

[Krathoon]

Did they ever english translate Silouette Mirage? Really, I kind of like the Playstation version.

 

[cireza]

Did they ever english translate Silouette Mirage? Really, I kind of like the Playstation version.

Fans have, like a ton of games.

 

[Kyo]

Anyone have a good list of games to play on the Saturn? A list including japanese and American gems?

Available in the US:
Daytona USA (bad draw distance and choppy performance, but divine handling and that soundtrack...)
Virtua Fighter 2
Fighting Vipers
Virtua Cop
Virtua Cop 2
Die Hard Arcade
The Legend of Oasis
Nights into Dreams
Burning Rangers
Panzer Dragoon Zwei
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Decathlete
Winter Heat
Saturn Bomberman
Guardian Heroes
Death Tank Zwei (comes with Duke Nukem 3D)
Dead or Alive
Gungriffon
Iron Storm



Japanese releases:
Sega Rally (slightly better than the earlier US release)
Daytona USA Circuit Edition (apparently better than the earlier US release)
Thunder Force V
Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 (includes TF AC and IV)
Sōkyūgurentai (aka Terra Diver)
Radiant Silvergun
Metal Slug
Elevator Action Returns
Assault Suit Leynos 2
Keio Flying Squadron 2
Cotton Boomerang
Grandia (fan translation available)
Silhouette Mirage (fan translation available)


Back in the days I would have listed a number of SNK and Capcom fighters, but I think all of those can be played just fine on modern systems. I'm not sure about Metal Slug, so I did include that one.

 

[Krathoon]

Yeah. The Saturn version is the best version of Grandia. The ground textures are lined up correctly and you have shadows.

That remaster was a turd.

 

[Kyo]

Yeah. The Saturn version is the best version of Grandia. The ground textures are lined up correctly and you have shadows.

That remaster was a turd.

Yeah, it's wonderful on Saturn.

I'm still pissed that they explicitly promised to include the superior aspects of the Saturn original in the remaster and then just... didn't.

 

[cireza]

Yeah. The Saturn version is the best version of Grandia. The ground textures are lined up correctly and you have shadows.

That remaster was a turd.

The battle backgrounds were also much higher resolution and the water looked better.

 

[Crayon]

Anyone have a good list of games to play on the Saturn? A list including japanese and American gems?

idk. You looking at getting a saturn or emulating or just curious? Had an n64 beck then and want to time travel? Build a library and collect?

 

[Celine]

That's easy to say in hindsight, but Sega of America was operating in a market Nintendo had locked down for nearly a decade. They didn't have the luxury of relying on existing IP the way Nintendo did, so they had to lean into sports realism, edgy marketing, and cultural timing — and it worked. Calling it "smoke" ignores the fact that they actually pulled off the impossible: breaking Nintendo's near-monopoly. If it was really that simple, everyone else would've done it too — but they didn't.

Anyways, Sega's biggest mistake with the Saturn was Sega of Japan shunning Tom Kalinske, the guy who made the Genesis a hit.

Kalinske understood the Western market. He made Sega cool, beat Nintendo in the U.S., and wanted a clean 3D-focused console with a smart, coordinated launch. Sega of Japan ignored him, redesigned the system in secret, and pulled the infamous "surprise early launch" stunt that pissed off retailers and devs alike.

The result? A $399 console that was hard to develop for, poorly marketed, and dead on arrival once Sony dropped the PlayStation at $299.

If Sega had backed Kalinske — kept the proper launch timing, simplified the hardware, and built a real Western strategy — the Saturn might not have "won," but it damn sure wouldn't have crashed the way it did.

Once they stopped listening to the guy who saved them, Sega stopped winning.

Nintendo and Sega released their first console with interchangeable software on the same day in Japan.
So they began at the same starting line but the former became the console manufacturer whom sold the highest volume of consoles in history and is still operating in the same business whereas the latter was forced out by the early '00s.
Unlike big corporations as Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega shared a common attitude to "play/game" although with totally different inclination, with Nintendo having more of a "toy-like" ethos whereas Sega had a "arcade-like" ethos.
Nintendo built its luxury of hugely popular in-house IPs by themselves, over time, just like Atari or Sega could have done.
The key difference is that from early on Nintendo chose to abandon the arcade business to focus entirily on the console business and at the same time when they were starting to achieve critical mass with the console business they started to think how to sustain that fortune on the long run while at the same time being fiscally conservative.
Nintendo's obsession to seize new genre kings stem from the fear that the success achieved with Famicom/NES was temporary unless they landed on software that could drive their business in the future, over multiple generations.
Beside business foresight, the other critical component that allowed Nintendo to build their hypertrophic first-party software line-up was the support of third-parties because before Famicom open up to third-parties (starting from late '84/early '85) Nintendo in-house software developers were forced to release games with such cadency, to sustain the platform momentum, that at most could have 3 months of development time, shortness which isn't conducive to the creation of genre kings.

As for Kalinske he contributed to Sega weakness in the console business as counter-intuitive as it might sound to many americans (lured by the narrative built around him).
SoA was hardly profitable and was loaded with ton of unsold stocks.
Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri explained well what was the issue that arised in the north american market:
"A huge problem came to light at Sega of America. In the American market, it was typically large retailers such as Toys "R" Us and Wal-Mart that stocked game hardware and software. Those kinds of retailers would buy a huge quantity of stock at first. However, if they didn't sell the stock within a certain period, they'd send it all back. We'd have to buy it all back.

SOA's posted profits in 1993, for example, were all washed away because it had to take extraordinary losses on returned stock later on. Those extraordinary losses came to $100 million or $200 million at a time. Furthermore, retailers in America held a lot of power, and they required manufacturers to have a certain amount of inventory on hand to replenish stocks when items sold out. For example, retailers required SOA to have at least 500,000 Genesis hardware units on hand to replenish sold stock, or they wouldn't do business with us.

SOA had an excess of inventory that would all be sold at once, bringing in a huge amount of revenue. Then, all that inventory would come back from retailers later on and SOA would take a huge loss. With the Genesis, all of those losses started to appear in 1994, 1995, and 1996. If you added up all the losses, the number would be astronomical.

When we looked at the numbers carefully, even though SOA had a reputation for earning so much money, it turned out they weren't earning much at all. We decided we had to change things, and that necessitated reducing the size of the company.

We told Tom Kalinske that we'd give him one year to restructure the company like so. This was a quite a strong request.

After one year, in 1996, the restructuring hadn't progressed at all. We decided we had no choice, and I was ordered to go to SOA and take over as president. Tom Kalinske was asked to step down. I initiated the restructuring and worked to make the company healthy."

Irimajiri Speaks Out About the Saturn, the 32X, and SOA's Financial Troubles - Mega Drive Shock

Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri recently gave a lecture series at the Forum – Management for Tomorrow. The fifth lecture in the series, held on October 20, 2022, focused on Irimajiri’s time at Sega in the 1990s. Irimajiri joined Sega in an executive role in 1993, right at the...

mdshock.com

If people don't believe his words, don't.
A SoA financial document for fiscal year '97 was leaked online not long ago and it show huge quantity of unsold products related to Genesis/Sega CD/32X/Game Gear that SoA had accumulated over time, for which there was nigh to no demand!


GEN unsold inventory:
HW: 135K
SW: 1402K

Sega CD unsold inventory:
HW: 100K
HW: 118K

32X unsold inventory:
HW: 402K
SW: 623K

GG unsold inventory:
HW: 304K
SW: 941K

Pico unsold inventory:
HW: 131K
SW: 180K

Sega of America had in total over 1 million of unsellable game systems and a few millions of unsellable games in the warehouse related to their old gen.


It's staggering how badly run Sega of America was.
It always makes me smile remembering how SoA spent $10 million to open Sega Multimedia Studio only to obtain in return a couple of crappy games.
Kalinske was a marketer full of hot air.

 

[Alexios]

Sega Rally (slightly better than the earlier US release)
Daytona USA Circuit Edition (apparently better than the earlier US release)

Both have later US NetLink releases that included all past improvements and online play. Though in the case of Daytona it was a limited release through Sega's online store only or something so it's rare. The PAL version of Sega Rally already included improvements from Japan (pre Plus/NetLink) too.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Motor Toon was technically Polyphony's first game, as Sony were funding the development on some level but didn't own the IP rights (to my knowledge) or Polyphony yet.

Polyphony is literally Sony, November 16, 1993 - Sony Corporation and Sony Music Entertainment Inc jointly established Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Polyphony was originally planning and production department of Sony Computer Entertainment.
Sega had names like AM2, Team Andromeda, but it's SEGA. Sony's teams had names that made them seem independent, which is why some Sony sports games were released for PC, but it was Sony releasing them. The PlayStation division, until 1997, operated as a music company due to a lack of experience with games, but anyone who says Sony's games are third-party is lying because they don't understand how the company operated.

Development on GT probably did not begin in 1994, but yes, Kazunori did have a vision for the game by that point. Actual main development on GT likely started after they were done with Motor Toon Grand Prix 2.

When a console is designed, the plan isn't long-term; the company (Sony, Atari, Sega) only prepares the hardware, low-budget first-party games for launch, and big games for 12 or 18 months after launch. But both are designed together. well, PS1 was successful, Sony released Motor Toon 2, but Gran Turismo was designed to be for the PS1 what Shenmue was designed for the Dreamcast and Gears of War for the Xbox 360. According to available data and my interpretation of it, GT1 was conceived alongside the PS1 even on ''Nintendo-CD'', and its differentiating factor would be the use of many licensed brands; the goal was to be a popular IP. In a multiverse where the PS1 stagnated at 2 million units sold, its secret weapon, aka Gran Turismo, would have failed.

Honestly, Sony was very smart to bet on a racing game, racing games are universal and allow for variations, attracting both hardcore and casual gamers.

We don't know exactly where the $20 million for timed MK3 exclusivity came from. It could've came from another Sony division but, considering some of the other divisions at Sony were not friendly to PlayStation at the start, then yes it's likely the $20 million came from the royalties they had been receiving from Japanese 3P on PS1 between 1994 and the system's Western launch in late 1995.

Motor Toon 1994 must have sold something like 50,000 copies, Rapid Reload Reload sold 85,000, Jumping Flash 250,000.
Philosoma and Crime Crackers together may have reached about 50,000, so we have 425,000 x $49, which equals 21.2 million. We also don't know if this money was paid in cash or as a discount on royalties.
We can't forget that Arc the Lad sold over 500,000 copies quickly, surpassing 1 million copies in the following months. In short, the Playstation was profitable even before its Western release.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

C Celine Solid write-up but I do have to correct you on one thing: Nintendo did not completely abandon the arcade market by the time of the NES. They still associated in the space and released various things in the arcade area, but it was done in collaboration with other parties. For example post-1985 they still released VS. Mach Rider, VS. Soccer, VS. Super Mario, VS. Gumshoe and VS. Dr. Mario up to 1990, and these were 1P arcade efforts.

They also still associated very heavily with some arcade companies into the '90s. IIRC they own the Cruisn' IP rights and Raw Thrills released a new version in the 2010s. You have them working with SEGA on F-Zero GX in the early 2000s as another example. So while Nintendo's involvement in the arcade market never amounted anywhere near the volume SEGA dedicated to it post-1985, they didn't "completely" abandon it, either.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Nintendo and Sega released their first console with interchangeable software on the same day in Japan.
So they began at the same starting line but the former became the console manufacturer whom sold the highest volume of consoles in history and is still operating in the same business whereas the latter was forced out by the early '00s.

But they weren't the same. Nintendo had success selling the Color TV-Game, Game Watch and selling Donkey Kong arcade. Sega only became independent after 1985. Sega was just a subsidiary struggling to create successful arcade games; most of them were flops; Turbo and Zaxxon were their main arcade games. The Nintendo ported Donkey Kong in 1983, while Sega ported Turbo to the ColecoVision instead of the SG-1000, and only ported Zaxxon in the last wave of games for the SG-1000. It's difficult to sell an SG-1000 without a killer app, especially a weak console like that. Despite these mistakes, I think Sega is a winner. Fourteen other companies competed, and only Nintendo and Sega remained. The problem is the difference in sales; in 1985, the SG-1000 had about 400,000 units sold, while the Nintendo console had 6 million units sold.

Unlike big corporations as Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega shared a common attitude to "play/game" although with totally different inclination, with Nintendo having more of a "toy-like" ethos whereas Sega had a "arcade-like" ethos.

This distinction is false; it's a marketing department thing. Sega is just a weaker, blue Nintendo. From 1981 until the 90s they made similar games, Sega even made Donkey Kong clones.

Nintendo built its luxury of hugely popular in-house IPs by themselves, over time, just like Atari or Sega could have done.

Neither Atari nor Sega grasped the importance of character creation; Nintendo was inspired by Namco. Atari went into crisis, and the SG 1000 was too weak to create a popular character. For the Master System, Sega created Alex Kidd, but the Master System didn't sell well in Japan. From 1983 to 1986, Nintendo created a market; it was foolish to buy another console because the Famicom was sufficient. This thinking persisted until the PS1 received FF7 in 1997, demonstrating the power of consumer trust in the brand. They abandoned Nintendo because the N64 didn't have good RPGs; love for the brand isn't enough to compensate for the lack of games.

when they were starting to achieve critical mass with the console business they started to think how to sustain that fortune on the long run while at the same time being fiscally conservative.

That's true, they realized they couldn't make games that were too similar, so Nintendo's strategy of making Mario and Zelda games by changing the formula and avoiding trilogies of similar games emerged. This allowed the company to keep the franchise relevant for 40 years.

If people don't believe his words, don't.

I don't believe it; to me, it's just a civil war at Sega, a new CEO blaming the old one

A SoA financial document for fiscal year '97 was leaked online not long ago and it show huge quantity of unsold products related to Genesis/Sega CD/32X/Game Gear that SoA had accumulated over time, for which there was nigh to no demand!

Sega of America had in total over 1 million of unsellable game systems and a few millions of unsellable games in the warehouse related to their old gen.
It's staggering how badly run Sega of America was.

1 million ? Nonsense, Sega of America sold over 17 million Sega Genesis units. Without the American market, without SoA, there is no SEGA. And that's true because failing in the West with the Sega Saturn was enough for the company to disappear from the radar.
When Sega finally remembered that America existed, they made the Dreamcast. It was too late, despite that, Dreamcast sold almost three times as much as the Saturn, 1.8 million vs. 5 million.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Nintendo and Sega released their first console with interchangeable software on the same day in Japan.
So they began at the same starting line but the former became the console manufacturer whom sold the highest volume of consoles in history and is still operating in the same business whereas the latter was forced out by the early '00s.
Unlike big corporations as Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega shared a common attitude to "play/game" although with totally different inclination, with Nintendo having more of a "toy-like" ethos whereas Sega had a "arcade-like" ethos.
Nintendo built its luxury of hugely popular in-house IPs by themselves, over time, just like Atari or Sega could have done.
The key difference is that from early on Nintendo chose to abandon the arcade business to focus entirily on the console business and at the same time when they were starting to achieve critical mass with the console business they started to think how to sustain that fortune on the long run while at the same time being fiscally conservative.
Nintendo's obsession to seize new genre kings stem from the fear that the success achieved with Famicom/NES was temporary unless they landed on software that could drive their business in the future, over multiple generations.
Beside business foresight, the other critical component that allowed Nintendo to build their hypertrophic first-party software line-up was the support of third-parties because before Famicom open up to third-parties (starting from late '84/early '85) Nintendo in-house software developers were forced to release games with such cadency, to sustain the platform momentum, that at most could have 3 months of development time, shortness which isn't conducive to the creation of genre kings.

As for Kalinske he contributed to Sega weakness in the console business as counter-intuitive as it might sound to many americans (lured by the narrative built around him).
SoA was hardly profitable and was loaded with ton of unsold stocks.
Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri explained well what was the issue that arised in the north american market:
"A huge problem came to light at Sega of America. In the American market, it was typically large retailers such as Toys "R" Us and Wal-Mart that stocked game hardware and software. Those kinds of retailers would buy a huge quantity of stock at first. However, if they didn't sell the stock within a certain period, they'd send it all back. We'd have to buy it all back.

SOA's posted profits in 1993, for example, were all washed away because it had to take extraordinary losses on returned stock later on. Those extraordinary losses came to $100 million or $200 million at a time. Furthermore, retailers in America held a lot of power, and they required manufacturers to have a certain amount of inventory on hand to replenish stocks when items sold out. For example, retailers required SOA to have at least 500,000 Genesis hardware units on hand to replenish sold stock, or they wouldn't do business with us.

SOA had an excess of inventory that would all be sold at once, bringing in a huge amount of revenue. Then, all that inventory would come back from retailers later on and SOA would take a huge loss. With the Genesis, all of those losses started to appear in 1994, 1995, and 1996. If you added up all the losses, the number would be astronomical.

When we looked at the numbers carefully, even though SOA had a reputation for earning so much money, it turned out they weren't earning much at all. We decided we had to change things, and that necessitated reducing the size of the company.

We told Tom Kalinske that we'd give him one year to restructure the company like so. This was a quite a strong request.

After one year, in 1996, the restructuring hadn't progressed at all. We decided we had no choice, and I was ordered to go to SOA and take over as president. Tom Kalinske was asked to step down. I initiated the restructuring and worked to make the company healthy."

Irimajiri Speaks Out About the Saturn, the 32X, and SOA's Financial Troubles - Mega Drive Shock

Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri recently gave a lecture series at the Forum – Management for Tomorrow. The fifth lecture in the series, held on October 20, 2022, focused on Irimajiri’s time at Sega in the 1990s. Irimajiri joined Sega in an executive role in 1993, right at the...

mdshock.com

If people don't believe his words, don't.
A SoA financial document for fiscal year '97 was leaked online not long ago and it show huge quantity of unsold products related to Genesis/Sega CD/32X/Game Gear that SoA had accumulated over time, for which there was nigh to no demand!


GEN unsold inventory:
HW: 135K
SW: 1402K

Sega CD unsold inventory:
HW: 100K
HW: 118K

32X unsold inventory:
HW: 402K
SW: 623K

GG unsold inventory:
HW: 304K
SW: 941K

Pico unsold inventory:
HW: 131K
SW: 180K

Sega of America had in total over 1 million of unsellable game systems and a few millions of unsellable games in the warehouse related to their old gen.


It's staggering how badly run Sega of America was.
It always makes me smile remembering how SoA spent $10 million to open Sega Multimedia Studio only to obtain in return a couple of crappy games.
Kalinske was a marketer full of hot air.

Looks like Sega tried the good 'ol Stack It High, Let It Fly sales strategy. Just have endless inventory and assume it sells.

Problem is that strategy only works if it's something people want and at a good price. You do that with boxes of high turnover product like chips or crackers. Something that will sell out. Not a matter of if, but a matter of how fast. You dont do that strategy with electronics where most of that Sega stuff listed is junk.

 

[nush]

Looks like Sega tried the good 'ol Stack It High, Let It Fly sales strategy.

I read that as the sales team juicing the orders to hit monthly bonuses only to quietly take the stock back or mark it down at retail. I've seen many examples of that in my professional life.

 

[Celine]

C Celine Solid write-up but I do have to correct you on one thing: Nintendo did not completely abandon the arcade market by the time of the NES. They still associated in the space and released various things in the arcade area, but it was done in collaboration with other parties. For example post-1985 they still released VS. Mach Rider, VS. Soccer, VS. Super Mario, VS. Gumshoe and VS. Dr. Mario up to 1990, and these were 1P arcade efforts.

I know the little exceptions. I referred to the general direction of the company.
Super Mario Bros. 3 in US debutted on the VS. format (arcade) but the general focus of Nintendo by that time was almost completely console-centric.
Even if Nintendo found enduring success with Donkey Kong in 1981 they didn't hesitate to put all their eggs on consoles once Famicom/NES took off and the switch was fast.
It makes totally sense too considerating the nature of the company (consumer entertainment oriented instead of B2B).

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I read that as the sales team juicing the orders to hit monthly bonuses only to quietly take the stock back or mark it down at retail. I've seen many examples of that in my professional life.

Totally. Channel stuffing has been around forever. I've seen it too. A big no no if the auditors see a company is playing games doing shit like that. Sometimes stuffing doesn't even have to involve sending out truckloads of product. It can involve just one single case of product playing games with financials.

For example, let's say a company will pay a store a $100,000 fee to order a ton of product. It's a legit deal worth a lot money and endless skids of product.

The correct thing to do is recognize the fee and the main first shipment going out the door so it goes together. But a company with nervous timing and needs to mess with the books could tell the store to order one case in let's say Q2, get the $100,000 fee claimed into Q2, but then ship out the rest of the product in Q3 so the sales go there. I've never heard or seen a company I've worked at doing that caught by auditors, but you shouldnt being doing that.

Why would a store do that weird ordering process? Because they can get the $100,000 fee earlier. And it's a scratch my back I'll scratch yours kind of thing. Sometimes a supplier needs a hand with ordering timing, and the retailer needs a hand for a different topic. So as long as they both got a good relationship with each other, sure, we can do some ordering/returns games together.

I've seen channel stuffing involve RAs (return authorizations) not only return the product, but the company pays them a hidden fee like 5% to take it back. So aside from the logistical issues of trucking and warehousing for a bit, the customer gets refunded back as normal, plus a 5% bonus credit. Just so they can hit quarterly or annual sales targets. Crazy.

 

[RetroAV]

Nintendo and Sega released their first console with interchangeable software on the same day in Japan.
So they began at the same starting line but the former became the console manufacturer whom sold the highest volume of consoles in history and is still operating in the same business whereas the latter was forced out by the early '00s.
Unlike big corporations as Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega shared a common attitude to "play/game" although with totally different inclination, with Nintendo having more of a "toy-like" ethos whereas Sega had a "arcade-like" ethos.
Nintendo built its luxury of hugely popular in-house IPs by themselves, over time, just like Atari or Sega could have done.
The key difference is that from early on Nintendo chose to abandon the arcade business to focus entirily on the console business and at the same time when they were starting to achieve critical mass with the console business they started to think how to sustain that fortune on the long run while at the same time being fiscally conservative.
Nintendo's obsession to seize new genre kings stem from the fear that the success achieved with Famicom/NES was temporary unless they landed on software that could drive their business in the future, over multiple generations.
Beside business foresight, the other critical component that allowed Nintendo to build their hypertrophic first-party software line-up was the support of third-parties because before Famicom open up to third-parties (starting from late '84/early '85) Nintendo in-house software developers were forced to release games with such cadency, to sustain the platform momentum, that at most could have 3 months of development time, shortness which isn't conducive to the creation of genre kings.

As for Kalinske he contributed to Sega weakness in the console business as counter-intuitive as it might sound to many americans (lured by the narrative built around him).
SoA was hardly profitable and was loaded with ton of unsold stocks.
Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri explained well what was the issue that arised in the north american market:
"A huge problem came to light at Sega of America. In the American market, it was typically large retailers such as Toys "R" Us and Wal-Mart that stocked game hardware and software. Those kinds of retailers would buy a huge quantity of stock at first. However, if they didn't sell the stock within a certain period, they'd send it all back. We'd have to buy it all back.

SOA's posted profits in 1993, for example, were all washed away because it had to take extraordinary losses on returned stock later on. Those extraordinary losses came to $100 million or $200 million at a time. Furthermore, retailers in America held a lot of power, and they required manufacturers to have a certain amount of inventory on hand to replenish stocks when items sold out. For example, retailers required SOA to have at least 500,000 Genesis hardware units on hand to replenish sold stock, or they wouldn't do business with us.

SOA had an excess of inventory that would all be sold at once, bringing in a huge amount of revenue. Then, all that inventory would come back from retailers later on and SOA would take a huge loss. With the Genesis, all of those losses started to appear in 1994, 1995, and 1996. If you added up all the losses, the number would be astronomical.

When we looked at the numbers carefully, even though SOA had a reputation for earning so much money, it turned out they weren't earning much at all. We decided we had to change things, and that necessitated reducing the size of the company.

We told Tom Kalinske that we'd give him one year to restructure the company like so. This was a quite a strong request.

After one year, in 1996, the restructuring hadn't progressed at all. We decided we had no choice, and I was ordered to go to SOA and take over as president. Tom Kalinske was asked to step down. I initiated the restructuring and worked to make the company healthy."

Irimajiri Speaks Out About the Saturn, the 32X, and SOA's Financial Troubles - Mega Drive Shock

Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri recently gave a lecture series at the Forum – Management for Tomorrow. The fifth lecture in the series, held on October 20, 2022, focused on Irimajiri’s time at Sega in the 1990s. Irimajiri joined Sega in an executive role in 1993, right at the...

mdshock.com

If people don't believe his words, don't.
A SoA financial document for fiscal year '97 was leaked online not long ago and it show huge quantity of unsold products related to Genesis/Sega CD/32X/Game Gear that SoA had accumulated over time, for which there was nigh to no demand!


GEN unsold inventory:
HW: 135K
SW: 1402K

Sega CD unsold inventory:
HW: 100K
HW: 118K

32X unsold inventory:
HW: 402K
SW: 623K

GG unsold inventory:
HW: 304K
SW: 941K

Pico unsold inventory:
HW: 131K
SW: 180K

Sega of America had in total over 1 million of unsellable game systems and a few millions of unsellable games in the warehouse related to their old gen.


It's staggering how badly run Sega of America was.
It always makes me smile remembering how SoA spent $10 million to open Sega Multimedia Studio only to obtain in return a couple of crappy games.
Kalinske was a marketer full of hot air.

You can spare me the sermon about Nintendo's "genre king" foresight — that's not some mystical Nintendo-only trait. Every company with half a brain tries to build sustainable IP. The real difference is Nintendo's third-party lockdowns in the '80s and early '90s, not some moral superiority in "business discipline." They kneecapped Sega and everyone else through exclusivity deals, period.

And as for Kalinske — the way you describe his strategy like it's a bad thing just shows how little you understand what Sega actually hired him to do. His job was to make Sega competitive in the U.S., and that's exactly what he did. Under him, Sega went from a rounding error to neck-and-neck with Nintendo — something Sega of Japan never came close to replicating before or since.

Those "unsold inventory" numbers you're quoting? They're the direct result of Sega of Japan abandoning the Genesis too early in favor of the Saturn. If you stop supporting the hardware that's still selling, of course retailers send back stock. Kalinske wanted to keep the Genesis alive through '95 — that's literally what could've prevented those losses. But instead, Japan forced the pivot, botched the Saturn launch, and torched all that momentum.

So let's not twist history: the Genesis era was the only time Sega ever stood toe-to-toe with Nintendo, and that happened because of Kalinske's leadership — not in spite of it. If anything, Sega's downfall came from Sega of Japan ignoring the guy who actually figured out how to win in the West.