Not true at all. You still have SOJ making the likes of Ristar, Art Of Fighting in 1994 and also having the SEGA CS Japan teams make Virtua Racing Deluxe, Chaotix, Stellar Assault, and Virtual Fighter for the 32X and to make out SOJ weren't sharing Saturn's specs or data is for the birds and we learnt with various interviews how SOA didn't want Saturn to go with the Hitachi and the SH2 chips but stick with Motorola and lets remember it was SOA who were the 1st to show off the Saturn with games running at the CES Show
Art of Fighting is a SNK IP; SOJ just got a license to reprogram it for the Genesis/MegaDrive and handle publishing on the platform. I'd figure costs-wise that was much cheaper than making in-house titles from scratch, and they had already been doing that since the system's launch in a way (like with Strider). I wouldn't use that as an example of them committing extensive resources to Genesis/MegaDrive when they could've/should've been shifting over to the Saturn. Tho Ristar, OTOH, I agree is an example of that (love that game tho).
As for why SOA might've wanted Motorola, TBH SOJ were right to ignore them on that choice. SOA had little to no substantive technical background on actual console engineering; that was all SOJ. And SOA already showed their "genius" with the 32X...not a great track record on their part. The only suitable Motorola CPUs that would've been economically viable for Saturn in a '94//95 timeframe were the 68040 and 68060, as SEGA would've been interested in one with the FPU integrated into the chip. The 68060 came out April 1994 from what Wikipedia says.
68060 had great performance, but the issue with choosing it probably would've been combination of power consumption and Motorola basically moving on to Power PC not long after. What sense would it have made for SEGA to choose a CISC processor for Saturn from a provider who themselves were dropping CISC in favor of RISC designs going forward? Plus, equivalent RISC chips (in performance) would've costed less, something SEGA would've prioritized.
SOA probably also just favored an American chip designer for Saturn, I mean they preferred 3DFX's Blackbelt design for some of the same reasons (and to appease EA, who seemingly had shares in 3DFX). On paper the 68060 would've made a good choice and also enabled Genesis/MegaDrive BC, but I think Motorola's own product catalog shifting to RISC, and benefits of power supply & customization options for non-CISC chip designs were more appealing to SOJ, and they made the right choice.
Well, kinda. They really should've waited until the SH3 was available, but that would've required a delay for Saturn until '95. Would've been worth it IMHO.
And anyone who thinks Eternal Champions was going to be able to take on the might of VF and Tekken is having a laugh. It wasn't like the game was massive on the Mega Drive and the Mega CD version utterly flopped.
Well the MegaCD didn't sell like the Genesis did so of course games exclusive to it didn't sell in high volume, either. Point is, EC had a fanbase, it was growing, and it would've ultimately benefited the Saturn in Western markets.
Especially at launch, where again, MK was still big and MK3's first next-gen home port was a PS1 timed exclusive for 6 months. Would've only helped the Saturn's meager early Western library to have another fighter more appealing to Western tastes and also give Saturn owners their MK fix without feeling they needed to turn to PlayStation for it.
Japan was behind the west for 3D and you could see that with how NCL had to look to the UK to make Star Fox, but when Namco brought out Star Blade for me the direction of travel was clear and then of course SEGA brought out VR
Are we talking in terms of gaming? Or in general? Because if in general then yeah, I'd agree. Gaming wise, though? No, Japan was definitely at least on par with Western game studios and I'd argue ahead of them by the late '80s/early '90s for 3D.
What Western games on console, microcomputer, PC or arcade were on the level of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter when those came out? Ridge Racer & Daytona USA in 1993? Tekken in 1994? I mean on a purely technical level, of course. I can think of some impressive pseudo-3D PC/DOS games during that period like Ultima Underworld and System Shock (and DOOM), and in terms of game design & scale those games were incredible for what they did. But on a
technical level, they couldn't touch the top Japanese 3D games of that time period. They were just tiers apart.
The Mega Drive did the best in the UK where it completely outsold the SNES, unlike in the USA where sales were much closer.
Actually, SNES did very well in the UK. In UK & Europe in general, SNES was closer to MegaDrive than NES was to Master System. Nintendo had closed a big chunk of the Europe gap during the 16-bit gen, though yes MegaDrive still won overall, just by a slimmer lead.
The US side of things are more murky these days because we have those leaked fiscal documents from SEGA showing they had huge inventories of unsold Genesis games & hardware during the late years of Genesis. If you look back on some of the (very hard-to-find) sales charts from that era you'll usually see SNES games more consistently in the Top 10s, but periods where Genesis games were the top sellers instead.
I've since had some doubt about Genesis having 65% of American market share in 1993 for example, because that might've been via sold-in metrics, and SEGA had some lucrative deals with big box retailers to keep their stock levels filled during holidays, but SEGA having to buy back unsold stock the following quarter. But I guess it really doesn't matter that much now; the main point is Genesis was competitive with SNES in the West, and broke Nintendo's stranglehold on the console market outside of Japan.
So you cite niche games that are non-existent today, which is exactly what I was saying. And you cite games like Tekken, Resident Evil and MGS (or whatever) which was the norm Sony built.
You just named three 3P titles which were developed wholly independent of SCEJ or SCEA, and then try blaming Sony for "setting industry norms" with those games?
So you basically say the exact same thing as me, thank you for agreeing. Sony shifted the market towards this population, who wanted to play realistic games, and succeeded.
The market was already shifting, buddy. On PC for example, gaming tastes were shifting to more mature story-driven titles thanks to adventure games and FMV adventure games like Phantasmaphoria, Myst, and 3D games like Alone in the Dark & System Shock. SEGA were doing that with their sports titles and pushing more mature games like Mortal Kombat & Night Trap.
More & more gamers were already trending that way since the kids who played NES, SNES & Genesis were growing up by the time PlayStation came out. Sony just capitalized on a naturally-occurring thing. And, even Saturn was appealing more to that demographic with early games like D and Lunacy (great game, I need to play it again soon).
The main difference between us is that you consider this a good thing while I consider that it largely suck, and paved the way for the modern video-game market. Also Sony is totally irrelevant to From Software's success lol. According From's merit to Sony is a complete joke. They have always been a multiplatform developer and succeeded on their own merit.
You couldn't be more wrong. PS1 was the system From Software cut their game dev teeth on, and it's where they refined their style. Also during that gen they were 100% exclusive to PlayStation for their games, this isn't even that hard to look up!
Trying to discredit that and claim they were always multiplat, that Sony and PlayStation had no involvement in their growth & success just reeks of cope from a fanboy who hasn't gotten over a 30-year grudge against the wrong company which they keep blaming for the death of SEGA consoles.
Anyone comparing the SVP to the 32X, and expecting similar or close results, has absolutely no clue on how the SVP works and its limitations. Skipping the 32X was a possibility, for sure, but the SVP would have never taken its place. The 32X works perfectly with Model 1 MegaDrive, what are you smoking ?
Uh, no the 32X definitely had some connection issues with certain MegaDrive/Genesis units. I think Model 1 systems were the culprit; basically there was a metal thingy you needed to put between the MegaDrive/Genesis cartridge slot and the 32X to negate some static interference, but some launch models were defective anyway when doing this so it didn't work. There are videos on Youtube which talk about it, you can look it up.
As for SVP vs 32X, the thing is 32X was overkill for what only needed to be a modest boost of Genesis performance for select titles. Asking Genesis owners who were looking to save up to jump over to 5th gen, $169 for an add-on that was dead six months later, was just stupid business all the way through. If they had put out a SVP cart for $50 and the same thing happened, a lot of Genesis owners wouldn't have felt as burned, and therefore may've given Saturn a chance.
Plus, the 32X just reinforced SEGA's decision to use dual SH2s for the Saturn. In a world where 32X didn't happen, maybe SEGA would've been more inclined to delay Saturn and upgrade from a dual SH2 setup to a more economical & easier-to-implement single SH3 instead. Or at the very least, they could've maybe reworked other parts of the Saturn like the system bus (to remove contention between both SH2s sharing the same bus), or VDP1 & VDP2 chips (integrate into a single ASIC and fix the alpha transparency problems).
