Support NeoGAF

[SportsFan581]

thicc_girls_are_teh_best it will be interesting to see what they offer. It certainly appears they are looking to shake up their position.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

SEGA rules, but Sonic fucking sucks.

Glad to see they are bringing back stuff like Crazy Taxi or Golden Axe, wonder how those will turn out.

The importance of Sonic has increased recently, not that I mind, but it is necessary that games like Sonic and Like a Dragon exist and subsidize production of new hardware as soon as possible, only then will Sega leave this comfort zone and be able to bring RPGs and other games that are in the drawer.

 

[Ozzie666]

Sega failed more than they succeed, lets be clear on that. The Dreamcast was however a beautiful straight forward system , except for that controller and no DVD support.

I'd imagine Sega would make 2 SKUS, one handheld, with a dock and external GPU for home play. It's the only thing that hasn't been done yet to any degree of success. Switch is closest.

Old Sega woud probably still use Power VR, maybe a powerful ARM CPU. The external GPU could bring it up a high performance level. Capture that japense market first with the handheld aspect, external CPU power for the west and hard core.

Developers are already used to scaling wither its Series S/X, or PS4/5 and soon to be Pro? Just a dream I know.

 

[Griffon]

Partner with Lenovo or Asus and make a SEGA-branded handheld PC, bundle it with a bunch of Sega games for Steam.

 

[THE DUCK]

Forget sega, we need a steam console.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Sega is a shell over its former self. You would think going 3rd party their company would have grown, but they've only shrunk putting out a much smaller assortment of games.

Selling Visual Concepts was a massive mistake and I think one of such magnitude that they'd never be able to return to the console space.

They failed to push their key franchises even as a 3rd party publisher. Shenmue should have been one of its highest priorities. Phantasy Star should have gotten a Final Fantasy like budget.

We've seen a fighting game renaissance with Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and Street Fighter... Where is Virtua Fighter? Virtua Fighter 5 came out in 2007...

The reality is that they lost Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Hirokazu Yasuhara. Even Toshihiro Nagoshi has left Sega.

It's a problem impacting several Japanese companies, but Sega has been especially hit hard by it, because it seems as though they haven't really groomed a new generation.

This has not been a problem for Nintendo, who has mainly been able to retain their talent or at least relationships with their talent. For them success begets success.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

People love to call decisions that don't work out mistakes as if the result itself determines whether a decision was good or bad.

That's just not how life works though. Sometimes you only have bad choices and you try to chose the least bad choice. Sometimes you make a good decision with the best data you have, but circumstances change. Sometimes you just don't luck out.

Not all decisions that don't work out are bad decisions, and they certainly aren't all mistakes.

On another forum I got into it with some people who say that Sony should have bought FromSoftware after Dark Souls 1 came out, but they ignore that Dark Souls became so popular because it was multiplatform. In an alternate universe where Sony bought FromSoftware, they might not have been that popular at all. In a similar universal where Ubi Soft made God of War instead of Sony, it might have been a significantly larger franchise. If Halo had released on all platforms and didn't have the push of Microsoft behind it, maybe it wouldn't have been nearly as big a franchise.

Was it a mistake for Nintendo not to use CDs for the N64?

And sometimes bad decisions have good results. Sony's failures with the PS3 revolving much around the price, lead to 3rd parties supporting the Xbox 360 more, which lead to Sony having to put more into their first party games. This ultimately lead to a massive separation in the following generation. If you went back in time and had Sony design and release the PS3 so it came out price equivalent with the Xbox 360, we might not have gotten Uncharted 2 or the Last of Us. Sony's multiplayer games probably would have been more successful and there would have been less attention put on single player games like Ghost of Tsushima.

 

[THE DUCK]

People love to call decisions that don't work out mistakes as if the result itself determines whether a decision was good or bad.

That's just not how life works though. Sometimes you only have bad choices and you try to chose the least bad choice. Sometimes you make a good decision with the best data you have, but circumstances change. Sometimes you just don't luck out.

Not all decisions that don't work out are bad decisions, and they certainly aren't all mistakes.

On another forum I got into it with some people who say that Sony should have bought FromSoftware after Dark Souls 1 came out, but they ignore that Dark Souls became so popular because it was multiplatform. In an alternate universe where Sony bought FromSoftware, they might not have been that popular at all. In a similar universal where Ubi Soft made God of War instead of Sony, it might have been a significantly larger franchise. If Halo had released on all platforms and didn't have the push of Microsoft behind it, maybe it wouldn't have been nearly as big a franchise.

Was it a mistake for Nintendo not to use CDs for the N64?

And sometimes bad decisions have good results. Sony's failures with the PS3 revolving much around the price, lead to 3rd parties supporting the Xbox 360 more, which lead to Sony having to put more into their first party games. This ultimately lead to a massive separation in the following generation. If you went back in time and had Sony design and release the PS3 so it came out price equivalent with the Xbox 360, we might not have gotten Uncharted 2 or the Last of Us. Sony's multiplayer games probably would have been more successful and there would have been less attention put on single player games like Ghost of Tsushima.

It's all this back and forward and competition that is healthy, makes me very confused when many people on this board are happy at the idea of MS leaving the console business. As a gamer, regardless of your favorite platform, having less competition would be bad.

 

[marquimvfs]

 

[Mibu no ookami]

It's all this back and forward and competition that is healthy, makes me very confused when many people on this board are happy at the idea of MS leaving the console business. As a gamer, regardless of your favorite platform, having less competition would be bad.

I mean ultimately I don't know how much Microsoft has really driven Sony. They haven't really driven them all that much in the last 10 years. If anything Microsoft drove Sony to buy bungie creating more consolidation in the market. I'm not sure that is the competition that we wanted.

There is something lost by Xbox leaving the market, but I think there will be new ways for competition to happen.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Was it a mistake for Nintendo not to use CDs for the N64?

without a doubt this saved them, imagine Nintendo having to pay $100 per unit, having its games subject to piracy and increasing the final price of the N64. Nintendo would sell fewer N64s and not more as laypeople think.

 

[Celine]

Arcades are still doing decently in Japan and other parts of Asia but in the West most of the big ones got absorbed by FECs (Family Entertainment Centers) and a lot of what they put out aren't even traditional games anymore. Although, some companies have done well for themselves in the market, like Raw Thrills.

During 2019 "video games" accounted for only 11.7% of the revenue generated by the amusement industry in Japan.
What led the amusement industry in the Country that year were prize games (about 90% of which are crane games) by being responsible for the absolute majority of the revenue generated (55.3%).
In second place were medal games with 29%.

(Data by the Japan Amusement Industry Association).

The Current State of Arcade Gaming in Japan, And How It's Dealt With COVID-19

Arcade gaming was already in a bad place before the pandemic hit, and the industry now faces an unprecedented crisis.

www.frontlinejp.net

 

[64bitmodels]

Nobody would care. Even if it had a dreamcast tier library no one would care. We don't need any more consoles.

 

[Arsic]

 

[THE DUCK]

I mean ultimately I don't know how much Microsoft has really driven Sony. They haven't really driven them all that much in the last 10 years. If anything Microsoft drove Sony to buy bungie creating more consolidation in the market. I'm not sure that is the competition that we wanted.

There is something lost by Xbox leaving the market, but I think there will be new ways for competition to happen.

I don't think that's true. Even just the existance of series X pushed Sony to build the best PS5 possible. And who knows what pricing might have been like during covid if there was no Xbox. Plus they have all the studios working a full budgets to fight off the compeition.
If there was no gamepass, you likely wouldn't have ps plus premium, and perhaps even higher subscruption fees. I understand there is still a ceiling, but it's higher.

Not so sure on the other competition stepping in at this point. If Google or Apple bring out a console, what exclusive games will they have? Maybe money hats to Xbox for timed exclusives? But then how is that any different than an xbox console.......

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I don't think that's true. Even just the existance of series X pushed Sony to build the best PS5 possible. And who knows what pricing might have been like during covid if there was no Xbox. Plus they have all the studios working a full budgets to fight off the compeition.
If there was no gamepass, you likely wouldn't have ps plus premium, and perhaps even higher subscruption fees. I understand there is still a ceiling, but it's higher.

Not so sure on the other competition stepping in at this point. If Google or Apple bring out a console, what exclusive games will they have? Maybe money hats to Xbox for timed exclusives? But then how is that any different than an xbox console.......

You could argue that this is negative competition that that money could have been used elsewhere in a more conducive place if Sony didn't have to compete.

Also they probably should have raised prices to drive off scalpers.

I didn't mean that apple or google would step in, but that there are other ways for competition to happen. As in, Sony will probably start competing with Steam and Switch.

 

[THE DUCK]

You could argue that this is negative competition that that money could have been used elsewhere in a more conducive place if Sony didn't have to compete.

Also they probably should have raised prices to drive off scalpers.

I didn't mean that apple or google would step in, but that there are other ways for competition to happen. As in, Sony will probably start competing with Steam and Switch.

Well valve is very close to likely launching a steam console. And probably should. But the question is, are they going to release it half heartily with no advertising, no retail partners, and no exclusives? Because with out those three they will never see the volume needed to even bother Sony or Nintendo.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Well valve is very close to likely launching a steam console. And probably should. But the question is, are they going to release it half heartily with no advertising, no retail partners, and no exclusives? Because with out those three they will never see the volume needed to even bother Sony or Nintendo.

There is no chance a Steam console has any success. As you mention volume is a big problem.

When you're looking at off the shelf parts, there is no way Valve is going to get enough volume to really have an effective price. On top of that it would be unlikely to be modular and upgradable, without being even more expensive.

When you consider Valve's lower royalties, it makes even less sense, because you need to sell hardware for even more and if it is like the steamdeck and it can run windows, you're beyond screwed.

Without physical game sales, why would retailers carry it unless they got really good margins on it?

So you're looking at a machine weaker than a PS5 and probably more expensive than a PS5 Pro...

Or significantly more expensive than a PS5 Pro and still weaker than a PS5 Pro. Or astronomically more expensive and thus not really in the ballpark of consoles.

The original Steam Machine came out in 2015 and we've been that road and it wasn't worth it. 90% of steam users are kb/m. I think there is this constant desire to try and see if Valve can't compete with Sony, but they can't. It would be a lot easier for Sony to compete with them than the other way around.

 

[THE DUCK]

There is no chance a Steam console has any success. As you mention volume is a big problem.

When you're looking at off the shelf parts, there is no way Valve is going to get enough volume to really have an effective price. On top of that it would be unlikely to be modular and upgradable, without being even more expensive.

When you consider Valve's lower royalties, it makes even less sense, because you need to sell hardware for even more and if it is like the steamdeck and it can run windows, you're beyond screwed.

Without physical game sales, why would retailers carry it unless they got really good margins on it?

So you're looking at a machine weaker than a PS5 and probably more expensive than a PS5 Pro...

Or significantly more expensive than a PS5 Pro and still weaker than a PS5 Pro. Or astronomically more expensive and thus not really in the ballpark of consoles.

The original Steam Machine came out in 2015 and we've been that road and it wasn't worth it. 90% of steam users are kb/m. I think there is this constant desire to try and see if Valve can't compete with Sony, but they can't. It would be a lot easier for Sony to compete with them than the other way around.

I think if they can deliver a portable at a decent price, they could do the same with a newer apu mini console. The newer strix halo that is rumored might be perfect, 40 cu's would be plenty for a lot of people. Like a $499 price. But alas, I still wouldn't expect them to sell more than 5-10 million if direct only.

The prior Steam machine was wrong in many ways.

 

[CrustyBritches]

The console business isn't worth getting into. Sony dominates the market, Nintendo only makes handhelds, and Xbox is struggling. Who wants a piece of that diminishing pie?

 

[Durin]

I just miss the weirdness that was the Dreamcast. VMUs were a neat idea for your controller, and as a separate device for silly little mini-games. Not to mention all of the fantastic arcade ports that yielded the best library for a console so short-lived.

Never been as excited by another console release as much, even though over time the PS2 had probably the best library of any console still.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

What made Sega fail in the past is the same thing that would make it fail today.
cultural differences

Sega's headquarters is in Japan but the American branch was the one who was successful, not them.
The Mega Drive sold much less than it could have, ending the 4th gen with 3M units sold in Japan. so they fixed the Mega Drive mistakes (from their perspective) on the Sega Saturn.

a) A new mascot adapted to the country, Nights.
b) RPGs (the need for rpg was decisive for maintaining 2d) at the time rpg was synonymous with 2d or limited 3d
This partially explains why they made a prelude console that would later become the Sega Saturn 2D with limited 3D. think of the prelude console as a 3DO Jaguar dai san dankai.
c) Arcade at home basically pleases Capcom (the most 2D company at the time that even launched cps3 arcade board at the height of the 2D decline) and SNK

The commercial performance of the Saturn surpassing the Playstation throughout 94-95, as well as the Saturn ending the gen with twice the base compared to the Mega Drive, proved them right.
However price of success in Japan was the alienation of Sega's Western base, it's not difficult to notice the lack of Sonic and NFL game.
Dreamcast fixed the Sega Saturn mistakes (from their perspective) Sonic Adventure, NFL 2k cheap price However this time alienation of Sega's Japanese fan base occurred, Dreamcast ending commercially below Mega Drive in japan.

Hypothetically in the future they would try to correct the Dreamcast's mistakes, among them, the biggest of all be launched before the competitor.
being launched first exposes the product's tactics and strategies, so the competition exploits weaknesses. But cultural differences will continue to be Sega's biggest challenge.

 

[MonkeyClaw36]

Sorry to nitpick, but Xbox Series S is only putting out 4TF of power. Sure it has the newer CPU, RAM, and SSD but I would absolutely argue that it's quite a bit worse than the Xbox One X in terms of capability. If SEGA were to drop a new console putting out 8TF, it would be quite a bit more powerful than the Series S.

That all being said, what would it bring to the table that doesn't already exist?

Hell, the damn thing can't even render @4K. The One X could. One X is still a beast.

 

[Days like these...]

A myth was created that Sega made mistakes in the past.

In fact, every company makes mistakes, but the impacts vary according to the capital the company has.
In the console market, the so-called mistakes is something necessary, few companies are as rich as Microsoft that can afford to make a mistake with Xbox One and basically relaunch the system with versions S and X or have enough money to put the best processor and the best gpu like they did Original xbox.

All other companies are forced to look for smart solutions to balance the scales.

Sega planned the Genesis successor as a console with limited 3D and excellent 2D capability, we are talking about 1991 here, very different from the myth that the console would be fully 2D (not even SNES was fully 2D ) this early concept, later became a console with single SH-2 so that after Sega discovered the PS1 specs and its 3d emphasis, they added the second SH-2 and other chips to make it our beloved Sega Saturn .

Why did this happen?

Simple, Money.
The plastic of the PS1, the length of the wire and quality of the cannon were not the best, memory card transferring this additional cost to the consumer save its games. But PS1 internal components were some of the best in 1994 and there were contracts ensuring exclusivity.
there was no way for SEGA to have a competitive console against companies that have dozens of times its capital, note that Nintendo, being richer than SEGA, did not dare to put CD-Rom in its consoles. This conclusion inexorably leads to the use of so-called mistakes ( wich are mistakes only when it goes wrong when it goes right they call it genius)

What would a hypothetical Sega console look like in modern times?


There is the 12TF 16GB Xbox Series X on the market today, there is also the 6TF 12GB Xbox Series S representing the minimum power to receive multiplatforms.
SEGA would have two options
Making a console above 12tf and using a lower quality cpu than the Wii U did, maybe 12gb of memory or
Make a console with 8 teraflops and 16GB of memory with expansion to 24GB solseparately.
This configuration would allow SEGA to surpass the Xbox Series X graphics but using Series S resolutions

I anticipate that this strategy of looking for more power is bad due to the advent of PRO consoles

Sega has enough money to put a console on the market, a Switch would be easy, I hope they still have a competitive instinct in them.

Tl;dr but I don't believe you.

 

[Scotty W]

Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001.

There are kids who were born after that who are now old enough to have finished university.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

interesting how Sega corrected some Saturn mistakes on the Dreamcast while introducing others

 

[Sophist]

Saturn was the ill-conceived child of the Sega CD and Sega 32x which should have never existed. The 90's was a graveyard for video gaming platforms, many big players failed hard, including Nintendo.

 

[tkscz]

A myth was created that Sega made mistakes in the past.

In fact, every company makes mistakes, but the impacts vary according to the capital the company has.
In the console market, the so-called mistakes is something necessary, few companies are as rich as Microsoft that can afford to make a mistake with Xbox One and basically relaunch the system with versions S and X or have enough money to put the best processor and the best gpu like they did Original xbox.

All other companies are forced to look for smart solutions to balance the scales.

Sega planned the Genesis successor as a console with limited 3D and excellent 2D capability, we are talking about 1991 here, very different from the myth that the console would be fully 2D (not even SNES was fully 2D ) this early concept, later became a console with single SH-2 so that after Sega discovered the PS1 specs and its 3d emphasis, they added the second SH-2 and other chips to make it our beloved Sega Saturn .

Why did this happen?

Simple, Money.
The plastic of the PS1, the length of the wire and quality of the cannon were not the best, memory card transferring this additional cost to the consumer save its games. But PS1 internal components were some of the best in 1994 and there were contracts ensuring exclusivity.
there was no way for SEGA to have a competitive console against companies that have dozens of times its capital, note that Nintendo, being richer than SEGA, did not dare to put CD-Rom in its consoles. This conclusion inexorably leads to the use of so-called mistakes ( wich are mistakes only when it goes wrong when it goes right they call it genius)

What would a hypothetical Sega console look like in modern times?


There is the 12TF 16GB Xbox Series X on the market today, there is also the 6TF 12GB Xbox Series S representing the minimum power to receive multiplatforms.
SEGA would have two options
Making a console above 12tf and using a lower quality cpu than the Wii U did, maybe 12gb of memory or
Make a console with 8 teraflops and 16GB of memory with expansion to 24GB sold separately.
This configuration would allow SEGA to surpass the Xbox Series X graphics but using Series S resolutions

I anticipate that this strategy of looking for more power is bad due to the advent of PRO consoles

Sega has enough money to put a console on the market, a Switch would be easy, I hope they still have a competitive instinct in them.

If you look into the history of Sega, money was far from their only issue. They didn't make a few mistakes here and there, they made some baffling and self-destructive decisions that cost them big every time. Their only real success in the consoles was the Genesis/Megadrive but they tried to keep it going well past it's prime and even that started to be an issue. Sega is out of the console business because the heads of Sega didn't know what they were doing.

interesting how Sega corrected some Saturn mistakes on the Dreamcast while introducing others

I will never forget that the Dreamcast could have had Voodoo graphics in it but only doesn't because Voodoo announced they were working with Sega before Sega could announce it.

 

[cobaltorange]

As someone who bought a Dreamcast at launch, boy was SEGA an overhyped company.

How so? The Dreamcast library, especially for the short time it was alive, was great. Still has more exclusives than PS5/Series X.

 

[cobaltorange]

If you look into the history of Sega, money was far from their only issue. They didn't make a few mistakes here and there, they made some baffling and self-destructive decisions that cost them big every time. Their only real success in the consoles was the Genesis/Megadrive but they tried to keep it going well past it's prime and even that started to be an issue. Sega is out of the console business because the heads of Sega didn't know what they were doing.

I will never forget that the Dreamcast could have had Voodoo graphics in it but only doesn't because Voodoo announced they were working with Sega before Sega could announce it.

I don't think the issue was that they kept Genesis going way past it's prime. It's that they got intimidated by all the flash-in-the-pan competitors and threw out add-ons to try to compete. The add-ons cannibalized their sales and shook their customers' faith. SNES was on the market for just as many years and didn't "go past it's prime." The fact of the matter is PS1 was a juggernaut. N64's sales paled in comparison too. If it wasn't for all the infighting between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, leading up to and during the Saturn, it would've at least done similar numbers to the N64. I don't think it had a chance of selling close to the numbers of PS1.

Nah, this is cope, the market chose the console with actual games: the old-gen PS1.
And we are about to witness this same thing happening again when the PS5 inevitably outsells the early next-gen Xbox in its first year.

Dreamcast did have actual games though. Of course it didn't have the library of a successful system that had been on the market for 4 years.

Sega will not put out another console because it's absolutely the dumbest thing anyone could do right now as consoles will begin to be phase out in the coming decades .

Why do you think they'll be phased out? So, how many decades are you thinking exactly? What does your crystal ball show?

 

[tkscz]

I don't think the issue was that they kept Genesis going way past it's prime. It's that they got intimidated by all the flash-in-the-pan competitors and threw out add-ons to try to compete. The add-ons cannibalized their sales and shook their customers' faith. SNES was on the market for just as many years and didn't "go past it's prime." The fact of the matter is PS1 was a juggernaut. N64's sales paled in comparison too. If it wasn't for all the infighting between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, leading up to and during the Saturn, it would've at least done similar numbers to the N64. I don't think it had a chance of selling close to the numbers of PS1.

Up to and during the Saturn's life time. I still can't believe Yugi Naka (well I kind of can now) actually hindered STI's Sonic game the way he did. They actually had a model running, that wasn't Sonic Xtreme, that was using the Nights engine and this made Naka threaten to quit if they didn't stop developing with the engine. The story of the Saturn is bonkers.

This goes without mentioning Sega exec's constant need to be the youtube comment equivalent of "FIRST". They were rushing out games before they were finished even back in the early arcade days. Yu Suzuki has even said that he would put in testing stage games on a broken TV so that the execs would still believe the game was unfinished just so they could test it.

 

[cartman414]

Saturn was the ill-conceived child of the Sega CD and Sega 32x which should have never existed. The 90's was a graveyard for video gaming platforms, many big players failed hard, including Nintendo.

What an ignorant thing to say. 32X was the red-headed stepchild that helped kill its momentum.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Sega failed more than they succeed, lets be clear on that. The Dreamcast was however a beautiful straight forward system , except for that controller and no DVD support.

it looked like a toy to me, controller was horrible but that's the world we live in, thanks to the Dreamcast controller, we had the Duke controller on the xbox, then the S controller then the xbox 360 controller . At the time there was the idea that with each generation the controller should be modified, Sony was the first to realize that this idea was foolish, the controller is a symbol that represents a console. A new Sega controller must have 6 front buttons, it's the Sega symbol.

I'd imagine Sega would make 2 SKUS, one handheld, with a dock and external GPU for home play. It's the only thing that hasn't been done yet to any degree of success. Switch is closest.

Old Sega woud probably still use Power VR, maybe a powerful ARM CPU. The external GPU could bring it up a high performance level. Capture that japense market first with the handheld aspect, external CPU power for the west and hard core.

For a few days I also thought that imitating the Nintendo Switch would be positive, then after thinking about it I concluded that it wouldn't. What sells Nintendo's handhelds are the Nintendo franchises, however companies like Sega, MS or even Sony need embedded technology that arouses the public's interest. So what Sega should do, I would do if I led the project, is launch an arcade cartridge console, this console would need to follow the Genesis philosophy and receive only selected multiplats, and it should be a next generation console (2025). My strategy is to predict the inevitable clash against the Xbox Series Z.

If the person wants to play outside of home, it would be at the arcade.
the arcade would have much higher specs than the console, the console would be a simplified version of the arcade.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

32x really hurt Sega
It is difficult to even theorize what new mistakes they would be capable of making.

 

[cireza]

32x really hurt Sega
It is difficult to even theorize what new mistakes they would be capable of making.

Did you up the thread just to say this ?

 

[deriks]

Didn't see this thread before, still, was that a question?

Sega fucked up since the Mega Drive, with the Sega CD and [primary] the 32X. Saturn was a frankenstein monster that never got a big boy Sonic game, and more expensive because we don't know. Dreamcast had basically all the right moves for the time - some people say the DVD thing, but the console was launched in fucking 1998 and DVD players were expensive as fuck back then. One could argue that a expansion or something could do the job, but piracy didn't help, and two years later the PS2 came with better hardware, better marketing and a nice price - and in those days there's kind of a cultural thing to have one console for the gen, so the Dreamcast was killed by a lot of the early adopters

It's a shame. I wish I could see how Sega is doing in the multiverse that they're partners with Microsoft and we are with the Dreamcast 5, and with Sonic Adventure 3 getting the GOTY

 

[fart town usa]

As someone who bought a Dreamcast at launch, boy was SEGA an overhyped company.

They were geniuses for Arcade gameplay and tech.

--------
I'm just gonna say it, DC isn't that great of a console. It has some bangers for sure and it's worth owning if you're a collector but it pales in comparison to the Genesis and Saturn. No 2nd analog stick? Braindead beyond comprehension, and the removal of two face buttons? Go play Jet Set Radio and tell me how good the controls are. It's an awful experience.

 

[cireza]

Go play Jet Set Radio and tell me how good the controls are. It's an awful experience.

What ? Always felt that it was perfectly fine and I play it almost every year.

 

[fart town usa]

What ? Always felt that it was perfectly fine and I play it almost every year.

Camera controls are trash. I play it too every few years. I like the DC, just too much nostalgia cope, system as a whole is mid at best IMO and I base that off few people in NA experiencing the Saturn first hand. Most people dont know any better because the DC was their first experience with Sega 3D at home, and the fact that it was Sega's last console. Lots of emotion involved.

 

[cireza]

Camera controls are trash.

You can only center the camera front, that's how it is supposed to be played. PSO is the same.

I don't really have an opinion about the Dreamcast being awesome or bad, it was a good product for its time though and the most significant jump of the 3D era for home consoles.

 

[RAIDEN1]

Let's not forget there was a civil war at its peak at Sega between 1990-1995, (which covers the Sega CD project, 32x, and Saturn..) unlike say in the mid 80s when they were all singing from the same hymn sheet when it came to Project Genesis/Mega-drive, that all went out the window after that console...

 

[diffusionx]

I don't think the issue was that they kept Genesis going way past it's prime. It's that they got intimidated by all the flash-in-the-pan competitors and threw out add-ons to try to compete. The add-ons cannibalized their sales and shook their customers' faith. SNES was on the market for just as many years and didn't "go past it's prime." The fact of the matter is PS1 was a juggernaut. N64's sales paled in comparison too. If it wasn't for all the infighting between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, leading up to and during the Saturn, it would've at least done similar numbers to the N64. I don't think it had a chance of selling close to the numbers of PS1.


Dreamcast did have actual games though. Of course it didn't have the library of a successful system that had been on the market for 4 years.


Why do you think they'll be phased out? So, how many decades are you thinking exactly? What does your crystal ball show?

I still think SegaCD was worth releasing, it just came out a bit too late and a bit too expensive. And I am sure people at Sega looked at the PCE in Japan where NEC released like 6000 add-ons and somehow it worked. The big mistake was the 32X. I think if they shitcanned that and released a good NFL game and a good Sonic game on Saturn in 1996, the system would have done fine in the USA.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

and more expensive because we don't know.

Except we know. The Sega Saturn and Playstation projects had similar production costs, were different routes and contracts, but in their own way produced very similar costs for the consumer. Saturn was ¥44,800 Playstation was ¥39,800. But Sony was more efficient in its strategy, for example the memory card is an essential item but Sony managed to make it optional in the consumer's mind, it had less plastic per inch, CD-ROM manufactured in Sony's own facilities, simple mainboard design, fewer chips associated with memory, better logistics. These movements not only allowed a lower price but also the possibility of lower costs in the future.

The Sega Saturn, in addition to providing internal memory for saves, also had a complex mainboard that made lower costs impossible in the future.
Sega Saturn + 1 game (bundle) $399. PS1 $299 (+ memory card + 1 game) good job Sony.

 

[cireza]

Except we know. The Sega Saturn and Playstation projects had similar production costs, were different routes and contracts, but in their own way produced very similar costs for the consumer. Saturn was ¥44,800 Playstation was ¥39,800. But Sony was more efficient in its strategy, for example the memory card is an essential item but Sony managed to make it optional in the consumer's mind, it had less plastic per inch, CD-ROM manufactured in Sony's own facilities, simple mainboard design, fewer chips associated with memory, better logistics. These movements not only allowed a lower price but also the possibility of lower costs in the future.

The Sega Saturn, in addition to providing internal memory for saves, also had a complex mainboard that made lower costs impossible in the future.
Sega Saturn + 1 game (bundle) $399. PS1 $299 (+ memory card + 1 game) good job Sony.

The PS1 main board was complex as well. Sony had a ton of money and could manufacture themselves the components, of course they were going to have a better margin anyway.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Except we know. The Sega Saturn and Playstation projects had similar production costs, were different routes and contracts, but in their own way produced very similar costs for the consumer. Saturn was ¥44,800 Playstation was ¥39,800. But Sony was more efficient in its strategy, for example the memory card is an essential item but Sony managed to make it optional in the consumer's mind, it had less plastic per inch, CD-ROM manufactured in Sony's own facilities, simple mainboard design, fewer chips associated with memory, better logistics. These movements not only allowed a lower price but also the possibility of lower costs in the future.

The Sega Saturn, in addition to providing internal memory for saves, also had a complex mainboard that made lower costs impossible in the future.
Sega Saturn + 1 game (bundle) $399. PS1 $299 (+ memory card + 1 game) good job Sony.

Expect they didn't.

The budget for the PS1 was over $500 million, dream if you think Saturn had that level of budget to design it and launch it. Also, you seem not to know that SONY also needed to manufacture parts of the PS1 outside of its own facilities. The PS1 GPU was co-developed and manufactured by Toshiba, a little known fact. You also seem not to know that SEGA Japan was able to cut the price of the Saturn before SONY in Japan

All that's for the birds anyway.


What hurt the Saturn and SEGA was Sega America: and the thinking the 32X was more than just a stopgap to counter the 3DO and Jaguar, but a system that would win the 32-bit and 64-bit console war...trying to hold to a dying dwindling 16-bit market that even in 1994 had began to be over saturated with games that people were getting so bored of (the same game over and over again) with millions of carts going unsold costing SEGA a fortune.

 

[ricardo_sousa11]

Sega had it all in the 90s, thats about it.

 

[nkarafo]

The Saturn died the moment people compared Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter with Ridge Racer and Tekken. That was it, there was no recovery from that.

 

[Kyo]

I keep seeing this thread get bumped and shaking my head at the basic premise. Sega certainly made lots of mistakes, but the mistakes they made with the Saturn were very different from those they made with the Dreamcast, so I find it pretty silly to lump these together under "the same mistakes" and predict a combination of mistakes that never happened concurrently will suddenly happen "again".

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Expect they didn't.

The budget for the PS1 was over $500 million, dream if you think Saturn had that level of budget to design it and launch it.

Saturn's budget was over 600 million dude, bigger than the Dreamcast (that's $1,377 billion in 2024 inflation, bigger than 'Super Game' $ 800 million)
The marketing budget was also about the same on Saturn and PS1 in the first year but the Saturn was less efficient as we saw, unfortunately you have little knowledge about this things.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Saturn's budget was over 600 million dude, bigger than the Dreamcast (that's $1,377 billion in 2024 inflation, bigger than 'Super Game' $ 800 million)
The marketing budget was also about the same on Saturn and PS1 in the first year but the Saturn was less efficient as we saw, unfortunately you have little knowledge about this things.

Stop bull shitting . SEGA didn't even spend $500 million developing and marketing the Dreamcast