RE4 vs. SH4 said:
IMO, no. It's sad because the Genesis was my favorite 16-bit console, and so many of the awesome games came from SEGA themselves. I dunno what happened to them. I'm not aware of any major people leaving the company since the 90's, so what's the deal? Did they just not adapt well to the 3D transition? Did they loose their passion for creating software? It makes no sense.
I can answer this. For one, Sega lost major mindshare for having so many failed consoles in a row. Competitors such as Sony developed a large market, basically marketing against Sega style games. There's a reason why the word arcade is negative when associated with Sega. The fanbases of Sony and Nintendo consoles are made up of people who chose not to support Sega, and would not go out of their way to seek out Sega games like the Dreamcast fanbase would.
Then ofcourse, Sega really did give their all to make the Dreamcast work, using their strengths in the arcade and whatnot, but third parties and the industry as a whole treated the console (and Sega) as a joke. All it took was some shady numbers and some demos by Sony to cause everybody to lose total confidence in the Dreamcast. Even showing out and dominating a couple E3's in a row meant nothing, something even Nintendo reps have commented on.
After Sega became a third party, they had a confused strategy to return to the top. They thought if they just made some games of the quality they had on the Dreamcast, things would take care of themselves. That did not happen because the fanbases of the 3 current consoles were not Sega fanbases, and really could care less about Sega in general (nor do they believe Sega's games are good). Sega did not realize that they were really starting from scratch. So Sega splitting their best games among 3 consoles just divided their hardcore base, and basically made their hardcore fans unhappy.
And now, it's been really 2 years since Sega has released large budgeted games in abundance on console, as if they gave up on this gen to load up for the next gen. So ofcourse, you have people thinking Sega will always be this dire. I don't believe this to be true, as they have obviously been tooling up for the next gen, but I realize that they cannot make many more mistakes.
I agree that Sega should pick one console, and treat that console as if it's their own console (by releasing all the games for it.. Sega has to develop a large enough fanbase that is enthusiastic about their games. They also need to curb the small, niche, arcade ports and lower priced games until they have developed this fanbase that will support them. Nothing but the big stuff for about 2 years. Getting that drive back is important. I still believe they have the best artists and R&D in the industry, and this time they will be starting at the same time as the rest of the third parties instead of being 1-3 years behind. Sega needs to find out what people want. I personally think Sega's image is on the nerdy, cheesy side...they need to find that coolness that they had during the Genesis era. Hell, even my bro thought Outrun 2 had a gay ass vibe to it which is not cool, and that game is one of their best of the past couple of years. Spikeout is similar with its cheesy vibe. Less cheese please.
Also, start playing hardball with the fanboy game press. They should work hand in hand with them, that EGM PSU article is a good start. No tolerance for bad reviews for product that needs to sell in large numbers or is high quality. Nobody dares diss a EA game that EA needs to sell a lot of copies,and besides, they don't want naysayers using fanboy reviews to continue the line that Sega sucks. This is a large reason why EA is on top, they never really get bad reviews for any of their games. Everybody besides maybe parents who buy games for children (where the license takes precedence) listens to reviews whether they should or not. Also, there's a reason why that person at GA remains anonymous after giving that C+ review for Ninja Gaiden. Fear of being blacklisted out the industry (especially this good ol boy network industry) is a pretty big motivator for keeping scores high. It's time Sega starts acting like the big corporation that they are.
