I find hard that people felt for paying to play online, specially in the early 2000's
It should always be free like it is on PC until now.
Offering a free online gaming services in the early '00s on mass market consoles, that was actually quality, was not easy.
Sega churned out tons of mediocre and absolutely awful Sonic games still... Sonic Heroes, Sonic 06, Sonic Forces, Sonic 4... just to name a few... and of course the atom bomb of shitness, Sonic Boom.
I don't think having their own console would have changed their gaming output.
If SEGA stayed as a platform holder, Sonic Heroes would've been better at launch same with Sonic '06 (which was literally halved in dev resources so they could get a Wii Sonic game out in 2006 as well).
I'm not a Sonic fan by any means (admittedly don't know much about the franchise in general), but didn't the run of terrible Sonic games start after they wen't third party?
Yep; SA1 & 2 definitely aren't perfect but they're a lot better than people give them credit for these days. And if you look at some of the code & features of SM64 you'd realize just how haphazard aspects of that game are, and how parts of its design are literally held up by duct tape.
Very
fun duct tape, but duct tape all the same.
I believe that whether or not Microsoft entered the market wouldn't have made much of a difference in the end. The Dreamcast failed, Sega had already been through a string of continuous failures, and its reputation was badly damaged. The fact that the PS2 quickly overtook its sales sealed that fate, and the GameCube and Xbox arriving later only reinforced what was already set in motion.
However, I really wish Sega's game development philosophy still existed in today's gaming industry. Once Sony and Microsoft essentially became the driving forces behind the current model, where profit at any cost and a strategy of inflating production costs far beyond the industry's natural growth became the top priority, all the sense of innovation, ambition, boldness, and creativity that once existed died along with Sega (and the pre-Iwata Nintendo).
Sega's failure helped solidify the idea that taking risks in the gaming industry can lead to financial disaster, and that's often used as an argument whenever someone dares to question the current model adopted by Sony and Microsoft (and to some extent, Nintendo as well).
What made a lot of SEGA games in their console run great was that, they always had a strong pick-up-and-play mentality with mechanics that had a lot of depth without getting overinvolved in minutia obscurities and excessive micromanagement, while also generally having strong pacing. Even in very console-orientated games like Shining Force III (currently playing Scenario 2), Panzer Dragoon Saga, Sonic Adventure etc. you can see this, and it's likely influenced by their arcade pedigree.
So that, emphasis on high framerates, clean visuals with bright & poppy colors, high-energy soundtracks, and games that did well at not taking themselves too seriously or trying to make grand statements on issues gamers play games to typically get away from....I feel a lot of that either died or dropped off heavily once SEGA stopped making consoles. You still see it in some Nintendo games (ironically they also have a long arcade history although it's more subdued than SEGA's), and certain 3P games & franchises (i.e maybe some Capcom & Bandai-Namco games, various indies), but it's not a driving force in the industry anymore like it was when SEGA still made consoles.
And that's a sad reality, increasingly so when I see the general state of the industry these days just deteriorating on multiple fronts.
Without MS and Halo, industry wouldn't have grown much.
I suspect whatever happened in Japan to console gaming would have happened worldwide.
GTA3/Vice City/San Andreas & PS2 had just as much if not more an impact than Xbox & Halo, and even if Halo wasn't a thing (it would've been; they were originally making it for the Mac), games like Half-Life 2 would've still came and innovated FPS genre.
I think without Xbox, we wouldn't have seen the rise of Western PC devs shifting towards prioritizing console development with 360. But then, they would've just stuck to PC, MS would've focused on PC and maybe PC gaming wouldn't have gone through a dark age it almost died to if it weren't for Valve & Steam.
This is absolutely ignorant of the history of online gaming.
There were a bunch of pay to play online services back in the 90s on PC. heat.net, kali, and various others. Others like Gamespy had a tiered service where online gaming was free, but something like voice chat required a monthly fee. And all of these services basically existed because most publishers/developers only allowed multiplayer by directly connecting to one another, with your computer dialing up with its modem to directly connect to another computer. So these services actually offered a substantial boon for gamers.
And when developers/publishers started making their own online matchmaking services for their games, the vast majority of these services died or became free. Blizzard basically started a trend with battle.net that other companies copied: they'll sell more games if you make it easy to play against people.
So in comes Microsoft with Xbox Live. MS basically cockblocked publishers/developers from using their own services that they started in the late 90s/early 00s and instead they needed to use MS's tools/services. How did MS convince these companies to go along with the Xbox Live scheme? Moneyhats. Various forms of compensation and promises. No other company but MS could bankroll so many companies like this and a lot of companies took advantage of MS's generosity in many ways (level 5, sega, etc). So now companies expected to be compensated and given tools for free for putting their games online for consoles, especially after the Xbox 360 became popular.
If MS hadn't come in with their backwards 1990s scheme, video game companies would still be chasing after higher sales for their games by making their own free services. And no company had piles of cash just laying around to waste on going backwards like MS did (muchless even lower a licensing fee for dozens of companies) to put their games behind a pay wall to convince consumers to pay up.
And this brings up another problem with MS, they basically made paid exclusives a thing too. SEGA, Nintendo and Sony before that weren't paying millions of dollars to make a game exclusive for their consoles. Exclusives before Xbox were basically limitations of technology (CDs vs carts) or small budgets/teams where they couldn't port games.
Seriously, MS got fucking lucky that online gaming was still so limited for consoles when they brought in the Xbox. The Dreamcast was the first console to come with a modem included, so if it hadn't failed, it would have had more popular online multiplayer games. Console gamers would have gotten used to NOT paying to play games online and this would be the expectation for console gamers going forward. This is why it's so difficult to get PC gamers to pay for any gaming services since the 00s, because PC gamers are used to NOT paying to play their games online. Maybe you're right that in 20 years, maybe another company would come along to try and rip people off like Microsoft did with Xbox Live, but the vast majority of console gamers wouldn't put up with it after experiencing free online play..
Unfortunately, the reality is that console gamers got used to paying to play online and it's now seen huge source of profit for console makers now.
I think this is an interesting way of seeing MS's early effect on gaming; they basically took the controversial approach that worked with Windows & PC, and applied a form of that to console gaming. Even if they just got out of an antitrust lawsuit, console gaming was a smaller industry than computers & computer OSes, and not seen as a vital market either (i.e you didn't need a console for business, school & work).
So if regulatory eyes weren't really eying the console market too much during that time, it wouldn't have been hard for MS to take some of the Wintel strats and apply them to gaming. One thing I have to disagree with you on, though, is SEGA not charging for online play. They
definitely did; if you remember, they did a $199 rebate with Dreamcast during 2000 where you basically got a year of SEGA.Net free with the rebate, as long as you bought the Dreamcast.
It was SEGA's way of a last gambit to drive sales ahead of PS2's American launch, but it didn't work.
Sega would have completely and utterly collapsed from debt and probably not even been able ot transition to a third party publisher. People seem to forget Sega never succeeeded at all financially in the console space. Yes creative and innovative for sure. But poorly managed. Every console was a market failure compared to the competition. Even the Genesis was all smoke and mirrors and not the success people think it was.
If not for their generous debt being wiped clean, they would have died even sooner as a console player.
Once the Arcade and amusement market bottom fell out, they were screwed even more so.
You can bet Sony would have charged for on-line play eventually, easy money.
Basically true. Although, considering the market at the time, the Master System was somewhat successful in Europe and Brazil. Same with Genesis/MegaDrive.
Though on that note, yeah, I think the leaked fiscal document definitely showed that Genesis's success in America might've been exaggerated. Retailers pumping the channel with tons of units for holiday shoppers and then forcing SOA to rebuy all unsold stock afterwards was devastating to the finances. That SEGA didn't even have consolidated accounting at the time just delayed any chance of fixing the problem sooner vs. later, which screwed them over in the end.
It actually makes me wonder if the Genesis ever outsold the SNES in sold-through numbers, in America, any point post-SNES's release. Basically, any year between 1992 and 1994, I wonder if SNES actually outsold Genesis in sold-through during the time. And, if the typical numbers we get about Genesis market share in those years are based on sold-in amounts (and maybe even only looking at the hardware sales)?
Certainly possible in hindsight. Still though, none of that diminishes the Genesis in my eyes; it's still my first game console ever and I love it dearly.
