Sonic X-Treme Unearthed

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Well, Dreamcast games released in Japan until 2007, remember. It's reasonable to assume that some small-ish number of systems were sold each year from the back stock they had probably built up. Think of how Nintendo sold the Famicom until, like, 2005 or something, with small numbers of sales each year. You're right though, I would expect that most sales there would have happened between December '98 and April '02, the period that Sega was releasing first-party titles for the system in Japan. But it's likely there were some sales after that... the only question is if it actually added up to anything significant. But if that 9.26 million number is the real, final Saturn sales number, it seems possible that the DC could have gotten the 130k sales needed to match the Saturn's total, perhaps... That's a small gap.

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They weren't selling new Dreamcast systems anymore at that late date. I don't recall when exactly they ran out of new Japanese units but it was much earlier than 2007. When Puyo Puyo Fever came out in early 2004, there were some stories that Sega was restarting Dreamcast sales in Japan, but that was based on a mistranslated web page, and all they did was sell refurbished units through Sega Direct. There was a "bundle" with the game and system but it wasn't a true retail bundle, just a package deal with a slight discount for buying both. They did the same thing when Radirgy came out two years later.

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For US Saturn sales, I just struggle to see how sales get up to 2 million considering the reality of the chart we have: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post693177 Those other numbers look quite reasonable, though.

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That chart doesn't label the Y axis, so you can't really tell how many units were sold. Even if you were to attempt to reconstruct the scale by counting the distance in pixels in spots where we know the approximate number, the resolution is too low to deduce decent numbers out of it. Also, NPD data doesn't represent total sales. It's useful for comparison purposes, but not accurate in absolute numbers. Only major retailers report to the NPD; independent stores, which were more numerous in the 90s than they are now, didn't. And it excludes sales in Canada.

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Originally Posted by Folco

Revenue decline from the FY '98 apex but didn't fall off badly.
The arcade business was always profitable.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=182

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Ah, right. That's still very bad for Sega's revenues, though! I mean, with the DC underwhelming, their only hope was good arcade revenues... but those were declining, not improving or staying flat. That certainly made a bad situation worse.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

They weren't selling new Dreamcast systems anymore at that late date. I don't recall when exactly they ran out of new Japanese units but it was much earlier than 2007. When Puyo Puyo Fever came out in early 2004, there were some stories that Sega was restarting Dreamcast sales in Japan, but that was based on a mistranslated web page, and all they did was sell refurbished units through Sega Direct. There was a "bundle" with the game and system but it wasn't a true retail bundle, just a package deal with a slight discount for buying both. They did the same thing when Radirgy came out two years later.

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Yeah, the question is about when they ran out. If they sold, like, a couple thousand systems a year from April '02 on for a couple of years, then the Saturn won overall in sales. But if they managed 125k total, then the Dreamcast might have. I'd imagine it'd probably mostly depend on how much they sold in FY2003 (April '02 to March '03), since later on I'm sure sales were negligible...

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That chart doesn't label the Y axis, so you can't really tell how many units were sold. Even if you were to attempt to reconstruct the scale by counting the distance in pixels in spots where we know the approximate number,

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This is very possible, we know many of those Chistmas-season peaks.

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the resolution is too low to deduce decent numbers out of it.

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Look at the full-size image, I think it's high enough resolution to see things clearly: http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1682/urwf.jpg

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Also, NPD data doesn't represent total sales. It's useful for comparison purposes, but not accurate in absolute numbers. Only major retailers report to the NPD; independent stores, which were more numerous in the 90s than they are now, didn't. And it excludes sales in Canada.

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This is true, Canada and minor retailers weren't figured into those numbers. That is a good point. Actual North America sales would be a bit above NPD numbers. Canada's small, and most games and systems sell at major retailers, but not all of them.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Yeah, the question is about when they ran out. If they sold, like, a couple thousand systems a year from April '02 on for a couple of years, then the Saturn won overall in sales. But if they managed 125k total, then the Dreamcast might have. I'd imagine it'd probably mostly depend on how much they sold in FY2003 (April '02 to March '03), since later on I'm sure sales were negligible...

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I have no idea why you are so interested in the narrative of one console "winning" over another.
You can say by the shipment data provided by Sega that Saturn outsold Dreamcast but it doesn't really matter.
Also 130K in this context are peanuts.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Yeah, the question is about when they ran out. If they sold, like, a couple thousand systems a year from April '02 on for a couple of years, then the Saturn won overall in sales. But if they managed 125k total, then the Dreamcast might have. I'd imagine it'd probably mostly depend on how much they sold in FY2003 (April '02 to March '03), since later on I'm sure sales were negligible...

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They definitely didn't have any more to sell by early 2004. That's very clear. Sales would have stopped by late 2003 at the absolute latest, and probably earlier.

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This is very possible, we know many of those Chistmas-season peaks.

Look at the full-size image, I think it's high enough resolution to see things clearly: http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1682/urwf.jpg

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Yeah, I tried but the image isn't good enough. Look at mid-98 for the Saturn; it looks like it goes up and down slightly, but it just registers as basically zero the whole time. The line and the points aren't perfectly aligned, and it's tough to gauge distance when it's so close to the axis. Look also at late '97 -- the line seems to show a slight decline for October, but when you zoom in and look at just the points, they're at the same height. Now obviously sales would be a low number for all of these times, but when we're talking about only 2 million units total, several instances of a low number will add up to a fairly significant chunk of that.

Just going by what I've seen locally. I know more people that had saturns back in the day than had dreamcasts back in the day. Also I see more saturn consoles floating around in the wild than I do dreamcasts. However, I see more Dreamcast games than saturn games. I think dreamcast owners were more die-hard gamers and bought more games or something...

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Originally Posted by AlecRob

Just going by what I've seen locally. I know more people that had saturns back in the day than had dreamcasts back in the day. Also I see more saturn consoles floating around in the wild than I do dreamcasts. However, I see more Dreamcast games than saturn games. I think dreamcast owners were more die-hard gamers and bought more games or something...

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I don't know where you live, but in North America the Dreamcast sold more than twice what the Saturn did -- a bit over 4 million for the DC, 2 million max for the Saturn. I'm not sure how the Dreamcast sold in Europe, but given that the Saturn only sold a million there, the DC probably did better there as well.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

They definitely didn't have any more to sell by early 2004. That's very clear. Sales would have stopped by late 2003 at the absolute latest, and probably earlier.

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Yeah, 2003 at the latest does sound reasonable, if by '04 all they were offering was refurbished systems.

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Yeah, I tried but the image isn't good enough. Look at mid-98 for the Saturn; it looks like it goes up and down slightly, but it just registers as basically zero the whole time. The line and the points aren't perfectly aligned, and it's tough to gauge distance when it's so close to the axis. Look also at late '97 -- the line seems to show a slight decline for October, but when you zoom in and look at just the points, they're at the same height. Now obviously sales would be a low number for all of these times, but when we're talking about only 2 million units total, several instances of a low number will add up to a fairly significant chunk of that.

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Ah right, I see what you mean. Yeah, figuring out Saturn numbers after March '97 on that chart would be pretty hard, the system is just so few pixels above the bottom of the line!

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

the system is just so few pixels above the bottom of the line!

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lmao! Sorry, I can't rep you again, ABF. But that part made me laugh quite a bit.

Holy Christ guys.

Maybe I wasn't listening, or just being the poop-nose I usually am, but is there any chance of seeing a Saturn port? Because I'd buy that in a second.

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Originally Posted by GriskaGyoran

Maybe I wasn't listening, or just being the poop-nose I usually am, but is there any chance of seeing a Saturn port? Because I'd buy that in a second.

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The guy with the original material is working directly on the Saturn development board, so the game, so far, is being tested on the console and emulator. There's also a guy in sonicretro that is receiving material to implement on his project for PC, that is current a lot more advanced since it started around 2010.
In a worst-case scenario we will receive, eventually, an unfinished but working Saturn game and a complete PC release with personal adaptations by the developer of the unfinished parts.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I don't know where you live, but in North America the Dreamcast sold more than twice what the Saturn did -- a bit over 4 million for the DC, 2 million max for the Saturn. I'm not sure how the Dreamcast sold in Europe, but given that the Saturn only sold a million there, the DC probably did better there as well.

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I live in Kentucky, louisville area

So... the PC version of Sonic X-treme was an NV1 game? Somehow I missed that detail until just now.

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Originally Posted by GriskaGyoran

Maybe I wasn't listening, or just being the poop-nose I usually am, but is there any chance of seeing a Saturn port? Because I'd buy that in a second.

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From Sonic Retro.

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To my knowledge, Jolly's goal is to get all three versions (Modern PC, Windows 95/NV1, and Saturn) to the same playable state.
The Saturn is the last platform he's going to be working on since it'll be the most difficult and likely the most time consuming, but with the code from the previous versions already in place it'll probably be a lot easier to port over than if he'd done it with the Saturn version first.
Things could change in the future, but Jolly has done good work so far so it's certainly possible.

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I'm waiting for SEGA to release this officially, kinda like that sonic CD widescreen port

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Originally Posted by AlecRob

I'm waiting for SEGA to release this officially, kinda like that sonic CD widescreen port

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I don't think they ever will. It's unlike any company to put work into a prototype that's almost 20 years old.