Sega and Sony: New Insight into the Partnership That Never Came to Be

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

The Jaguar did indeed have a great price point but the software was NEVER there. The best games seems to be PC ports and or games inspired by Sega (Super Burnout) and Nintendo (Atari Karts).

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SEGA was worried before the system came out. The Jag tech was impressive a lot of people and the planned £199 price point had some in SEGA worried. Michel Ancel was a huge fan of the Hardware and Rayman led development on the Jag. John Carmack, one of the best programmers around then (never mind now) said its the best Hardware he had ever seen and the Jaguar CRY colour mode the best thing around and how he wished it was on the PC. The Jaguar was impressing a lot of people, little did most know how dire Atari was in or how it would mess up the launch so bad and come out with an advertising campaign that would have peed off most of the top Japanese developers, which its heavy push on USA.

I'm amazed to this day that 1) SEGA was worried over the Jag and 2) SEGA Paid out its ridiculous settlement to Atari when SEGA should have played hardball and just watch Atari go bankrupt and it wasn't even like it was just SEGA using the 9 pin patient, Neo Geo, Commodore, Amstrad/Sinclair and a host of others were too.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I'm amazed to this day that 1) SEGA was worried over the Jag and 2) SEGA Paid out its ridiculous settlement to Atari when SEGA should have played hardball and just watch Atari go bankrupt and it wasn't even like it was just SEGA using the 9 pin patient, Neo Geo, Commodore, Amstrad/Sinclair and a host of others were too.

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I am too and today it looks comical, your competitor has put out a joke of a console so you respond with your own half-baked add-on? This is one time where the truth is stranger than fiction.

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Originally Posted by axel

I am too and today it looks comical, your competitor has put out a joke of a console so you respond with your own half-baked add-on? This is one time where the truth is stranger than fiction.

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But people didn't know it would go to be a joke of a console, the Jaguar did on paper sound like a very nice system. I bet SEGA wasn't just worried about the Jaguar or the 3DO, but also the planned SNES CD Drive and the planned NEC ironman console (which would later go on to become the PC-FX) who knows manybe even the planned Neo Geo Star lol
Like I said too, I'm amazed that SEGA thought it would be a good move to pay Atari close to $100 million dollars and allow Atari access to its IP other than Sonic. I would have played hardball or at the very least just take old MD stock off the market and make all new Mega Drive come with a custom port, rather than pay Atari and give them the right to use my beloved SEGA IP.

But competition can not only bring out the best in corps, but the worst just looked at Kinect or more so NEC PC SuperGraxf; A system made to try and counter the MD only to be a lesser mans PC-Eng, never mind Mega Drive. SEGA had a gun-ho attitude of they'll just try anything and if it didn't work so what. I bet it was a great place to work, but a nightmare for SEGA's cash flow and investors

Few people even knew it existed back then and yes those who did were far and few. Atari was already a name that carried little to no weight by 93 esp since it wasn't really Atari anymore. Everything after 2600 was a major flop and made no dent. There was no real hype before of after it's release. It had some crappy ads of "Do the Math" but they didn't run that often while Genesis & SNES ads were constant that I recall

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

But people didn't know it would go to be a joke of a console, the Jaguar did on paper sound like a very nice system. I bet SEGA wasn't just worried about the Jaguar or the 3DO, but also the planned SNES CD Drive and the planned NEC ironman console (which would later go on to become the PC-FX) who knows manybe even the planned Neo Geo Star lol
Like I said too, I'm amazed that SEGA thought it would be a good move to pay Atari close to $100 million dollars and allow Atari access to its IP other than Sonic. I would have played hardball or at the very least just take old MD stock off the market and make all new Mega Drive come with a custom port, rather than pay Atari and give them the right to use my beloved SEGA IP.

But competition can not only bring out the best in corps, but the worst just looked at Kinect or more so NEC PC SuperGraxf; A system made to try and counter the MD only to be a lesser mans PC-Eng, never mind Mega Drive. SEGA had a gun-ho attitude of they'll just try anything and if it didn't work so what. I bet it was a great place to work, but a nightmare for SEGA's cash flow and investors

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I don't see the Kinect being the same kind of error, trying to match a feature of a popular console is much different than scrambling to build an add-on to counter what was essentially vaporware. The Jag is OK on paper but even at launch it would have seemed obvious that Atari was a shadow of its former self and the console had next to no third party support, well I guess hindsight is always 20/20.

Even if the Jaguar had sold well I still don't think the 32X would have been the way to counter it, the Saturn (or any other standalone console) would have been much better.

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Originally Posted by axel

I don't see the Kinect being the same kind of error, trying to match a feature of a popular console is much different than scrambling to build an add-on to counter what was essentially vaporware. The Jag is OK on paper but even at launch it would have seemed obvious that Atari was a shadow of its former self and the console had next to no third party support, well I guess hindsight is always 20/20.

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At the time I couldn't see why SEGA would be worried over the Jag. I guess that with the full launch of the Jaguar set for spring 1994 and possible delays to Saturn in 1994 Maybe SEGA top brass was worried of SONY getting the upper hand in Japan and how the Jaguar could have 1994 all to its self with a price point close to that of the ageing 16 bit consoles and spec's that totally blew them out of the water and then there was all the talk of other systems, like the SNES CD, Neo Star and NEC's Iron man and 3D0 bulldog (M2). With the Jaguar I also remember talk of Time Warner looking to take more a controlling stake in Atari (to add to its stock it already owned) that could have meant some serious money, how the Williams was going to use the Jag Hardware in the Arcades and that MK III would be exclusives to the Jaguar (for next gen systems) most of it was bull and hot air, but I guess some inside SEGA was worried. There again with the Saturn, I never saw the sense in the 32X at all. I also remember talk of a Spiced up Mega Drive in 1990 (forget Jan 1994) Mean Machines and CVG both reported on the GigaDrive and that was before the Mega Drive had even launched in the UK


I could see The Wii motion controls was just a fad, but SONY and Microsoft had to act and bring out their own motion controls and MS went down the route of making an Add-On.

Where was the sense in Kinect and where was MS Europe and MS Japan?; who would fully know most houses in Europe and Japan, simply wouldn't have the space to use the system proper On so many levels it was a stupid, ill-planned and pointless add-on, very much like SEGA's horrible Activator. At least SONY move allowed players input via buttons and at last provided its worth with SONY VR. Kinect was utter crap on the 360 and also helped kill any chance the Xbox One might have had vs the PS4, more so with adding over £100 compared to the price of the more powerful PS4.
I do also struggle to see the sense and logic with NEC's PC Eng Super Grafx, the N64 DD never made much sense to me or the Virtual Boy; which I thought was day one looked and was a joke.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

At the time I couldn't see why SEGA would be worried over the Jag. I guess that with the full launch of the Jaguar set for spring 1994 and possible delays to Saturn in 1994 Maybe SEGA top brass was worried of SONY getting the upper hand in Japan and how the Jaguar could have 1994 all to its self with a price point close to that of the ageing 16 bit consoles and spec's that totally blew them out of the water and then there was all the talk of other systems, like the SNES CD, Neo Star and NEC's Iron man and 3D0 bulldog (M2). With the Jaguar I also remember talk of Time Warner looking to take more a controlling stake in Atari (to add to its stock it already owned) that could have meant some serious money, how the Williams was going to use the Jag Hardware in the Arcades and that MK III would be exclusives to the Jaguar (for next gen systems) most of it was bull and hot air, but I guess some inside SEGA was worried. There again with the Saturn, I never saw the sense in the 32X at all. I also remember talk of a Spiced up Mega Drive in 1990 (forget Jan 1994) Mean Machines and CVG both reported on the GigaDrive and that was before the Mega Drive had even launched in the UK


I could see The Wii motion controls was just a fad, but SONY and Microsoft had to act and bring out their own motion controls and MS went down the route of making an Add-On.

Where was the sense in Kinect and where was MS Europe and MS Japan?; who would fully know most houses in Europe and Japan, simply wouldn't have the space to use the system proper On so many levels it was a stupid, ill-planned and pointless add-on, very much like SEGA's horrible Activator. At least SONY move allowed players input via buttons and at last provided its worth with SONY VR. Kinect was utter crap on the 360 and also helped kill any chance the Xbox One might have had vs the PS4, more so with adding over £100 compared to the price of the more powerful PS4.
I do also struggle to see the sense and logic with NEC's PC Eng Super Grafx, the N64 DD never made much sense to me or the Virtual Boy; which I thought was day one looked and was a joke.

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There's a reason we have so many articles and videos of "worst consoles of all time", you take one look at these things and wonder WTF they were thinking. The systems you listed at the beginning though, I'm not sure how many of them could have been the reason behind the 32X. Let's say a SNES CD had launched, Sega already had a CD-ROM add-on, they would have been ahead of the curve in that case. I never even heard of the Neo Star or NEC Iron Man, again it's hard to believe they were scrambling to rush a system out the door in response to products that didn't exist.

I remember trying the Virtual Boy in a store when it came out, I had neck and eye strain after only a few minutes, I would not have taken it home even if it were free. Argonaut Games (the team behind the Super FX chip) have said they already had a full color virtual reality system ready to go but Nintendo insisted on building their red and black torture device.

Let's not forget Turbo CD is before SEGA CD.

Nobody cared about the Turbo CD in North America. I rolled my eyes when they were trying to sell the Turbo-Duo for $300.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Nobody cared about the Turbo CD in North America. I rolled my eyes when they were trying to sell the Turbo-Duo for $300.

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That wasn't the point. Point it came out before SEGA CD so SEGA CD wasn't so ahead of the curve as someone claimed.

Gotcha!

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Originally Posted by SegataS

That wasn't the point. Point it came out before SEGA CD so SEGA CD wasn't so ahead of the curve as someone claimed.

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Uh... did you see the full sentence?
"Let's say a SNES CD had launched, Sega already had a CD-ROM add-on, they would have been ahead of the curve in that case."

Nowhere in my post did I say the Sega CD launched prior to the Turbo CD.

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Originally Posted by axel

Uh... did you see the full sentence?
"Let's say a SNES CD had launched, Sega already had a CD-ROM add-on, they would have been ahead of the curve in that case."

Nowhere in my post did I say the Sega CD launched prior to the Turbo CD.

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But since something released a CD add on before SEGA they were in no way ahead of the curve. Just on the curve.

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Originally Posted by axel

. Let's say a SNES CD had launched, Sega already had a CD-ROM add-on, they would have been ahead of the curve in that case. I never even heard of the Neo Star or NEC Iron Man, again it's hard to believe they were scrambling to rush a system out the door in response to products that didn't exist.

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How much bull was written about the SNES CD? most of it, we now know to be utter crap (thanks to hindsight). I kept on reading how it was going to have a spec that blew away the Mega Drive and Mega CD combo with a 32Bit CPU and added Video processors and it just turned out to be little more than a basic CD drive. The Neo Star was meant to be SNK 32Bit system (not sure how much was ever based on fact) I used to read a lot about NEC's Ironman in mag's like EDGE, CVG they showed the hardware and that 3D game running on it, with streamed backgrounds.
Something had SEGA spooked with the need to rush a system out in the west, that rules the PS, Ironman tbh, but maybe some were worried about the Jaguar and the 3DO; which also was going to have it's own super powerful add on with Bulldog, which would also be a separate system too (the M2)

I can't see it being the PC since SEGA was already working on the format and looking to increase its presence on the format and that at the time, PC were hugely expensive, which would price out most of SEGA's audience (in terms of the mainstream) the Mega CD and Mega Drive had most of the basic power to beat the SNES, you had the SVP chip to counter the Super FX too and so that leaves the Jaguar and the planned upgrade to 3DO the Bulldog, or a possible planned Philips CDi II (which was also said to be in development with 3D tech from Argonaut ) It was just a crazy time, and easy to look back and laugh, but if I said to you in the late 90's that Apple would be worth more than Microsoft, that NVidia would be the best selling 3D card and that 3DFX would be no more, one would have LOL ...

I never saw the point or the merit in the 32X myself at all, it sounded a mess right from the start. From day one I never saw the point in the Virtual Boy or the N64 DD. The N64 DD drive should have just been a CD Add on and the Virtual Boy looked a joke, was a joke and a terrible system to use and play on.
I'm amazed that Nintendo allowed that pile of crap to hit retail. It was a great time mind,each month you seemed to have news on a new planned system or Arcade board, it really was exciting times

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Originally Posted by SegataS

That wasn't the point. Point it came out before SEGA CD so SEGA CD wasn't so ahead of the curve as someone claimed.

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Not many cared for the PC Eng in the USA, so any add On to the base system would have a tall ladder to climb. But in just the same way the Mega CD drastically looked to improve on the PC Eng CDROM2 tech and features, most were speculating on the SNES CD improving apon on the Mega CD, looking to add a new faster CPU and even talk of 32Bit CPUs being used...

I saw the 3DO as a main threat only down to Trip, EA and the number of developers 3DO said they had sent development kits too. Most of it typical Trip talk and hype, but there you go..

Somthing had SEGA spooked and made it rush out a 32 bit system. I never saw the need or point to the 32X myself. Atari was a joke and given than SEGA Japan was all for the Saturn (who housed the best development talent inside SEGA) made the Saturn the only choice That and the cartridge format was a massive step backwards, when it was so clear optical based media was the future.

On those scores alone the 32X made no sense.