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It WASN'T superior... which is why we let our recent experience sway our judgment long enough to see the PSX WAS clearly the superior choice, both in price and library. The hardware may have been a toss up, but two out of three combined with being burned is very convincing.Quote:
Originally Posted by wavelX
Wait, are you saying the Saturn hardware isn't superior to that of the 32X? That sounds a bit suspect to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry coeurl
No, the full context is in reference to the PSX vs. Saturn. And with that, I know there is still debate as to which machine was a stonger performer, but the fact is that PSX's capabilities were more easily tapped.
Chilly: But considering the obvious advantages the PSX had over Saturn, can you really say that your 32X/SCD experience was the driving force behind your choice of PSX?
My choice of Saturn was because I am a hopeless Sega fan. I'm not a blind fan, though, and I waited until I saw something for "my" system that I just had to have. That would be NiGHTS.
Now, I think I might understand your position. Are you saying that your 32X experience allowed to you pierce the "Sega Fan" fog and look at the systems objectively?
I don't think the Sega CD alone really hurt them in th eeyes of developers, the 32x's short life (killed along with Sega CD and Game Gear) would hut it, then the early launch debacle with the Saturn, complex (somewhat buggy) Saturn hardware with initially poor dev kit (and even with later improvements didn't get close to the developer freindliness of the PSX).Quote:
Originally Posted by wavelX
I'm sure that the number of people burned by 32x were relatively small, but that certainly made fodder for the gaming media, and as you mention the Saturn was at a significant disadvantage in general. (might not have been so bad if they'd never invested in 32x and put more resourses into Saturn -developers, advertizing hype, along with a timely launch in mid/late 1995, a huge scre up there- still the complex and expensive hardware plus inability to eat losses like Sony put them at a disadvantage in general)
GBA was much later, GBC was the next after Virtual Boy, and VB was neither here nor there as a proer portable console (not a handfeld obviously). It would have been better to accelerate GBC development, or maybe even release a "32-bit" add-on for SNES (instead of stringing fans along with SNES CD vaporware), even soemthing a simple as a Super-FX (slightly enhanced) lock-on cart to facilitate cheaper and more numerous Super-FX games. (with the long wait for N64, not to mention initialy limited library)Quote:
Virtual Boy obviously didn't harm it's successors, even though it was a MUCH larger debacle than either 32X or SCD. Again, when GBA showed up, I never heard about people buying it "in spite of" their VB experience. They just bought it because it was, in essence, a portable SNES with plenty of games from all the right developers.
It hurt them with developers though, and that perceived threat of CD-R piracy was the last straw for some. Still, for the general public, the PS2 may have had massive hype, but I don't think the DC would have been at a significantly greater disadvantage than GameCube or Xbox had they continued. (would have had a price advantage to both, GC didn't play DVDs either, Xbox doesn't out of the box, and a big back-library of games)Quote:
With Dreamcast, it was nearly the same story. No one in the "mainstream", in my experience, remembered the Saturn at all. The serious gamers did, but I felt that most of the gamers who stuck with Saturn long enough to get "burned" had a Sega-centric gaming proclivity anyway, and were more than willing to try Sega again with DC.
That and I think DC broke into a significant number of less-gaming centric househulds. (I've mentioned it before, but from personal experience, people I know who had no previous console got DC, some of which have never bought another -switched back to PC gaming in the case of one friend)
And yet, I wan't especially impressed by the PS2 when it came out, I was ~11/12 at the time (and nintendo -and PC gamer at the time) and the limit of 2 controler ports was significant (at first I though it allowed USB controllers as well, which would have been really cool...). The graphics were nice, at least in the better early games, but I'd been a good bit more impressed by DC displays previously. I'm sure PSX owners would have been more hyped though, but I wasn't among them, and some of the better PC games my dad had at the time looked on par or better than a lot of the PS2 stuff.Quote:
Essentially, it was a foregone conclusion in the public mind that the PS2 was just going to blow your mind, and if you were impressed with Dreamcast graphics, well....that was NOTHING compared what what PS2 and the "Emotion Engine" had in store!
The DVD functionality was obviously a major selling point, but didn't interest us in the least as we had a DVD-ROM drive in out family PC with a media player supporting DVD video and S-video out from the video card to the TV in out entertainment system. Granted that kind of set-up would be far from common. (except for other famlies with a tech-oriented family member) We did get a JVC DVD player several years later and I think on sale for ~$100.
Yeah, but Japanese Saturn adds were pretty awsome... And I think you mean "Theatre of the Eye."Quote:
Then Sega's ad firms started trying to be clever, trying to win awards with "theater of the mind" and "It's thinking". I don't know how many times I've read Sega execs in interviews dismissing game footage commercials as "boring". They claimed that what you had to do was give a sense of the excitement (by showing non-game things, such as people on a couch having fun) or other things to put you in the mindset. But if they had just showed what the machines could do (especially in DC's case), it would have made a difference.
Sega's early '90s adds had a lot of non-game footage as well, but it's a balance of making a memorable impact with th ecommercial and showcasing a game. (also depends whether it's an advertizement for the console or a specific game)
But in both respects Saturn adds were weak. (especially ones like Sonic R)
Some longer commercials would obviously take longer to air, but I think it's worth it if it really sticks with the viewer. (like the chrismas Sonic & Knuckles add) Some kind of memorable gimick, either catchy (slogans like Genesis Does or Next Level), comedic, or something that emphesizes a unique feature.
That's another thing, Nights may have been the Saturn's biggest killer app, but it wasn't the kind of universally enjoyable game that worked for a broad range of people (particularly outside of Japan). Yeah, it's pretty, but the gameplay is not nearly as universal as a platformer or such. (or even a rail shooter; in fact I though Nights was an on-rails 3D flying game before I say gameplay footage)Quote:
Originally Posted by wavelX
There were big multiplatform killer apps (at least somewhat ealry on) that originated on Saturn, like Tomb Raider which is almost always associated with PSX in particular and not touted on the Saturn in spite of it being released slightly later on PSX -and PC shortly after that. (maybe in part from Sega's limited funds at the time)
Something like that. I was a die-hard SEGA fan, and the PSX still had that "it was originally an add-on for SNES" tag applied to it early on. If SEGA had released a good Sonic game on the Saturn, I might still have been swayed back. But, SEGA released a minor update to the Genesis Sonic 3D Blast (in 96... they didn't even have a Sonic game in the early lineup), and that was the last straw. I gave the PSX a good hard look and liked what I saw. The early lineup of games were particularly impressive for a newbie like Sony.Quote:
Originally Posted by wavelX
I remember renting a saturn and being extremely impressed with the cd player screen being a spaceship. Actually just thinking about it now I'm still impressed. Plus Daytona USA. I was one of those kids that liked the PS and the Saturn pretty much equally. Although resident evil and Gran Turismo made me forget about the Saturn for awhile.
The early lineup of PSX games was truly amazing.
Jumping Flash
ESPN Extreme Games
Warhawk
Twisted Metal
Battle Arena Toshinden
Jet Moto
...and then Crash Bandicoot, and Resident Evil as well as amazing sequels to all but two of these games (one had no sequel-Warhawk one sequel sucked-BAT2)
I wanted a Saturn for Panzer Dragoon...but that was all it had.
Today I look at the Saturn I own, and that's still all it has + Nights + the Vs. Series imports.
Jumping Flash is a great game, but Crash Bandicoot & Battle Arena Toshinden were products of hype, pure & simple. Besides, the Saturn did have several Toshinden titles, if I remember correctly. Resident Evil was on Saturn as well.
Crash was still good 'nough
I even enjoyed Punky Skunk.
BAT came later to the Saturn yes, but I don't believe it was just a product of hype.
It was the first 3D fighter to have weapons.
It had desperation attacks, supers (that were just hard button presses you could do at any time) and 3D rolling.
It was pretty cool for the time.
Saturn did get Resident Evil eventually, and...it got by far the best version.
One of my Saturn imports in fact.
Exclusive enemies, mini game, and all.
QFTQuote:
Originally Posted by PimpUigi
I loved that game. It was FUN! Half the time, we'd let the other guy get in one of those close attacks simply because they were so effin' awesome. :cool:
The other really fun tactic was to get close to an edge, goad the other guy into one of their combos, and watch them go charging right over the edge. It was hilarious! :rofl:
bah, Mario 64 is better than all of those combined. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by PimpUigi
Battle Arena Toshinden and "Amazing" should never feature in the same post, every version of it was complete and utter ass, the Saturn versions being the worst by far, but the PSX version was almost as dire.Quote:
Originally Posted by PimpUigi
Neptune only might have been okay for like two years, but by the time the N64 was out and PSX started hitting its stride, Sega would really need something more powerful, as I said... but I think you admit something like this later.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Overall though, I do think that their best decision would have been to not release the 32X in any form. It's NOT a next-gen system and could never have been. Neptune couldn't have been Sega's main 32-bit platform, not if they wanted even a minimum level of long-term success. And what about the carts-CDs thing? Neptune is necessarily stuck to carts, which Sega of Japan didn't really want to be using anymore; sure you can hook it to a Sega CD, but there's a big additional cost, and that adds a whole bunch more limitations thanks to the small bandwidth of the side bus.
If only the Genesis had had better color hardware... that really was the system's biggest flaw, more so than the scaling and rotation stuff. Sega CD at least added scaling and rotation functionality. Polygons... eh, just use the SVP anyway. I know it's a lot weaker, but addons were NOT the way to go.
Really though, overall it's hard to imagine a WORSE path through this era than the one Sega took. Almost any alternative sounds better, really... :lol:
But anyway, get Sega of Japan and America to actually work together on their next system, using the best ideas from both of them, and design something good that'd be ready for late 1995 or early 1996. Stick with Genesis and Sega CD until then. No 32X. Make more non-FMV Sega CD games instead, and some more Genesis ones too. That's what I wish they had done. (Oh yeah, and as far as the Genesis games of 1995 go, Vectorman was probably their top title (and a fantastic game!), but I think it'd have been even more successful if a lot of people hadn't turned on Sega already by that point...)
Again though, what's the point? I don't think they really thought of using the same hardware again, back then nobody did that, but how would that be an advantage over a new design? I don't see it... backwards compatibility, I guess, but they didn't seem too interested in that. Maybe they should have been, I like BC too (one of the many awesome things about the GBC and GBA are their full backwards compatibility!), but if it restricts what you can do with your next system, sometimes you have to abandon it...Quote:
Yep, and a big reason for my suggestion for an evolutionary, backwards compatible all-in-one system instead of the 32x. It could be designed to be both compatible, and rearrange the hardware to work much more fluidly together when not in compatibility mode. (mapped more efficiently, avoiding the foibles of the CD exp/cart slot interfacing, along with enhancing the hardware in general) Again, that's all here: http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8497&page=3
More expensive per cartridge, sure, but people don't really look at that, they look at 'not having to buy an addon'. Prices are funny... look at the PS3 vs. the 360, people for a long time thought "PS3=more expensive" even though it game with stuff included that cost extra on 360 -- internet play is $50 a year on 360, $100 for a wi-fi adapter, etc. People notice the big up-front cost more... like that $200 addon they need to play the $50 game, when they could just spend $80 or something to get just the game if it'd been stand-alone. And remember, a lot of people aren't going to get that many games for the addon, so the stand-alone carts actually probably WOULD make financial sense for a lot of people. Particularly when it'd lead to there being fewer of them, just the major titles probably... most 32X games were minimal upgrades on Genesis titles, so few would lose much. Others could have been on Genesis or Sega CD with only minor changes (just change the number of colors...), like Tempo and Knuckles Chaotix (redesign the bonus stages, but oh well).Quote:
Ugh... I don't like that idea, besides them being ugly (lower color+poly count+framerate) and more expensive, I do think the super FX idea was flawed, other enhancement chips were fine overall, rather cheap and were too varied to be addressed in a single add-on, super FX was more expensive (in part because it added 128 kB of RAM, like SVP). I do think Super FX should have been an add-on, like Sega considered for SVP (simple passthrough cart). Probably even add a bit and (after Star Fox) go straight for Super FX-2 in a lock-on cart with at least 4 MB of cart ROM address space and maybe 256 kB work RAM instead of 128k. (probably could have had a built in game and still cost no more than $100 and promote more games as lock-on carts, so Star Fox 2 would probably be released, along with more 3rd party games)
SNES of course has the advantage of a 15-bit (32,768 color) master palette, along with several graphics modes supporting 8-bit (256 color) paletized in a single layer.
... But seriously, you think Super FX should have been an addon too? You're thinking like Sega, and that's why they lost and Nintendo won. Nintendo realized how bad an idea addons were, and planned the SNES from day one to just put the addon chips in the carts and raise the prices of those games. It was a policy that worked very well, and I can't fault it much. The only bad thing I'd say is that Nintendo killed off the Super FX a bit too soon... they were evidently thinking that the N64 would be out sooner than it actually was. They should have kept it going a bit longer, and not done thing like cancel Star Fox 2 "because N64 was coming soon" when at that point actually N64 was like a year or two off. It was that that kept there from being more Super FX games I would say, not price or the fact that it was an addon chip.
Your lock-on cart idea is kind of interesting and may have worked, but overall I think the stand-alone concept's just as good really. Maybe better, because it doesn't have the add-on stigma.
(about DKC) That wasn't my point at all though. My point was that DKC was an amazing game, sold extremely well, and was one of Nintendo's crucial blows in getting the SNES's North American sales total past the Genesis's and making sure it'd stay that way. Oh, and I was also referencing all of the ads talking about how it was a next-gen game in a cart, hyping the 3d rendered characters, etc. It was all just marketing-speak, but it worked... but of course, it didn't hurt that the game was fantastic and looked outstanding. That's the kind of thing I was talking about, not whether it used enhancement chips or not; it didn't, but that wasn't the point. Hardware does not always determine everything. :)Quote:
Which had nothing to do with anhancement chips (in spite of some claiming it used SA-1), it was expensive because it was a 4 MB cart, used high-end graphics worstations, and because they fely they could sell it at those prices effectively.
Agreed completely, as I've said. Killing Genesis, whether out of spite or whatever, was a bewilderingly bad decision. They really weren't thinking at all... And as for Sega CD, yeah, definitely. Re-release the major non-FMV titles, make a few more of them because you're not working on 32X stuff (Chaotix and Tempo to CD or something? Actually market Wild Woody a bit more? Etc with other genres.), and presto, you might save the system and make it so you could actually find non-FMV Sega CD games used in stores now. As it is, it's not easy. :) Don't just drop it though, at least keep it going until the now-later next system was out. Do get rid of most of the FMV though, by 1995 at least interest in that had dropped off a lot...Quote:
Do what nearly all other companies did with aging consoles, move them into the budget market followed by phasing them out gradually (usually including a cost reduced form factor), simultaneously with releasing a single successor. (in th ecase of the PS2, it went budget, but has remained popular unusually long)
They could re-release more popular games with gold seals or some such (like player's choice), particularly with Sega CD. (emphesizing the best, non "FMV" titles -including some streaming video dependednt gems like Silpheed and NovaStorm)
Sega always had lots of hardware ideas... maybe too many. I mean, definitely too many that they let get too far along... and this continued, think of how they fully designed two Dreamcast systems, only to then decide which one they wanted. Why... I know hardware companies always have stuff they're working on, but at some point you've got to actually make decisions. :)Quote:
Yeah a complex issue, and part of why I was wondering about how Michael Katz might have done things differently in place of Kalinske, of course it was Nakayama's choice to replace Katz. (not only was there issues between SoA/oJ either, but internally in SoJ, as I mentioned discontent over Nakayma's leadership/managment style in particular)
On top of that there were plans for a console before Saturn (Gigadrive or whatever it would be called), but was felt to be too weak when compared to the information on Sony's developments, so they scrapped those plans and started over with Saturn. (no idea if Gigadrive was built to be compatible like previous Sega consoles, but as I mentioned, it certainly could have been technically speaking)
Well, if it was designed to compete with Sony, they sure didn't have a good idea of what Sony was doing did they, given the giant mess Saturn ended up as, with all that random hardware tossed in the box to try to match Sony's high specs, not that they did...Quote:
Actually, the Saturn replaced "gigadrive" because they wanted it more 3D oriented (to compete with Sony), but ended up being too hard to work with compared to PSX (complex, hindered by bugs, an dlimited sometimes for simply poor support for some features like the DSP coprocessor for fixed-point 3D math), even though it was roughly comperable in 3D (or even better in some respects) compared to PSX. If nothing else, the use of quadrilateral primitives made it a big pain for most developers with triangles being the standard. (an oddity the 3DO shared as well as Nvidia's NV1 architecture, probably some software rasterizers for unaccelerated PC games too)
You're right that Saturn wasn't too far off of PSX in potential performance, but 3d games on Saturn definitely looked worse than 3d on PSX, partially because the PSX was more powerful and partially because of how ridiculously hard Saturn was to program for. Did they not see how hard it was to program for coming or something, or were they just too rushed by Sony's release date and their intense desire to match it to do anything about it... I think they really needed to give up on matching Sony's date. They couldn't with good hardware.
Really? I've heard that compared to later systems PSX was pretty complex... not more so than PS2 I guess (yeah, that one's infamous too), but definitely complex. I don't know for sure though, I'm not a console programmer. :)Quote:
No, PlayStaion was extremely programmer friendly, from what I understand probably rivaling the Dreamcast in that respect; PS2 on the other hand... (that's one thing they did get right with 3DO, other than the quadrilateral peculiarity it was highly tuned for games written entirely in C -less powerful than PSX or Saturn of course)
Really, you think $400 might have been okay when Sony was $300 at the same time? Sega dropped its price soon after Sony launched for a reason... and it wasn't just that Saturn was selling badly, which it was. It was because it was too expensive.Quote:
I don't know, $400 could have been OK if they managed to get a decent system out by the time the 32x was in US with reasonable support and decen tlaunch lineup, competitive enough and being at dropping significantly by the time PSX arrives. (getting it out so early would mean expensive if it was to remain reasonably competitive as too, but optimized enough to drop in manufacturing cost significantly as time went on -ie most expensive components like fast RAM and CD drive would be the most cost sensitive)
Really though, they couldn't have had a good system out in the US in late 1994, and anyway they didn't need one. I know the Jaguar and 3DO came out in late 1993, but few people had one. Most people weren't ready for next-gen systems until late 1995, and Sega didn't need a system out here before then. Early 1996 would have been fine too. Heck, Nintendo did quite fine with a late 1996 launch, only the lack of third party support kept the N64 from getting past the PSX in its early months... PSX sales in the US were solid but slow for its first year, while the N64 initially sold MASSIVE numbers... it only didn't pass PSX because of how much longer PSX had been on the market. But had N64 had better third party support keeping out a good stream of games, I think it'd have passed it easy. As it was though, over the whole generation PSX sold about 40 million in the US, N64 21 million, and Saturn maybe 2-2.5 million. The late launch hurt Nintendo a bit, but other things hurt them more. Conclusion? Late launches aren't a problem if you have the right hardware. Also see the SNES, which got past Genesis eventually despite launching over a year and a half later, and Wii, which passed 360 eventually despite coming out a year later. Focusing too much on matching the date isn't helpful. Of course you can launch too late, but still, getting it right doesn't mean being out the same week as your competition. :)
See above. I absolutely don't think that 1996 would have been too late.Quote:
Not sure if any of those were really good ideas, either expensive and/or too late. (the N64 pointing towed the latter) Either a Genesis+CD derivative (not add-on) or all-new, but much simpler than Saturn (affine-texture+triangle oriented 3D) design.
Sorry, but designing systems entirely based on hindsight, not based on what they knew at the time, isn't too helpful. Assuming that there's a way to get them to work together is one thing, but just assuming that they magically know EXACTLY what people will want years down the road? That's not so much.Quote:
I think they could, with hindsignt at least we can see that (at the time) the most important aspects were texture mapping and (triangle) polygon pushing formost (even in 256 color), higher color not hugely important, high res (320x224/240 pretty standard), antialiasing, filtering, shading, not hugely important for the average person (I personally fine a lot of such 3D fairly grating personally, and will often go for minimal no texturins with a more tastefull, possibly gouraud shaded look).
So all they needed was a console with 32x sized framebuffers, color capabilities of 32x at least, go ahead with the SH2s but with 2MB and full 32-bit databus like Saturn (and probably get away with CPUs handlin 3D math, no coprocessor), and a decent VDP handling triangle rasterization, affine mapping, and possibly some gouraud shading support. (more useful in highcolor mode) Maybe even through in a "sprite" mode like the PSX GPU has, then go with something simple for sound, maybe just use the old Ricoh chip like the Sega CD has, or go with a pair of basic 16-bit DACs. (drivin by CPU, simple, able to set sample rate in hardware, sample ROM+RAM and maybe ADPCM playback support) And going really cheap, only 1x CD drive. (a decen sized cache can help with load times too, also tempered by cost though and won't really help video playback)
Anyway, do you know much about that proposed Logitech system? Sounded pretty impressive to say the least...
[quote]I think that might be a a bit of a myth, with the PSX hanging very close to Saturn only a few months after release and pulling ahead a good bit before FFVII's release. (that and the biggest killer apps on Saturn were indeed 3D, Virtua Fighter being pretty much the system seller at launch)
THe Japanese may have been more tolerant toward 2D (moreso than the more niche market of hardcore western gamers, particularly fighting game fans followd by a few other genres like SHMUPS, RPGs, and 2D platformers)[quote]
Well, PSX pulled ahead, but Saturn stayed somewhat close for the first two years, that is true. The Saturn did well in Japan, but particularly before stuff like FFVII and DQVIII came out on PSX...
You are right about the Japanese market liking 3d too of course. And yeah, Virtua Fighter was the big one there. But still, Japanese console gamers were definitely more interested in 2d that generation than Western ones were.
Western handheld and PC gamers liked 2d just fine (aside from PC gamers who exclusively played FPSes or something), but console ones had mostly gone to wanting everything 3d. And I can understand why, the feeling when I first saw Mario 64 was like nothing I had ever seen... retroactively people condemn it, but at the time, I think the feeling was understandable and probably unavoidable. 3d stuff looked so different and cool! :) (As a note, I myself was mostly actually playing more 2d games than 3d, having a PC and GB and not N64 for several years... so I had nothing against 2d.)
That would definitely have helped, but not enough unless the 32X was going to be Sega's main platform for a period of years, which it realistically couldn't do. So no, I don't think that'd be the way to go.Quote:
I don't know, if Neptune (not just 32x, but hypothetically Neptune instead of Saturn) came out in Japan with its pretty good port of Virtua Figher and following game lineup (stronger than the early saturn one, at least larger in volume) I think the initial success might have been significant. Still, I don't think it would have persisted, or would at least have still fallen far short of Sony in the end. (if nothing else cartridges would be rather unattractive, it certainly didn't help the N64, especially in Japan, where the turnaround for Nintendo was almost comperable to Sega's in Europe)
Oh, and yes, a stronger game lineup is of course vital. Saturn had far too few games early on. Even had they stuck with the Saturn hardware as it was, other than the later launch they also needed many more games... maybe never make 32X and mostly work on more Saturn stuff instead, so you'd have an actual game lineup ready early on, for the Saturn's fall 1995 launch (where it should have been). With more games and the lower price and no 32X abandonment making people mad, oh and no Genesis discontinuation of course, I think Sega would have been in much, much better shape even with that hardware.
They may have still lost money because of how expensive Saturn was to make, but they'd have been in better shape, at least. :)
Releasing DC even sooner isn't the answer, it was probably released a bit too early as it was, given the power gap between it and the other consoles of that generation (GC and Xbox particularly blow DC away, but even PS2 once pushed was more powerful). No, they needed a better system in that generation... I think with Atari's experience between the 7800 and Jaguar we learn that you can't just skip a generation and expect to do as well the next time as you did before, people forget about you and what you were doing before isn't necessarily going to work anymore... but see above for my 1996 thoughts.Quote:
I thought about this too with an SH3 as the CPU, but their 1996 project (indeed with an SH3) seems to have been based around Nvidia's NV1 design, so still quads instead of triangles.
But I think they Dreamcast is excelent hardware wise, maybe if they streamlined things earlier it could have come out slightly sooner as well (or push for wester release much closer to Japanese) and maybe with some of the drawbacks resolved. (namely the CDR+piracy one, followed by controller issues and memory card capacity)
Really? You don't believe that? Hard to imagine, it seems like there's so much proving it... that there aren't many other ways to explain why Sega of Japan didn't consider at all what other regions wanted in a next-gen console, why they discontinued everything other than Saturn, etc, etc... but I think at least one of the interviews here said something like this, about the jealousy aspect. Forget which one, though...Quote:
I'm really not sure how true this is, I've seen it before but not any soild evidence that this was a significant factor in SoA/J conflicts. Bigger issues seem to involve frustration over SoA spending, and some discontent over Nakayama in general. (there was some other friction, but I really haven't seen anything compelling on the whole jealousy thing)
Sega of America wanted a cartridge-based next-gen system. Japan wanted CDs. Nakayama or whoever eventually decided to go with both. Oh, and sure, I'll agree about Nakayama being part of the problem, he was on top after all, it's ultimately his responsibility! When things go horribly wrong so systemically, the person in charge has to be at least partially responsible...Quote:
Well, SoA didn't really want the 32x (or any additional genesis upgrade) but Nakayama insisted, SoJ engineers (and some management iirc) weren't at all happy about the idea either, particularly in context of the Saturn. So, if I've got my info right, it seems Nakayama himself might have a a fair bit to do with the problems in general. (I seem to recall musings on this topic that Nakayama knew the arcade buisness well and traied to apply poicies that worked in that industry into the homw console maket which were not at all applicable)
[quote]Worse, as cool as the nomad is, it's not a a successor to the GG at all, an dnot a product appealing to a mass market (more to hardcore fans), too expensive and inconvienient, genesis carts are hardly portable optimized. GG had plenty of life ahead with a large gap before the GBC and time for an impreoved redesign and time to beat Nintendo to a successor.[quote]
Well, it was kind of a successor, it was a new handheld after all... but it was never going to be much more than a niche product, that I'll agree with for sure, not with THAT battery life and coming out that late in a fading system's lifecycle. They really needed a redesigned GG which got much better battery life, and to stick with that system. It'd have done fine for years more, particularly with such a redesign.
True. Many mistakes, all on top of eachother. Agreed.Quote:
But not only a series of mistakes, but mistake on top of mistake, often adding insult to injury.
Yeah, I agree, if 32X hadn't existed I think the Sega CD wouldn't be remembered as badly as it is now. It was definitely retroactively blamed for addon-itis, while the 32X was the real problem, not so much Sega CD...Quote:
Sega CD wasn't so much a mistake other than the way advertizing was emphesized toward FMV in the west (again, the nature of the entire CD-based market at the time), but the 32x allowed the combined reputation to become what it is today.
Dreamcast was 2 1/2 away from release in the US then, though. The thing didn't have a name yet I'm sure, much less hardware design or anything. Stolar was just destroying his own system with absolutely nothing ready to replace it. Sega of America paid the price in response, and they deserved exactly what they got -- a VERY skeptical public when DC finally released in 1999. They did eventually manage to win over the hardcore, but the mass market never bit, not before Sega ran out of money... well, had you not gotten them so angry at you years earlier, maybe they'd have been a bit more likely to consider your system? :)Quote:
Saturn was scrwed up by diverted resourses 32x, rushed design and release in Japan, then rushed pre-release with tripple whamy of small game lineup, pissed off developers/retailers, and Sony's $100 price undercut. Then you have Stolar, who in th emidst of trying to get this fumbling company back together, is brash enough to publicky state "Saturn is NOT our future," anyone, yeah, anyone in marketing/media should knoe that you should never negatively reenforce your product, instead at least say "Dreamcast IS the future of video gaming" or something.
(And on that note, I absolutely agree with those saying (such as Chilly Willy I believe) that it wasn't just about the number of people who bought 32Xes. It was about them, all the people they knew who they then complained to, all the people who got the idea from it that Sega liked to kill their systems early, all the millions of gamers who then had that feeling reinforced absolutely when "Saturn is not our future", and more. The number of people who actually bought 32Xes doesn't matter much compared to those other factors.)
They didn't have the money to keep going as a hardware manufacturer, I think... remember, Sega lost money, hundreds of millions of dollars of it, on both Saturn and Dreamcast. Sega did not make money on either system, and only started making money again the year they went fully third party, after four or five straight years of losses. I think that Sega could not have done what you suggest unless you fundamentally fix their business model in the years before that to fix the massive losses that caused the eventual exit from the hardware market. Don't fix that and you don't change the outcome. As I'm sure you know, what you're saying there is not realistic for the Sega that existed in, say, 2000 or 2001... but that's why we're speculating here, to try to create a situation where something like that IS realistic. :)Quote:
Then there's th ediscontinuation of the Dreamcast, sure Sega would have lost out to the PS2 and the (perceived) piracy problems were there, but they could have worked foreward past that, probably wouldn't be worse than their abbrupt transition to 3rd party. Hell, maybe theu could have sold on par with Microsoft (easily beat them in Japan) and Nintendo, hell maybe even make it to a distant 2nd behind Sony. If nothing else it should have made for a smoother transition to 3rd party, all the while releasing more an dmore titles on PC, and finally start releasing full multiplatform games for Xbox, GC, and preferably still supporting Dreamcast. (Winows CE based games could probably help developing multiplatform for PC and Xbox in particular)
Sega didn't help this by selling the DC at a loss, of course, as I said... they should not have sold it for so much less than it cost them to make it! I know they wanted to help sales by doing it, but I think it hurt them more than it helped for sure.
Anyway, had Sega had more money, because of a better 1994-1998 plan than the insanely bad path they took, I think it's incontestable that DC would have done better. First, I think I've read that they might have been considering DVD for the DC, only to drop it because they couldn't afford it; be the first cheap DVD player and they'd sell millions based just on that, I believe, as Sony did later with the PS2. Second, they'd have had to get past those early days with the DC and get to the later days where they might have actually made money on it; it was ditched too soon for that to happen. But sure, fix the money problems and they'd have been fine for some time. Piracy might have hurt them by 2003-2004 or something, by the time more people had broadband internet (the amount of CD game piracy you're going to have by people on dialup is never going to be enough to hurt a big company much...), but I'd bet DC2 wouldn't have been out by later than 2004 or 2005 anyway, so I don't think that'd be a huge problem.
Cough - ram expansion - cough - N64 DD - cough.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Sorry, you were saying? ;)
I think the horrible early launch killed the Saturn too moreso than the 400 price tag. Who releases big consoles in the second quarter? Which happened to be right when school was being let out. This move was a reactionary move on Sega's part in which there were scared shitless of Sony. If you let someone else dictate your moves then you have already lost the battle.
Correction Nintendo didn't bother with add-ons in the USA. As they had the FDS for the Famicom. The Satellaviewfor the SFC then the 64DD for the N64. And given how dominating the NES was here and how well the SNES had done and how the N64 sold much better here than in Japan, it would've been interesting to see how these add-ons would've fared in the states.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon View Post
... But seriously, you think Super FX should have been an addon too? You're thinking like Sega, and that's why they lost and Nintendo won. Nintendo realized how bad an idea addons were,
I see a lot of similarities between the Saturn and the PS3 in terms of follies. You think Sony will be the next to close their video game hardware doors? I heard they are in a 3-4 billion dollar hole.Quote:
Originally Posted by Da_Shocker
No because they have a whole bunch of other divisions that are propping the game division up. They make TVs, PCs, Walkmans, Movies, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I think they'll be just fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheEdge
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheEdge
The PSx sold over 102 million worldwide then the PS2 sold 138 million worldwide. These are top 2 best selling consoles ever and Sony would be a fool to leave the industry because of the bump the PS3 created.
Mario 64 isn't better thanQuote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Jumping Flash 1&2
ESPN Extreme Games + 2 Xtreme
Warhawk
Twisted Metal 1&2
Battle Arena Toshinden
Jet Moto 1&2
Crash Bandicoot
Resident Evil
Panzer Dragoon 1&2&3
Nights
X-men Vs. Street Fighter & Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Saturn imports
How can you just make up stuff like that?
Of course, Mario 64 is the best 3D Mario, and I'd take that over 2 Xtreme any day...but all those games?
N64 to me only had M64, Z64, 007, Extreme G, and WCW/nWo Revenge
I didn't like any other N64 games, Doom 64 was ruined by stupid graphics and bad music, and Starfox 64 to me just had super bland game play, especially after Panzer Dragoon and Warhawk.
I still got a N64 over the Saturn mind you, and it's not like the PSX had anything multiplayer wise to compete with awesome 4 player 007, or WCW/nWo Revenge.
Sario 64 err I mean Mario 63 is one of the most overrated gamer ever!
Stupid question, but I've never really understood the fact that Sega discontinued the Genesis in '95. Games came out for it until '97. Was that all done by Majesco with no Sega involvement?
Yes, I was saying that having bother was worse than either alone and Saturn alone would be the best. (but still far from ideal) Yes, the CD thing was also an issue, that was one of the big interests for developers as well, CDs are cheap, high capacity media, very different in nature from ROM carts.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
BTW I think the CD interface was limited not by bandwidth (other than the VDP limitations in general), but by the odd and limited memory map. (only 17 bit of address space mapped to genesis, that's only 128 KB) Having a cloned cartige port might have been a much better idea for that connector. (set-up to switch between cart/exp port with priority for cart games -which the CD already does)
That's what the Super VDP thread was about, I'm not sure if the expansion slot has the necessary pins for supporting video overly like the 32x does though. (that may be a big part of why they abandoned it) Fact is that the ASIC int he Sega CD would have been a lot more useful had it not been tied to the Genesis VDP. (but instead had it's own, simple bitmap display controller, something like the 32x has)Quote:
If only the Genesis had had better color hardware... that really was the system's biggest flaw, more so than the scaling and rotation stuff. Sega CD at least added scaling and rotation functionality. Polygons... eh, just use the SVP anyway. I know it's a lot weaker, but addons were NOT the way to go.
Also, Chilly Willy suggested that they Genesis VDP should have had at least a 12-bit (4,096 color) palette, not bothered with hilight/shadow, and supported a pixel accumulation mode allowing 8-bit palettetized colors at 1/2 horizontal resolution. (256 color palettes) http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4328&page=14
Yep. (even if they'd just gotten the Satun's launch right I think it would have gone a long way)Quote:
Really though, overall it's hard to imagine a WORSE path through this era than the one Sega took. Almost any alternative sounds better, really... :lol:
Yeah, if there had to be a delay until mid/late 1995 for their new console, the Sega CD might have been an intrim option, Chaotix should have been fine on Sega CD for the most part. (special stages would have to be soewhat different -maybe use streaming video background to approximate the 3D tunnels) Maybe emphesize the existing library of non-"FMV" games too, point out the few really showcasing the ASIC's capabilities. (like Soul Star)Quote:
But anyway, get Sega of Japan and America to actually work together on their next system, using the best ideas from both of them, and design something good that'd be ready for late 1995 or early 1996. Stick with Genesis and Sega CD until then. No 32X. Make more non-FMV Sega CD games instead, and some more Genesis ones too. That's what I wish they had done.
That's just it though, both the Master System (Mk.III) and MegaDrive had been evolutionary developments of their predicessors, optimizing to make use of the old hardware efficiently while maintaing compatibility (via a passive adaptor for MD) and still enhance them considerably.Quote:
Again though, what's the point? I don't think they really thought of using the same hardware again, back then nobody did that, but how would that be an advantage over a new design? I don't see it... backwards compatibility, I guess, but they didn't seem too interested in that. Maybe they should have been, I like BC too (one of the many awesome things about the GBC and GBA are their full backwards compatibility!), but if it restricts what you can do with your next system, sometimes you have to abandon it...
With add-ons you're very limited on how you can enhance the hardware, with a standalone system there's tons of engineering options available, and building on the old hardware should save development time and cost. Chilly Willy's suggestion was built around the use of dual Genesis VDPs and would have allowed a rougly comperable system to Saturn, but most likely sooner, somewhat less expensive, and arguably less complex, and certainly easier to work with if for no other reason a switch to triangle polygon rendering. (if nothing else, building on an established architecture, and avoiding the issues the Sega CD has as well)
Compatibility may be hit and miss, but it's never a bad thing so long as the design was effeciently built around the principal. (might be more important in Europe too as a selling point, but then again, SMS wasn't very popular in the US, so that aspect of Genesis wasn't really a selling point; something that would differ with the Genesis)
I'm not talking 32x level add-on here, I'm talking a simple Sonic and Knuckles or GameGenie type cartridge with SVP/Super FX built in (maybe with some enhancements like more than 128 kB of RAM and/or more than 2 MB of ROM address space), so only very moderately more expensive than the standalone games, and with a built-in game to offset this. (N/Sega could even eat a bit of the cost to offset this with the advantage of widening the market for subsequent FX/SVP games to lock-on)Quote:
More expensive per cartridge, sure, but people don't really look at that, they look at 'not having to buy an addon'.
... But seriously, you think Super FX should have been an addon too? You're thinking like Sega, and that's why they lost and Nintendo won. Nintendo realized how bad an idea addons were, and planned the SNES from day one to just put the addon chips in the carts and raise the prices of those games. It was a policy that worked very well, and I can't fault it much. The only bad thing I'd say is that Nintendo killed off the Super FX a bit too soon... they were evidently thinking that the N64 would be out sooner than it actually was. They should have kept it going a bit longer, and not done thing like cancel Star Fox 2 "because N64 was coming soon" when at that point actually N64 was like a year or two off. It was that that kept there from being more Super FX games I would say, not price or the fact that it was an addon chip.
The cost was as much a reason for cancellation of additional Super FX games than was the N64, and SF2 wasn't the only cancelled game, the other few did not have N64 equivelents. Manufacturing those carts was more of an investment than normal games, so cost wasn't just an issue for consumers, but the manufacturers as well.
It was in part due to hardware though, the SNES's large color palette facilitated this, not sure if any parts actually used one of the 256 color modes, but even so, the SNES used a good number more 16-color sprite/bg palettes than the genesis. (although toy story compares relatively well on both, it's still fairly noticable)Quote:
(about DKC) Oh, and I was also referencing all of the ads talking about how it was a next-gen game in a cart, hyping the 3d rendered characters, etc. It was all just marketing-speak, but it worked... but of course, it didn't hurt that the game was fantastic and looked outstanding. That's the kind of thing I was talking about, not whether it used enhancement chips or not; it didn't, but that wasn't the point. Hardware does not always determine everything. :)
As I understand it, the dropped everthyng because they were stretched too thin and money was tight, so they bet everything on Saturn... and lost.Quote:
Agreed completely, as I've said. Killing Genesis, whether out of spite or whatever, was a bewilderingly bad decision.
It wasn't random hardware, it was a bunch of custom chips that were rushed and had some bugs (and the peculiarity of quadrilateral rendering)Quote:
Well, if it was designed to compete with Sony, they sure didn't have a good idea of what Sony was doing did they, given the giant mess Saturn ended up as, with all that random hardware tossed in the box to try to match Sony's high specs, not that they did...
Comparing best to best, the both looked ok in 3d.Quote:
You're right that Saturn wasn't too far off of PSX in potential performance, but 3d games on Saturn definitely looked worse than 3d on PSX, partially because the PSX was more powerful and partially because of how ridiculously hard Saturn was to program for.
Not sure on the base hardware (though it does seem pretty streamlines and straightforeward), but the development tools were excelent, very comprehensive and C freindly, facilitating rapid development of software.Quote:
Really? I've heard that compared to later systems PSX was pretty complex... not more so than PS2 I guess (yeah, that one's infamous too), but definitely complex. I don't know for sure though, I'm not a console programmer. :)
Single CPU of well known architecture. GPU with texture cache, triangle rasterization, affine texture mapping, and gouraud shading support, DSP coprocessor (geometry transformation engine) for 3D math, and a rather basic sound system. (same DSP setup used with SNES, actually removed some features iirc, though had 24 channels opposed to the SNES's 8)
No, $400 would have been ok for a sytem ready for US release in fall of 1994, drop the price to match Sony a year later. (and still have a big head start) This is a total hypothetical situation of course.Quote:
Really, you think $400 might have been okay when Sony was $300 at the same time? Sega dropped its price soon after Sony launched for a reason... and it wasn't just that Saturn was selling badly, which it was. It was because it was too expensive.
Sega certainly felt they needed something soon, and I know others on here who agree. I think a 1995 release would be fine though, just as long as they at least met Sony's release with comperable lineup and such.Quote:
Really though, they couldn't have had a good system out in the US in late 1994, and anyway they didn't need one. I know the Jaguar and 3DO came out in late 1993, but few people had one. Most people weren't ready for next-gen systems until late 1995, and Sega didn't need a system out here before then. Early 1996 would have been fine too. Heck, Nintendo did quite fine with a late 1996 launch, only the lack of third party support kept the N64 from getting past the PSX in its early months... PSX sales in the US were solid but slow for its first year, while the N64 initially sold MASSIVE numbers... it only didn't pass PSX because of how much longer PSX had been on the market. But had N64 had better third party support keeping out a good stream of games, I think it'd have passed it easy. As it was though, over the whole generation PSX sold about 40 million in the US, N64 21 million, and Saturn maybe 2-2.5 million. The late launch hurt Nintendo a bit, but other things hurt them more. Conclusion? Late launches aren't a problem if you have the right hardware. Also see the SNES, which got past Genesis eventually despite launching over a year and a half later, and Wii, which passed 360 eventually despite coming out a year later. Focusing too much on matching the date isn't helpful. Of course you can launch too late, but still, getting it right doesn't mean being out the same week as your competition. :)
Nentendo did well with the late SNES launch because of their massive market share in the US, at least in large part. That was a big contribution to the N64 as well, but they were significantly weakened by then, with the Japanese in particular.
The thing is, I think Sega could have had a decent machine out by late '94 which would remain reasonably competitive against the competition and certainly be fine by the time the Dreamcast launched.
Such a 1994 launch would come just after the Genesis's 5 year anivercery in the US, a pretty standard time for a new console. (with the Dreamcast launching in roughly another 5 years)
I think they'd have lost out big time by 1996, they were already loosing market share to Nintendo, who lost market share themselves with the N64's late release and scant library. (related as many developers had moved to Sony, in part due to CD of course) But Sega was still the smallest one of the "big boys" in the market, particularly in Japan, where they'd been quite weak up to the Saturn. People who bought their consoles back in '89/90 before the SNES was even released were almost certainly ready for a new console. (with the exception perhaps to the few who had gotten the Sega CD)Quote:
See above. I absolutely don't think that 1996 would have been too late.
The SNES had still been out for barely 5 years in the US when the N64 was released. (and that was with a good bit of delays)
I'm others others on the board feel a good deal more strongly on this late release issue that I do.
That was the ideal system, but it makes perfect sense from a tchnical standpoint, Sega already had done similarly in the arcades (combining 2 SMS VDPs). The Genesis VDP had been designed with the external pixel/color bus there, but left unused. The Sega CD's ASIC was already flexible enough for affine texture rendering, and could have been much more useful with a better VDP set-up. (including a simple "Super VDP" set-up like in the 32x)Quote:
Sorry, but designing systems entirely based on hindsight, not based on what they knew at the time, isn't too helpful. Assuming that there's a way to get them to work together is one thing, but just assuming that they magically know EXACTLY what people will want years down the road? That's not so much
Now to my other proposed system, not the evolutionary one, that's a pretty simple concept, and if Sega really had wanted to quicly build a PSX competitive system, that would be the one. Hell, looking at the emerging market in 1993 in general you could see where things were moving. Triangles make th emost sense to use for rendering, period, texture mapping started to come into its own, so hardware support for both is pretty much a no-brainer. Now, shading was pretty big too, and for a while it was unclear whether smoothe shading or texture mapping would be the bigger thing for 3D, Flare (designing the Jaguar) in th eearly 90s went for an emphesis on shading with affine mapping secondary. 3DO and PSX supported this more evenly, probably with more of a bias towards textures. (again 3DO had th eodd feature of quad rendering, which is something Sega should have learned from to NOT do)
They seemed pretty gung-ho for the dual SH2 cpus for whatever reason, which really weren't a bad choice, you're not forced to use both, a single one still is reasonably comperable to the PSX's 33 MHz R3000. And a DSP as a 3D coprocessor isn't absolutely necessary (use CPUs instead), but they could have used the SVP for this.
More or less a basic system, somewhere between 32x and Saturn. (and a simple sound system, either taking the Ricoh chip like in Sega CD, more sample RAM, or just a simple set of DACs driven by software -but better than the 10-bit PWM crap in 32x) Probably manage under 3 MB of total RAM, 2 MB main, 512 kB for video, and 128-256 kB for audio, plus the CD-ROM cache. (PSX only used 32 kB for this I beleive, but saturn had a huge 512 kB one, not sure if that was mislabeled kB instead of kb, which would be 64 kB)
I've seen this mentioned before, but I'm not entirely sure what it refers to, FPSs weren't that huge yet, particularly with 3D's limitations, flight/space sims were huge though, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Wing Commander III/IV, big 3D games, and I'm talking pre-1996 here. Plus the Mech Warrior games among others.Quote:
Western handheld and PC gamers liked 2d just fine (aside from PC gamers who exclusively played FPSes or something), but console ones had mostly gone to wanting everything 3d. And I can understand why, the feeling when I first saw Mario 64 was like nothing I had ever seen... retroactively people condemn it, but at the time, I think the feeling was understandable and probably unavoidable. 3d stuff looked so different and cool! :)
Maybe you mean 2D in the context of adventure games, and strategy/rpgs, but in the case of adventure games, they'd gone rather big with FMV (Myst, Returnt to Zork), followed by 3D. (Grimm Fandango)
Flying games and Adventure type games were probably the biggest genres in PC gaming prior to the explosion of FPSs in the late 90s. The main 2D games I remember were some arcade ports (inluding some very old atari/namco compilations and rip-offs) plus Jazz Jackrabbit. (plus soem consoleports like Earthworm Jim) There were some puzzel games and such though. (but many of those were older)
I agree as mentioned, and even so, it was just mistake after mistake, with 32x and then the horrible debacle with the early release.Quote:
Oh, and yes, a stronger game lineup is of course vital. Saturn had far too few games early on. Even had they stuck with the Saturn hardware as it was, other than the later launch they also needed many more games... maybe never make 32X and mostly work on more Saturn stuff instead, so you'd have an actual game lineup ready early on, for the Saturn's fall 1995 launch (where it should have been). With more games and the lower price and no 32X abandonment making people mad, oh and no Genesis discontinuation of course, I think Sega would have been in much, much better shape even with that hardware.
PS2 was a big polygon pusher, DC has better antialiasing and texture mapping capabilites I beleive. Delaying the DC may have allowed a bit more RAM onboard, maube enhance th evideo hardware a little, but DVD was not going to happen and be price competitive with PS2. (and who knows if it would have helped with the CD-R issue, Sega didn't bother much with security because they had propritary media, the CD-R flaw was a bit of an oversight, perhaps something that they'd have caught with more time, perhaps not)Quote:
Releasing DC even sooner isn't the answer, it was probably released a bit too early as it was, given the power gap between it and the other consoles of that generation (GC and Xbox particularly blow DC away, but even PS2 once pushed was more powerful). No, they needed a better system in that generation... I think with Atari's experience between the 7800 and Jaguar we learn that you can't just skip a generation and expect to do as well the next time as you did before, people forget about you and what you were doing before isn't necessarily going to work anymore... but see above for my 1996 thoughts.
And the Atari comment is a poor comparison, the 7800 was delayed after Atari Inc ceased to exist, Atari Corp did later release it with rather little advertizing and very modest releases, even so it sold reasonably well (over 3 million in US alone from the figures I've seen). Of course that's after the numerous problems with Atari Inc/warner management, the 5200, and th e1983 crash, followed by a completel new company taking peices of the old. And the 7800 didn't skip a generation, if anything they tried to cram 2 machines into the same generation, with the 5200.
Now the Jag is another issue entirely, again not really related to skipping a generation, but Atari jumping mack into th econsole market from their dying computer line, short on funding, problmematic management, and desperate moves. Really a different situation, and something else I've discussed at lenght at Atariage. (it really could have been a great little system if they'd hade the time/money to really finish up the hardware and make a proper release)
Already explained the discontiuneation connected to money, a somewhat desperate bet, bt makes sense in some respects. I don't necessarily think the Saturn was designed more for Japan than any previous system had either. And a big part of SoJ/A's conflict did come from SoA's spending, and again there seemed to be a general issue with the way Nakayama was doing things as well. (something both SoA and SoJ management were conflicted about, for different reasons)Quote:
Really? You don't believe that? Hard to imagine, it seems like there's so much proving it... that there aren't many other ways to explain why Sega of Japan didn't consider at all what other regions wanted in a next-gen console, why they discontinued everything other than Saturn, etc, etc... but I think at least one of the interviews here said something like this, about the jealousy aspect. Forget which one, though...
What??? SoA not wanting CDs? They're the ones who put all that money into "multimedia" stuff for the Sega CD, the only reason the 32x was cartridge based was because of the original request from Nakayama and what that subsequqntly morphed into. Everyone was moving toward CDs, multimedia was still huge at the time, the only ones who went for carts were Nintendo, and look where that got them!Quote:
Sega of America wanted a cartridge-based next-gen system. Japan wanted CDs. Nakayama or whoever eventually decided to go with both. Oh, and sure, I'll agree about Nakayama being part of the problem, he was on top after all, it's ultimately his responsibility! When things go horribly wrong so systemically, the person in charge has to be at least partially responsible...
Agree. :DQuote:
Well, it was kind of a successor, it was a new handheld after all... but it was never going to be much more than a niche product, that I'll agree with for sure, not with THAT battery life and coming out that late in a fading system's lifecycle. They really needed a redesigned GG which got much better battery life, and to stick with that system. It'd have done fine for years more, particularly with such a redesign.
Some people have gotten th eimpression that Peter Moore had the main hand in pulling the plug on DC, and maybe have had something to do with his relationship with MS... I have no idea how much merit such speculation has or whether Moore really just ended up being the guy who had to handel such responsibility and was backed by the rest of the company (and board of directors) in the decision.Quote:
They didn't have the money to keep going as a hardware manufacturer, I think... remember, Sega lost money, hundreds of millions of dollars of it, on both Saturn and Dreamcast. Sega did not make money on either system, and only started making money again the year they went fully third party, after four or five straight years of losses. I think that Sega could not have done what you suggest unless you fundamentally fix their business model in the years before that to fix the massive losses that caused the eventual exit from the hardware market. Don't fix that and you don't change the outcome. As I'm sure you know, what you're saying there is not realistic for the Sega that existed in, say, 2000 or 2001... but that's why we're speculating here, to try to create a situation where something like that IS realistic. :)
At least the attempted plans with M$ didn't go anywhere, that could have been really bad, I brought up the possibility of merging with M$ and colaberating on the Xbox release (endorements, branding, exclusives titles etc) Chilly Willy mentioned how noone surved such a deal with Microsoft, comparing them to the Borg. ;)
Too bad things with Bandai didn't go through though, that could have perhaps have really helped things for Sega at the time...
Do the sales of Genesis 3, Majesco made 2's, Nomads, and Firecores count towards the 29 million sold?
I think Genesis 3s may, but not clones and probably not TecToy Mega Drives either. (not positive though)
What 29 million? The Genesis almost certainly sold 40 million plus worldwide... Wikipedia's numbers are wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by PimpUigi
Sega of Japan halted all internal development for all systems other than the Saturn in September 1995. This did not, however, force Sega of America to halt all funding for new games they wanted to publish as well, and indeed as you say Sega of America kept funding new first-party-published releases on the system until 1997. All of those games were Western-developed, however, not Japanese. Vectorman 1 and 2, The Lost World, Sonic 3D Blast, etc... Western developed titles, made by Western development teams and then published by Sega.Quote:
Originally Posted by zetastrike
Just going to answer this one for now...
PC games on average are deeper and more complex than console games. One result of this is that more complex genres are more popular on PCs, like strategy games, RPGs, building sims, etc. In the '90s those genres were mostly 2d. There were many 3d PC games certainly, but just as many 2d ones I'd bet. Regardless, I just never remember that "2d is stupid and outdated" feeling in PC gaming that I definitely remember from mid '90s console gaming. Of course PC gamers cared about graphics, a lot, but the idea that just because a game was 2d it was worse or something... that feeling just wasn't that strong. Lots of 2d games were very popular, MUCH more so than was true on consoles. You'd expect that though, with the different genres that were popular... so to try to go into some specifics.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Because I didn't own any consoles other than the Game Boy (and GBC in Dec. 1998) before I got an N64 in Sept. 1999, but we'd had a PC since early 1992 and I'd been playing games on it ever since, I mostly played PC games through that decade... and I definitely was playing more 2d games than 3d.
First, yes, strategy games were almost all 2d. This is an important point, because strategy games have always been one of the most successful genres on the PC, and they're my favorite genre overall. From turn-based to real-time, finding 3d strategy games was quite rare. I can think of a few from the late '90s, but only a few... Warzone 2100, Earth 2150, Homeworld, Dungeon Keeper... that's about it. Everything else was 2d. Life/building sims like the SimCity games, etc, were almost entirely 2d as well; only actioney spinoffs like Streets of SimCity or SimCopter were 3d.
Also, wargames were almost entirely 2d. Aside from Panzer General 3D, I can't think of one other polygonal wargame out there... and that genre was more popular then than it is now.
Adventure games were of course often 2d. Yes, many were FMV games or had major FMV elements, but many others were pure 2d, and even those FMV ones weren't polygonal...
Space/flight sims were 3d. FPSes were either 3d or fake 3d (Doom/Duke 3D style). Flight sims were 3d. But no, I wouldn't agree at all that flight games were 'the biggest thing on PCs'... yes, space and flight sims were much more popular than they became this decade, but they weren't as popular as strategy games! RPGs I'm not sure, those were mixed in terms of popularity, but most of those were 2d. Some were 3d, like the Elder Scrolls games, but most were 2d. Some were hybrids, like Betrayal at Krondor... polygonal overworld, but isometric 2d battles and static-picture towns.
Racing games were definitely mostly 3d from the mid '90s on. I like racing games a lot, and 3d definitely was a huge improvement for that genre. And then there are Tomb Raider style action-adventure games, entirely 3d subgenre.
On the other hand, puzzle games have always been and are still mostly 2d on the PC, and have always been popular.
Oh, and there was still the occasional 2d platformer or something on PC until the late '90s. 3d platformers did exist, but weren't much more common really... while in the early '90s platformers were a major genre on PC, by the late '90s they were a minor one. Still, there were a few.
Still, overall, on PC some of the most popular genres, such as strategy games, puzzle games, RPGs, adventure games, wargames, and more, were mostly 2d through the '90s, and many games in many of those genres are still 2d today. Certainly lots of PC games were 3d, but just as many were 2d. And given that strategy games were and are my favorite genre, I'd be surprised if I spent more time playing 2d games than 3d, even if we only look at the period after I got a Voodoo2 card (Nov. or Dec. 1998). Before then all we had was a horrible S3 ViRGE, no good for anything beyond software mode 3d and not very good at that either. And I never cared about FPSes all that much...
I remember when I got a Voodoo 3
Good times.
Would certainly help if you had a source.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Especially since the SNES sold twice as long.
There's no way the SNES ever had bigger market share than the Genesis (until it was discontinued of course) if the Genesis sold 40 million plus.
Genesis was still selling well in 1997. Officially discontinued or not, I honestly wouldn't have noticed by it's continued presence.
I remember Model 2s still stocked, on clearance in some stores then, never even seen a Model 3.
All brand new Gen games were clearing out for $10-$20 CDN each. A friend of mine who had only a genesis at the time, conned his younger brother into splitting the difference from his allowance, they picked up a few new games every week. Good times to say the least.
I also remember at the time, my Uncle trying to get me to go buy myself a genesis console, they were $60 brand new but I never got around to it. He came back $100 lighter, with a brand new model 2 w/sonic2 pack-in, an extra controller, a copy of Dynamite Headdy, & Aero the Acrobat. By the time I had enough extra money to buy one myself, the Gen was out of stock, & the Saturn was approaching the same situation. :p
The SNES sold 49 million worldwide, you know. Nintendo has released sales figures for all of its systems. Why would there be no way it ever passed the Genesis (in the US I assume you mean) if it outsold the Genesis by millions worldwide? :)Quote:
Originally Posted by PimpUigi
As for a source, that's part of the problem -- Sega never released any official, exact hardware numbers for its systems. We simply do not know how many systems Sega actually manufactured, much less how many they sold including all third-party systems as well like the Laseractive and Genesis 3. The closest thing I have is the thread on Digitpress linked below, where the best estimate of actual worldwide Genesis sales was 'something definitely above 36.5 million, maybe reaching as high as 40 million depending'.
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129693
So, we do know that the 19 million number is definitely wrong. Look at my post there and the replies. In fact, the system actually sold at least 19 million in the US alone, never mind the rest of the world... "at least" because we don't know if htat includes the Genesis 3 particularly, which sold at least a half million systems in 1998. I remember an interview with Majesco sometime said that they thought the Geensis had outsold the SNES that year thanks to their efforts... of course the SNES had sold better from 1994-97 (and maybe a little before that? Hard to say, without the Genesis numbers), but the point is, despite Sega's best efforts the Genesis was a very successful system here and sold for a long time. The idea that it totaled only 14 million overall in the US, while the SNES sold 23.35 million, is just crazy. 19 million's better, but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't even a little above that, depending on if that number includes Majesco...
Hopefully someday Sega's internal numbers will leak like Atari's 1985-90 numbers did earlier this year and we can actually answer some of these questions, it's annoying that they never said anything. Nintendo has announced exact sales numbers (shipped numbers really, but good enough), but Sega... nope. Ah well.
I believe the model 3 was only released in 1998, so I wouldn't expect you to find any in '97... but yeah, even then people were still buying them. I remember my younger cousins got a Genesis in '97 or '98, for instance. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Knuckle Duster
Black Falcon,
I guess my personal perspective is a a bit skewed as we never really had many strategy games on PC, or puzzel games for that matter (outside of adventure games). We did have a few Sega PC games (Sonic CD and Sonic & Knuckles collection, or the demo at least, plus Garfield, and BUG!). And funny that you mention 3D platformers as Croc was in our PC game library as well.
A good number of flight sims (some old ones like Chuk Yeager, and later got into X-Wing, by which time I was old enough to play -somewhat), but adventure games in particular. It wasn't until Quake II that I remember my dad getting into FPSs. (and I played Goldeneye a lot at friends, but we didn't have it for N64, which we didn't get until 1999 anyway -plus got some games like Rogue Squadron on PC instead)
Then there was unreal tournament, Unreal, Unreal: Return to Na Pali, etc. (but not to the exclusion of other games, I could go on, but that just gets into various other late 1990s games and onward, and Bleem in its fleeting existance) Oh, and Sim City 2000 and 3000.
Anyway, I do remember Populus or at least one of the sequels (as demos), some of the worms games and lemmings games (painball specifically, but I think that was a demo/shareware). Plus edutainment, especially Dinosaur Adventure and the 3D sequel I have fond memories of.
So again, must have been my personal experiences, I definitely had PC gaming freinds who were much more oriented towards games like Star Craft, Diablo (II), War Craft, along with adventure games like the Monkey Island series (I don't recall us having any SCUMM games at home though) and Black and White. Plus various other realtime strategy games. (like Age of empire games)
Don't recall RPGs though, like any of th eUltima series.
Intesteringly that one Dreamcast owner I mentioned is a big PC games for all of these genres (space/flight combat sims, strategy, PC RPGs, and FPSs). As I mentioned he or his family never owned a console prior and hasn't since, and he's far from a retro gamer as well (even for PC). Maybe you'd count him in with the "hardcore," but maybe just an exception to the rule. But one thing for sure, the DC was the first console that really caught my attention and impressed, maybe it was just my age at the time, but I was definitely more interested than I'd ever been in Playstation.
Saturn was more mysterious to me, and I rarely saw it, N64 was the mainstay from me and a number of freinds -most of which had theirs first, and PSX, meh it seemed kind of average, and the people who said it was "more powerful" than N64 annoyed me at the time in particular...
Edit:
One more note on the Super FX issue: please not that I don't think Nintendo's enhancement chip strategy was a bad idea in general, all other chips were pretty inexpensive and worthwhile, including the very popular SA-1 (which probably should have been available sooner), but Super FX was pretty damn expensive by comparison, a custom RISC CPU, a larger chip (not positive, but the 512 bytes of on-chip RAM at very least added to the size) plus 128 kB of RAM. (not sure if they managed to use DRAM, but I'd assme it was PSRAM they used which wasn't especially cheap)
Hmm, maybe the Genesis 3 was mostly a US thing, wiki lists it as being released in 1998, so pretty late (Majesco had their Model 2s a good while prior). I also noticed that Sega had licensed the Game Gear to Majesco as well and they sold it as the "Game Gear Core System," so that might explain that being on th emarket a good bit longer after Sega "discontinued" it. The major issue with discontinuation would be the lack of software coming out, first party at least, though there was a bit trickling ot from 3rd parties on the Genesis at least, but the GG shouldn't have been cancelled at all. (if may not have been as big a hit as other Sega products in Europe -I've heard some comments that the Lynx was more popular or at least regarded more highly; in the US is seems to have done pretty well though, GB dominated the market, but it was still out there)Quote:
Originally Posted by Knuckle Duster
As far as I know the Majesco Genesis and Game Gear were both US-only releases, yes. My Game Gear's a Majesco GG, so I know a bit about it... I don't have a model 3 Genesis, but I've certainly seen them around. They're not rare, in the US at least.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
The Majesco Model 3 Genesis was released in 1998 for $50. As I said, it sold well and ended up selling probably a half million units that year. That was pretty much the only year it was sold new, they didn't really keep it going after that... but it was a nice last gasp for the system. :)
As for the Majesco-model GG, it was released and sold in the year 2000. It's actually arguably the best model of Game Gear. Majesco Game Gears have a better, higher-refresh-rate screen and better capacitors than regular Sega (1990-1997) Game Gears. That means less blurring and none of the awful capacitor problems the Sega systems have (if I'm wrong about the capacitors, please let me know! I'm not certain about that point... but I've never heard of a Majesco GG with the capacitor problem, and have heard that they might have used better ones.).
There is one negative to Majesco GGs, for some reason perhaps relating to the different screen they are not compatible with the TV Tuner. Oh well, to get the benefits I don't mind. :)
It's easy to tell Majesco GGs from Sega ones. First, the shell is Genesis black, not Sega Game Gear grey. It's a definite improvement, I would say, the system looks better with the Genesis color. :) Second, the power plug area isn't red or yellow or whatever, it's just black like the rest of the shell. Third, the Start button is purple instead of blue. And fourth, the Game Gear logo, those three little colored bars, are all white in the Majesco GG, as opposed to one bar each of red, blue, and green, as it was with the Sega models.
The one real disappointment is that they use the exact same lighting system that Sega used, so the battery life is the exact same "7 hours on 6 AAs according to the manual" of the Sega models. Too bad...
Oh, for both the Genesis and GG, Majesco re-released some games. The only new game Majesco made was Frogger for the Genesis, the one and only new game released on the Genesis in 1998, though they made an SNES version as well, also released in 1998, and also the only new SNES release that year. Other than that the titles they released were just re-releases. They're not too hard to tell apart, the Majesco Genesis titles all are in cardboard boxes and not plastic, and say 'Distributed by Majesco Sales' in small print on the back of the box and Majesco's logo is on the front of the cartridge. I have a broken Majesco Sonic 3 cart for the Genesis and working Pac-Man and Sonic Spinball Majesco carts for the Game Gear. The Pac-Man one is complete with box and manual...
But again, I don't think Majesco sold its stuff outside the US then, so I doubt they came out anywhere else... Canada quite possibly, but not Europe for sure.
Cus the Megadrive sold like shit in Japan. Look at how lopsided the numbers are down there in Japan whereas other places were much more closer. Remember the Megadrive was outsold by the PCE there.Quote:
The SNES sold 49 million worldwide, you know. Nintendo has released sales figures for all of its systems. Why would there be no way it ever passed the Genesis (in the US I assume you mean) if it outsold the Genesis by millions worldwide?
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=14306
No, it didn't. It was a million seller and Sega's most successful console up until that point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Da_Shocker
You gotta put things in perspective. Japan is not the US. Three or four million units sold is quite an impressive number. It would translate to about eight million units in the US.
17 million SFC sold in JapanQuote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser
3.58 million Megadrives sold in Japan
IDK what weird world you live in but those numbers are terrible on Sega's part.
So, if Dell sells 17 million Notebooks and HP sells 4 million Notebooks in a country with a total population of 127 million people, HP's Notebooks somehow "sold like shit" ?!
Really, if you can shift x million units of your new hardware, it did all but "bomb" - especially if your previous model sold a few hundred thousand units total, and you managed to top that number 10:1.
If the MD did so well in your eyes why on earth did SoJ kill it off so swiftly once the Saturn came?
They discontinued Mega Drive in 1996, two years after Saturn's release, and one year after Sega of Japan published their final MD games: Dragon Slayer II, Ristar, Surging Aura, Alien Soldier, Light Crusader, Pengo.
For some reason (32X/Mars/Neptune) Saturn wasn't compatible to its predecessor - unlike each and every single console Sega of Japan released up until that point.
When the 32X project turned into a phenomenal disaster, and with Sega of America loosing $800 million US Dollars from 1993-1996, they discontinued software support for all of their platforms in late 1996: Game Gear / Master System / Mega Drive / Mega CD / 32X
- all but arcade, Saturn and PC.
It's that attitude that there's only one "winner", and EVERYONE else is a "loser". There's no such thing as second place - that's just a fancy name for losing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser
I've never subscribed to that viewpoint. It certainly doesn't make much sense in business. It's mainly an attitude for fan-bois who can't stand any attention being diverted from their one true love.
Yeah, and the Genesis outsold the SNES in Europe, Brazil, and other markets, and only lost to the SNES by maybe 4 million in the US (23.35 million to 19+ million). It all evens out overall. Seriously, did you read the thread I linked to? Here are the numbers you'll need to try to disprove to say that the system didn't sell at least 36.5 million systems...Quote:
Originally Posted by Da_Shocker
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129693
As I said in that thread I don't think that last clone system should count, I'm not sure about that Majesco number (I know they started selling systems late in the Geensis 2 era, and not just with the Genesis 3 in 1998, so it IS possible it was that high, I'm just a bit skeptical), and there are no good sources I know of for actual Nomad sales (the source that says 'one million' is far from reliable, I would say, see the thread), but it's a decent estimate overall even so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe View Post
I've seen sourcing saying this:
Genesis: 19 millions
European Mega Drive: 9 millions
Japanese Mega Drive: 3.5 millions
Majesco's sales: 2 millions
Nomad: 1 million
Brazil: 2 million
That's 36.5 millions. But what's missing?
Australia (Ozisoft handled it)
South Korea (Samsung handled it)
India
Other Asia
Other South America
At Games new Mega Drive/Genesis distributed by several companies in some regions
The actual sales number is probably well over 40 millions, but more sources are needed.
(SNES was 8.58 million reported by Nintendo in "Other", as in all countries they were selling it in other than America and Japan. 9 million for Europe and 2 million for Brazil sounds reasonable I think, we know Genesis won overall in Europe, and in Brazil only basically had competition from the Master System...)
Overall I'd probably put a low estimate at maybe 35 or 36 million, and a high estimate at maybe 40 million.
A Black Falcon your numbers are LOL like wow. It doesn't even out because it didn't sale at all in Japan. That was the biggest weak point everywhere else the numbers are very close but Japan lopsided numbers is what killed it? And where on earth did these Nomad numbers come from? The 33X didn't sale over a million units yet they are easier to come across than a Nomad.