Developers with Genesis Allegiances!

What's the error in my discrimination? With platformers and shmups (my preferred gametypes), all of the storyline is relegated to one or two screens at most, and can be completely ignored. Hell, with some of them the storyline is completely contained within the manual. With very few exceptions, all of my favorite games contain two paragraphs of text at most. I'm not saying that "action" games don't feature the same basic plot outlines as RPGs, just that the plot isn't integrated into the gameplay in they way that it is in an RPG.

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Originally Posted by jerry coeurl

I'm not saying that "action" games don't feature the same basic plot outlines as RPGs, just that the plot isn't integrated into the gameplay in they way that it is in an RPG.

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Actually, I was being a little bit facetious (but still making a point) ;)

I've been playing Atomic Runner a lot recently and after checking around I'm adding Data East to this thread under "neutral" as they seemed to make about the same amount of games for both systems (they actually released slightly more on MD in the west but slightly more on SNES in Japan) also at least two of their games (Joe & Mac, and Captain America) were far inferior on SNES.

Was the reason why EA didn't make games for the DC is the graphic chip set or something

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Originally Posted by KnightWarrior

Was the reason why EA didn't make games for the DC is the graphic chip set or something

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No, the official word was that EA was angry after being left with loads of stock and some upcoming games in development when Sega suddenly announced the discontinuation of the Saturn, causing them to lose money, after that they said they wouldn't develop for Dreamcast unless it sold over a certain amount units, although after it sold the number they'd given they still didn't make any games, this stubbornness reportedly lost EA a hell of a lot of money when they didn't have any Dreamcast sports games out during a successful christmas.

And what actually happened is that Bernie Stolar, whom I would consider the best CEO that Sega of America ever had - the only good one anyway, not counting David Rosen; ... that Stolar was pressured to sign a contract that garantueed Electronic Arts the sole exclusive rights to release sports games for Dreamcast.

a) that would have meant no sports games by Sega of Japan [in the West?] - like Virtua Tennis!
b) Stolar had just bought Visual Concepts for $10 million Dollars.

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Originally Posted by [url=http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/qaa-former-sega-president-on-dreamcasts-failure-pranks-against-sony-his-ouster.html]Bernie Stolar[/url]

I said, “[Okay], I’ll agree to that, you’ll be the only third-party publisher that will have sports. But you’re going to have to compete with us because I just bought Visual Concepts.” And he said, “No, no, no, no...then you should not do he deal with Visual Concepts.”
I said, “No it’s too late.” [Laughs] “We’ve already signed the documentation. We’ve already taken the steps.” So because of that, he did not go onto the platform.

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and because of that he had to leave Sega. The rest is history :(

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That's debatable. They fought tooth and nail for names but, if my recollections of usenet from back in the day are correct, it may not have been the original names they were fighting for.

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http://sega-saturn.com/saturn/other/ign_vic.htm

Christuserloeser I don't exactly hate Stolar but there is no way in hell i'd consider him to be the best CEO at Sega since Kalinske was behind Sega's most successful console of all time. With that said EA contract terms seem to be more like a smoke screen for some reason. There were rumors that Sony had paid them not to make games for the DC. Then I also remember EA wanting Sega to go with the Voodoo hardware because they were more familiar with it.

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No, the official word was that EA was angry after being left with loads of stock and some upcoming games in development when Sega suddenly announced the discontinuation of the Saturn, causing them to lose money,

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EA stopped making games for the Saturn in 97

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

No, the official word was that EA was angry after being left with loads of stock and some upcoming games in development when Sega suddenly announced the discontinuation of the Saturn

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That didn't happen. When Saturn was dying, we all saw it coming. I doubt any of their '99 sports games were ever in development for Saturn. Their non-sports games that were canceled are games that would have been released during 1997, like Syndicate Wars and Nuclear Strike. They didn't have anything in the pipeline for 1998.

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after that they said they wouldn't develop for Dreamcast unless it sold over a certain amount units, although after it sold the number they'd given they still didn't make any games, this stubbornness reportedly lost EA a hell of a lot of money when they didn't have any Dreamcast sports games out during a successful christmas.

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They said they'd support the Dreamcast after it sold a million units in North America. I don't know why they said that. I get the impression that they never had any intention of following through on it. I'm not sure if they ever made an official statement acknowledging the DC's sales and saying "we're still not releasing anything for it", but if they did, I never saw it.

I don't think EA lost "a hell of a lot of money" by snubbing the Dreamcast. DC wasn't around that long and was never the dominant system; they could afford to skip it. I'm sure they would've done better by having Dreamcast games out, but not having them wasn't a huge financial pickle for the company. One thing that did happen was that NFL 2K1 and NBA 2K1 outsold their EA counterparts on PS2.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

And what actually happened is that Bernie Stolar, whom I would consider the best CEO that Sega of America ever had - the only good one anyway, not counting David Rosen; ... that Stolar was pressured to sign a contract that garantueed Electronic Arts the sole exclusive rights to release sports games for Dreamcast.

a) that would have meant no sports games by Sega of Japan [in the West?] - like Virtua Tennis!
b) Stolar had just bought Visual Concepts for $10 million Dollars.

and because of that he had to leave Sega. The rest is history :(

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What remains unexplained is why EA made such a demand, which they've never made before or since. Also, did EA actually expect Sega to agree to it? I think there's got to be more to the story, that EA had some other motive.

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Originally Posted by runback22

I find it funny that I can go back after nearly 20 years and spend hours with these genesis games yet the Wii couldnt hold my interest for more than 20 minutes. Genesis still does what Nintendon't.

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Too bad I'm stuck with emulation. :shame:
I'mma find a Firecore or RetroGen somewhere or that portable Genesis that uses SD cards so I can play all my ROMs on a portable..

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

I don't exactly hate Stolar but there is no way in hell i'd consider him to be the best CEO at Sega since Kalinske was behind Sega's most successful console of all time.

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I acknowledge Kalinske's achievements, and packing in Sonic with the Genesis was very clever indeed, but I do believe that much of of Sega's success in the US was merely attributed to the circumstances under which Kalinske assumed his position: Genesis was already launched and slowly gained some momentum (they sold 500.000 units during the first few months according to Katz); the games were there - including Sonic, but also Moonwalker, Castle of Illusion, Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage; the Sega vs. Nintendo campaign was there, the SNES was there, unbelievably ugly, and didn't turn out to a better machine - just different; they could afford to lower the price tag for the machine thus making it more attractive to both students and familes... I could go on and on.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

What remains unexplained is why EA made such a demand, which they've never made before or since. Also, did EA actually expect Sega to agree to it? I think there's got to be more to the story, that EA had some other motive.

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I've been thinking about that too.

Everyone knew that SEGA was in a very bad financial situation and in no position to decline such an "offer" - which is likely the number one reason why they made it in the first place.

You gotta remember that even Microsoft got involved in the Dreamcast project, right from the very beginning:

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Originally Posted by [url=http://sega-saturn.com/news/052198c.htm]Bill Gates[/url]

We believe the Dreamcast system represents a significant advancement in console-based entertainment. For consumers, Dreamcast's state-of-the-art 3D graphics technology and online capabilities will provide unprecedented levels of realism and performance in game play.

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So Mircosoft already had a foot in the door, Electronic Arts might have thought that they could get in as well.

Having Electronic Arts on board by securing them with exclusive rights to sell sports games for Dreamcast would also guarantee SEGA that Electronic Arts would do everything they could to support Dreamcast, giving Dreamcast games top priority. So, EA's strategists probably thought it would be entirely feasible to make such an "offer", and that they could not affort not to agree to it.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

That didn't happen. When Saturn was dying, we all saw it coming.

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whether or not you personally saw it coming makes little difference to the fact that Sega made an announcement they didn't need to be making which needlessly harmed EA's profits.

Where it comes to upcoming releases I don't know, the whole "EA had games in development" idea is one of those heavily proliferated things on the net which i'd never thought to question that could well be bogus, or exaggerated

The idea of the whole clandestine meeting where EA read out a list of demands sounds pretty ridiculous to me, no company just decides to throw away the chance to make money for no good reason. A mixture of the two ideas sounds more realistic, ie EA were pissed at Sega, and Sega had shown that they could be a liability so EA started making demands.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

I don't think EA lost "a hell of a lot of money" by snubbing the Dreamcast.

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Sports titles sold by the truckload on Dreamcast that 1st big christmas and EA didn't have a product out there, I don't see how you can debate on the fact that EA lost out on a "hell of a lot of money" to be honest :?

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Originally Posted by Honey the Cat

Too bad I'm stuck with emulation. :shame:
I'mma find a Firecore or RetroGen somewhere or that portable Genesis that uses SD cards so I can play all my ROMs on a portable..

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Umm, I'm pretty sure the SD-card add-on cart is for propritary firecore/retrogen games only, it won't work with roms, unfortunatle. (almost positive)
Anyway, you should be able to find a real genesis more cheaply than a firecore... (<$20 shipped online, perhaps less in local ads/craig'slist, a bit more with some games included, but often a better deal as well) Aim for a model 1, even the VA7 (with poor sound) will probably be better overall (plus Sega CD, 32x, SMS-PBC, Virtua Racing compatible) than retrogen unless you care about the propritary games. (sound is a bit poor/muffled, but firecore's is way off... plus VA7s will have pretty good video -and s-video moddable, unlike many model 2s) check out Ace's guide: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7796

And good luck. ;)

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

I acknowledge Kalinske's achievements, and packing in Sonic with the Genesis was very clever indeed, but I do believe that much of of Sega's success in the US was merely attributed to the circumstances under which Kalinske assumed his position: Genesis was already launched and slowly gained some momentum (they sold 500.000 units during the first few months according to Katz); the games were there - including Sonic, but also Moonwalker, Castle of Illusion, Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage; the Sega vs. Nintendo campaign was there, the SNES was there, unbelievably ugly, and didn't turn out to a better machine - just different; they could afford to lower the price tag for the machine thus making it more attractive to both students and familes... I could go on and on.

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I don't know why having Sonic as a pack-in was such an amazing acheivement, really it should have been pretty obvious and would have been stupid to do otherwise. Really, many successful systems attribute a portion of their success to a killer pack-in game, a "system seller." Many previous to the Genesis, Atari had Combat initially, but later packed-in Space Invaders (particularly with the Sears models), one of the most popular games at the time, likewise there's Donkey Kong on ColecoVision, and especially Super Mario Bros. on the NES! (then SMW with the SNES, which was released prior to StH in Japan)
All those games would follow the same logic as Sonic on the Genesis, and SoJ management would have to be blind not to se that...
Katz may have had reservations on the whole Hedgehog character thing, but he was impressed once he saw the game in action, so I'm sure it would have been a natural chioce to offer bundled with the system.

Plus, with the Genesis on th emarket for a year and the SNES being released, it made sense to drop the price as well. (and $150 is a nice round number) One thing Katz suggested in an interview was that many consumers were holding off on getting a Genesis before they saw waht the SNES had to offer.

I also have one note to the family issue: Nintendo's kid-friendly immage (and indeed nature), would have been a pretty stong factor for families with young children.

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

whether or not you personally saw it coming makes little difference to the fact that Sega made an announcement they didn't need to be making which needlessly harmed EA's profits.

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Are you talking about the E3 '97 thing? Because they didn't announce the discontinuation of the Saturn then. Stolar just made an idiotic anti-Saturn comment. The discontinuation of the system was announced at the beginning of 1998, at which point it was very obviously dying. EA had been gradually dropping the Saturn from their lineup throughout 1997 -- their only releases for it towards the end of the year were multiplatform sports games, and it was clear they were to be their final Saturn releases.

In any case, it's definitely plausible that there was bad blood between EA and Sega (specifically Stolar) due to the Saturn, but there's no way they were left high and dry with a bunch of games in development. All their Saturn games were ports anyway.

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Sports titles sold by the truckload on Dreamcast that 1st big christmas and EA didn't have a product out there, I don't see how you can debate on the fact that EA lost out on a "hell of a lot of money" to be honest :?

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Simple, EA's sports titles still sold by the truckload on Playstation, and arguably, EA Sports would've just split the market with Sega Sports, rather than expanding it.

I've seen it rumored that EA had seen NFL 2K and knew that they couldn't create a DC version of Madden 2000 that wouldn't look bad in comparison, but I don't know how true that is. Given the time frame though, I don't think EA would've been able to make their "2000" sports games for Dreamcast from the ground-up; rather, they would've had to to have been ported from the Playstation, with the requisite smoothing, but not able to stand up graphically.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Umm, I'm pretty sure the SD-card add-on cart is for propritary firecore/retrogen games only, it won't work with roms, unfortunatle. (almost positive)

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At least one ATgames hand held seems to run roms just fine.

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also developed by AtGames (says so right in the box)

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So Mircosoft already had a foot in the door, Electronic Arts might have thought that they could get in as well.

Having Electronic Arts on board by securing them with exclusive rights to sell sports games for Dreamcast would also guarantee SEGA that Electronic Arts would do everything they could to support Dreamcast, giving Dreamcast games top priority. So, EA's strategists probably thought it would be entirely feasible to make such an "offer", and that they could not affort not to agree to it.

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The WinCE wasn't the only OS for the DC though. That was just an easy excuse to port some PC games to the DC. But that was a developers choice though. And consumer's probably wanted a choice between Football games. And 2K did overtake the Live series. Shame they never came close to dethroning Madden :(