Why MS didn't buy Sega.

[sheath]

So you are referring only to a relatively well received traditional Football game? I honestly don't remember anybody playing Gameday back then. For one the early adopters I knew that bought a PS1 or Saturn in 1995 were traditional Arcade gamers, not sports fanatics. They would be just as likely to play Wrestlemania as Madden. Either way, the actual sports game situation wasn't that dire on the Saturn in comparison to the PS1.

1995
Saturn:
Bases Loaded '96
Center Ring Boxing
Daytona USA
NHL All Star Hockey
Pebble Beach Golf Links
Quarterback Attack
Sega Rally Championship
World Series Baseball

Playstation:
ESPN Extreme Games
Fifa '96
NBA In The Zone
NBA Jam Tournament Edition
NFL Full Contact
NFL Gameday
PGA Tour '96
Power Serve 3D Tennis
WWF Wrestlemania the Arcade Game

Both platforms focused more on experimental and tech demo sports titles than anything else.

[Da_Shocker]

So you are referring only to a relatively well received traditional Football game? I honestly don't remember anybody playing Gameday back then. For one the early adopters I knew that bought a PS1 or Saturn in 1995 were traditional Arcade gamers, not sports fanatics. They would be just as likely to play Wrestlemania as Madden. Either way, the actual sports game situation wasn't that dire on the Saturn in comparison to the PS1.

1995
Saturn:
Bases Loaded '96
Center Ring Boxing
Daytona USA
NHL All Star Hockey
Pebble Beach Golf Links
Quarterback Attack
Sega Rally Championship
World Series Baseball

Playstation:
ESPN Extreme Games
Fifa '96
NBA In The Zone
NBA Jam Tournament Edition
NFL Full Contact
NFL Gameday
PGA Tour '96
Power Serve 3D Tennis
WWF Wrestlemania the Arcade Game

Both platforms focused more on experimental and tech demo sports titles than anything else.

Well it sold relatively well and I knew a quiet a few folks that was playing Gameday back in 95. But the PSx had the sports games that actually mattered in Football and Basketball. I do wonder what the hell was Sega's infatuation with 32-Bit golf back then. I'm pretty sure the 32X and Saturn would've been better off with NFL 90 whatever rather than those boring ass golf games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Gam...o_game_series)

[SEGA.GENESIS1989]

Well it sold relatively well and I knew a quiet a few folks that was playing Gameday back in 95. But the PSx had the sports games that actually mattered in Football and Basketball. I do wonder what the hell was Sega's infatuation with 32-Bit golf back then. I'm pretty sure the 32X and Saturn would've been better off with NFL 90 whatever rather than those boring ass golf games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Gam...o_game_series)

Tiger Woods

[Qjimbo]

But for Bill [Gates] this wasn’t enough, he didn’t think that SEGA had enough muscle to eventually stop Sony so we did our own Xbox thing.

More like by that point, SEGA were making some very expensive mistakes. The last decent thing they did in the hardware arena was realise that the Saturn needed to be 3D and did a quick bait-and-switch to get it up from 2D to a reasonable 3D system. But just like with the Saturn, the Dreamcast lagged behind the competition in terms of horse power and they weren't able to lock in enough developers to make a good game library. Microsoft by themselves managed to get some exclusivity deals, like Rare.

[Da_Shocker]

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods wasn't big at all during the mid 90's. And I highly doubt he was in either one of Sega's golf games.

[SEGA.GENESIS1989]

Tiger Woods wasn't big at all during the mid 90's. And I highly doubt he was in either one of Sega's golf games.

Tiger not big in the mid nineties? LMFAO! Tiger Woods was prominently featured on most major sports networks here in Canada and why my buds and I sometimes played hooky to watch his play on television ...



August 1996 baby!

[Da_Shocker]

Tiger not big in the mid nineties? LMFAO! Tiger Woods was prominently featured on most major sports networks here in Canada and why my buds and I sometimes played hooky to watch his play on television ...



August 1996 baby!

Come again? These games came out in 94 and 95 respectively. Woods didn't blow up until the late 90's.

Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996, and immediately signed deals with Nike, Inc. and Titleist that ranked as the most lucrative endorsement contracts in golf history at that time.[50][51] Woods was named Sports Illustrated's 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.[52] In April 1997, he won his first major, the Masters, becoming the tournament's youngest-ever winner.[53] Two months later, he set the record for the fastest-ever ascent to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings.[54] After a lackluster 1998, Woods finished the 1999 season with eight wins, including the PGA Championship, a feat not achieved since 1974.[55][56]

[SEGA.GENESIS1989]

Come again? These games came out in 94 and 95 respectively. Woods didn't blow up until the late 90's.

Woods became a professional golfer in August 1996, and immediately signed deals with Nike, Inc. and Titleist that ranked as the most lucrative endorsement contracts in golf history at that time.[50][51] Woods was named Sports Illustrated's 1996 Sportsman of the Year and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.[52] In April 1997, he won his first major, the Masters, becoming the tournament's youngest-ever winner.[53] Two months later, he set the record for the fastest-ever ascent to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings.[54] After a lackluster 1998, Woods finished the 1999 season with eight wins, including the PGA Championship, a feat not achieved since 1974.[55][56]

The hype surrounding Tiger Woods occurred well before he became a professional golfer. The media began following Tiger while he was still an amateur. The fact that Canadian sports networks were following him while he was an amateur just goes to show you how special he was at the time. Canada of all places! After he turned professional in '96, Tiger truely became a household name ... I'll give you that.

[Knuckle Duster]

The hype surrounding Tiger Woods occurred well before he became a professional golfer. The media began following Tiger while he was still an amateur. The fact that Canadian sports networks were following him while he was an amateur just goes to show you how special he was at the time. Canada of all places! After he turned professional in '96, Tiger truely became a household name ... I'll give you that.

Canada of all places? You make it sound like Golf was never a huge sport here.

[kool kitty89]

Well it sold relatively well and I knew a quiet a few folks that was playing Gameday back in 95. But the PSx had the sports games that actually mattered in Football and Basketball. I do wonder what the hell was Sega's infatuation with 32-Bit golf back then. I'm pretty sure the 32X and Saturn would've been better off with NFL 90 whatever rather than those boring ass golf games.

The Football thing (especially in terms of an NFL license) was Sega's big hole in the Saturn (and 32x's) sports library, not just in '95 either, but that problem lagged on a bit longer too.
EA and Sega Sports titles didn't arrive until '97, and only Acclaim was there in '96 with Quarterback Club.

Personally, I'd rather play a good golf game than a football one . . . but that obviously has no bearing on actual mass-market interest. (football was and is the number one sports game franchise to target with max priority, and Sega missed that)
To be fair, Sega NFL '97 seems to have been a pretty good showing on the Saturn, but that's 2 years late . . . not to mention Sega's own policies of virtually killing off the Saturn in '97 regardless.

[sheath]

I keep saying this but I think it is getting missed in the anachronistic mess that is our hindsight. 1997 was THE year for the 32-bit consoles, prior to that they were just sort of on the market as a very 3DO like high end option for early adopters. The 32-bit era started two full years too early for the average consumer.

I ordinarily argue against using adjusted for inflation figures for consoles because I think the game industry exists in a bubble where "perceived" value is at set prices dictated by prior "successful consoles." But, we might remember that 1995 was a market slump, and those tend to happen because of broader economic issues. Also, 1996 was an election year in the US in which a long standing regime was replaced by a Democratic one, this always causes economic instability for that year. Finally, in 1995 dollars $300 was almost $450 in 2012 money and was pretty much the same for 1996. It was pretty much only after the consoles dropped below $250 that mass market sales were even possible. That isn't even getting into how Nintendo had its slavish fanbase convinced that the Ultra 64 was going to be a silicon graphics machine in a $250 box in late 1996.

NFL is as mass market as it gets, they had plenty of time to sit back and figure out a good fully 3D solution.

[Team Andromeda]

The Football thing (especially in terms of an NFL license) was Sega's big hole in the Saturn (and 32x's) sports library, not just in '95 either, but that problem lagged on a bit longer too.
EA and Sega Sports titles didn't arrive until '97, and only Acclaim was there in '96 with Quarterback Club.

John Madden 97 came out in 1996 . Sure it was a bit of a whole but Madden wasn't a launch title for the MD and I really don't think people bought the PS for Playday . The Saturn had some really good sports games early in and also with World Series Baseball II and NHL Powerplay the best versions of Baseball and NHL Hockey . I think far more of a bodyblow in terms of sports games was the lack of a F1 sim and losing the likes of Fifa to Sony and Pro Evo .

[kool kitty89]

I keep saying this but I think it is getting missed in the anachronistic mess that is our hindsight. 1997 was THE year for the 32-bit consoles, prior to that they were just sort of on the market as a very 3DO like high end option for early adopters. The 32-bit era started two full years too early for the average consumer.

That was an argument I was making quite often in Saturn/32x discussions on the forums for the first year or so I was on here (I'm pretty sure some after you joined too).
Albeit, I used that same point for a separate argument too, namely that up through 1996 the 4th gen market was still the dominant segment outside of Japan and it was late 1996 when things really shifted, meaning 1997 was the first full year of the 5th gen being mainstream. (and, therefore, it was a mistake to distribute resources the way they did at the time, and that the 32x itself was unnecessary compared to pushing for more/better late-gen MD -and possibly CD- software of various sorts, while carefully shifting key resources to Saturn support and both preparing for a shift to massive software support for the coming generation as well as corresponding marketing -1995 would have been a niche year, 1996 shifting towards mainstream, and 1997 the first year to really push for the Saturn and cut MD support for budget market status with mostly re-releases of existing games and maybe a handful of late localizations of existing JP titles) It's also unclear how Nintendo may have handled SNES support had the N64 not been delayed, but considering they had already planned (software wise) around a 1995 release, there's a good indication of the way things were going in any case. (the fact a few major Super FX titles were dropped just prior to mass production was indicative of this -Star Fox 2 in particular probably would have been released in '95 had they not intended the N64 to launch that year)

Now, that argument was made in a specific context too, and I went a fair bit broader with it in other scenarios (and refined some of the supposition on it in general since that point).

With that in mind, and the case where the 32x had already been launched in 1994, I'd maintain that the best option was to still keep MD support at the forefront for mainstream (in terms of PR and market positioning, not necessarily in terms of total monetary investment -since proportionally lower spending and high profit margins are typical of that stage in a console's life). But with the 32x already being supported and already in the hands of hundreds of thousands of consumers, it certainly would made tons of sense to continue support as planned and claimed publicly. At that point, with the 32x, they should have been focusing on maximizing profitability where possible while minimizing losses (monetary and PR wise) while trying to blend it in as best as possible with the MD, CD, and Saturn.
From a sheer market standpoint in general, the 32x (at least in the short run) was a more mainstream volume market platform (outside Japan) for 1995, and they should have been able to make the best of things after the fact too. (not sure where the Neptune would come in, but TBH, they should have had that in 1994 to complement the 32x) On the software end, logistics would inevitably be complicated with so many distinct platforms, but that doesn't mean efforts couldn't be made to minimize that. (specific support for 32x to Saturn transitional support and potentially expanded tools for MD/CD/32x development as well -for the selective cases where multi-platform releases were attractive . . . and I mean for any of those 4 distinct formats, or perhaps finally allowing hybrid cart+CD games as well)

I maintain all my other recent arguments in regards to the reasons the 32x as a whole didn't make sense for Sega given the alternative options (from Jupiter to nothing but investing in MD/CD marketing and software) and particularly in regards to the Saturn's development/release status in 1994, but the point remains that Sega could have made the best of the situation with the 32x as it was rather than the mess of things that occurred in 1995.
And the fact is that it didn't stop in 1995 either, but things kept getting screwed up in one war or another all the way up through the Dreamcast. (1996 was a messy transitional year, and the shift with Stolar's management didn't help things -streamlining resources made sense, but the execution was way off- . . . then the de-facto discontinuation of the Saturn in 1997 -in spite of major 3rd party releases actually picking up that year and continuing into 1998- and then the huge hole in the market until Dreamcast -and even then Sega had dropped from the low-end market segment at that point, and with the Dreamcast itself getting marketing screwed up in some regions and overall spending still to fast and loose in the US given the budgets they had to work with -they got some things right, but needed to be way moe tactful and conservative with spending in certain areas if the DC was going to last long enough to become profitable, or unless they could have managed more emergency funding in general -overspending on SegaNet related things and general rebates and price drops on hardware scales were among those mistakes)

I ordinarily argue against using adjusted for inflation figures for consoles because I think the game industry exists in a bubble where "perceived" value is at set prices dictated by prior "successful consoles."

Some may see things that way, but even a lot of average people will realize that "1994 dollars" are way different than "2006 dollars" etc. That's especially dramatic when considering the really old consoles. The 2600 was among the least expensive platforms of its type in the late 1970s (and 80s), but it was sill quite expensive for the time too. Ask anyone who actually spend money in 1977 or '78, and $170~200 was definitely a lot back then.
For the same reason, the 3DO's 1993 price was far crazier than the 60 GB PS3 in 2006, yet some people made that comparison rather ignorantly. (and in many cases, did do without having any personal perspective for what $700 was in 1993, or $500 in 1994 for that matter)

But, we might remember that 1995 was a market slump, and those tend to happen because of broader economic issues.

It's also a matter of perspective:
If you look at revenue and/or hardware sales, things will be skewed in unrealistic ways. With the understanding that the industry made next to zero (or sometimes less than zero) profits on hardware sales themselves, it's smartest to look at software sales (volumes and cash flow) in terms of actual market performance. Hardware sales say something about a new platform and possibly about market growth, but software sales volumes and revenue are far more significant overall.

Hardware only exists as a conduit to sell software, and while hardware sales and install base will contribute to how some 3rd parties direct software development and distribution, it's the end results in software sales and volumes that should be most important to consumers and investors. (for that reason, I'd be really interested to see how 7800 and SMS game sales compared in 1986-1989, both in volumes and revenue -especially with the huge gap in game pricing)

Some market analysts were leveling similar complaints about Nintendo's market in 1990/1991, when those were among the top sales years for the NES.
Granted, if you've got some relatively ignorant investors not understanding this issue, it's very important to address that . . . a big matter for maintaining good PR with investors and shareholders.
The console market is not analogous with the home computer markets at all in that respect, though certain platforms of certain generations blur the lines between those two. (both are similar in that rising competition drives new hardware releases/upgrades, but computer hardware has relatively high profit margins on the base hardware and peripherals and may or may not have any direct profits from software -depending on licensing and in-house publishing)

In fact, introducing a new hardware platform is something that should be UNATTRACTIVE to many investors since it will necessarily mean a major dip in profits and increases in risks. Granted, it's also a necessity to do when there's direct competition posing a real threat with a new platform expanding the market. Look at what happened this most recent generation: no new competition appeared (outside of PCs) for a full 7 years.

Also, 1996 was an election year in the US in which a long standing regime was replaced by a Democratic one, this always causes economic instability for that year. Finally, in 1995 dollars $300 was almost $450 in 2012 money and was pretty much the same for 1996. It was pretty much only after the consoles dropped below $250 that mass market sales were even possible. That isn't even getting into how Nintendo had its slavish fanbase convinced that the Ultra 64 was going to be a silicon graphics machine in a $250 box in late 1996.

NFL is as mass market as it gets, they had plenty of time to sit back and figure out a good fully 3D solution.

True, and in that respect, lacking it on the 32x was probably a bigger problem then the Saturn . . . at least had the 32x been handled better in '95 (again, in the context of it existing at all).
Lacking a Sega Sports NFL license in 1996 was a problem though, with the mainstream shift taking place late that year. (even so, Sega still could have done much better in 1997, and they had a genuinely good NFL entry at that point too . . . they could have had Sonic X-Treme by Spring of '97 as well)