What if the Saturn was never released and it was up to the 32X?

[stika]

There was never any SEGA deal at all. Looking over that the Saturn would have been 3D, It was the way SEGA and the industry was going (Core even confirmed in a Mega CD interview that SEGA Saturn already had better spec than the 3DO) but SEGA learning of the PS-X did make them up the Saturn spec.



Or just imagine a SEGA all behind and focused on the Saturn . I'm pretty sure had that been the case, SEGA could have beat the N64 for sales in the USA, UK, and Japan

Interesting, I did not know about that Core interview. Any idea where I can read about it?

[Team Andromeda]

Yes of course here's a Interview with Core way back in October 1993 when Thunderhawk was just shipping for the Mega CD and the 3DO was hitting the USA.

[stika]

That was a pretty interesting read. Thank you!

[roadkill]

Sony's Japan then president was behind the PS-X project and also green light the Team to go on its own. The SONY board and executives was against the action as they felt Console's were for the Toy Market and SONY wasn't a Toy corp

How times have changed. Now Sony is relying almost completely on their video game divisions.

[Shanobi]

People are only thinking theoretically, based on what actually happened. IF Sega had fully supported the 32X, released the 32X-genesis single unit system (Neptune?), and supplied their full support to it, it certainly could have worked.

What really failed was marketing, combined with the lack of great games at launch.

Think about this: Does anybody remember hype for the 32X? Or do you remember confusion? Confusion that this device came out of nowhere, and was believed doomed before it even had a chance in the market.

Nintendo famously rode out the introduction of two console generation releases, and KEPT a huge chunk of their audience with them until they released their newer hardware iterations. But they did that with a singular plan in mind.

Sega just had too many cooks in the kitchen.

[Silanda]

Think about this: Does anybody remember hype for the 32X? Or do you remember confusion? Confusion that this device came out of nowhere, and was believed doomed before it even had a chance in the market.

I remember hype, at first at least. It didn't come out of nowhere if you were following Sega magazines at the time. The hype dissipated when it became clear that the Saturn was going to be significantly more capable (the 32x was initially rumoured to be as powerful), and that the bulk of software support was going to the Saturn. The launch went pretty well, however.

I too think that the 32x could have been a success, but only if the Neptune had replaced the Mega Drive/Genesis 2 when the 32x released, and if Sega had extensively retooled the Saturn for a later release. Sega would have had to have released something by mid '96 though; even with software support, the 32x alone couldn't have carried Sega up to '99 if there had been no Saturn equivalent. It just wasn't strong enough.

[gamevet]

People are only thinking theoretically, based on what actually happened. IF Sega had fully supported the 32X, released the 32X-genesis single unit system (Neptune?), and supplied their full support to it, it certainly could have worked.

What really failed was marketing, combined with the lack of great games at launch.

Think about this: Does anybody remember hype for the 32X? Or do you remember confusion? Confusion that this device came out of nowhere, and was believed doomed before it even had a chance in the market.

Nintendo famously rode out the introduction of two console generation releases, and KEPT a huge chunk of their audience with them until they released their newer hardware iterations. But they did that with a singular plan in mind.

Sega just had too many cooks in the kitchen.

You're sending a mixed message here. You say the 32X single unit (Neptune) could have worked, yet say that Sega had too many cooks in the kitchen.

The 32X wasted a lot of resources that could have been put behind the Sega Saturn. It would have been cool to have a Star Wars arcade game on the Saturn, that had all of the bells and whistles of the arcade game, but we got a 32X port with limited sound capabilities, along with just okay graphics.

[Team Andromeda]

People are only thinking theoretically, based on what actually happened. IF Sega had fully supported the 32X, released the 32X-genesis single unit system (Neptune?), and supplied their full support to it, it certainly could have worked.

What really failed was marketing, combined with the lack of great games at launch.

Think about this: Does anybody remember hype for the 32X? Or do you remember confusion? Confusion that this device came out of nowhere, and was believed doomed before it even had a chance in the market.

Sorry a half assed 32 Bit system just doesn't work . People making the move up to 32 Bit wanted the real deal . Too much of the 32X was limited thanks to being a add-on of the Mega Drive in terms of display and screen res, sprites Ect .

Nintendo famously rode out the introduction of two console generation releases, and KEPT a huge chunk of their audience with them until they released their newer hardware iterations

Can we please stop that myth , Nintendo only supports its hardware till the next hardware is ready to go . To SEGA credit it supported the Mega Drive long after its follow up systems were out . Nintendo on the other other almost totally drop its systems . Nintendo only support the Snes because the N64 hardware wasn't ready and delayed , When the N64 was ready NCL dropped the Snes like a stone , it did the same with N64 when the Cube was ready Ect .

32X was 2 years too too late . Come the end of 1994 and the start of 1995 - People wanted to move on from 16 bit gaming and SOA called it badly wrong in that people were willing and ready to pay $300 to get real 32 bit gaming

[EclecticGroove]

Eh, I think the 32x "Could" have worked.
But not as it was. It was too late (as you noted) and released to close to the true 32bit gaming generation.

But in this hypothetical world where it had the full support of everyone, and was better planned out (and supported) it likely could have come out earlier.

If I wanted to go all "perfect world" on it, I'd say the 32x and Sega CD should have been a single add on that was in between the release of both. It would have been more powerful/capable than the Sega CD, but not quite as powerful as the 32X. That would have given them an add on that really only needed to add a boost to the systems color palate (plus what ever other nice extras they could at the time) over what the Sega CD gave to really make it seem like a worthwhile investment.

That would slate it's release somewhere around in 1993... which would have given it a good 2+ years to entrench itself before the 32bit systems were coming to market.


Anything short of that I just don't see how it would work.
Releasing the 32x in effectively 1995, when the Saturn was months away (or already released if you were in Japan) simply was not feasible.
Removing the Saturn simply pits an extremely complicated, under powered, and rather expensive beast against the superior Playstation and the N64 (which had massive promises of being the be all end all device of the generation).

The Genesis + 32x would not be able to compete, and the Genesis + 32x + Sega CD would struggle to compete as well. The hybrid device would not save it since the overall architecture could not change unless you chopped off the old Genesis system support.

Now, that said, I think it would do OK to start. It would come in with a massive library of games to play. But the Playstation would quickly have shown just how outclassed the aging Genesis + peripherals was at that point.

[MasterGenesis]

If the Saturn was never released and it was all up to the 32X (I'm assuming tat in this case the Neptune would've been released instead of the 32X), Sega would've sold even less consoles then they did with the Saturn (although they would've sold a few more Neptunes) because the 32X wasn't that better than the Super Nintendo with the Super FX chip. If they just released the 32X as an add on and not released the Saturn, the Dreamcast would've never been made because Sega would've dropped out of the console market and we would be seeing Sonic Adventure for the PS1 and Seaman for the N64.

[avlon]

I don't know if I would call it "hype", but in the gaming community, it was well known at the time that Sega's future was the Saturn, and that Sega Japan really had no interest in backing it, so it was pretty much DOA.

Other issues were the price, the library of games, and the fact that it was a poorly thought out and clunky add on. For example, if you had the Sega CD, there were THREE power supplies to plug in just to get this frankentsteinian contraption working. The stack was hilarious, especially with the game genie, sonic & Knuckles/Sonic 3 combo if you were interesting in console stacking Jenga.

Sega should have just gone ahead as originally planned to make the Saturn itself backwards compatible with the Genesis via the Cart slot. That would have helped it tremendously IMO.

[MathUser]

The 32x was never a proper next gen console. Even if they made that neptune console, it'd still have genesis music and sounds. It would have lost the war even harder.

[MathUser]

You know, like how atari 7800 lost the war to NES cause they tried to use the 2600 sound chip?

[NekoNiaow]

The 32x was never a proper next gen console. Even if they made that neptune console, it'd still have genesis music and sounds. It would have lost the war even harder.

With the MegaDrive 68k entirely dedicated to manage the FM chip the machine was very likely capable of producing awesome sound. For example, mixing three samples in realtime is totally within the 68k's capabilities if that is the only thing it has to do and it could probably do more (Amiga Turrican II's music does exactly that).

[MasterGenesis]

You know, like how atari 7800 lost the war to NES cause they tried to use the 2600 sound chip?

There are so many reasons the 7800 failed and it involved more than just the sound.