| kain_kusanagi said: The rivalry between Sega and Nintendo was nothing compared to Sony's brute force attack on the industry. The Genesis and SNES fought over a marginal 50% of the industry. Sony took the industry over. The Playstation destroyed both the Saturn and N64. Both of which had truly great games. The Dreamcast had some of the best games of the generation, but nobody bought it. Why didn't they buy it? There are three reasons and only one of them is Sega mistakes. The other two reasons are; The Playstation brand was "cool", and Sony said the PS2 would be able to do photorealism. When the Dreamcast hit the market Sony started saying the PS2 would be "Toy Story" quality. Gamers decided to ignore the amazing games on Dreamcast and wait for the promised superiority of the PS2. When the PS2 did finally hit the market it had no great games for a year and the ones it did have didn't look any better than Shenmue on Dreamcast. But it was too late for Sega and the Dreamcast died early, before it could be optimized. Even when devs started optimizing the PS2's graphics the games never looked or played substantially better than the Dreamcast. We lost an innovator and an industry co-founder because people believed the Sony hype machine. Sega was in trouble financially after the Saturn got taken out by the Playstation. Sega pined all their hopes on the Dreamcast. They did everything right and it should have been a success. When I play my Dreamcast I can't help but notice how ahead of it's time it was. It doesn't matter that Sega labeled it's faster processor "Blast processing", or correctly stated that the Genesis could do what the NES could not. What matters is Sony intentionally killed the Dreamcast with a lie. I'm an old school gamer and Sega is a big part of my childhood. Watching Sony destroy something I loved isn't something I can easily forget even after I've moved on. Like I said, I don't hate Sony and I enjoy their products. I just wish I had a Dreamcast 2 and could play Shenmue 3. The Xbox was the last straw that broke the Dreamcast's back, but Sony packed on bail after bail. It was just business, but it crippled one of my favorite game companies. |
I'm a big Sega fan, it was a great part of my childhood and my first console was a Master System. But Sony isn't the only responsable for his fall. Sega screwed the consumers with the expensive Sega CD being replaced by 32X almost imediatly. And screwed everyone again launching Saturn a year after. And once again, screwed Saturn with poor support (not even a real Sonic game). The Dreamcast was their first thing done right since Genesis, but it was too late. There is a limit for how much a company can damage its reputation and still be succesfull in the market.
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