torok said:
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.
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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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Yeah, Sega made mistakes. Sega fans got burned. I never really felt that way, but it's true that fans took a hit. But the Dreamcast broke sales records when it launched. That means Sega fans returned. The Dreamcast looked like it was going to do great. Until the dark shadow of PS2 hype smoothered Sega. Playstation fans, the largest fan base at the time, had no intention of ever trying a game on anything other than a Sony system. That had nothing to do with Sega's past mistakes and everything to do with the Playstation brand being "cool" in popular culture. Sega did everything right with the Dreamcast. It was a critical darling. The games were amazing. But Sony said the PS2 would be better than sex and people believed the hype. The PS2 took over the entire market before it earned it. The PS2 went on to have a truely great library of games, but those aren't the games that convinced people to avoid the Dreamcast. During the first year of PS2 the Dreamcast had the better games. People ignored all the great Dreamcast games and let it die while they waited for PS2 to muster up the games we now look back as classics.
The Sega Saturn has some of my all time favorite games, but Sega made a lot of mistakes with it. I liked the Sega CD thanks to Working Designs and a few shooters, but the FMV fad gave it a bad name. The 32X sold so poorly it couldn't have left a bad taste in the majority of gamer mouths. The Dreamcast may have been the best Sega console since the Genesis, but it was also ahead of it's time, worth every penny, and is still fun to play today.
Yes it's true that Sega could have survived the PS2 assault if company hadn't lost so much money with the Sega CD, 32X and Saturn. But it's also true that if gamers, real gamers, had choosen fun instead of waiting Sega could still be producing hardware today. If I see a game I want to play I buy the machine it's on. Even if I have to skimp and save to get it. It wasn't Sega's past that frightened off buyers, it was Sony's false hype that swayed them away. Like I said, I don't hate Sony and it's all just business. But Sony tripped Sega during the last mile of a marthon and Sega never finished the race. Damn I want a Dreamcast 2 with Rez 2, Shenmue 3, and Panzer Dragoon Saga 2.
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