| zorg1000 said: Is the saturn in your timeline the one we know or theyre original design before sony showed ps specs? And will u post your sales figures? |
I'm not sure. The rumor that Sega changed the Saturn's design after learning about the PSone's specs are just that; a rumor. I haven't been able to find a real source for it, besides a quote on Wikipedia that even Wikipedia itself didn't trust. My feeling is that even the original Saturn was capable of 3D graphics beyond what was possible in generation 5, and even the enhanced Saturn of our timeline would have had a lot more 2D backgrounds and stuff incorporated into games that were fully 3D in our timeline.
As for sales fighures, here's the preliminary figures I have for my timeline.
| Sega Genesis | Super Nintendo | |
| Japan | 4 | 19 |
| America | 17 | 25 |
| Other | 10 | 10 |
| Total | 31 | 54 |
First, with the Saturn arriving a few months later and the PSOne never existing, I estime that about another 5 million 4th generation consoles would have been sold. Note how The Super Nintendo decisively wins in Japan, is somewhat ahead in America, and is on par with the Genesis in the rest of the world.
| Sega Saturn | Nintendo 64 |
| 14 | 10 |
| 18 | 27 |
| 10 | 12 |
| 42 | 49 |
The fifth generation is not a good one for Nintendo, much like in real life. Indeed, the Sega Saturn, despite its weaker 3D and/or more complicated design matter little compared to the expense and limits of cartridges compared to CDs. The only major 3rd parties that are strongly pro-Nintendo are Square and Enix, who even in our timeline initially designed their Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games for the N64. Therefore, on the back of Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot, DDR, niche JRPGs, Metal Gear Solid, and real-life Saturn games like Virtua Fighter and arcade ports, the Saturn sells somewhat better than the N64 in Japan.
In America, things remain largely unchanged from the 4th generation. Nintendo still has Mario, Zelda, and the RPGs that Westerners care about, and Sega has fighters, arcade games, and sports games. And what the Saturn lacks in Sonic it makes up for in 3rd party support. Thus, the market expands only slightly.
In Europe and various other parts of the world, the situation is similar to America, except smaller. Remember, console gaming only really grew in popularity there after the PSone. In real life, the N64 grew in proportion to the Saturn, so I'm giving it the grrowth that does occur in this timeline, but there's not much.
Thus, generation 5 sells about 90 million systems, compared to over 140 million in our timeline. The lack of a PlayStation generation with its low development costs and wider appeal hurts gaming a lot.
| Dreamcast | Nintendo GameCube |
| 14 | 11 |
| 21 | 28 |
| 12 | 10 |
| 47 | 49 |
Let's face it; neither Sega nor Nintendo did anything to expand gaming in the 6th generation either. Console Gaming is particularly hurt by a weird thing; disc size. The GameCube and Dreamcast discs held a maximum of under 1.5 GB of data, compared to the PS2's 4.7 GB DVDs. This greatly discourages porting PC games over and also disencourages experimenting with open world games. Also, because the Dreamcaast only has one analog stick, that just hurts games that require extensive camera controls even more.
As for individual regions, there is little change. None of the 1st party games of this era blew anybody away, and the neo-Dreamcast and GameCube are similar enough to encourage a lot of multiplatform titles. The Dreamcast had the advantage of online play, which helped it gain ground in America, but without a shooter culture on the consoles from a game like Halo, this matters little.
| Pluto | Revolution |
| 7 | 16 |
| 20 | 35 |
| 14 | 29 |
| 41 | 80 |
Finally, some real growth! Well, outside of Japan. Note that that this data is as of alternate 2011, so numbers may still increase.
First thing you'll notice in the chart is that Nintendo wins. This is because of strong first party efforts and the continued sharing of 3rd party support. Of particular note are games like Wii Fit, a New Super Mario Bros, and an online Mario Kart. The second thing you'll note is how most of the growth came from Nintendo outside of Japan and America. I believe that Nintendo would use their handhelds as a Trojan horse to build a prescence in these parts of the world, and would eventually be able to sell games in far more countries than Sega could. Nintendo's emphasis on games that require little localization effort during the 7th generation, as opposed to, say, Valkyria Chronicles and Sonic the Hedgehog, also helps.
Next post, I'll do some software sales figures.
Love and tolerate.
