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JWeinCom on 16 February 2021
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Mr Puggsly said:
curl-6 said:

In this timeline, the Sega CD and 32X don't happen, the Saturn is easy to develop for and priced on par with Playstation, and they don't alienate retailers with a surprise release.

What difference do you think this would have made to how things play out?

Many would argue Sega CD was actually a good add-on. It actually had notable titles and unique content you wouldn't find on SNES or Genesis. It would have been best if 32X didn't exist, but instead the few notable 32X games were made for Sega Genesis and/or Sega CD. Games like Kolibri, Knuckles Chaotix and Tempo could have been classics on the Genesis. While some other 32X content could have been good Sega CD ports, like Mortal Kombat 2, Wrestlemania the Arcade Game, Space Harrier, After Burner 2, perhaps even Doom. If you look through the Sega CD library you'd see it gave a nice boost in power so developers could have pushed more impressive content as well. Sega could have leaned into tech like the Super FX chip if they really wanted better 3D content on Genesis and Sega CD.

Last, its evident Sega CD content was cheaper to produce because CDs are cheaper than carts. So it got significantly more content than the 32X ever did.

I wish they pushed the Sega CDX and made it more affordable.

Like I said already, the 32X should not have existed. It had some okay content, but it wasn't worth the impact it had on the brand and some of that content would have bolstered Genesis and Sega CD. Maybe even Saturn.

Sony's impact on the industry was so significant that its hard to imagine Sega could have done anything to stop it. At best they could have boosted their sales with less mistakes.

The problem is that add ons just rarely work in gaming. By definition, they just cater to an already existing portion of the existing base. Even if your system is a major success and sells 100 million, you need to sell the add on to half of your base to get it to a decent market.

Meanwhile, you're narrowing your brand as a whole because big titles like Sonic CD are only accessible to a small base. Then you have market confusion, especially when you have the 32X as well. People don't necessarily want to buy a machine if they think they may have to keep upgrading it to play everything. They want to be set. 

I don't fault Sega, because it was a new industry. Sega had a lot of innovative ideas that would be refined successfully by others, but they were sometimes ahead of their time in the wrong way. If Sega had not done either add on, and refocused their efforts into making sure the Saturn had great content they'd have been better off. 

Add-ons just generally aren't a strong idea, unless you're fine with them being a niche product and they're not going to take up too many resources. The Wii-mote could have easily been an add on to the Gamecube (I think it was conceived as such) but Nintendo realized from previous products that it was best to sell it as a complete product.