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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What if.... Sega never made that awful mistake with the Sega Saturn?

archer9234 on 11 October 2014
kupomogli said:
archer9234 said:
Nickelbackro said:
The sega CD while not the best seller wasn't a brand doomer. The CD has its place in history, however the decline began with the 32X and Nomad as both weren't heavily supported.

The CD helped in screwing everything up. Instead of designing the Saturn when the Genesis was dying. They go and Make the CD add-on. Wasting time to get things out. Plus, it was always hated because it required AC adapters, AV wires, etc. Might as well been the Saturn from the start.

 

I like the Sega CD only because there are some good games on it, but I do agree it was the very beginning of Sega's demise.  They then released the 32X which did even worse than the Sega CD, which anyone could have told you that was  going to happen.  Their poor development and bad start of the Saturn, and then their big Dreamcast mistake.  As great as the console was, it's kind of hard to sell games when people can just burn them and play them right off  the console.  If Sega did stuff a little different, the current gen might have Nintendo making games for Sega instead of the other way around.  Or might not have got Sony or Microsoft to join the market.

I agree on that. It did have some good games. I have them too. But when I got the CD for the first time. I though why isn't this a new system. All those wires made my room a mess lol.



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DerNebel on 11 October 2014

What if... Sega wasn't an utterly trashy videogame company?

Jesus I hate Sega.



archer9234 on 11 October 2014
shikamaru317 said:
Sega made alot of mistakes during that time period:

2. Releasing the Saturn too early in the West with very few games

Sega caused that themselves. Saturn was released in Japan nearly at the same time as the 32X came out in the US. People found out and were skipping it. So they were losing money. So they probably pushed the Saturn out with no games. Just to deal with that loss. Than screwing the Saturn in the process. This was their problem. Not having any focus on hardware, and were to go. They made so much hardware alternatives (CDX right after the Genesis 3, Nomad, the unreleased Neptune), that really didn't need to be made. They kept droping support. Or not even advertising them.



daredevil.shark on 11 October 2014
shikamaru317 said:



But to be fair to Sega, they were faced with a difficult task, the biggest Electronics company in Japan had just decided to make a game console and Sega knew that Sony would need to get through them before they could reach the top spot.


They panicked.



disolitude on 11 October 2014

Gamers like to sensationalize thurn early launch had very little to do with Sega's failure overall.

Sega made mistakes but ultimately failed because they had financial issues, plain and simple. They couldn't burn monel like Sony to float consoles below cost, especially once their arcade division started tanking towards the end of arcade era. People don't realize that Sony lost more money in 2000 floating the PS2 at 299, than Sega did that year...


Otherwise mistakes they made which could have made them fight the good fight for longer:

1. Make Saturn easier to program for - aka. tell Nvidia to fuck off with their quad polygons and design Saturn to run triangles, and get more software support
2. Have better engineers to design a powerful but cost effective console instead of the Saturn
3. Not even bother with 32X and give the software support it got to Sega CD and Genesis
4. Support Sega Cd and Genesis beyond 1996...free money
5. Foresee the death of Arcades and invest in online sooner
6. Dreamcast piracy fiasco
etc



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MikeRox on 11 October 2014
WhiteEaglePL said:
Nintendo would not be layed back as they are now, PS would continue like today but less superior, Xbox probably would be a lesser brand, or on par with Sega's.


I think MS would probably have done a joint venture with SEGA rather than what we saw happen.

The big missing piece of the puzzle though, is how rapidly the arcade sector (which was far more important to SEGA) collapsed. That caused their cashflow crisis meaning they couldn't sustain the Dreamcast. As you can see from current sales of the Wii U/XB1/Vita etc. (and PS4 in Japan). Dreamcast's actual retail performance wasn't the killer a lot of people remember it being.



RIP Dad 25/11/51 - 13/12/13. You will be missed but never forgotten.

daredevil.shark on 11 October 2014
shikamaru317 said:

In a nutshell, exactly this. Nintendo was alot cooler under pressure, instead of rushing to make a console to counter Sony they decided to wait and let the SNES have a few more years of popularity. Then they released the N64 after hardware prices had gone down enough that they could release a more powerful console than PS1 for a good price. They still lost to PS1 in sales by a considerable amount, but they sold enough N64's to stay in business.

If Sega had adopted a similar strategy, releasing games for Genesis, Sega CD, and Sega 32X for a few years, then releasing the Dreamcast a year early in 98, they would very likely still be around today.

Agreed.


Sony's entry in console gaming was inevitable. It began since ken kutaragi started making audio chips for nintendo secretly. During SNES era sony was publishing games for SNES. Plus nintendos decision (usage of cartiages) was also to blame. Whatever I have seen from console gaming is two things. Be patient and make games. No more TV stuff (Its happening since 1985). But people forget these. Console makers are replaying same mistakes over and over again.



disolitude on 11 October 2014
shikamaru317 said:

 

In a nutshell, exactly this. Nintendo was alot cooler under pressure, instead of rushing to make a console to counter Sony they decided to wait and let the SNES have a few more years of popularity. Then they released the N64 after hardware prices had gone down enough that they could release a more powerful console than PS1 for a good price. They still lost to PS1 in sales by a considerable amount, but they sold enough N64's to stay in business.

If Sega had adopted a similar strategy, releasing games for Genesis, Sega CD, and Sega 32X for a few years, then releasing the Dreamcast a year early in 98, they would very likely still be around today.


Saturn was the right strategy and 32X should never have been created.

People don't realize that in 1993-1994 Sega had plans to release an upgraded Genesis (colors, sprites on screen, SVP chip integration) that played and enhanced all existing Genesis games. This was scrapped by a dude called Joe Miller who just before 1994 E3 pitched the idea of the 32X instead. What a big mistake listening to that guy...

PS1 would have won gen 5 no mater what. They had Final Fantasy which won them Japan and would have won them the west as well. But without 32X and with tweaks to the Saturn, Sega could have hung in there and sold 20-30 million Saturns, delaying the Dreamcast and making it a fair fight come PS2, Gamecube, Xbox were coming out.

Sega always had the software, they just needed a console that sold well.



Deeds on 11 October 2014

People seem to forget that....

(1) The Dreamast had a successful launch, especially in the US.

(2) What really killed the Dreamcast was Sega themselves (not piracy, not Sony) because they were delusional to think they would be successful as a third party dev. so the pulled the plug on the Dreamcast.

(3) Sega was working on releasing the Dreamcast 2, but the leadership thought, "We would be more successful as a third part dev, so let us drop hardware". This belief was the final nail in the coffin for Sega.

Sega was run by morons that made bad decisions time after time and the fact that they had fans means anyone can have fans. Good riddance to them.



Norris2k on 11 October 2014
shikamaru317 said:

Sega made alot of mistakes during that time period:

1. Designing the Saturn with 2 CPU's/GPU's which made it difficult to develop for
2. Releasing the Saturn too early in the West with very few games
3. Not releasing games from many of their most popular series on Saturn (no Sonic 4, Streets of Rage 4, Ecco the Dolphin, no Phantasy Star, etc.). Those games would have helped boost the Saturn's sales.

But to be fair to Sega, they were faced with a difficult task, the biggest Electronics company in Japan had just decided to make a game console and Sega knew that Sony would need to get through them before they could reach the top spot. Sadly alot of the things they did to try and counter Sony had the opposite effect, the more powerful 2 CPU/GPU console also made the console more difficult to develop for, which chased some devs away. The early release blew up in their faces because they didn't have enough games available.

If Sega hadn't made those mistakes we could be looking at very different gaming market nowadays. Sega would likely still be making consoles, I do feel confident in saying that. The Saturn's failure lead to the Dreamcast's failure even though they did everything right with the Dreamcast, they had just lost too many Sega fans to Sony and Nintendo the previous generation because of the Saturn. If Saturn had been more successful then Dreamcast would have been more successful.

Even without such mistakes I don't really know if they would have suceeded. I really like Sega a lot, but they have never generated as much cash as Nintendo, as you said they were not as big as Sony (and then MS), and their very strong point were the arcade games and their console adaptation. Their other strong point was building excellent hardware, custom chips in partnership with japanese electronic makers, and that advantage would have disappeared facing modern architecture that tend to be standard (the very last try of a custom chip was the PS3 cpu, with heavy investisments, and it failed). Even without mistakes, facing MS, Sony and Nintendo would have been very tough for Sega.