shikamaru317 said:
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disolitude said:
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.
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I agree with you, sorry, I misspoke before, meant to say they should have released the Saturn later, not the Dreamcast earlier. If they had taken their time with the Saturn's design instead of rushing to beat PS1 to the market, they would have been in alot better position. They could have went with a more powerful single chipset configuration instead of the expensive, difficult to develop for dual chipset configuration. They could have had games ready for release from some of their most popular Genesis series (Sonic, Streets of Rage, Ecco, Phantasy Star, etc.), as well as the some of the new IP's that ended up being popular on Saturn (Virtua Fighter, Sakura Taisen, and Panzer Dragoon).
I think their mistake was trying to counter Sony head on, brute force to brute force, that was never going to work, Sony was just too powerful, their name was too well know worldwide, the name "Sony" alone was enough to attract new gamers that had never played games the previous generations. Instead they should have waited and took their time developing Saturn, then released the Saturn around the same time as the N64, battle with Nintendo for 2nd place, because Nintendo was an opponent they knew how to fight, as the Genesis had proven.
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This actually comes back down to the arcade sector. SEGA didn't want a hi spec'd 3D console because they wanted to keep higher quality textured 3D graphics the wow factor for their arcade cabinets. The original plan was for the Saturn to be an absolute 2D powerhouse.
Sony showed off their PlayStation tech demo of a T-Rex head (no body etc.) and everybody lol'd none harder than SEGA, who felt safe with their 2D powerhouse strategy for the Saturn. Then suddenly Sony showed their finished PlayStation Prototype with the completed T-Rex (this was on the original demo discs included with launch systems).
SEGA's entire primarily 2D strategy was completely nuked out of the water and they cobbled the 3D hardware into the Saturn as a last minute fumble (this is actually the reason the system was so difficult to code, it wasn't originally going to have the 3D hardware capabilities and so the system wasn't built from the ground up for it).
Couple in all the other crap they pulled, and also the in fighting between Sega America (who were the successful home console division) and how pig headed a lot of the higher ups in Sega Japan were (Yuki Naka threatening to quit if they let an American developer use his game engine for Sonic Xtreme) and they really set themselves up for a huge failure.
But yeah, Sony completely took them by surprise with just how powerful the PS1 was, especially after how lacklustre other CD based 32 bit consoles had been (CDi, CD32, Atari Jaguar and even to a slightly lesser extent, the 3DO) They expected Sony to pull out a similar system to those. So when it was actually looking a whole generation ahead, they shat themselves.
