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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Alternate History: Sega doesn't drop the ball in the 4th to 5th gen transition

Mr Puggsly said:
JWeinCom said:

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. 

I think the goal of add-ons was trying to keep users engaged with unique or better experiences. Maybe even to deter them from other platforms. Sega CD wasn't much of a success, but I do believe it had a solid library with numerous titles that were later ported to other platforms. That was certainly the goal of the 32X, but it seems like horribly designed hardware overall.

Ideas I consider bad from Nintendo were the DSi and New 3DS. The DSi was needed for access to digital games. While the New 3DS was a half assed upgrade that gave access to an underwhelming library. They also locked SNES emulation to New 3DS to drive sales.

Its also worth noting Nintendo played with add-ons for NES. They worked on a CD add-on for SNES. The N64 did get the 64DD in Japan as well. When I look at Sega CD, I consider we got some solid games that Genesis couldn't really duplicate or do so as well.

I get what the goal was, but like I said, Sega was a bit ahead of their time. The concept just wasn't ready.

With the DSi and New 3DS, they worked fine because they were replacements for portable hardware, and they had other features that made it more appealing. People are going to replace portables anyway as they get banged up. So they worked as hardware revisions. The exclusive games for them didn't really sell very well.

I'm not arguing that the CD wasn't decent hardware, but it just wasn't a good idea from a marketing point of view.



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Let's not forget Turbo CD/PC Engine CD is the first CD add-on for a console and as much as I love SEGA. Turbo CD had a better library than SEGA CD. In fact, TCD had a stellar library of RPGs/Shmups esp.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

shikamaru317 said:
Leynos said:

Let's not forget Turbo CD/PC Engine CD is the first CD add-on for a console and as much as I love SEGA. Turbo CD had a better library than SEGA CD. In fact, TCD had a stellar library of RPGs/Shmups esp.

I personally thought Sega CD had a pretty good lineup. Sonic CD was great, I like it more than Sonic 1 and 2. Got some nice adventure games like Jurassic Park, Willy Beamish, and Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. SoulStar and Sewer Shark were both great rail shooters. Games that released on both Genesis and CD had much better soundtracks on CD, games like Ecco: The Tides of Time, Terminator, Samurai Showdown, and NBA Jam (all great games with even better soundtracks on CD). Got a few nice RPG's, Shining Force CD, Shin Megami Tensei, and Shadowrun, though sadly most of them didn't make it west, only Shining Force CD did. 

Lunar, Lunar 2, and Popful Mail were the cream of the Sega CD crop IMO. I'd call the first two games my favorite 16-bit Sega games.



ice said:

PS1 still wins

In a altered timeline, 3rd party companies would probably port most of the games to Sega which is primary what Sony relied on with their first console. Sega would have had the 1st party edge and if they released the Saturn at a similar price to the PS1 and convinced majority of PS1's 3rd party catalog with games like MGS, FF7 and Silent Hill etc, adding on top of Sega's own library, their wouldn't be much the PS1 would have over the Saturn outside hardware limits.



Leynos said:

Let's not forget Turbo CD/PC Engine CD is the first CD add-on for a console and as much as I love SEGA. Turbo CD had a better library than SEGA CD. In fact, TCD had a stellar library of RPGs/Shmups esp.

I don't think that's really relevant to this discussion, but in response its worth noting much of that library was Japan only.

For us western folk the Sega CD had the objectively better library and easier to find obviously. The Sega CD also had more technically impressive titles, while PC-Engine CD games looked much the same as the PC-Engine. Their libraries had different strengths, but I feel what Sega CD did was more unique in the 16 bit era.



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JWeinCom said:
Mr Puggsly said:

I think the goal of add-ons was trying to keep users engaged with unique or better experiences. Maybe even to deter them from other platforms. Sega CD wasn't much of a success, but I do believe it had a solid library with numerous titles that were later ported to other platforms. That was certainly the goal of the 32X, but it seems like horribly designed hardware overall.

Ideas I consider bad from Nintendo were the DSi and New 3DS. The DSi was needed for access to digital games. While the New 3DS was a half assed upgrade that gave access to an underwhelming library. They also locked SNES emulation to New 3DS to drive sales.

Its also worth noting Nintendo played with add-ons for NES. They worked on a CD add-on for SNES. The N64 did get the 64DD in Japan as well. When I look at Sega CD, I consider we got some solid games that Genesis couldn't really duplicate or do so as well.

I get what the goal was, but like I said, Sega was a bit ahead of their time. The concept just wasn't ready.

With the DSi and New 3DS, they worked fine because they were replacements for portable hardware, and they had other features that made it more appealing. People are going to replace portables anyway as they get banged up. So they worked as hardware revisions. The exclusive games for them didn't really sell very well.

I'm not arguing that the CD wasn't decent hardware, but it just wasn't a good idea from a marketing point of view.

I don't think it was just a matter of being ahead of its time, I think there were genuine problems with the execution. Price was high, maybe the CDX should have been considered at launch for people who want everything in a small unit. And of course continued support would have been better than ever making the 32X.

I think CD add-ons that give experiences the old cart based hardware couldn't do is actually a good idea. It wasn't ahead of its time because it was a good time for it. Genesis was basically limited to sprites and the little storage of a cart. Sega CD improved the graphics, added more 3D features, basically eliminated storage issues for bigger games, it allowed for more ambitious games in general. If you observe its library you see it did all of that. But was the execution great? Arguably not. Yet its still something people are actually fond of.

I believe Nintendo used the exclusive software of DSi and New 3DS to actually encourage people to upgrade. It wasn't just a revision. Many people opted for 2DS because it was cheaper and the exclusive content of New 3DS was underwhelming.



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