/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10371291
They're dead and it's better for everyone. Stop poking the corpse

>>10371293
It's just interesting, what would have happened if the Saturn went 64 bit?

How the fuck were you supposed to put the cds in?

Should Sega have gone for the MegaDVD?

>>10371291
The Dreamcast was the best thing they could've done, nothing short of the launch PS2s exploding on day one would've stopped Sony.
Sony was a multimedia powerhouse willing to lose hundreds on systems for game retention rate and establishing DVDs.

>>10371291
Fuck no.

>>10371507
The Dreamcast would probably have rode out 6th gen entirely if Sega hadn't gone broke, it was well liked and did pretty ok until they couldn't afford to support it anymore, then it went into a freefall.
The 32X, the Saturn, and Sega's desperate clinging to the shrinking arcade market pretty much destroyed the Dreamcast's prospects in spite of the fact that the Dreamcast was genuinely a good console.

>>10371540
Also we were all downloading and burning Dreamcast games.

>>10371440
It a fake mockup made from a 32X shell. A real one would extend from the back like the TG16 if they ever made it

Shut up.

>>10371585
What a stupid idea. What a stupid thread. Suck my fucking dick, OP.

Sega could have personally sent E3 booth babes to jack each and every customer off and Sony would still have busted that ass

>>10371440
The same way you would on a CDX... Contrary to popular belief it actually does not block the disc tray at all

This was still a silly jab to make though especially considering how the Neptune could've turned out if they had continued support for it

>>10371291
WE ALREADY HAD THIS THREAD!

>>10371291
so instead of being behind in the late 90s, you wanted them to be REALLY behind?

>>10371291
They should have made the Saturn into a miniature consumer grade Sega Model 2 the same way the Genesis was more or less a consumer grade System 16. That would have future proofed it and made it visually competitive through at least 2000.

>>10371805
The Saturn was already based on model 1, making a cheap model 2 wouldn't have been viable at the time.

>>10371291
No the Saturn didn’t need any peripherals
It needed more support

>>10371753
Sega honestly needed to stick with just one new console design instead of wasting a lot of time and money pulling themselves apart from global infighting. I will however be forever grateful for the Sega CD, because having Genesis games with good actual music proves how much of a difference that can make.

>>10371556
>Also we were all downloading and burning Dreamcast games.
Dead meme
>>/vr/thread/9765251#p9770078

>>10371902
Indeed. SEGA CD is my favorite SEGA system, sadly I never had one growing up

>>10371902
They should have shrunk the Genesis down into a handheld to compete with the GBA.

>>10371507
>The Dreamcast was the best thing they could've done
I got a Dreamcast bundle with 4 packed in games plus 5 more games on sale and 3 OEM controllers, VMUs and rumble packs for $150 the first week of the PS2 launch at La Curacao. I regret selling it a year later when I could finally afford a PS2.

>>10371828
The Saturn wasn't really anything like the Model 1.

>>10371291
No, it would be even more retarded and pointless than the 32x. The 64x would basically do all the work leaving the Saturn to do nothing, just make a stand alone console.

>>10371323
Saturn 64 would have crushed PSX and N64 combined in sales and games.

>>10372170
PSX was only released in tiny numbers and only in Japan anyway.

>>10371291
This thread has to be a satire of Sega fans.

>>10371540
>The 32X
Yes

>the Saturn
Did bad outside of Japan

>and Sega's desperate clinging to the shrinking arcade market pretty much destroyed the Dreamcast's prospects in spite of the fact that the Dreamcast was genuinely a good console.

Retard take. This is where you dropped the ball.

The arcade market pretty much was the only reason Sega was still in business. It funded the development and creation of Genesis, 32x, and Saturn. It was huge. The arcade market did shrink in the late 90s, but it was still profitable.

All those Dave & Busters, Aladdin Castles, Time Zones, Chuck E Cheeses, Round 1, Theme Park arcades, Amusement park arcades, Movie Theater arcades, etc...need SOME company to keep making arcade games for them. Who do you think makes all those games?

Sega did the dumbest thing ever. They pulled out of the arcade market in North America because they thought the arcade market was going to permanently crash and burn. But it didn't.

All those companies I just mentioned? They said "Wtf Sega? We still need games for our businesses. Who is gonna supply us arcade machines now?"

Then an American arcade company called RAW THRILLS saw an opportunity, and jumped right into the spot that Sega's arcade division had abandoned. They started selling arcade machines to businesses and are now the #1 supplier of arcade machines in all of North America. And you know what the best part was? They didn't even need to fight for it. Sega just gave it to them when they shut down their American Arcade factories and most of their arcade offices.

The funny part is that several years later Sega realized their mistake. The arcade market was still viable in America. Then they reopened all their offices and tried to sell their arcade machines again. But it was too late. RAW Thrills was #1 and had taken almost all the business. Sega's reputation was pretty bad and businesses didn't fully trust them. Sega stills sell arcades in the USA, but are a shadow of their former glory.

The Saturn would have lasted till the late 90's if it had real transparencies, the meshes were embarrassing and if it used triangles instead of quads. It would have been on par with the PS1 HW wise. Anything else would have been a failure, no expansion gimmick worked previously.

>>10372547
>Who do you think makes all those games?
Bamco

>>10372563
> If the Saturn was a completely different machine
The whole design of the gpu was fundamentally wrong, it was not a case of just quads vs triangles.

>>10372547
Was this why Sega world shut down too here in Australia?

>>10372059
We had that in 1995 and it was trash. Early 2000s technological advances might have saved it but by then Sega wasn't thinking about hardware.

>>10372725
Yes. Sega (and many other Japanese arcade manufacturers) believed that the arcade industry was dying worldwide. So they ran back to Japan to hide and lick their wounds. They shut down many of their overseas offices and arcade factories. Then focused on Japan as their main arcade business. I think some of them regret their decision to do this since other arcade companies just moved in and took over.

Sega as a company was actually doing pretty bad. They were in near bankruptcy because of the failure of the 32x, Saturn, and the cancelled Dreamcast. Sega actually didn't even have the money to manufacture the Dreamcast. They burned up their money reserves with making and selling the Saturn. Sega actually borrowed money from banks, and went into deep debt to make the Dreamcast. Truthfully, Sega should have stopped after the Saturn. But they wanted to try one last roll of the dice.

In today's market, if you want to order an arcade game from Sega, Namco, Capcom, etc....it has to be shipped from Japan. This increases the cost. It's part of the reason why Japanese manufacturers have struggled to gain a foothold in the market like they used to. Ordering an arcade cabinet from them costs twice as much as it used to. Standard Cabinets cost around 5K to 6K back in the 90s. But today if you want something like a modern Street Fighter or Tekken cabinet, you are looking at around $16K to $18K. Japanese manufacturers jacked up their prices so high.

If you are an independent arcade owner, that's crazy. It's why you hardly see joystick cabinets anymore in arcades. It's way too expensive. For $18K, you could buy a Deluxe cabinet from Raw Thrills in America.

Another issue is support and warranty. If something breaks, you have to ship it back to Japan for repairs. But with Raw Thrills they have local factories to deal with it. The repair and shipping time is much sooner. Sega (and other Japanese companies) USED to have factories like that everywhere. Not anymore.

>>10371323
nothing

Saturn is garbage

>>10372787
It outsold N64.

>>10372547
>they thought the arcade market was going to permanently crash and burn. But it didn't.
>>10372738
>many Japanese arcade manufacturers believed that the arcade industry was dying worldwide
I mean, it is what it is. The juice isn't worth the squeeze of opening repair centers on the other side of the globe.

>>10371291
>make jump to cd games
>fuck it let's add a cartridge port and charge $250 for it
I could see them actually doing thay

>>10371469
Underrated post

>>10372787
>Reeee the Saturn killed my SEGA
Lmao, grow up

>>10371323
nintendo 64 was "64 bit" and the quality of games was terrible. would have been no better than an n64, probably similar or better hardware and video capabilities.

>>10372840
> no graph showing the profits made from gambling machines such as those made by sega/sammy, konami, etc.etc that they make every single year
> which would dwarf console profits easily
it's graphs like this that are complete fucking horseshit.

>>10371556
Greatly exaggerated meme, piracy was EZ on the Playstation as well, but Sony wasn't running that thing at a loss, they raked in profits in spite of (probably even because of) piracy.

Gaben once said that piracy is primarily a service problem, and I think he's dead on about that. If the game isn't easily available because of something like a lack of distribution, then people are gonna try to get it some other way.
Looking at a country like Brazil, the main reason vidya piracy is rampant there is because foreign vidya gets taxed out the ass, so then it becomes a government enforced distribution problem, prompting people to help themselves.

If Sega could have kept steam for the Dreamcast, distribution would have kept up (improved, even), and they could have kept contracting for more games, probably good ports and good originals. Hell, maybe they'd eventually revision the machine to run quieter as production continued. Everything about the Dreamcast was either great or 'good enough,' but prior bad business finally caught up with Sega.

>>10371839
Correct. Bad market support, bad developer support, bad production support (32X cannibalizing assets needed for Saturn production).

The Saturn wasn't that bad in itself, but it was handled so fucking badly in the west.

>>10372840
This is a cool graph, but as you have to remind people very often, America is not the World. Sure it was the largest market, but from a historic perspective graphs that only take the American market into consideration provide flawed, incomplete analysis opportunities.

Saturn needed Sonic, Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star and a GOOD Shinobi game. Mario 64 and Final Fantasy VII both sold their respective consoles to me, but there was nothing that stood out about the Saturn

>>10373187
This is a sensible analysis. Taxation is a central problem, well pointed out. I'd exercise some caution when considering piracy to be just about services: In some territories, games are just out of the reach of the end users for purely economic reasons. You might then say, "well if you're dirt poor, that's on you, no games for you", but the thing is most of these users would have been willing to buy your games if the price was right for them. Which opens another can of worms, which is how to manage pricing in multiple territories without affecting sales: Meaning that users in your main market could feel scammed if they catch wind that third world country users are getting the same games for a fraction of the price. What are you going to tell your American users if they find out Latin Americans or Europeans can get the same games for less money?

Then you could find yourself facing the basic, most obvious truth about piracy: It's about price, not services. Services push the perception of value forwards, so that users will re-evaluate price in your favor. But it obviously is about price.

>>10371323
This looks like a joke image
Also "what if threads" should be a bannable offense.

>>10373187
>The Saturn wasn't that bad in itself, but it was handled so fucking badly in the west.
The Saturn wasn't really ready for primetime. The system wasn't "terrible", but it's definitely not the best Sega could have done. Saturn needed to go back to drawing board, and workshopped some more by Sega engineers. The whole issue was that Sega was so concerned about releasing the Saturn before Sony Playstation, and constantly comparing themselves to Sony. That kind of design philosophy is not good and will lead to your downfall. Sega just needed to focus on making a good system and stop worrying about Sony and rushing the release of the Saturn. Nintendo had a much better approach.

The Saturn hardware had a funky design that was changed last minute. Dual CPUs were not ideal, and caused extra headaches for developers. Sega themselves seemed to be the only developer to really know how to advantage of the different hardware design, and have the resources to do. Again, I'm not saying Saturn was bad, but it was not an industry standard design.

Saturn needed to be more like Dreamcast. Affordable, hardware that follows industry normals, and most importantly....a great game library with Sonic leading them.

Sega should have teamed up with nintendo during 5th gen to destroy the snoyboy gaystation. Sonic extreme on the n64 would have been kino.

>>10373356
I wonder about Sega's relationship with Hitachi. I wonder if Hitachi was the best choice to make hardware for Sega? It seems like Hitachi desperately begged and bribed Sega to be their hardware supplier for the Saturn. There had to be some behind the scenes kickbacks Hitachi gave to Sega execs.

>>10373398
I thoigh the hitachi CPUs are quite decent though? And sega got a good deal out of them.
Was more like missing some decidated 3d sillicon to help out, which they decided to use a 2nd cpu instead.

>>10372547
>Did bad outside of Japan
This is a meme. It did bad in Japan too. They managed to outsell Nintendo for like 1 month in 1996 when they were still ramping up N64 production and that was the entire source of "Saturn is successful!!". They also sold better than the Megadrive but that means nothing because the Megadrive sold almost as bad as the Xbox in japan.

>>10371291
>Should Sega have gone for the Saturn 64x instead of Dreamcast?

Yea, because then they would've been dead by 1998.

>>10373323
You don’t understand. Seggers have to constantly live in an imaginary world where Sega won otherwise they’ll kill themselves

>>10373580
A universe like that wouldn't have a 32X, a 64X, or anything like that.

>>10373260
The subject is Japanese arcade cabinet manufacturers closing their American arcade operation and operating from Japan, the graph is relevant enough.

>>10373356
the 2 CPUs aren't even close to the biggest problem with the system.

>>10373684
It's a big problem since programmers disliked making games for for Dual CPUs. It's already at a disadvantage right out the gate. Even today, dual CPUs and dual GPUs never took off because of those same old issues. More work to make your game run on dual CPUs/GPUs and an easier option is available.

>>10373972
Programmers not liking something isn't the be all end all. The PS3 was a shitshow to work on too, apparently. The Saturn wasn't a terrible machine. Unusual and a technological dead end, sure, but in 1994 it wasn't "bad." It wasn't anything internal to the machine that screwed it. It was a combination of Sega's own fuck ups and the realities of the changing market they couldn't adapt to.

>>10371323
>it's real
lol

>>10374616
It's not.

>>10373993
>Programmers not liking something isn't the be all end all. The PS3 was a shitshow to work on too

That only works when your brand is powerful enough and your company has huge financial resources to simply "brute force" your console past any inconveniences.

Developers will say, "It doesn't matter if it's difficult to program for. This console is huge and popular. We have to release our game on the console no matter what."

Sega didn't have either of those anymore by the Saturn era. It lost all that when Sony played themselves as the "hip" new underdog console (similar to what Sega Genesis did to Nintendo). Sony did lose a ton of money pushing the Playstation. But they are a huge hardware corporation that can afford it to throw money away.

>>10371291
What if OP wasn't a massive faggot that posted "what if Sega ..." threads on a Peruvian octopus breeding forum EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY

I think it would have acted PC-arcade card de PC-engine had, you just had the get the cartridge and the games would still come out on CD, might not have been a total failure.

YEAHGAIS JUAT CRAM 2 MORE 32BIT SH2S INTO OUR HARDWARE

THAT WILL MAKE IT GOODER

>>10374656
>is

>>10371291
64X > dreamcast. Simple as.

>>10372059
They did that, in fact it was the same year as the Saturn, before the GBC

>>10375228
It's gooder than 1 SH2

>>10371556
Where did you get all your GD-ROMs to burn pirated ISOs onto from in 1999~2003?

>>10372840
>I mean, it is what it is. The juice isn't worth the squeeze of opening repair centers on the other side of the globe.
Sega and Bamco don't believe that. Otherwise they wouldn't have reopened their offices in America and Europe and try to sell arcade games again. Even though they were 10 years too late and Raw Thrills dominates the arcade market.

>>10377025
Offices only need 2 accountants and 3 computers to work. Repair centers are money sinks with all the parts and shits that need to be stocked and managed. Like they'll sell you machines shipped from Japan, sure, free money. But repair centers are huge investment relatively.

>>10375391
street vendors (yes, this was a thing), usenet, then by 2003 we had torrent sites and I had a cd burner to make my own shit.

>>10377037
What I mean is that there is still profit to be made in the market and Japanese companies regret closing almost all their overseas offices for 10 years. If they hadn't done so, they might still be in control of the international market. Now they are trying to play ketchup

>>10375391
>i was born in 2003
It shows

>>10371291
They should have just made the Saturn backwards compatible Genesis games, and made sequels to their hir franchises. Like an actual Sonic game. I don't care if the Sonic dev team wanted to make other games. They are literally paid to do their jobs. Make a damn Sonic first. Then do other stuff after. What was Sega smoking by allowing that? No one cares about that damn Nights into Dreams clown. It's not mascot material.

Sega should release the 256x for the master system to get back into consoles.

>>10371291
Silicon Graphics approached Sega first and they told them to go to Nintendo.
Sega USA was too attached to the Genesis and 3d was an afterthought on the Saturn (which is why it just uses another CPU for 3d).
A Saturn based on SGI hardware using discs might have prevented Sega’s failure in the console space, but we’ll never know

>>10371291
What the? Since when? I feel like I am experiencing Mandela Effect here I never heard of this.

This would have been trash honestly Sega needed to distance themselves from Saturn which was a failure. What we should really be saying is how they should have handled the launch of Saturn much better.

>>10371323
It would've tanked hard. There'd be like ten games total for the thing three of which would be hailed by nerds on this board as vastly better than whatever its genre contemporaries were even though it's crazy.

>>10378737
A 2.5D Sonic would have been great on the Shaturn.

>>10378737
Sonic developers were fucking sick of sonic. They were ready to hand in the notice if they had to make another sonic game.

>>10371291
>>10371323
32Xbros.....

>>10379602
The mandela effect isn't when you use terms you don't know the meaning of

>>10379772
True, the mandela effect is when you're wrong and people correct you, you double down on being wrong and insist that you were transported to another world.

>>10379664
>Sonic developers were fucking sick of sonic. They were ready to hand in the notice if they had to make another sonic game.

Boo hoo. Cry me river. That's their job. They are paid handsomely to make Sonic games. If they don't like it, then resign.

You think Yu Suzuki complained about having to make more "arcade only" games because Sega told him to? Do you think he whined and said he wanted to make console games instead? Hell no. He kept cranking out arcade only hits. Hang on, Space Harrier, Super Hang on, Outrun, After Burner, Space Harrier, After Burner 2, Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, SCUD Race, Ferrari F355 challenge, etc. He never complained. And Yu Suzuki was rewarded for it by being allowed to make the most expensive console game in Sega's history (at that time).

Sonic team is a joke.

>>10378737
The Saturn was already a disaster without having an entire genesis grafted on. Backwards compatibility would have burned silicon budget making the Saturn even more useless at 3d.

>>10379368
Even though the Saturn was a disaster, its still tiers above the cataract simulator.

>>10381518
Lol even you really believe that. The PS1 left Saturn for dead and it was pretty ugly next to n64 on glorious crt

>>10381518
Lol you don't really believe that. The PS1 left Saturn for dead and it was pretty ugly next to n64 on glorious crt

>>10381562
The Saturn actually had textures, the n64 just had Vaseline smears.

>>10381575
Pathetic bait for a pathetic console. Enjoy those textures anon.

>>10381513
>The Saturn was already a disaster without having an entire genesis grafted on. Backwards compatibility would have burned silicon budget making the Saturn even more useless at 3d.
It already had that cartridge slot in the back that most people at first glance confused it for a Genesis port. Might as well actually make it a Genesis port.

>>10381643
What did the zoomie mean by this?

>>10381772
Shut your faggot zoomer ass up, you aren’t fooling anyone, little boy.

>"Hey Takahashi, remember know how our Megadrive was very well received and sold great internationally?"

>"Yeah"

>"But that our Saturn is selling terrible outside of Japan?"

>Yeah..."

>"And how when we tried to make a 32X expansion accessory for the Megadrive that used carts when we had already created a cd expansion for it and people knew our next console was coming that accessory was one of the worst selling and biggest blunders we ever made?"

>"... yeah?"

>"How about we made a 64X cartridge based expansion accessory for the Saturn even though the Dreamcast is due in less than two years from now?"

>"... you're fired"

>"I'm YOUR boss!"

is this a stealth bernie stolar thread

>>10373398
I think Hitachi provided the chips for their arcade boards. So I think it was just laziness and prejudice. I forget where I read this, but I think Sony outsourced their chip design to an American company that made essentially cut-down clone SGI chips.

>>10378737
Yeah considering the Saturn already has a 68000 variant processor on it, they should've attempted to make it back-compat with the genesis and even maybe the Sega CD. Why was the Saturn such a design mess when they already had cd-based console with the Sega CD? Just use an updated 32-bit 68000 series chip with more mhz, the same Sega CD sound chip and just bolt on an SGI chip for 3d.

It would've killed Sega faster. An add-on for a dead system would have collected dust.

>>10382057
>Why was the Saturn such a design mess when they already had cd-based console with the Sega CD? Just use an updated 32-bit 68000 series chip with more mhz, the same Sega CD sound chip and just bolt on an SGI chip for 3d.

According to that interview that was recently posted here, because they were deciding if the console should focus on very good 2D or early 3D and opinion was split, so they decided to create a good 2D console with some minor 3D abilities.

Then examples of what the PlayStation would be able to do started appearing and many devs wanted to move onto 3D, so they then had to find a way to kludge decent 3D into their mostly 2D system.

https://mdshock.com/2023/07/10/irimajiri-speaks-out-about-the-saturn-the-32x-and-soas-financial-troubles/

>It was generally thought that our next-generation console had to bring something new and different to the market, such as 3D graphics. However, there was also the opinion that we could make even greater games with 2D graphics

>Opinions were split

>The next-generation console design featured both the ability to do a limited amount of 3D graphics and the ability to do the highest level of 2D graphics.

>In the middle of 1993, right when I joined Sega, Sony revealed the 3D graphics capabilities of its PlayStation.

>The polygons-per-second capabilities of the PlayStation were truly amazing.

>We soon learned that many third-party developers had made the decision to abandon 2D game development in favor of 3D graphics. It was a very bad situation for us.

>It was decided we had no choice but to increase the 3D capabilities. At the absolute minimum, the Saturn had to be able to handle the 3D graphics of Sega’s fighting game Virtua Fighter.

>A possible solution was to add a GPU that could specialize in handling the heavy graphics calculations. However, it was far too late to begin development on something like that, so it was decided to use a second Hitachi SH-2 CPU in place of a GPU.

>>10371291
>>10371323
It would have been a mistake just like the 32X or hiring Bernie Stolar.

>>10382057
The 68000 is just one small piece of the Genesis. You are basically arguing the climbing the first stair of a staircase means you are almost at the top.

>>10382506
>You are basically arguing the climbing the first stair of a staircase means you are almost at the top.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

>>10380334
>Sonic team is a joke.

No, they were great. It's only Yuji Naka who is a joke.

He left Sonic Team in 1991 already, thinking he is a hotshot who is going to be hired by Nintendo - STI had to charm him back to Sega with a multi million contract. He thought he is as good as Yu Suzuki, even crediting himself as YU2. He killed one of the biggest first party titles for the Dreamcast by telling, in front of its entire developer team, to move the best coders to Sonic Team and fire the rest (after which the entire team quit and the game got cancelled). He spent the the company budget on his own Ferrari addiction. He published photos of his team with other members photoshopped out like fucking Stalin. He was convicted TWICE and is currently on probation after forfeiting hundreds of millions of yen.

>>10381772
They had a 1-CHIP Genesis by 1996, and the Saturn could take digital video input natively. They could've released a Genesis Converter for the Saturn that takes Genes scarts, handles all Genesis hardware logic inside the converter which has a 1-CHIP Genesis on it, and outputs the video digitally to the Saturn to display.

Would've made a ton more sense than outsourcing the 1-CHIP Genesis chips to fucking Mexico to make the Genesis 3. It would cost them 50-100$ either way, but if they go the Converter route, they'd give a gigantic push to the Saturn.

>>10382541
>He killed one of the biggest first party titles for the Dreamcast by telling, in front of its entire developer team, to move the best coders to Sonic Team and fire the rest (after which the entire team quit and the game got cancelled).

What game was this?

>>10372792
N64 outsold the Saturn at a 3:1 ratio

>>10373972
>It's a big problem since programmers disliked making games for for Dual CPUs.

Dual CPUs weren't even that crazy or new of a concept. The Genesis had 2 CPUs in it with the Z80 and 68000. Yes one is intended to run the sound system, but that doesn't have to be it's job. On SNES any game that's using an expansion chip like the SuperFX, SA-1, etc. is going to be a dual CPU game with even more crazy limits and bottlenecks than the Saturn's dual SH2s. Sega CD is again doing dual CPU stuff since there's the Main 68000 in the Genesis and the 2nd 68000 in the Sega CD. And that's not even getting into the wild west that was arcade hardware.

The bigger pain points with developing on Saturn are the following:
-VDP1 and VDP2 interactions can be janky and hard to understand.
-VDP1 is slow with a low fillrate and lots of pixel overdraw.
-VDP1 Transparencies are finnicky and it can't do additive blending for anything but gouraud shading.
-No texture coordinates for VDP1.
-Memory is splintered across multiple banks with various speed differences.
-The SCSP can only work with uncompressed PCM samples.
-The SCSP pretty much hogs memory access from the 68K making it challenging to use the 68K to do things like audio decompression.

Even then though, those issues aren't anything worth throwing a complete design away and spending 2-3 years redesigning it. Saturn's problems have less to do with it's hardware, and more to do with Sega of America not handling it well at all from before it even launched.

>>10382654
In Japan Saturn outsold the N64 in both hardware and software. That's probably what the person was referring to.
>>10382578
Apparently it was Geist Force but I wouldn't give that story much credit. It doesn't hold up to any scrutiny when you look at the supposed timeline. It apparently happened in fall of 1998 and apparently Naka said to take whatever 3D rendering tech they could use for Sonic Adventure and to throw the rest away. But the problem here is that Sonic Adventure was already in a pretty much finished state by this point and was due out in less than a month in Japan. It would be pretty odd for them to still be trying to take 3D rendering tech to put into a game that was by all means finished by that point.

It honestly sounds like more tall tales from Sega of America developers that have consistently tried to blame Japan for all their own failures over the years.

So the way it would have worked from what I've heard, all the components would be in the 64x, and the saturn would only provide power and disc reading.

>>10382657
>The Genesis had 2 CPUs in it with the Z80 and 68000. Yes one is intended to run the sound system, but that doesn't have to be it's job.

It pretty much was, the only other tasks it really did was SMS backwards compatibility since that was the CPU the SMS used.

>On SNES any game that's using an expansion chip like the SuperFX, SA-1, etc. is going to be a dual CPU game with even more crazy limits and bottlenecks than the Saturn's dual SH2s.

That's like saying every PC that ever had a discrete GPU is a dual-CPU system, they were two completely different processors with the second being special purpose, not just a dual CPU like the Saturn was.

>Sega CD is again doing dual CPU stuff since there's the Main 68000 in the Genesis and the 2nd 68000 in the Sega CD.

Large chunk if not the vast majority of SegaCD games ran pretty much entirely on the SegaCD unit because it was such a pain to use both processors across the expansion bus.

Even when the PS3 came out many devs weren't able to handle the mess that was the Cell, and this was well after games stopped being programmed in assembly and running on bare metal so you would have to manually time the multiple processors instructions together.

>>10371291
could only imagine how much of a nightmare that would've been to program for

>>10373356
>Dual CPUs were not ideal
SH-2s were literally built for multiple CPU configurations. They had master/slave stuff built directly into the architecture. It was a non-issue and not hard to develop for on account of the CPUs. That doesn't necessarily mean that devs were writing games to get the maximum performance out of the slave chip, but developing for for them wasn't some kind of arcane science.

>>10382681
>It honestly sounds like more tall tales from Sega of America developers that have consistently tried to blame Japan for all their own failures over the years.
Sega of America has nothing to do with the failures of Sega of Japan you dum dum.

>>10383802
>It was a non-issue and not hard to develop for on account of the CPUs

It certainly was an issue. Many game developers did not like it, and history has proven that dual CPU configurations (even on modern day hardware) takes more time and effort to program for. And the results aren't great. Often times buggy compared to single CPU configurations.

Anon. You aren't going to win this argument. There's too much history to prove you wrong. Don't even try.

>>10383882
the issue was development environment

>>10383886
The issue is Sega Saturn hardware is more complicated than it needs to be to barely achieve similar results as their competitors. Their competitors who use more streamlined and less complicated hardware.

>>10383423
>It pretty much was, the only other tasks it really did was SMS backwards compatibility since that was the CPU the SMS used.
You can use the Z80 for other tasks. It's just the primary purpose for it was to run the sound system. On the Saturn you can use the 2nd SH2 for whatever task you want, it's just the primary intended purpose was helping with 3D math.

>That's like saying every PC that ever had a discrete GPU is a dual-CPU system they were two completely different processors with the second being special purpose, not just a dual CPU like the Saturn was.
The SA-1 is literally the same CPU as the SNES just clocked faster. The SuperFX chip is again just a fast co-processor to help with 3D math calculations and is also given the task of doing the software rendering to a buffer. Neither chips are even close to being an actual GPU.

>Large chunk if not the vast majority of SegaCD games ran pretty much entirely on the SegaCD unit because it was such a pain to use both processors across the expansion bus.
You have to set up and initialize both CPUs to even get the system to boot. A lot of games actually use both CPUs. Generally the Genesis CPU would run a lot of the game code and the Sega CD CPU would run code that dealt with the Sega CD Specific hardware. There's typically code between the two to coordinate data transfers from one side to the other.

>PS3 and Cell
Most of the PS3s issues if I remember correctly had more to do with the split memory set up and weaker GPU when compared to the 360s GPU and shared memory set up.

>>10383872
>Sega of America has nothing to do with the failures of Sega of Japan you dum dum.
No, but they have everything to do with their own failures. Which those failures did far more damage to the company as a whole than any of Sega of Japans did.

>>10383926
The CPUs aren't really the issue with it being complicated. The fractured memory set up and the quirks of VDP1 are more to blame there.

But again those issues can be overcome with good devkits and good software. This is the real area where Sony succeeded. The bought Psygnosis and along with them SN Systems. With that they got a team that made some of the best devkits around to make the devkits for the PS1. Before they did that, the PS1 devkits and tools were just as bad as Saturn's. That move got them great streamlined devkits as well as a performance analyzer to help pinpoint bottlenecks so developers could get the best performance for their games. No one else had tools like that at the time.

>>10383974
>No, but they have everything to do with their own failures. Which those failures did far more damage to the company as a whole than any of Sega of Japans did.

Yawn.

No one cares about your Sega branch wars fanboy fantasies.

>>10383980
>The CPUs aren't really the issue with it being complicated.
Yes they are. They are the *core issue* here. Having dual CPUs is not a substitute for having a dedicated GPU.

>dev kits.
Sega made really good dev kits later on so it's not an issue.

>>10384004
>Having dual CPUs is not a substitute for having a dedicated GPU
It has a dedicated GPU, it's called VDP1. You still needed some beefy CPU power during this time to do all the 3D Math. The PS1 had a fast coprocessor tailored for this in it, the GTE. Sega instead went for another SH2 for it's 3D coprocessor.

The original set up was 1 SH2 and the SCU-DSP, but the SCU-DSP wasn't really good enough to hold it's own against the PS1, so they added the 2nd SH2 instead. At that point though the SCU was already mostly done and it would be more costly to redesign it to remove the DSP, so they just kept it as is.

The dual processor set up to help with 3D math is not as crazy of a set up as you think it is for this time period.

>Sega made really good dev kits later on so it's not an issue.
They still were no where near as good as Sonys, and by that point it was too little too late.

>>10383980
Sega Saturn has some of the worst pop-in I've ever seen in games. It also lacks Anti-Aliasing or trilinear filtering. Transparencies were also very limited

>>10384089
>Sega Saturn has some of the worst pop-in I've ever seen in games
A lot of early 3D games have this issue. It's also made a bit worse on Saturn due to how a lot of AM2 engines (which includes SGL) work. They generally have a lot of static buffers for storing things like vertices, draw lists, etc.. When those buffers fill up, the engine just stops processing data until the next frame, resulting in polygons not getting drawn regardless of if there's enough CPU time to still process more data or not. There are ways to relieve this such as merging common vertices to reduce duplicates in the list so the buffers don't fill up as fast, but not all devs did this.

>It also lacks Anti-Aliasing or trilinear filtering.
So did the PS1. It still got by ok.

> Transparencies were also very limited
Even the N64 and PC platform struggled with this. If you look at a lot of ports of PS1 games to N64 and PC the first thing to get nerfed was the transparencies.

>>10383423
>Even when the PS3 came out many devs weren't able to handle the mess that was the Cell,
This is fake news caused by 1-thread developers deflecting from their lack of knowledge by complaining loudly instead of admitting they need to learn a new trick or two.
The Cell was not a "mess". By today's standards it's a ho-hum bog standard stream processor. You create a compute kernel, you attach it to an SPE core, you create a buffer of data for it to process and you say "GO" and then get a results buffer when it's done. In 2006 this was anathema to "self taught" game developers. Today if you applied for a job as an engine developer you'd be laughed out of the interview room if you weren't capable of doing GPU compute, which is just stream processing by a clunky graphics API interface.

>>10384251
>Today if you applied for a job as an engine developer you'd be laughed out of the interview room if you weren't capable of doing GPU compute,
Well duh. That was almost 20 years ago. Times have changed. We are discussing things in the context of the times they were made.

>>10384258
Even by 1994 standards multiprocessor programming wasn't some crazy new thing for game development, game consoles, or arcade hardware. Especially when you get to 3D graphics.

>>10384258
My point is that the Cell isn't a "mess." It was ahead of its time. A mess is the Jaguar where it has a buggy, unfinished CPU that trashes the bus if you aren't super careful about memory access. It's a mess rather than difficult because you have a theoretically powerful CPU that you can't use properly because you have to waste most of your time spin-locking to avoid bus contention.
The Cell on the other hand was solid, it was just sadly not what engine programmers of the day wanted and they shit on it endlessly. By the time talented developers without a chip on their shoulder realised what they could do with it, the ship had sailed, the 360 was the primary development platform.

>>10384301
Don't forget that you can't even run a program from main memory on the Jaguar because the system crashes when you try to do any branch or jump instruction from main memory. You also cant do 2 divides in a row or the 2nd divide will come back with the wrong answer. The Jaguar really is a comical train wreck.

Ehhh....Sega used an "arcade philosiphy" when designing the Sega Saturn. Sega made hardware that worked for their purposes, with the assumption that it would only be used by them. Sega were selfish, and didn't take other 3rd oart developers' needs into consideration when designing the Sega Saturn's hardware... which—arguably—was an abuse of their power as a major player in the console race. If you really want to make games for the Saturn, you must submit to it, play by its rules. You can't "have it your way", this isn't Burger King. And this was under the best case scenario when Sega finally had good development kits to give to. 3rd party devs half way through the Saturn's lifecycle.

>>10384251
>>10384301
Cell is a mess and it wasn't ahead of its time. It's a CPU that sucks at doing CPU and GPU, and by a hilarious twist of fate it came out AFTER the 8800 GTX, the First GPGPU.

>>10384339
Nintendo did the same thing with all their hardware. In fact they continue to do the same thing to this day.

>>10384351
Nintendo wasn't stretched thin financially like Sega was. They also. Weren't trying to compete directly against Playstation or Playstation 2. Nintendo was satisfied making a mid-range affordable 3D console that was a few steps down from the best hardware available. Thus Nintendo actually made money on each console they sold.

Sega did the exact opposite of Nintendo. They made an expensive and unoptimized console with a strange design for its time. They had poor support for 3rd party devs and when they realized they were making mistakes it was too late. Everyone went to Sony or Nintendo. Sega Saturn was dead in the West.

>>10384380
> Weren't trying to compete directly against Playstation or Playstation 2.
Yes they were.
>Nintendo actually made money on each console they sold.
I'm pretty sure they lost money on the Wii U, 3DS, Gamecube, and possibly even the N64 on release.
> They made an expensive and unoptimized console with a strange design for its time.
The Saturn wasn't that much more expensive than the PS1 to make. PS1 was about $500 at launch in 1994, Saturn was about $540. By the start of 1996 both Saturn and PS1 were being sold at a profit.

As for unoptimized consoles with strange designs, the N64 isn't an easy thing to work with either, and the SNES is a mess of weird design choices.
> They had poor support for 3rd party devs
Not in Japan.
>Everyone went to Sony or Nintendo. Sega Saturn was dead in the West.
This has more to do with Sega of America dicking around with the 32X instead of prepping for a western Saturn launch than the actual Saturn hardware.

>>10382552
What's the medical term for deranged children obsessed with imagining insane convoluted bullshit ways they could have saved Sega?

>>10384409
>> They had poor support for 3rd party devs
>Not in Japan.
yes, including japan. which is why most of the development tools and development hardware for consoles was being coded and manufactured by.. europeans.
dark times in the 80s and 90s. nintendo literally recommended people to buy or rent UNIX Sony workstations just to create code and audio for a fucking SNES and shilled SGI workstations to make graphics for the n64. things weren't better for sega developers. a lot of these developers were forced to rent expensive workstations, come up with their own solutions or pay someone to engineer a solution. third party devs that were not well financed were left on their own with very little support until they found cheaper and faster solutions provided by middleware developers. sony was the first to come along with a development solution for their machines that wasn't fucking cancer or cost more than a house and could be plugged into an compatible PC running MS-DOS/Windows. and it too was designed by europeans. apparently the japs did fuck all except do what they were told.

>>10384483
>yes, including japan
Saturn had better third party support in Japan than the N64 did.
>Goes on about devkits
That's not the same thing as having third party support. It can impact it sure, but it's not the same thing.
>sony was the first to come along with a development solution for their machines that wasn't fucking cancer
That wasn't Sony, that was SN Systems. Sony was just rich enough to buy that company along with Psygnosis.

>>10384409
>I have done no research but I will pretend I know stuff
Lmao. No anon. Nintendo makes money on each console sold. The trade off is that they don't use top end hardware like Sony.

>Wii U, 3DS
Not retro.

>>10384380
>Nintendo was satisfied making a mid-range affordable 3D console that was a few steps down from the best hardware available. Thus Nintendo actually made money on each console they sold.

Err, what? Nintendo only started making weaker hardware starting with the Wii. They were at worst on-part if not beyond their competition in previous gens. The Gamecube shat on the PS2 hardware-wise, same with the N64 vs the PS1 and Saturn or SNES vs Genesis.

>>10384685
N64 was not more powerful than saturn and gc wasn't even 1/4 as strong as ps2.

>>10384685
>Snes more powerful than genesis
Lols. Snes was slightly more powerful than master system.

>>10384685
You have a lot to learn.

>>10384089
>It also lacks Anti-Aliasing or trilinear filtering
That is a good thing. Those features have never looked good, all they do is make the graphics look like Vaseline smears.

>>10384409
>>10384613
What are you two? 5 years old?? Every console sells at a loss to start with, but that means zero in itself.

Manufacturing anything in volume requires factory tooling which costs a bucket load. Once this is done a given number of consoles need to be sold with a specific margin of profit to make the product profitable. Consoles sold 'at a loss' may actually make a small margin but never pay back the outlay for tooling on their own. Again this may mean zero if the revenue comes from licensing or 1st party titles.

In Nintendo's case, they're great at doing the math and achieving the numbers for system profit. Most of the time. But that's insurance, not their main source of revenue.

>>10384689
Shhh. Grown ups are talking.

>>10384692
Ditto.
You don't actually have a clue what you are talking about.

>>10385004
>Every console sells at a loss to start with
This is where your whole post falls apart. Multiple people have told you that Nintendo doesn't operate that way. Nintendo selects cheaper hardware in order to sell every console they make for a profit. They do not sell consoles for a loss like Sega, Sony, and Microsoft does.

Nintendo knows they don't have the financial resources to compete against hardware giants like Sony. And to attempt to do so is foolish, and would end badly for Nintendo. So they make a console with affordable hardware and focus on the games.

That's how Nintendo operates.

>>10384742
Other anon is wrong on a few counts but at least set them straight.

>>10384685
Nintendo had considerable experience with handheld devices and flogging an underpowered horse (nes) to the limit with all kinds of tricks. They had also toyed (haha) with many gimmicks before the Wii, but yes it was a cheap system because the GC wasn't the huge success it was hoped to be and the hardware could be built upon.

Those other comparisons aren't that simple and the competition had some kind of advantage in both cases.

You will end up on the lunatic fringe screaming about Vaseline or the equivalent of if you refuse to do research or acknowledge reality

>>10384689
Pretty sure 64-bit is more powerful than 32-bit

>>10384692
This one is debatable. The base console is stronger but the SEGA CD and 32X turn the Genesis into a powerhouse.

>>10385040
It doesn't fall apart there, and it seems you can't grasp a basic business concept. That's the only explanation for your absolute drivel.

Consoles don't materialise from nowhere to sell. Raw materials, equipment and space are needed that all cost money before a single device is sold.

Only you seem to think they are spun from straw by elves. Anyone else over 5 who said Nintendo doesn't sell at a loss knows this too

>>10385056
>Pretty sure 64-bit is more powerful than 32-bit
OMW this thread is all over. No more evidence needed

>>10385048
>Nintendo had considerable experience with handheld devices and flogging an underpowered horse (nes) to the limit with all kinds of tricks. They had also toyed (haha) with many gimmicks before the Wii, but yes it was a cheap system because the GC wasn't the huge success it was hoped to be and the hardware could be built upon.

Their handhelds were generally weaker than the near-nonexistant competition yes, but their consoles before the Wii era were not. The NES, yes, that system was weaker in several ways to the SMS, and stronger in others, but starting with the SNES they were creating consoles more powerful than Sega/Sony until the Wii era. When both the N64 and GC with it's much more powerful hardware didn't do well but the Wii obliterated the PS3 and 360 with it's laughably weaker hardware Nintendo just kept to cheaper and weaker hardware and never looked back. Yes, there are some features the PS2 had over the GC and PS1 over the N64, but for the vast majority Nintendo's systems were far more powerful. Doesn't help that for ports the lead platform tended to be the PS1 or PS2, but Resident Evil 4 is a good example, a game whose lead platform was the GC and it shows with how downgraded the PS2 port was visually.

>>10385056
>Pretty sure 64-bit is more powerful than 32-bit

That is not how that works. All "64 bits" in the way it was advertised means is being able to use 64 bit integers or have a 64 bit address bus, which means jack shit in terms of power (Or in the case if Atari, if you flunked math but still try to act like a math professor and insist that 2+2=8). The N64 was technically capable of 64 bits, but it was so limited and cumbersome to use that almost all of it's software just ran in 32bit mode.

>The base console is stronger but the SEGA CD and 32X turn the Genesis into a powerhouse.

Sure if you want to toss hundreds of dollars in addons it better become more powerful. Too bad few will develop for such addons. SNES had enhancement chips too.

>>10385057
>Consoles don't materialise from nowhere to sell. Raw materials, equipment and space are needed that all cost money before a single device is sold.

And Nintendo does it far cheaper than their competitors. What aren't you getting here?

>>10385057
Do you think Nintendo is broke or something? They HAVE money. They can afford the initial investment it takes to order parts like CPU, GPU chips, etc and spin up production lines. The real cost of the console is what components your company chooses to put inside it. Most console manufacturers have chosen very high end components. Console manufacturers historically make most of their money back on game sales. They take a hit on selling consoles to establish a base of customers, but make a huge profit on game sales.

Nintendo took the opposite approach. They didn't want to sell a console for more than it costs to manufacture it. Instead their chose cheaper components to put inside their consoles. So they make a profit on both the console and game sales. The trade off is that their graphics and other features may not be as bleeding edge as their competitors. But Nintendo is fine with that.

>>10385169
Most consoles are sold at a profit.

>>10385180
>Most consoles are sold at a profit.
No they aren't. When consoles are launched they are sold for a loss. The Saturn, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, and Dreamcast all sold for a loss.

However As years pass and components get cheaper, then the company is able to slowly reduce the manufacturing costs. That's why consoles drop in price as time goes on, and they offer revisions where the case is slimmed down.

Nintendo has survived because they choose inexpensive components, and have multiple franchises (Mario, Donkey Kong, Starfox, Metroid, etc) they can rely on to sell.

Sega died because they sold their consoles at a big loss trying to compete with Sony, but no one was buying their 32x and Saturn games. Sega was broke by the time Dreamcast came. They literally couldn't even afford to manufacture Dreamcast and had to take out huge loans and went into deep debt to make it.

>>10385129
I prefer PS1 and Saturn over N64 but they are not more powerful when it comes to 3D graphics. Better at audio and FMV stuff yes, but the N64 was a powerhouse when it comes to 3D technology. Saturn could never handle something like OoT. As wonky as it is, the N64 was still capable of some really impressive visuals that SEGA would not see until the Dreamcast

>>10385129
>Sure if you want to toss hundreds of dollars in addons it better become more powerful. Too bad few will develop for such addons. SNES had enhancement chips too.
Was not trying to start a console war. SNES was my favorite console until I started playing both SEGA CD and TurboGrafx-CD a few years ago. Not popular add-ons but they were indeed capable of some really impressive stuff that Nintendo would not see until the GameCube, primarily CD audio and FMV. SNES is still better at a lot of things, mainly transparency and on-screen colors (though the 32X may have had more, not sure).

I should also probably note that I'm kind of ignoring the cheeky image/suggestion in the OP. The last thing SEGA needed in 1998 was more add-ons, especially anything that resembled the 32X. The SEGA CD was still great though imo

>>10385056
Pretty sure a pocket calculator is more powerful than that dead hamster rolling in the wheel inside your noggin.

>>10375391
The Indian gas station.

>>10371291
>>10371291
>>10371291

You'd think with all the recent revelations of how mishandled the entire Company was and how all of their decisions were bungled or how they cost the company millions of dollars-

that you people would wise up and stop making these stupid threads. Leave your thought experiments in your own head amongst your own thoughts.

>>10385235
I never bought a N64 for the simple fact that I don't have 3 hands. Also the visuals on the Saturn & PS1 for some games beats the N64. The N64 could never be able to handle a game like Metal Gear Solid.

>>10372840
So this graph counts the switch as a homeconsole? That's retarded it's clearly an handheld but with a HDMI output.

>>10385129
Thanks for a decent reply and this sounds reasonable. Bear in mind the nes cpu was not cutting edge when new. It relied on a host of support chips and lasted long after the expected use-by

>>10385147
That was my position. See >>10385004

>>10385169
Lol so now you agree with me while still behaving a meme soundboard

>>10385194
This guy gets it.

You have to be very strategic with cash. Economy of scale won't help if there's nothing to shift hardware. No doubt there's a lot of other boring but smart economic plays

>>10385235
>I prefer PS1 and Saturn over N64 but they are not more powerful when it comes to 3D graphics. Better at audio and FMV stuff yes, but the N64 was a powerhouse when it comes to 3D technology.

That's basically what I was saying. Also arguable that the PS1 was better at FMV tech-wise, it's more that there really wasn't space to put FMVs in the carts other than very special/specific circumstances.

>>10385245
Wasn't trying to get into a war, was just stating that the SNES had more powerful hardware, and that I felt counting addons (that did terribly) is stretching it, especially when you consider those would have been possible on a SNES as well and it starts to blur the lines on if the console is even doing much at all or if the game is just running on the add-on at that point. (Like that guy who "ported" Doom to the NES... he just put a Pi in a cart and made it output the video/audio through the NES and accept controller inputs, but the game was completely running on the Pi itself)

>>10385462
The three hands meme was clearly started by zoomies who never played an N64 back in the day. Neither the controller nor any of the games were designed for you to use all three parts of it at once. The whole point was that it had three possible ways to hold it depending on what the game used.

Left hand on d-pad and right hand on buttons, this made you use L and R as the shoulder buttons

Left hand on analog stick and right hand on buttons, this made you use Z in place of L

Left hand on d-pad and right hand on analog stick, very very few games had this as an option (mostly a few first person games and ones that really need two directional inputs by design), this made you use Z in place of R

You was NEVER supposed to use the d-pad, analog stick, and buttons all at the same time. This is why there are four directional c-buttons that act like a second d-pad on the right of the controller. Anyone going "LOL three hands" is too young to have ever played an N64 back then.

>>10384483
>most of the development tools and development hardware for consoles was being coded and manufactured by.. europeans
I'm actually kinda curious about this. Which European firms were in the business of making graphical workstations for doing gamedev on in the 80s/90s? I know of SGI, NeXT, Sun, and Sony but none of these strike me as being particularly European.

>>10371469
>stealing this for the next thread

>>10386538
Plenty of 'early' stuff was done on Amiga, eg. The T1000 in Terminator 2. That's all I can think of.

Obviously talking about graphics but games almost certainly also

>>10371469
I have one of those for my Dreamcast 360

>>10387791
Yeah but the Amiga was American. It was produced primarily in the US.