/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10776245
The infighting between SoA and SoJ leading each team to sandbag the others success

Operating an amusement park in Australia.

>>10776245
It's probably not the single worst, but turning Phantasy Star into an MMO instead of competing with FF/DQ has to be up there. They took an influential and popular series and made it niche by design.

>>10776303
No, that was a forward thinking decision. MMOs were so popular in the 2000s that they basically killed single player RPGs in the West for a whole decade. Sega of course was a bit early, but their game wasn't even a flop.

>>10776303
>>10776312
>PSO
>"MMO"
What?

>>10776303
They were making a console with online connectivity as one of its main features. Even Sonic had online-exclusive content, I'm pretty sure O in PSO was a deliberate decision.

And the game is good anyways.

>>10776312
Sega was almost religiously on the bleeding edge even when it was to their detriment. That was the whole reason Namco backed off the arms race they were locked in. Namco realized that with the ever changing arcade landscape neither company could afford the fucktarded supercomputers they kept investing in so they struck a deal with Sony and just started producing arcade versions of the PS1. Sega meanwhile kept YOLOing it to the point that VF3 was stuck in arcades for years because the Saturn would have shit itself trying to run it.

>>10776245
Starting console wars instead of just focusing on hardware

If they didn't rush out their stuff the entire time, they could still be in the console business.
The gaming history, of course, would've took the entirely different course

> Game Gear works on 4 batteries instead of 6
> Genesis is still selling like hot cakes after SNES release
> no Donkey Kong Country games are made to challenge Sonic
> 32x and CD don't exist
> Sonic Adventure and Shenmue released for Saturn
> Dreamcast releases after PS2 and mogs it entirely

Actually, forget that very last part. It's still our current reality.

>>10776316
This is literally what it was called at the time.

>>10776342
>CD don't exist
bad future

Obviously releasing the Saturn without a 3D Sonic game. I don't care if the guys called "Sonic Team" were allegedly tired of making Sonic, they needed to get to work and make what everyone wanted.

>>10776362
Sonic CD and Policenauts are the only worthwhile games. And Policenauts isn't a game.

>>10776403
Snatcher, rather. Same shit.

>>10776403
Shining force CD and both lunar games are neat. Also Policenauts was a PS1 game, Snatcher was released on the Sega CD.

>>10776416
I forgot about Shining Force. Lunar is shit.

>>10776403
>Sonic CD and Policenauts are the only worthwhile games.
Some good ports and exclusives that have not been named:
Illusion City
Popful Mail
The Terminator
Final Fight
Prince of Persia

Earthworm Jim
Samurai Shodown
Mickey Mania
Keio Flying Squadron
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure

Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin
Batman & Robin
Wonder Dog
Panic!
Shadowrun

not putting a proper Sonic game on Saturn was dumber than anything on display with the Sega CD.

>look I made another gaslighting thread

>>10776303
It was absent during the Saturn era. They probably weren't planning to do anything with it anyway.
>>10776342
>Starting console wars instead of just focusing on hardware
That was for the west. Only in the USA it was the Genesis and only with Brits it was many consoles.
>Game Gear works on 4 batteries instead of 6
Game Gear would need to be overhauled or come out at a later date.
>no Donkey Kong Country games are made to challenge Sonic
What does console warring have to do with this? You'd want exclusive games for your console to entice people to purchase the console.
>32x and CD don't exist
Good for no wasted time and money developing such things.
>Dreamcast releases after PS2 and mogs it entirely
The PS2 was so successful due to how the PS1 knocked it out of the park. Unless there is something to make the Saturn rival the popularity of the PS1 the Dreamcast wouldn't "mog" it. If SEGA had enough in the bank for a whole console generation then the Dreamcast would do well, but since they didn't it was doomed.
>>10776435
A Sonic game would help, but they still needed additional third party software. Sony had it in spades. Nintendo struggled with it. SEGA had some at the start, especially with the multiplatform releases.

>>10776245
Releasing the Saturn several months early. Pissed several retailers off so much that they vowed never to stock Saturn stuff, and it led to an anaemic launch library because barely any of the games were ready on time.

>>10776245
Releasing the CD, 32x and the Saturn so close to each other. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that people skipped the Saturn because they were already burned by two shitty add ons. The few good Sega CD games could have been Saturn launch titles

>>10776342
in a world without blue/white LEDs, how was a backlit color handheld supposed to run on only four (4) AAs?

>>10776483
yep. absolutely this. they killed the damn thing before it even started. also 299

>>10776460
>That was for the west. Only in the USA it was the Genesis and only with Brits it was many consoles.
Not strictly true. Sega was obsessed with beating the PS1 to market to the point that in Japan they just eeked it out by about a week, which in the grand scheme means jack shit aside from bragging rights. The Saturn certainly would not have beaten the PS1 in any capacity but all of it's problems stem from that one boneheaded decision to get into a foot race with Sony.

That said, Sega DID have some reason to worry. The Mega Drive was toast in Japan and Virtua Fighter was white hot in arcades. They needed a way to get that one game in people's homes ASAP so rushing the Saturn was their chosen method of doing that. They should have gone a different direction but it at least gives some rationale to the decision.

For me, while it was hardly the most destructive, one of the dumbest things they ever did was pursue two entirely different Dreamcast architectures without telling the other what they were up to. SOA was working with 3DFX while SOJ was working on what turned into the final design and neither had any idea that it's counterpart was striking deals. It was just so needlessly stupid and indicative of the larger issue of SOJ and SOA refusing to coordinate. Of all the decisions it stands out as one of the most petty.

>>10776342
>Dreamcast releases after PS2 and mogs it entirely
Yeah I'm sure people would be shoving each other off the way just to play Seaman over GTA3

>>10776324
Nah, only shut-in nerds like or remember PSO. That's the hard truth. Just look at where Phantasy Star as a brand is right now compared to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. At one point it was in contention.
It honestly might be fair to say that it was the right decision at the time, given that internet connectivity was the hot new thing in games, but logic dictates that relatively few people will have the time to dedicate to an MMORPG, and that the franchise's growth would be limited as a result. This is exactly what's happened.

>>10776245
"The Saturn is not our future" - Bernie Stolar

Single dumbest thing ever said.

>>10776846
The complication is that he was right. When he said this the Saturn was already fucked. His plan was to blow it all away and start over fresh with the Dreamcast. Given the reality of the situation he walked into that wasn't completely irrational.

>>10776798
Maybe because Phantasy Star simply has more of a presence in Japan because certain rereleases and games stayed in Japan.

Pulling of Dreamcast.
Then…
Making Sonic Heroes
That’s basically the pivot point.
They transformed the company from hot shit, to blah 7.5/10 games. They totally lost momentum. They needed a console. They have never regained relevance and struggle to be competitive against AAA games.

>>10776846
They killed the Saturn in the west right when the 5th gen was really picking up

>>10776846
>a jew disregarding (((Saturn)))
You have to admit this is ironic.

>>10776245
Didn't push the Arabian master system market hard enough

>>10776245
The more I think about it the more Hikaru takes the cake. Imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars on an arcade cab only to move it years later and have the CPUs fall off the motherboard because Sega forgot to tin the solder. It was a factory defect. Why wasn't there a recall of all machines sold? How did the Better Business Bureau not get involved? Why was there no class action lawsuit? I love Sega, but that shit is absolutely inexcusable.

>>10776249
This, and the 32X in general.

>>10776245
>what is the single dumbest thing they've ever done?
It's a tie between the 32X and letting STI try to make Sonic 4.

>>10776864
It killed trust with retailers. They should have kept trying to sell Sega Saturn and wait until 2001 to release the Dreamcast.

>>10776942
Exactly.

>>10776978
>antisemitism
Go back to /pol/, Hamas.

>>10777337
Sega was already on every retailer's shit list. Stolar's problem was there were no good options. They could keep throwing good money after bad to keep the Saturn on life support but then you're trying to saddle retailers with a console that nobody wants. It was too late to rehabilitate its reputation. Even if they tried to localize more games, most of the third parties bailed already. All the franchises that came out on Saturn and PS1 simultaneously like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Mega Man were going PS1 exclusive. Capcom stuck with it for its fighting games because the RAM cart was one singular benefit but what else was there? Working Designs would have kept plinking away but if you let them do Saturn's versions of Grandia and Lunar like they wanted, does that really turn the tide? Especially since they were slow and unreliable when it came to release dates. A weeb will tell you that releasing Sakura Taisen and Radiant Silvergun would make all the difference but we all know that's bullshit. Stolar wanted a clean slate so the Dreamcast could launch with no baggage. He was sort of proven right by its wildly successful launch. It's subsequent collapse notwithstanding.

Infighting, and the lack of quality software made for the Saturn and 32x. The 32x was a bad product, but even then it could have been saved if it had a decent library of games. It was intended to be sold to existing Mega Drive owners, giving them a way to "upgrade" without having to invest in a whole new console and leave their existing library behind. But better yet, what SEGA could and should have done was base the Saturn on the existing Motorola 68000 architecture. By that point, it could do 3D games rather well, and it would have allowed the Saturn to be backwards compatible with the Genesis while allowing developers to produce games much easier. SEGA of Japan's ludicrous hardware designs and lack of software output is what killed the brand. No Streets of Rage 4, no Sonic 4, no new Phantasy Star or anything that could even REMOTELY challenge the PlayStation.

>>10776245
>the one that takes the cake?
Either Yu Suzuki helping out the Sony Playstation hardware team, or ditching color ram in the mega drive VDP to make room for master system compatibility. Both incredibly stupid thungs to do.

>>10776245
Falling for the console add-on meme. As has so often been pointed out, if you sell a standalone console the install base is 100% of consoles sold. If you sell an add-on the install base is some percentage of consoles sold. By definition, it's dividing your customer base.

I honestly think If they'd just held their horses until the Saturn launch, taken the game that turned out to be Sonic CD and made it a Saturn release title along with Virtua Fighter they'd have had a fighting chance. People would have been thirsty for a new Sega console instead of pissed about the shitty add-ons with minimal support they'd wasted money on and the Saturn was built for 2D so a traditional Sonic game on it would have looked amazing.

>>10777595
The Sega CD made sense because Sega had just seen NEC do brisk business with the CD-ROM2 add-on. But after that they just went ham with all the gizmos. A Genesis in every form factor you can imagine and dozen gimmicky accessories. Nothing was ever enough. There were two entirely unrelated Sonic cartoons running simultaneously. They made deals with JVC, Pioneer, Aiwa, IBM, and Amstrad to incorporate Genesis consoles into every goddamn thing. If it were possible to make a dishwasher play Genesis games Sega would have struck a deal with Whirlpool. There was never a plan. There was no strategy or attempt to protect the brand's reputation. They just rode shit until the wheels fell off.

Giving up when PS2 came out just because a bunch of brain-dead modern "gamer" fucktards no longer wanted to play real games.

>>10776312
>>10776303
Final Fantasy X was planned to be a MMO in development. But then they made 11 a MMO. DQ eventually made a MMO with X.

So I agree that it was pretty forward thinking

>>10776245
soj shitting themselves over the atari jaguar and 3do and demanding a response (32x) instead of developing and marketing a great system. but in retrospect their biggest fuck up was not giving sega cd more time for development and making it the genesis' one and only expansion. it would've been an acceptable finish to the genesis and sega could've diverted all efforts to the saturn which would've caught on strong even with its hardware difficulties. with more translated japanese imports it absolutely would've thrived. Would've been more third party games, survival horrors, racers, etc.

>>10776846
he was right, SoJ nuked any potential it would've had in america. dumb fucking japs.

Does anyone have any insight into why Sega was run so poorly? Why were the Sega Japanese Executives so bad at their jobs?

You never hear these massive stories of Sega screw ups from other Japanese companies like Nintendo or Sony.

I just don't understand how a global gaming company could be this badly run. Sega went from being #1 in the world to bankruptcy in the span of 10 years.

>>10778731
Sega was primarily an arcade company that dabbled in consoles as a side hustle. When it turned out there was merit to that the company didn't seem to figure out how to do both at the same time.

It started out well. The Genesis was a slimmed down consumer version of the System 16 arcade hardware, so it was effective at translating Sega's biggest arcade hits to the home with reasonable fidelity along with a lot of other arcade games that shared the common 68000/Z80 architecture like Capcom's stuff. But as the 90s moved forward the arcade division acted as if it were the only thing that mattered. They weren't as antagonistic as the SoA and SoJ relationship but there was almost zero consideration for the home market. Meanwhile Namco and Sony coordinated beautifully. Two entirely different companies had better synergy than two divisions within Sega. Add in SoA and it's like Sega was three entirely separate entities begrudgingly forced to work with each other.

Plus, going back to the arcade thing, that was really Sega's bread and butter. The Genesis had it's moment in the west but in the grand scheme that only lasted like four or five years. Sega rode that wave for a bit but it was really just a stroke of good luck. Once arcades started to die out Sega was toast, just like Midway.

>>10778759
May I ask why Sega Executives in Japan were so bad at their jobs? Why didn't the Japanese CEO step in and say

"Hey this is very dysfunctional and we need to get everyone on the same page. Even some of us disagree on some stuff, it's important we stay united."

>But as the 90s moved forward the arcade division acted as if it were the only thing that mattered. They weren't as antagonistic as the SoA and SoJ relationship but there was almost zero consideration for the home market.

Ok so the Sega Genesis was based on System 16 arcade. Got it. What is the Sega Saturn based on?

>>10778794
>What is the Sega Saturn based on
nta but wasn't it pretty much an original design? Basing it on the Model 1(Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter) would've been too underpowered by '94/'95 standards, while the Model 2(Daytona USA) would've been way too expensive.

>>10776245
Yuji Naka spitefully refusing to let the Sonic Xtreme team use his engine, thereby forcing them into development hell and dooming the Saturn because no Sonic. It all started there, Sega bros. The crushed butterfly moment.

>>10776798
>Nah, only shut-in nerds like or remember PSO
And who remembers the original Phantasy Star games?
You keep calling it an MMO yet it really isn't. Is CoD an MMO because you can play online with people? I don't care if it was called an MMO back then, it isn't.
>but logic dictates
Easy to say now looking back 25 years. But again it was more of an online action RPG and there was no problem playing it casually.
You sound pissed that a game series you really like was totally changed to something new and I cant fault you for that.
Either way PSO was a unique and new experience, in fact you could say it was a pioneer and it's not on the list of mistakes because it was a good decision.

>>10778813
Didn't they only lose like two weeks worth of progress because of Naka's tantrum? What really fucked X-treme over was the SoJ CEO demanding that they start development over from scratch after seeing one of the unfinished fisheye demos

>>10778812
>Basing it on the Model 1(Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter) would've been too underpowered by '94/'95 standards,
I don't know. I'm trying to understand the office politics. I'm not really familiar with all the tech stuff but I'm looking at YouTube videos of Virtua Racer and Virtua Fighter on Sega Model 1. They look pretty good to me. Seems like it would be great for consoles in 1994. Am I missing something?

>>10778831
Model 1 games didn't have texture mapping, for instance

>>10778794
>>10778812
The Saturn was wholly original. Which in and of itself isn't terrible but the arcade division refused to stop using bleeding edge equipment, making home ports either a hassle or entirely impossible. As for why the CEO didn't step in, no idea. This is conjecture but it seems like each division was given a lot of latitude to do whatever it felt was best in it's own market space.

You saw a little bit of this in how Sonic was handled. The way each territory had it's own cartoon or comic down to Sonic having entirely different backstories depending on what you were looking at. On paper it sounds smart: let the people with their ear to the ground make the decisions within their specific specialty. But it turns out that, no, that's not a good idea because you end up with poor coordination at best and open conflict at worst. Each division feeling like they owned their own little kingdom made it hard for any one plan to be accepted because it meant the "wrong" division got it's way.

>>10778854
perhaps the mistake was even in trying to link them. even back then I couldn't understand why the games couldn't just be the games and the shows could be the shows. that's already how video game adaptations were presented anyway

>>10778823
>And who remembers the original Phantasy Star games?
Only hardcore gamers even know what Phantasy Star (PSO included) is. This is my whole point.
>You keep calling it an MMO yet it really isn't.
It's just what people called it when it came out. Whatever that translates to today, the point is the same.
>Either way PSO was a unique and new experience
They shifted their top RPG into a sub-genre that only appealed to hardcore gamers at a time when console RPGs were exploding in popularity among normies. At best, this was a shortsighted decision.

>>10778826
Even if it was only two weeks, whatever they produced in that time probably wasn't going to be as good. And that's just the coding aspect of it. They also had to change the original design, which is a recipe for disaster if it happens midway through any game's development.

>>10776246
Pretty much this. It wasn't one single bad decision. It was death by a thousand cuts over a period between 94-2001 with constant, small bad decisions just piling up and making problems along with a lack of budget to react to what Sony was doing.

Though the biggest cut probably would have been Sega Japan rejecting Silicon Graphics after Tom Kalinske cut a pretty incredible deal for a CD Based system because "We already have the Saturn in development and that's what we're going with". SGI took that deal to Nintendo instead. If Sega had done a SGI design based console with CD's then they likely would have taken all the third party support from Nintendo like Square and sucked the air out of the room on Sony's console because it could do 3D Better.

>>10776460
>but they still needed additional third party software.
If they'd actually released a good Sonic game on it, it might have sold well enough to keep the third party support.

>>10778913
Sega was very anal retentive about timetables to the point they'd make self-destructive decisions if things didn't go their way. Nintendo delayed the N64 an entire year. Not ideal but they worked through it. Sega wanted to get a Sonic game out by Christmas and then when they missed that window they scuttled the entire project. Plus the Saturn library itself was a series of attempts at finding something that would click but not giving any one thing the time to breathe. We got Bug!, Clockwork Knight, Astal, and Panzer Dragoon but they all kind of came and went. It's an extension of what Sega was doing on the Genesis for a while with Vectorman, Eternal Champions, and Ecco. Just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Meanwhile Nintendo really nurtured it's games. They made sure you knew Donkey Kong Country was the game you MUST play. Then Killer Instinct was marketed like mad, and so on. Sega had A.D.D. in comparison.

>>10776864
>The complication is that he was right.
It's still an absolutely retarded thing to say from a PR perspective. Even Nintendo knew to never shit on the Wii U directly, even after the NX was announced to be a thing in an investor meeting in 2015, and they publicly still supported the console. Meanwhile with Stolar said "Saturn is not our future" the first party Sega releases stopped almost entirely, with only games that had already been announced prior to that ever coming to the west.

>>10778904
>>10778904
Hmm I see where you are coming from and agree but I had to rush in to defend my beloved. There really wasn't a good reason to tie PS to the O (from my outside perspective), it easily could've been standalone or they could've at least continued the series(again from my outsider pov). If someone knows the reason behind it all I'd love to hear it.
Like a lot of their decisions it was a gamble, I can see why they tried it honestly and even if they had kept doing the same thing with the series I don't think it would've mattered.
For the time they were poplar as you say but I think PSO has stood the test of time. I think you can see many glimpses of PSO in games like Monster Hunter World and even Dark Souls. The world wasn't ready for PSO and sadly traditional rpgs have fallen from favor.

>>10778812
Saw Die Hard in the arcade and didn't consider the graphics bad at all, should have designed more Titan STV games.

>>10778973
Nintendo were exceptional at pivoting. After telling Rare they will miss the Holiday 95 window so they had to cancel the Killer Instinct port. Rare told them "We can re-do it as a SNES project with a small team and have it out by the end of 1995 for the Holiday system" and Nintendo immediately green lit them. Game was a smash hit and SNES had a ridiculously good Holiday season despite Sony and Sega's consoles coming out because Nintendo had insane amounts of good software coming out because Nintendo were incredible at pivoting and having faith in their software.

Meanwhile. Sega was crippled by infighting. Sega US saw the really good numbers Eternal Champions put up on Genesis and Sega CD and greenlit a third one thinking "This could be our Killer Instinct". Sega Japan heard it and killed the project because "We have Virtua Fighter, we don't need two fighting games competing and 2D is dated anyway" despite EC's good numbers. Sega Technical Institute was not impressed and people left the studio over it. Even when one of those "throw shit at the wall" games actually stuck. Sega Japan was there to immediately destroy momentum

>>10777475
Dreamcast was losing money($199 instead of $299 was a mistake), most retailers refused to stock any Sega related product thus missing out on more sales and it was launched to early, plus piracy killed the Dreamcast by scaring away publishers. Stolar killed Sega.

>>10777885
Wrong. It was SOA who nuked the potential Sega had in the U.S., at least the Saturn was successful in Japan. Unlike SOA's 32X add-on.

>>10778985
The Saturn and Wii U aren't that comparable though. The Wii U was in bad shape but still had a solid install base so smoothly transitioning to the Switch and getting all the important games ported over made sense. The Saturn was up shit's creek. Let's look at the whole context of that one line. The article here where it comes from is from September 1997 and opens with EGM basically saying "So Sega is fucked now, m'irite? What do you think about that, Bernie?" It'd be impossible for him to deny the Saturn's situation without looking like an absolute tool. And more importantly, maintaining a defense of the Saturn in the face of hilariously incontrovertible evidence to the contrary to the point the press itself is calling your system a disaster risks hurting the upcoming Dreamcast's reputation before it even launches. The thesis of the entire interview was "We admit we messed up but we learned and we're going to do better going forward."

>>10779029
>We have Virtua Fighter, we don't need two fighting games competing
And yet Fighting Vipers exists. What an amazing amount of hypocrisy. Everyone had a chip on their shoulder at that company.

>>10779039
Stolar had nothing to do with the piracy. That was 100% on the engineers. The price was a mistake in hindsight but it's not like that gamble isn't something routinely done by other companies. The difference is that the Dreamcast didn't sell enough software to cover the losses because of the aforementioned piracy as well as a few other major issues like EA refusing to support the thing entirely. Sega was also not Sony and didn't have the money to support a loss per console like that but for all we know SoA was entirely in the dark about Sega's overall finances.

>>10779039
>at least the Saturn was successful in Japan
Not as successful as people tend to think. It was stable, sure, but it only sold about 300,000 units more than the N64 and people tend to say the N64 had a poor showing in Japan. Think about it. The N64's worst territory and the Saturn's best territory, and the Saturn still only managed to sell better by a razor thin margin.

>>10778973
>It's an extension of what Sega was doing on the Genesis for a while with Vectorman, Eternal Champions, and Ecco. Just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
I don't know the exact numbers, but magazines of that time often stated that Ecco was a very succesful series. Vectorman sold like half a million during its first release, those are good numbers for the first game of a series released so late. And this anon >>10779029 is already talking about how Eternal Champions also sold well.
Why didn't Sega make new entries of those games or a new Streets of Rage, a new Comix Zone...? Why release something like Bug instead of making a new Ristar or a new Kid Chameleon? Why turn Golden Axe into a fighting game and replace the main characters with newer ones? Why wasn't "Manx TT Superbike" called "Hang On: Manx TT"? Why make Dark Savior instead of just making a new Land Stalker?
Virtua Fighter and Sakura Taisen were very succesful and helped selling Saturns in Japan, and Burning Rangers was a good effort, even if it came a little too late. Making those games was a good idea, but you don't need to throw away everything and start from anew when you already have recognizable series. And the efforts dedicated to minor games like Clockwork Knight, Astal or Mr. Bones. could have been dedicated to a new entry in the Phantasy Star series, for example.
Nintendo's extreme repetitiveness bores me to tears and it's one of the many reasons why N64 disappointed me so much, but Sega just goes to the other extreme.

>>10776483
It really doesn't matter how good your system is if you get it banned from stores. What the fuck were they thinking?

>>10779178
They weren't. It seriously sounds like they asked a random 14 year old kid what they'd want and just did it. Because the only way I can make sense of it is by putting myself back at that age and thinking how cool it is that I don't have to wait and can just get the thing now as a total surprise. But then you look at it as an adult and realize just how insane it was. Events like E3 were primarily to sell your shit to retailers. Back in the brick and mortar days an executive buyer for a store like Toys R Us would have a lot of power. If you decide to just drop that bombshell you throw their entire operation into disarray. Retailers have their own logistics to deal with. Stores didn't have the shelf space prepared when suddenly their orders arrived months early. They had no advertising printed up. And other retailers who hadn't gotten orders in yet because they thought they had a few more months were watching their competitors sell a product they didn't have a chance to get themselves. I can't imagine a competent adult in that profession didn't predict these problems. Even the idea of springing it on consumers, even if the retailers were on board, makes zero sense. You surprise launch a system in fucking May? All those Memorial Day shopping sprees?

>>10779064
Last Bronx and Sonic The Fighters as well. Though that was more Sega's constant fucking up Virtua Fighter home ports and Tekken selling gangbusters on PS1 that they suddenly decided "No, we actually need more fighters". And even then Sonic didn't make it to the Saturn because suddenly they had reservations about Sonic kicking and punching other characters even in Japan.

Sega was a mess during that era.

>>10779262
Yup, they'd make a stupid decision, watch another company succeed, and then scramble to match. Half of Sega's console business was just them trying to put out fires. And business decisions made in a panic are hardly sound. Which only lead to more fires.

>>10776245
Completely ignoring the Western audience that made them famous during the 16-bit era as soon as the Saturn came out for no reason besides SoJ being butthurt that the console flopped in Japan.

>>10776245
Completely ignoring the Western audience that made them famous during the 16-bit era as soon as the Saturn came out for no reason besides SoJ being butthurt that the Mega Drive flopped in Japan.

>>10779318
"Congrats on all the success, we'll take it from here!" - Famous Last Words

>>10779318
Pretty much exactly what happened. America and Europe saved Sega. Then Sega took that victory, went back to Japan, and gave the middle finger to Western fans.

>>10776245
the sega cd was a fine decision
the sega 32x was monumentally stupid

>>10779039
No, you jap apologists are sick in the head. After the 32x debacle (which originated from jap atari panic NOT america you fucking retard), SoJ rushes the saturn onto the market before the west has any chance to properly market the system and coordinate with retailers. Sony waltzed right in and gained way more ground because of sega's incompetency.

what is wrong with you nip apologists, seriously? do you have any idea how badly the japs fucked up? even after nakayama shat himself in 1993 and demanded a 32 bit implosion, the west was still replete with sega diehards. poor team coordination, bad third party support, difficult hardware, nil ports of quality titles, etc. It's entirely their fucking fault and it didn't even need to be as brutal as it was, SoJ turned a controllable stove fire into a raging city wide inferno.

>>10779598
>It's entirely their fucking fault and it didn't even need to be as brutal as it was, SoJ turned a controllable stove fire into a raging city wide inferno.
"Modern" Sega fans just completely eat up all the bullshit that Sega Japan says because they're the ones who are still around so clearly they know what they're talking about, right? That Sega RPG (Segagaga or whatever) that paints the American branch as being the villains is so fucking painful to play

>>10776245
Saturn with no sonic mainline title at launch closely followed by saturn with no sonic mainline at all ever. Fucking ludicrous

>>10776327
Well.... Funny you say that....

>>10779632
It's not like they didn't intend to make a proper Sonic game for Saturn, but there was some development hell and rumours of Yuji Naka sabotaging the US project because it used the engine from Nights into Dreams or something.

>>10776245
Not focusing on 3d over 2d. I know the n64 was rejected Sega sloppy seconds but it would have been interesting to see what they would have done with it

>>10776915
You understand why they pulled it right? Like, they literally had no choice

>>10776245
Falling out with EA and losing all their 3rd party support for dreamcast was a massive slip up. EA and Sega were formidable together and certainly fucked over Nintendo for a good few years. A shame how that soured.

>>10778731
Nintendo fuck up just as bad but they get away with it.

N64 was a mess, stupid lop sided 3d architecture, awful blurry iq, sticking stubbornly with cartridges, THAT joypad.

Then you have the game cube, stupid kiddy image, silly mini cds,

Wii U, enough said

>>10779019
Athlete kings was another and it looked FANTASTIC, high res and 60fps

>>10778813
That sonic extreme team could have used a engine straight from God himself and they'd have still fucked it up. That was a turd that could never be polished

To me its the 32X.
It destroyed their public image, and then the wheels fell off shortly after. It was the starting domino of bad decisions that tanked them. Nothing really signaled their complete ineptitude until the 32X came along.

>>10779646
They needed stronger management to reign in that prick. He was cancerous

I feel like the 32X is too much of a scapegoat. Yes, it didn't help but it was such a blip that it's effectively irrelevant. Erase the 32X but change nothing else and the Saturn crashes and burns just the same.

>>10776246
more like SoA acting retarded and throwing a fit like an entitled child whenever SoJ tried to tard wrangle them

>>10779178
>>10779232
Look at the release dates for the US launches of the PS1 and the Saturn. Keep in mind the Saturn was launched 4 months before it was scheduled to launch. Had SEGA stuck with the original plan, they would be launching the same month as the Playstation, and be competing directly with an electronics giant with far more money than them to advertise and survive price wars. So they hit the panic button, and launched immediately to try and get ahead of Sony. And in doing so, they shot themselves in the foot.
In all fairness to them, they were still riding high on the success of the Genesis, being the first successful console they had. They were eager to replicate that success. They didn't know why it failed in Japan but did gangbusters in the US, but all they could see that went differently is the PC-Engine beat them to the market in Japan(and was more successful), but they beat the competition to the market by two years in the US, and Nintendo was just starting to compete against the Genesis by 1994. So launching ahead of Sony must have seemed like the smart move to make.

>>10779667
Probably Nintendo only survived Sega own fate because they had Pokémon on their portables and it carried alone the whole company until Switch and some other games like Mario Odyssey/Maker 2, Splatoon, Smash Bros and of course the port of Zelda BotW from Wii U helped it expand their "pool of franchises".
But it's strange when you stop to think how Sega never learns, after all they released about 3 consoles in such a small spam of time and ended up like history shows but even nowadays they still rush and cancel everything they can like the last Sonic games being rushed projects hurting their potential to sell to non-sonic fans after the movie was a success two times in a roll and sending a procure and cease to the Streets of Rage fangame game instead of just doing like Sonic Mania and hiring them to make a new game which would sell like water easily.
Ironically Sega defeats herself with bad decisions every single fuckin time, but they have Persona and Yakuza so i doubt those bad choices will impact them like it did in the past.

>>10780117
The odd thing is that generation took a while to really get going anyway. It had several false starts because the 16 bit consoles were punching way above their weight class. You'd think Sega would have known this considering they were literally 1/2 the reason that was the case. If you can be first in a sane way then, sure, there's a benefit to doing that. But Sega was so obsessed with beating Sony to market they put that above everything else even when they had to cut corners to do it. That unfettered obsession with winning that race is what ultimately fucked everything up. All their problems with the Saturn stem from that single decision. They weren't ready. Even in Japan they weren't ready. The Saturn's port of Virtua Fighter was pretty shit, with the geometry of the stage popping in and out of existence. This is supposed to be your flagship game that you want everyone to buy and you rush it? They did the same thing with 32X's Doom. That could have been a fantastic port but they released what was effectively an incomplete beta. Their NOW NOW NOW attitude was insanely stupid.

The most egregious part is they had all the pieces they needed and instead of putting them together in a sane way they just lit it all on fire. Case in point: the Virtual Boy is largely considered one of Nintendo's few big fuckups, right? But it didn't hurt the N64. It covered the delay and then people moved on. Sega had the 32X sitting RIGHT THERE perfectly ready to fill the same role and be Sega's Virtual Boy but instead of using it that way they plowed through the Saturn launch so they came out right on top of each other and the market shat on both.

>>10780207
People do underestimate how much the Game Boy and DS carried Nintendo through it's leaner days. The Gamecube sold similar numbers to the Xbox but while Microsoft was busy losing $4 billion Nintendo was quietly making bank off the GBA.

>>10776245
Not make a million dollars from Fantasy Zone.

Everything about the Saturn is pretty funny. I know weebs will swear up and down that it wasn't actually a failure, but if you just look at the game output that it had, it looks so pathetic and tone deaf.

>>10780410
This is true even in Japan. If you look at sales charts it had like two or three million sellers and then the individual game sales fall off a cliff. The N64 sold slightly fewer systems but has more than twice as many million sellers in Japan. In totality the Saturn library has a shit ton of games but that's because it turned into a dumping ground for the 1990s Japan version of shovelware: mahjong and horse racing games up the ass along with literal porn. It was kind of like what happened to the Wii library except without the benefit of selling a billion systems.

>>10780080
nip dick sucking retard, kill yourself. America and Europe knew how to market and sell sega systems, soj on the other hand was an endless supply of stupidity and penis envy. kill yourself.

>>10780054
pretty much

>>10780207
Fair point about the portable market keeping them afloat. They usually shit the bed after a huge success so it will be interesting to see what happens if they fuck up with the switch 2.

The problem with the Wii u was never the software, I think the switch proved that. The problem was the stupid hardware, ugly bulky game pad that wasn't portable really anyway (and at that size probably just as well). The Wii u was like a 3 year beta for the switch so it had dozens of titles ready to be ported and the best part was no fucker had them previously anyway because no one bought the Wii u. They won't have the portable safety net or the pool of ready to go software next time.. Hopefully they royally shit the bed again.

>>10780207
Agreed with the sonic analogy - I mean sonic 06 was the saturn in software form really, rush out when it wasn't ready, full of hype and expectation after what had come before it and... It was a mess.

>>10780298
I don't think the advantage comes from rushing to be out first. The advantage comes from your competitors fucking up and delaying. If you release at the scheduled time and your competitors delay, THATS where the advantage comes about. Rushing shit out is never ever gonna win you anything

>>10776303
PSIV wrapped things up nice and neat so they decided to do something completely brand new with the name without harming the world and storyline of the original tetralogy. in the process, PSO ended up being a pretty damn strong influence for persistent online console gaming altogether (not just for RPGs either) in the same way the original PS and PSII were important for single-player JRPGs. that's anything but niche

>>10776794
GTA3 was being developed for DC first, dummy.

>>10776245
>Sony wants to provide their tech and split developing costs to make a new system? that's dumb

>>10782178
Sony was never going to stop there. They wanted the whole pie and
Ken Kutaragi was obsessed with pushing Sony into the gaming market. Even if it meant going behind the backs of his superiors at Sony.

>>10780410
It's a failure, but it's an interesting failure. The company was so at war with itself it bled into their product. I can't think of another system like it.

>>10779174
>Why make Dark Savior instead of just making a new Land Stalker?
I can answer this one. Because after Landstalker the team broke up and took the game in 3 different directions.
Kid Chameleon was SoA's, and I guess SoJ wanted to be at the forefront.

>>10776245
Ever making consoles. Only thing they were good at was arcades

Shelving Eternal Champions in favor of Virtua Fighter.
They could have both existed on the Saturn and beyond.
Hyper violence never goes out of style.

>>10780579
>America and Europe knew how to market and sell sega systems, soj on the other hand was an endless supply of stupidity and penis envy. kill yourself.

So is that why Saturn sold so well in Japan and tanked everywhere else?

>>10783516
SoA and SoE didn't want the Saturn. And they especially didn't want it to come out early without telling any retailers or gamers.

>>10783516
Hard to sell systems when you're banned from stores.

>>10776245
In hindsight, it's much easier to see how important brands/franchises are to consoles. In the mid 90's everyone was trying to make new consoles, new IP and new mascots. It seemed like the way to go, to constantly make new stuff to compete. We now can see, making stuff that's familiar is what sells. The arcade industry needed the new, pac-man, galaga, rampage ect. they didn't really get sequels, but each offers a different style of play. That was 80's though, that business model didn't work. People were buying and owning games because they appreciated the play style so much, that did want more of the same. That's why they spent 50 bucks on it over a few quarters.

Sega doings things like mandating all games be 2D side scroller was stupid. Toejam and earl was a unique game, and they decided it should not be a unique franchise. Phantasy Star should have been the sega RPG. This is >>10776303
not exactly an accurate statement, but it hits close. PSO was fine-ish. I mean that as a brand pivot. We should have gotten a phantasy star 5 on the saturn and likely a 6 as well and kept the brand going as a traditional RPG. It's the constant brand re-invention that hurts people. Everyone knows what mario is, or zelda. Sega should have leaned into their brands diversity and maintained them in their genres. Even now, Sega still struggles with this. That to me, tells me it's their biggest mistake. I look at a game like Castle Crashers and think, why don't we have a Golden Ax game like this? Cause Sega.

>>10776403
Lunar and popful mail

>>10777253
Pushing for the Saturn to release months early and pissing off retailers
Hiring kalinsky his scam caused Sega of America to have a shit ton of Genesis consoles and for them to demand the 32x be a thing
Not translating and sending over more "anime" titles
Sega of America spending 100 million on advertising while the company was circling the drain.

>>10780207
Nintendo survived because they didn't stupidly throw money around on a bunch of bullshit. Sure there's a Virtual Boy and a N64DD but compare to Sega that's nothing.

>>10782384
The Saturn is interesting because it's a technological dead end. While the spirit of the PS1 and N64 continued on in subsequent generations the Saturn stands apart. Especially since any multiplatform game from back then only ever sees the PS1 version rereleased. You'll never see the Saturn Tomb Raider or Resident Evil again. 99% of the Saturn is stuck there.

>>10776303
Universe was dogshit bro and all the people who worked on OG PS are gone

>>10784152
The reason ps1 versions got re-released is probably just laziness. The saturn versions of games were sometimes technically better. Some of the capcom Vs games come to mind. Though ultimately arcade versions were even better. It's an interesting point to bring up, but I think it's probably just what was accessible. Saturn versions of games are worth using for re-releases for sure.

>>10783516
>So is that why Saturn sold so well in Japan and tanked everywhere else?
Virtua Fighter carried the Saturn. It was arcade gaming hype. Not necessarily Saturn hype. The Saturn just happened to benefit from it. As long as the console could run Virtua Fighter, then if was going to sell.

>>10784095
>Sure there's a Virtual Boy and a N64DD but compare to Sega that's nothing.
The irony is the N64DD would have succeeded if all the game studios didn't convinced (bribed) into exclusivity deals with Sony. The magnetic disks that the N64DD uses can potentially store up to 1GB of data. Even more than CD-ROM.

>>10784303
The 64DD was supposed to release in 1996 and didn't until 1999. It was dead on arrival

>>10784516
Nintendo didn't release it earlier because almost all the companies it was intended for decided to side with Sony. So Nintendo switched it to a low priority.

>>10784543
That's not what happened. Right in the middle of development the price of maskROM plummeted making the 64DD redundant. Nintendo probably would have canceled it outright had it not been done. That's why they only released it via mail order. Something similar happened to the FDS which is why everything switched back to carts later on.

>>10784543
If you are correct and the disks could hold as much as a CD then companies wouldn't have dumped Nintendo

>>10784691
Companies dumped Nintendo mainly because Sony offered them much better contract deals to develop for Playstation. They allowed game studios to keep a greater amount of the profit, Sony would cover the marketing budgets for the games, and Sony would possible cover some development costs. A great deal. Sony went all in on trying to crush Sega and Nintendo.

Sega CD 32X

>>10784881
It didn't help that Yamaguchi was a world-class asshole whose hardline tactics continually alienated developers. Both Sega and Sony's success wad because of that prick.

>>10784881
>Sony would cover the marketing budgets for the games, and Sony would possible cover some development costs.
This right here. All those publishers that Nintendo supposedly lost because they didn't use CDs? Those publishers were in the wind regardless because Nintendo couldn't afford to bribe them the way Sony did. Squaresoft was not going to put shit on the N64 no matter what hardware it had when Sony was offering to foot the bill for the at the time an unprecedentedly expensive marketing campaign.

>>10784881
>>10785278
Wow, actually non-brainrot-youtuber-parrot posts on nu-/vr/? I must be dreaming.

>>10784881
they also treated the 3rd parties like shit, mandating how many games they could release a year, copies they could print at a time, the censorship and hording all the good release dates for themselves

>>10778794
>What is the Sega Saturn based on?
>>10778812
>nta but wasn't it pretty much an original design?
iirc, at least vdp2 is derived from the vdp in the sega system 32

>>10784881
So you don't think the decision to continue to use cartridges and less space made any impact at all?

>>10778831
model 1 only supported flat-shaded quads, no texture mapping

>>10783545
>SoE
we don't hear a lot about soe despite its importance w/ the master system & mega drive, what was the deal w/ it during the saturn days?

>>10785323
>model 1 only supported flat-shaded quads, no texture mapping
Is that a deal breaker for you?

Could you tolerate a Sega Neptune based on the Model 1 for 3D graphics, backwards compatible with Genesis games, and $100 dollars cheaper at launch?

Then Sega focuses on making good games for the budget hardware.

>>10785327
Sega of Europe got the Sega Genesis late. 2 to 3 later than everyone else. In some cases, places like India, didn't get the the Genesis until 1994.

Sega Genesis was still considered in the middle of it's lifespan in Europe. At least 1 to 2 years minimum left of life. They did not want the Sega Saturn yet.

That's why Saturn sold poorly. People were still enjoying their Genesis and not ready to upgrade yet.

>>10776798
Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest had MMOs but kept making single player games after, why couldn't Phantasy Star do the same?

>>10778731
>Does anyone have any insight into why Sega was run so poorly?
Was?

>>10785284
>nu/vr/
Stop trying to fit in. The only person new here is (you).

>>10785314
It had its advantages. Remember the N64 launched at $150 which was remarkably cheap for a system that had some serious technical advantages over PS1/Saturn. It had limitations, too, but the tradeoffs made the N64 capable of offerings the competition couldn't easily reproduce and at an affordable price. The games were often more expensive but people typically weren't buying games as frequently as they rented them. And importantly raw storage space isn't THAT relevant most of the time. Redbook audio and FMV are the two big ones. High res textures, too, but the N64's issue there wasn't cart space but the system's texture cache. The 64DD was originally planned to cover storage concerns but that became moot once 32MB and 64MB carts became affordable.

>>10785327
Pretty much what >>10785375. Virgin Mastertronic were originally the distributors till Sega bought them out and established SoE. They did a really good job of getting third party support in Europe. Because of the similarities in the dev environment for the Mega Drive with the Commodore Amgia and Atari ST it was near trivial to port to the Mega Drive without much compromise compared to how complex the SNES was (And that was also hampered by Nintendo's third party developer support in Europe. It was not great unless you were a Nintendo anointed studio like Argonaut or Rare who had the direct line on the fax machine).

The big reason why Sega Europe was not happy with the Saturn is the big game SEGA Europe really got behind was EA's FIFA International Soccer which made Mega Drive sales absolutely accelerate over Europe right just before Christmas in 1993. If you left it late to get a Mega Drive that year, it was near impossible to get one because of that game and it shifted a gargantuan amount of copies in Europe to the point retailers were running out of stock and people had to pre-order copies as soon as they came in. They had so many Mega Drive customers because of FIFA alone that Sega suddenly dumped a new console on them when people were still buying for the Mega Drive edition of FIFA (Which was seen as the best version) when they had lots of software potential.

Sega also had big Europe only hits like Micro Machines which people were still buying well into 1996. And Saturns RRP was astronomically high in Europe at £399.99 in British Pounds because of Sega Japan along with very limited stocks in EU retailers. Generally a lot of really fucking bad decisions when Sega Europe clearly communicated they would have been fine with the Mega Drive. Especially as the first FIFA Soccer on PS1 and Saturn wasn't very good and people didn't feel like it was worth it yet. Just lots of real dumb decision making from Sega Japan that hobbled Europe.

Sponsoring formula 1 race and a driver.

>>10776992
>buuuu

>>10785884
Nintendo of America owned the Seattle Mariners for over 20 years

>>10776245
32x

>>10776432
I was so disappoint when I found out the sega cd version of batman and Robin wasn't a beat em up like the genesis version

>>10785314
>So you don't think the decision to continue to use cartridges and less space made any impact at all?

Think about your words carefully. If CDs were *that* important, then game studios would have left Nintendo for the Sega Saturn which used CDs too. They didn't.

>>10786147
>If CDs were *that* important, then game studios would have left Nintendo for the Sega Saturn which used CDs too. They didn't.
>Ditching nintendo to go and make games for the saturn
>When SEGA was on fire
>When the saturn had shitty and complex architecture and was a pain in the ass to develop games for, not to mention the low number of units sold worldwide
Yeah... But Sony bribed everyone to kill poor Saturn and SEGA... Huh...

>>10786153
>When SEGA was on fire
>not to mention the low number of units sold worldwide
Think back to 1994. Sega Saturn hadn't launched yet. This was still the period when every game studio was still trying to decide which next gen console to produce games for. By your logic, Sega Saturn should have been a big contender since it used CDs. Sega's reputation was also still good in 1994. They still had massive sales from the Sega Genesis, and had a huge market share. Sony hadn't launched the Playstation yet. It was still Nintendo VS Sega.

But most game studios like Squaresoft chose to stay with Nintendo despite the cartridges limiting them. They still chose Nintendo 64 over Sega Saturn despite Saturn using CDs.

Ask yourself why.

>>10776303
One of the worst opinions I've ever read on this board

>>10776505

>>10778940
>with constant, small bad decisions just piling up
Literally every piece of hardware they released between the Genesis and the Dreamcast was a BIG bad decision.

>>10779546
>the sega cd was a fine decision
A console add-on that requires you to already own another console and then only had games that were entirely inferior to those available on said console definitely qualifies as a "bad decision". The CD and the 32x were the exact same kind of bad idea. Almost everyone I knew had a Genesis/Mega Drive. Of those same people, nobody had nor even wanted a CD or 32x.

>>10786147
Except, they did. For Sega and Playstation. Taito, Hudsonsoft, Capcom. There's tons of smaller developers that went to Saturn. Many eventually returned and developed for the N64, but this was after the Saturn's struggles. Like, the first Madden game released on the n64 was 99. Even still, they didn't port saturn games to the n64, they had to develop games within the capabilities of the n64.
>>10786184
>But most game studios like Squaresoft chose to stay with Nintendo despite the cartridges limiting them. They still chose Nintendo 64 over Sega Saturn despite Saturn using CDs.
Except.... they didn't. Name one Squaresoft game released on the N64.

>>10786291
The PC-Engine CD was very successful in Japan so if you're Sega in 1991 looking at the landscape it wasn't unprecedented. The issue with the Sega CD is that as the generation moved forward the limitations of the Genesis's base color palette held it back. Unfortunately there was no convenient way for the Sega CD to add a better VDP. It meant that in screenshots, which is how most people got their news back then, Sega CD games didn't look that much better than ordinary Genesis ones. And often even looked worse than SNES games. But even then, it wasn't a horrific failure. The Sega CD sold something like 2 million units. That's 1 for every 16 Genesis consoles. Not great but not a complete shitshow.

>>10776303
PSO is more of the thing where Sega tries to be first to market with something half baked

>>10786318
>Except.... they didn't. Name one Squaresoft game released on the N64.
The point he's making is that there were CD consoles aplenty during the SNES's lifespan. If Squaresoft so desperately wanted CDs there was the Sega CD or 3DO or the Saturn. Clearly they didn't care THAT much. Which is why their jump to Sony had more to do with what Sony did on their behalf rather than what the PS1's architecture was. In a hypothetical world where the N64 did use CDs they still would have jumped ship because Sony paid them to. When you boot up FFVII the first thing you see after the PS boot logo is "Sony Computer Entertainment America Presents" even before Squaresoft's own logo. Sony co-published it.

>>10786378
It also wasn't the last time they did that. FFVIII was published by "Square Electronic Arts LLC" They just kept following the money, sucking rich cocks whenever they could.

>>10786318
>Except.... they didn't. Name one Squaresoft game released on the N64.
You aren't following the conversation at all.

-Anon #1 said game studios left Nintendo 64 because they wanted CDs.

-Anon #2 said they left Nintendo because Sony bribed everyone with great exclusive contracts.

-Anon #1 disagreed and said CDs limited game studios.

-Anon #3 said that if CDs were important, then game studios would have jumped to the Sega Saturn which used CDs in 1994. They didn't. Game studios stayed with Nintendo 64 until Sony bribed them all away. The biggest one being Squaresoft.

-Anon #1 said Sega's reputation was terrible and Sega Saturn sold poorly

-Anon #3 said Sega's reputation was still solid in 1994, and the Sega Saturn had not released yet.

<YOU ARE HERE >

>>10786291
The reason the Sega CD sold poorly was because it was simply too expensive. It was the cost of a full Sega Genesis at $299. The Sega CD needed to be 100 dollars cheaper at least.

>>10786378
>If Squaresoft so desperately wanted CDs there was the Sega CD or 3DO or the Saturn. Clearly they didn't care THAT much.
Why the FUCK would they jump ship to absolute garbage platforms like the Sega CD, 3DO, or Saturn just to say "LOOK, we're using COMPACT DISCS!!!!" The SNES was more than capable of handling the kind of games they made, and was also the most successful system with the largest user base. They stuck with it until the scenario changed, and the N64 proved incapable of what they planned once they started development of FFVII. The playstation was an up and coming system, and while the money incentive might have helped, it was also just better business.

Jesus fucking christ, I'm no business major, but some of you faggots are braindead. Imagine Squaresoft jumping from one of the most successful and popular consoles of the era to the fucking 3DO just for the sake of using CDs. Imagine actually suggesting that with a straight fucking face. Fucking idiot.

>>10786378
Why would they go to the 3do or segaCD

>>10786416
Because if the prevailing wisdom holds true, that Squaresoft desperately wanted CDs, they could have had them without waiting for the PS1.

>>10786410
That's not how the argument tends to go. It's always some bullshit like "if Nintendo only used CDs..." but clearly that wouldn't have retained Squaresoft.

I'M not the one making the argument that Squaresoft should have jumped to the 3DO. I'm taking the prevailing wisdom to it's logical conclusion that if everything people say is true about Squaresoft then it means they would have made games for the 3DO or Sega CD. Konami and Capcom both hopped around like that. Several third parties dabbled with CDs while also making SNES games. Clearly Squaresoft NOT doing that means that what people tend say about how it all went down are very wrong.

>>10786410
>Why the FUCK would they jump ship to absolute garbage platforms like the Sega CD, 3DO, or Saturn
In 1993, Sega wasnt considered a garbage company. They were bigger than Nintendo in some parts of he world.

>N64 proved incapable of what they planned
Squaresoft originally were going to use the N64DD with the magnetic disks. Mag Disks which can theoretically go up to 1GB of space.
But then Sony brute forced their way in and used money to buy out game developers from Nintendo.


>Imagine Squaresoft jumping from one of the most successful and popular consoles of the era to the fucking 3DO
You are shifting the goalposts. Your original argument was that Squaresoft left because they wanted to use CDs.

The reality is somewhere in the middle. Squaresoft DID probably "want CDs" but it was a pressing issue at the time. The idea that they asked Nintendo to consider it is probably true. But if you're Nintendo in 1994 when the N64 would be in principle engineering, you'd have no reason to listen to them. CD consoles were often not doing gangbusters. The 3DO was languishing. Some others like the CD-I were barely a thing. Even others like the PC-FX were unmitigated disasters. So jumping on the CD bandwagon wasn't a slam dunk decision. Then you have one of your many third parties telling you they want CDs but at the time Squaresoft was doing well but not breaking records. None of their games were selling Street Fighter II numbers. Hell, Nintendo's own games were outselling Square's at the time. Anyone acting as if this was oh so clear completely misunderstands what was going on at the time.

>>10786464
*wasn't a pressing issue

SEGA of America is to blame for the company's downfall. This was made clear in a recent expose by a SEGA of Japan executive, who commented on Tom Kalinske and the real issues plaguing the American division at the time. Bascially, Sega of America made very little money, even during the peak years of the Mega Drive. This was due to the ridiculous deals they had made with American big-box retailers, and the large amounts of unsold stock they were forced to buy back. Sega of America was operating on a gamble basically, and it did not pay off in the end.

>>10786432
Except both the 3do and Sega CD didn't have the install base to justify leaving Nintendo. These 3rd party games didn't leave Nintendo until Nintendo shit the bed and we unable to provide the same space and cheapness as sony could

>>10786575
Konami made games on the Sega CD. Did they have to "leave Nintendo" to do it?

>>10786367
Whatever money they made didn't make up for the customer resentment they fostered. Both sides were pissed off, Genesis owners were mad that a Sonic game was locked behind a 300 dollar add-on, and Sega CD owners were mad that all the best games were still coming out on cartridge. It was the beginning of consumer distrust in the brand. They never should have released it.

>>10786479
Lmao. Do more research.

>>10786479
>This was due to the ridiculous deals they had made with American big-box retailers, and the large amounts of unsold stock they were forced to buy back.

Nope.

You, Japanese Executives, and whatever YouTuber you watched don't understand how the American retail industry works. The laws are different in America compared to Japan.

In America, there is no "unsold stock". You are required in the USA to have a certain amount of stock held in reserve as part of your contract to sell in retail stores. This reserve stock is held back incase there's a surge in demand. So Retail stores won't have shelves sitting empty while waiting for more product to be shipped. Shelves must always be full. This applies to all consumer goods. Electronics, clothing, personal care products like shampoo, toilet paper, etc. Somewhere in the USA, there is a warehouse holding reserve stock.

>>10786605
Allow me to clarify something my first point was about the situation in 1996 not 1991. Sony by that time had a platform that was cheaper to make for, no asinine contracts and helped some companies out with marketing. When Nintendo failed to produce something similar they left. Sony never had to brute force anything

>>10786652
Companies do that all the time through. Especially when they are looking for a new buyer or looking to enter the stock market

>>10786652
>This reserve stock is held back incase there's a surge in demand.
Yes. This is absolutely true. Although sometimes the surge in demand is greater than reserve stock. We saw during 2020 when masks, hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper flew off the shelves. Reserve stock is not enough.

I mentioned this in another thread already, but their strategy with not building Saturn as a 3D system first still baffles me

They were pioneers of 3D in the arcade so they had the leg up in both hardware and software
Everyone in the industry, even Nintendo, were starting to experiment with the tech and it had been a pipe dream for years so its not like it came out of nowhere
Sony were so impressed with Virtua Fighter they decided then and there to focus on 3D for the Playstation

I get hindsight is 20/20 so there probably was some good reason at the time why they started building it as a 2D system at first before pivoting at the last minute, but I think it really bit them in the ass. Adding an extra CPU onto the hardware made it significantly more expensive and made it harder to program for; This veered off customers and third party devs which further compounded the issues Sega had with their botched US launch.

>>10785285
>mandating how many games they could release a year
There were tons of shovelware from one company so already wrong
>copies they could print at a time
Wrong again, devs themselves chosehow many copies they could print to avoid losing money and having tons of unsold stock
>the censorship
Like?
>and hording all the good release dates for themselves
Again, any proof?

>>10784095
Need to disagree strongly, N64DD i won't blame them because Sony just "convinced" (bribed) almost every game developers they planned to release games on it like others anons said on this thread but Gamecube even with some impressive titles like Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4 (exclusive for a while), and Zelda Twilight Princess still was a failure of console, Wii had its interesting gimmicks but to me it lacked a TITLE to associate a game famous even nowadays to it like people associate PS3 with Bloodborne and Wii U was really a Switch prototype, the natural evolution of Gameboy/Dual System to mix both their almost monopolized market of portable games (before the mobile gacha infection at least) and their GC/Wii/WiiU franchises on a single place making probably their most successful console yet (until Switch 2 comes out).
While not breeding money like Sega for 4 generations in a row Nintendo wasn't the best on the front between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, but on the portable games market they dominated alone with Pokémon and a few international hits like Megaman Battlenetwork, Animal Crossing, their Metroidvanias following up SotN, the Ace Attorney series, some spin-offs of their own franchises like the Mario&Luigi games/the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon up to Super and some ports of Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy people could play anywhere.

>>10786843
Everyone could see the writing on the wall except Sega of Japan. Or more specifically certain Japanese Executives within the company.

I think a lot of stems from the Japanese Executives "insecurities" about the Mega Drive failing miserably in Japan. And not just the Mega Drive... but the Sega Master System...Sega SG-1000, SG-1000 Mark 2, and SG-1000 Mark 3 were all failures in Japan. That's 5 failed attempts (depending on how you count) to break into the Japanese market.

To put it in romance anime terms:

It's like a Highschool girl (Sega) keeps trying to ask out the Chad of their class (Japan) to go out, but keeps getting rejected. Chad Japan instead goes out with another Stacy (Nintendo). Meanwhile another classmate (America) thinks Sega is hot and asks her out. Sega accepts, but deep down Sega isn't over Chad (Japan) yet.

SEGA be like:

"WHY WONT Japan accept me?? I keep getting rejected. America and Europe love me, but I think they are ugly! I want Japan! He's hot. I don't care how many gifts America gets me! I love Japan the most!! "

---------

I know it sounds weird, but a lot of Japanese executives were still bitter and emotional at their failures. Other overseas branches of the Sega company were doing way better than the home office. Sega of Japan wanted THEIR opportunity to get a successful 2D console in Japan. That's why Japan Execs were stubbornly pushing 2D for the Saturn. It was a half emotional response. That's just how they are.

Meanwhile everyone is telling Sega of Japan that the age of 2D is over. Even Sega of Japan's own "arcade division" was telling them that 3D was the future. I guess the "Arcade Division" would be Sega's girl classmate and best friend.

Sorry. My mind is on anime at the moment while reading about the downfall of Sega and Sega of Japan's weird behavior. But you get the Idea.

>>10786904
Where does this bribe meme came from? If they did bribe them then 3rd parties wouldn't have scattered everywhere during the PS3 era and beyond

>>10786736
And that's where I have to disagree because, again, Sony co-published FFVII. They paid for the marketing. That's not just two different consoles and Squaresoft picking which one they like better. In a different universe where the N64 used CDs they were going to jump ship anyway because there was no way Nintendo could afford that kind of scratch.

TL;DR - it didn't matter what the N64 was. Sony was always going to buy Squaresoft. They effectively became a Sony second party in all but name.

>>10786652
>>10786775
This is why in situations where a console is in high demand you get weird trickles. When the N64 and Wii were impossible to find you'd hear about a store getting something like 10 units at a time at random intervals. That's not Nintendo producing new units and sending them out as fast as possible. It's them rationing their warehouse stock so they can keep stores happy enough until demand and production equalizes.

>>10786843
The Saturn was always built to do 3D. It just wasn't able to do it as well as they realized they'd need to in order to be competitive.

>>10786605
>Hiroshi Kawai: What I heard was Nintendo said, "If you're leaving us, never come back."
Nintendo was so offended over Square's deal with Sony that they told Square to fuck off. It was an "us or them" ultimatum and Square had no choice but to go with Sony because their kind of games weren't suited to cartridges anymore.

>>10787004
Considering Sony was co-publishing Square's games what was Nintendo going to do? Let it's direct competitor make money on their platform? It's reductive to think about this like interpersonal bickering. These were all business decisions.

>>10787004
That's just Public relations cope so Squaresoft doesn't too look greedy for money, and being bought out by Sony

>Squaresoft: They told us to fuck off. Oh no. I guess we have but jump on Sony's and offer a lapdance. We have no choice!

No Squaresoft. It was because Sony offered you hundreds of millions of dollars, and bought a 20% stake in your company.

>>10787015
>and bought a 20% stake in your company.
That was after Square blew all their money on Spirits Within, also if Nintendo wanted to make amends aka make the GC sell, they would've bought some stocks in it as well

>>10776342
Donkey Kong Country was made as a fuck you to Aladdin and to spawnkill the 32x. Maybe it wouldn't have had the same impact if it lacked the "why buy another system when the SNES is doing better graphics than what they've shown for it" discourse

>>10786940
Is FFVII the only example you can provide?

>>10787050

>>10787050
Resident Evil 2 and 3, Tomb Raider 2 and 3, Mega Man X 5 and 6, everything Squaresoft from the get-go. Don't be dense, this is all publicly available history

>>10787050
Do you have any idea how big FF7 was? It was massive.

>>10787015
Nintendo routinely told publishers that it was their way or the highway. This one just bit them in the ass way harder than the others.

>>10786940
Square did look at the Saturn and there was an attempt by Sega to negotiate ff7 onto the saturn, but by the time Sega was talkingto square, Sony beat them to it and had already promised square significant residuals. Had the saturn been a stronger console, its possible FF8 may have been released on it, but it was already dead by that release.

>>10776365
Yea that was retarded. Nights and sonic r should have scrapped and combined into sonic x.

>>10786441
>"if Nintendo only used CDs..." but clearly that wouldn't have retained Squaresoft.
Who's to say?

>>10786458
>Your original argument was that Squaresoft left because they wanted to use CDs.
Yes. They wanted to use CDs... in 1996. They didn't give a fuck about medium in the years prior because cartriges were still king, and the SNES had a huge user base. And to infer that ,if they did give a fuck about CDs, they would have jumped ship to fucking 3DO or Sega CD is the most retarded shit I've ever heard. Good business comes first, and jumping FROM Nintendo to the 3DO/Sega CD in the early '90s would have been an absolute bonehead move. But jumping from Nintendo to PS1 in 1996 was an entirely different prospect. The Playstation was selling phenomenally and had much more potential in both Japan and America than any other system. Square likely would have chosen to go with Sony regardless of any other incentives. It was simply the best move for FFVII and their company.
>Mag Disks which can theoretically go up to 1GB of space.
Not sure where you read that. Everything I can find says it only supported up to 64MB. But even so, the DD never really became a thing, did it? Square didn't want to hedge its bets on a piece of add-on hardware when it could have just gone to Sony and been guaranteed a format that could handle what they wanted without forcing the userbase to buy some shitty add-on in order to play their game. A shitty add-on that didn't even launch worldwide.

>>10786432
>Because if the prevailing wisdom holds true, that Squaresoft desperately wanted CDs
They desperately wanted CDs in 1996 when they found out N64 was going to be cartridge. It wasn't just some arbitrary desire they had.

>>10788236
The N64 was not first announced in 1996.

>>10788235
>1996
Game studios knew in advance about which next-gen consoles were using CDs, and which were using cartridges. They knew as early as 1993.

>>10788235
>The Playstation was selling phenomenally and had much more potential in both Japan and America than any other system.

No. Not immediately. It took 2 years for the PS1 to get its own massive hit game that could push console sales. 1995 to 1996 were slow sales years for Sony Playstation in the USA and Europe.

PS1 did not sell like crazy until 1997 when Final Fantasy VII came out. So many people in this thread have no clue how big FFVII was for Playstation. It was a massive crazy success. In the months after FFVII was released, no other console in history sold so much at that volume in such a short time period. Hoardes of people were buying PS1 just for FFVII.

So in short, PS1 was not the slam dunk you think it was until 1997. A full 2 years after its launch.

>>10788601
On top of that, wasn't Secret of Mana planned to be on the SNES CD back in 1993 and Squaresoft had to switch it to cartridge once that deal fell through? I remember reading that Squaresoft was all-in on the SNES CD and they were pretty pissed off when suddenly they had to convert everything to the base SNES. That might be where the whole "we want CDs!" originated from. Literally "we had planned for this and now you're changing shit on us."

Again, I'm not making the argument that Squaresoft would have gone to the 3DO. But rather pointing out that they would have if OTHER people's arguments were true. It's a gross oversimplification when people say "Square wanted CDs and went to PS1 because it used CDs."

>>10788798

Diff anon here.

Squaresoft's absolute number #1 priority was to follow the money and to make money. That's why they stayed with Nintendo for so long.

Sure they wanted more storage space, but storage limits was an annoyance they could live with....as long as they could make money.

Sony just came along at the right time. They offered Squaresoft more storage AND (more importantly) LOTS of money. Without the money part, Square would have never left Nintendo.


>It's a gross oversimplification when people say "Square wanted CDs and went to PS1 because it used CDs."

100% Correct.

>>10788853
Right. That's why I think that even if the N64 were a CD system they still would have lost Squaresoft. They actually made the right call because if you're going to lose them anyway why listen to them?

>>10788862
Same thing with N64DD. If all game studios that wanted the N64DD left, then why bother developing and marketing it? No point and would be a waste of money.

Nintendo was right about CDs. The load times were unacceptable in 1994. There's no way an open world game like Mario 64 could work. The game would be stopping to load for 1 to 2 minutes everytime Mario opened a door, or walked too far.

>>10779045
I wouldn't call 13.5 million consoles sold a "solid install base". It's only about 50% more than the Saturn, and only margnally better in terms of market share for their respective console generations (about 6% for Saturn and 7% for Wii U)

>>10788898
They probably wouldn't have even started working on the 64DD had they known that maskROM prices would plummet soon after. They came up with the idea to cover all their bases since at the time they expected carts to be limited to 8MB or maybe 16MB. A 64MB option for games that really needed more space was a nice compromise. 64MB is actually plenty for games of that generation unless you're doing FMV and redbook audio. Once larger carts became economically viable it rendered the 64DD obsolete as it was being made. They probably should have just canceled it outright but I guess they felt like they should at least recoup what they could.

No, the real mistake Nintendo made was the pitiful 4kb texture cache. There were a lot of corners cut in the design. Unified 4MB RDRAM instead of dedicated VRAM, no sound CPU, etc. But all that stuff made sense given the impressive CPU and GPU they wanted to use. Spend the money on those two chips and then judiciously keep production costs low surrounding it. But they seemed to have expected most games to look like Mario 64 so when a lot of games started making ample use of high res textures the N64 was ass fucked, it's only saving grace was the fact that CRTs tended to cover up a lot of the issues and some of the better developers got around it with clever use of the cartridge itself.

>>10788987
I suppose "stable" is a better phrase. It was a massive disappointment compared to the Wii but it wasn't totally in the toilet, either. It put Nintendo in a weird position because it sold too well to shitcan it like they did the Virtual Boy but not well enough that it had a future. They're solution was surprisingly elegant. Replace it with something better and slowly port most of the library, gradually obsoleting it. The anon who said Nintendo is very good at pivoting is 100% right. Every mistake they've made either turned into a make lemonade situation or was rendered moot by a very rapid transition to the next thing.

>>10789006
>No, the real mistake Nintendo made was the pitiful 4kb texture cache. There were a lot of corners cut in the design.

You have to look at it from a business perspective. Unlike Sega, Nintendo doesn't sell their consoles or accessories at a loss. Every item or unit sold must make a profit for Nintendo. Even if it's a tiny profit. That's Nintendo's philosophy. In order to do that, they either need to cut back on some part of the console, or use hardware that is a few steps down from the most powerful. Then just focus on the games. In the long run its benefitted Nintendo and kept them alive against hardware juggernauts like Sony and Microsoft. Meanwhile Sega, Atari, etc...are dead and buried.

>>10789113
Right but all the problems people point out about the N64, blurry textures and shit? That's not because of the cartridge. It's because of the texture cache. And it wasn't a super expensive thing, either. It was just that they didn't expect games to become so texture heavy.

>>10789152
I think Nintendo just wanted to cut costs. They were super penny pinches. There are video interviews where Designers and Engineers talk about the development of the Nintendo 64. And they Nintendo was breathing down their necks about keeping the cost down and arguing about every little detail. Even arguing about how many screws the case should use, how long the screws needed to be, if they could make them shorter, could they make the case use thinner plastic, etc. Pretty wild hearing how cheap Nintendo was acting. Designers had to push back several times.

If it were Sega making the Nintendo 64 (or Sega 64, they would be drunk and use too many screws, use 5 CPUs, throw in 4 attachments to the console and 3 different power adapters. And it would be sold for a big loss.

>>10789157
They weren't exactly acting cheap. At least not in the same way, for example, Atari was when it came to the Jaguar. The N64 had a pretty expensive CPU and GPU combo for the time and for good reason. If you look at the PCB it's pretty funny how the system is pretty much those two chips and some RAM. It enabled them to sell the N64 at a profit but also waaaay undercutting the PS1 and Saturn launch prices. They probably could have doubled or even quadrupled the texture cache though without affecting costs too much. Though maybe not at the time they were designing it. Memory prices in 1994 when it was being engineered were way higher than they'd be just a couple years later. That said, I think if they had known what games would eventually look like and benefit from they might have come up with a more elegant alternative.

>>10788906
Bullshit, PSX could move games like Soul Reaver, that had far larger levels than SM64s matchbox levels.

>>10789264
Soul Reaver bottlenecks you in clever ways. You don't get the same sprawling landscapes and certainly not with zero loading in between areas. It takes 10 seconds to switch areas in Spyro. Mario 64 kicks you out after getting a star and you can jump right back in with almost no delay. That'd be impossible on PS1.

>>10788235
>Yes. They wanted to use CDs... in 1996.
Do you really not understand the gap in development time from 2D to 3D? Capcom jumped to CDs very quickly, but was for 2D games. Studios that originally did 2D and wanted to go to 3D needed more time to figure that medium out. The turn around time for these initial 3D games was a longer. Theres many CD based Jaguar and 3DO games that got saturn and playstaion releases. Had 3DO lasted longer, it would have gotten more, saturn as well. What you couldn't do is release them on the n64.

The 3DO really just became the PS1. The way the Switch inherited all the Wii U ports to replace it? That exact same thing happened in the early longbox days of the PS1. Anything on the 3DO worth a damn just slid over.

walks up to the microphone

"299"

leaves

>>10787529
That would have drastically changed history if Sega got FF7 instead of Sony. It wouldn't have helped Sega much, but definitely would have hurt Sony and Square.

>>10789912
I think Square probably didn't go with Sega because Sega had other competiting rpgs on their console and Square didn't want to be just one of many different rpgs.

>>10789912
The marketing and brand push from FF7 was a lot of sony's doing. So without it, FF7 on Saturn alone wouldn't have been much. However, with it and suppose even saturn getting FF7 as well as sony, could have breathed life into the saturn.

>>10789941
FF7 would have been a huge hit on the Saturn. But Sega wouldn't be able to spend money marketing like Sony. So what would happen would be them relying on good reviews in magazines and word of mouth. Then sales would gradually pick up over time until it becomes a smash hit.

>>10789958
Without Sony's perfect marketing campaign it would have just been another "hidden gem".

>>10776245
sega was founded by a group of american jews

>>10789958
if Sega nabbed a previous Nintendo exclusive as a Saturn exclusive, they would have advertised it. The issue is, the sony marketing campaign was really smart. It hyped FF7 like a movie. Sony, made movies. Sega didn't. It was an arena and area that worked well to strike gamers at. The idea this game was better than a movie. It sold games.

FFVII also wasn't solely responsible for the PS1 taking off. It was on a rather meteoric rise already with games like Crash Bandicoot and the market's naturally expansion anyway. Even non-exclusives like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil were doing more for the PS1 than the Saturn. So FFVII was able to cash in on that while also adding more fuel. It wouldn't have had the same effect on the Saturn even if Sega could have afforded the marketing campaign (it couldn't).

>>10789958
FF7 is kinda weird to call history wise because after Square announced they were dropping Nintendo over cartridges. They initially were talking to International publishers over Final Fantasy VII and in particular saw interest from Electronic Arts and Eidos who were very keen on a partnership with Square and had envisioned FFVII as a multiplatform release across PC and console. Sony were the ones who wanted to sign a gargantuan deal with Squaresoft for the game and the movie rights. Square went with the offer with the most money. Sega probably got in on the conversation but Square's mind was made up. Square must have liked EA though since they chose them to co-publish their games in the US post FF7
>>10790687
1997 was the pivotal year for Sony because they were firing on all cylinders with first party and big third party exclusives like FF7. But it was the year when third party multiplats really became essential on the platform like FIFA Road To The World Cup in late 1997 which just shot sales through the roof in Europe.

>>10776245
>what is the single dumbest thing they've ever done? Of all the monumentally stupid decisions, which is the one that takes the cake?

Hiring a retard like Bernie Stolar.

>>10776365
I swear Nights was meant to be a Sonic game at it's inception but Sega had no idea how to implement it in 3d and decided not to ruin the franchise with what they cooked up.

>>10790843
Nights itself is a weird game. It's unusually arcadey, what with the core premise being you racing against a clock. It feels like a quarter muncher, which wasn't exactly the kind of game console junkies were looking for. Yeah, it has nice visuals and the flying mechanics are fun but it didn't feel very meaty. It'd be like launching a new console with Gauntlet as your flagship game. Just a very odd choice.

All Sega needed to do was release nothing between Sega Genesis and Sega Saturn.

Then just build up hype and excitement for the next generation of games. Sonic on the Saturn. Streets of Rage on Saturn. Etc. Get gamers hyped.


But of course Sega screws up something so simple.

>>10786843
That's a myth ,saturn was always designed to be 3d system

>>10791989
I don't understand why this is even a thing people believe. The Saturn always had the dual VDPs and one SH-2. The only thing they changed was adding the second SH-2 because they realized the system was underpowered compared to the PS1. The second CPU did IMPROVE the Saturn's 3D but only to the extent that the extra horsepower allowed it to push more polygons.

>>10792024
>I don't understand why this is even a thing people believe.
Because we have actual interviews that confirm it. Sega staff were split between making Saturn a 2D or 3D machine.

>>10792047
But the architecture didn't change other than adding a second SH-2. Regardless of what they were thinking about doing, what the actually produced from the start was obviously 3D capable. It would have been worse at it but not incapable of it. The 3DO can do 3D.

>>10792061
>3D capable
...is not the same as 3D focused. And not the same as prioritizing 3D above all else like N64 and PS1.

Saturn makes game developers do much more work to achieve the same 3D results on other consoles.

>>10792061
>3D capable
...is not the same as 3D focused. And not the same as prioritizing 3D above all else like N64 and PS1.

Saturn can do 3D. But it makes game developers do much more work to achieve the same 3D results as other consoles.

>>10792061
Also, I think a lot of 3D games on Saturn only used one CPU, especially ports from PS1. That actually hurt the Saturn's reputation because a lot of the time they were leaving the second CPU idle, essentially leaving horsepower on the table in exchange for simplicity.

>>10792081
That's semantics though, isn't it? And most people misunderstand the conversation. They think the Saturn couldn't do 3D at all and then Sega used tape and bubblegum to add the functionality afterwards. But that's not what happened. The reality is that the Saturn was always able to do 3D and was intended to handle 3D games as well as 2D ones. But they realized they needed to be able to push more polygons so they added another CPU. That's a very different scenario than the popularly conveyed one.

>>10778731
>what is the Virtual Boy
>what is the PS3
>what is the Vita
>what is the Wii U

>>10778731
It's all relative. SEGA still did pretty outstanding compared to Atari, NEC, SNK, The 3DO Company, Bandai, Commodore. People need to remember SEGA doesn't only do consoles, they are also an arcade company. That is kind of literally the reason they stopped making consoles in the first place. The 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast can all be tied back to SEGA's arcade roots. They were all basically an attempt to bring that experience to home consoles. Once they saw that people didn't want that, they decided it would be safer to just go third-party like Namco, Capcom, and Konami.

Another thing I want to point out is a lot of Sony's success can be attributed to third parties like Square and Konami. A good majority of the "best" PlayStation games came from third parties to begin with.

>>10792086
>That's semantics though, isn't it?
No because from a developer perspective, if I have to work harder to make games for the Saturn than I do for Playstation or N64, then I'm not going to bother. Especially when Saturn had such low sales numbers. It's like driving an older classic car without the power steering feature. You physically have to work harder to turn the wheel and achieve the same results as cars with power steering installed.

>>10792087
>what is the Virtual Boy
A minor speed bump that didn't really cost Nintendo too much

>what is the PS3
Not as good as PS2 but gained sales later in its life.

>what is the Vita
Sony's attempt to fight the Nintendo DS

>what is the Wii U
A prototype Nintendo Switch that sold 14 million.

>>10792167
Why are you saying they "have to work harder" to do 3D? The Saturn had a lot of complexities but it wasn't magically easier to do 2D on it, either. You still had to deal with the same architecture. The issue wasn't that it was harder to do 3D on Saturn. You could do 3D on it using just one SH-2 as some games did. It just wouldn't be as capable if you did that, which is exactly what happened a lot of the time.

>>10792183
You know exactly what I'm saying. If you compare developing 3D games for the PS1 VS Sega Saturn...then it requires less effort and less steps involved to make PS1 3D games. Sega Satusna requires more from developers to achieve similar results.

Plus programming games using dual CPUs was not common back then. Yu Suzuki commented on this when making games for the Sega Saturn. In short, he said Saturn will require more from developers and not every developer will be up for the task, or want to do it.

The PS1 also had better development kits and Sony took feedback from developers seriously. Meanwhile Sega initially gave third party studios rather primitive development kits in comparison, and expected many third party game studios to "just figure it out" when it came to making games.

>>10792174
They were still fuck ups. The difference was sony and nintendo had games and money and brains to make up for mistakes.

SEGA was founded by a jew. Just thought that that might be interesting to you all.

>>10792674
The same jews who rape your children in underground tunnels and create economic problems with made up Monopoly money. The very same type of person made SEGA.

I just thought that might be interesting.

>>10791838
blame nakayama for shitting himself over the jaguar and other proto 32bit trash kek. also shitting on your jap employees so badly they went full bonzai mode and began spiting their western counterparts. I still think the sega cd was a good idea, just more development and they could've rode it until the saturn was good to go.

>>10786915
be a little less gay, but at least you are an impartial weeb. nothing worse than a nip loving gaijin.

>>10792697
>nothing worse than a nip loving gaijin.
An Israel loving kike.

>>10780207
>sending a procure and cease to the Streets of Rage fangame game instead of just doing like Sonic Mania and hiring them to make a new game which would sell like water easily
Weren't these two decisions made around a decade apart from each other.
Also the Sonic Mania devs had already worked with Sega on other Sonic projects beforehand, which is was a big part behind Mania getting pitched in the first place.

>>10792207
>If you compare developing 3D games for the PS1 VS Sega Saturn...then it requires less effort and less steps involved to make PS1 3D games. Sega Satusna requires more from developers to achieve similar results.
I don't think that's true. At least not the way you're phrasing it. The PS1 and Saturn are incredibly different. A game made for one will be hard to port to the other. That's why every port, regardless of which machine it started on, tended to blow ass. The Saturn did have more "moving parts" because of the dual CPUs and GPUs but that applies to 2D games as well. If we're going to say making 3D games was harder on Saturn then so was making 2D games. It's also worth pointing out that the Saturn was sometimes better than the PS1 at doing certain things in 3D games. For example, the textures in Tomb Raider are way less wobbly on Saturn. What it sounds like you're saying is that the PS1 was just all around better at 3D, which is true in that it could push more polys.

>>10777627
>The Sega CD made sense because Sega had just seen NEC do brisk business with the CD-ROM2 add-on.
A CD add-on made sense *for NEC*, because they didn't need to put 70% of an entire second console inside it. They could just overcharge for a glorified CD-ROM, some extra RAM, and a connection bridge.
Sega couldn't do that, due to the Genesis's inherent architectural handicaps. They had a choice to either not make a CD add-on at all, or make an overdesigned one, which would run code autonomously from the base console. Choosing the latter meant that their device would suffer from a combo of high price (for prospective clients) and high manufacturing cost (meaning slim profit margin). However going with the former option felt to them like losing the tech (and publicity) race.
Looking back with Hindsight-O-Vision, it's pretty obvious they should've shitcanned the idea from the beginning, and concentrated on passthrough cartridge technology instead.

>>10780298
>It had several false starts because the 16 bit consoles were punching way above their weight class.
Just as importantly, the earliest 32-bit consoles were either blood-pissingly expensive, poorly designed, or both. It took a while until production processes became streamlined enough to spit cheap 32-bit parts out of the assembly line.

>>10776245
Sega CD to 32x to Saturn to Dreamcast in too short of a time. Even I could see they were squeezing all they could out of everyone they had because they thought the Genesis was so successful because it was the first 16bit console on the block; and so they tried to be the first CD console, 32bit, etc.

>>10777627
Nintendo did a lot of this as well with things like the Sharp SF-1 or the Twin Famicom. Mario also had three cartoons from the same studio. A lot of this isn't totally unheard of with 90's electronics marketing. I mean look at the Game Boy Camera or Game Boy Printer, totally unnecessary but they made them anyway. You also had really obscure add-ons from them like the BS Satellaview and 64DD, which for all intents and purposes was like a crappier SEGA CD or FDS for your N64.

SEGA's biggest offense is maybe the 32X, and even it's easy to sweep under the rug when you consider how many other successful consoles they had back then. I think they just didn't want to keep pushing arcade-focus consoles in a market that was looking for something else by 2001.

Releasing a sequel to NiGHTs (a game that's built on fluid, aerial movement) exclusively on a console that has HEXAGONAL stick rotation.

It's obviously not their biggest fuck up but it's the one that sticks in my craw the most

>>10792956
Hindsight is one of those things that's so baked into our perspective but necessary to remove in order to answer questions like this thread.

It just goes to show that you never know what's going to work or not. The CD format had a rocky as shit start in the video game market and for all anyone knew at the time could have been a fad appealing to rich yuppies, which is exactly what those early CD consoles like the CD-I were doing. Then the PS1 showed up and a lot of things just fell into place. Meanwhile the Wii did gangbusters with it's motion controls but the minute Sony and Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon it proved to be an actual fad and rapidly cooled off. Now Nintendo barely even acknowledges motion controls in the Switch.

It's hard to blame Sega OR Nintendo for the decisions they made about CDs at the time. Both were making calls that were defensible based on the information available.

Sega was in a tougher position though. While Nintendo was dominating they had the luxury of staying the course and coasting on a business strategy that was working for them. Meanwhile for Sega the SG-1000 was a non-starter. The Mark III/Master System saw some meager success but was hamstrung by Nintendo's anti-competitive practices. So Sega was in a position where it kept having to look for an angle. The Game Gear ate batteries like crazy but releasing a miniature Master System in full color to compete with the Game Boy was arguably the rational move when you kept getting your ass slapped down by the bigger fish. The Sega CD was another example of that. Yes, it was expensive but it was the only avenue Sega had available since expensive stuff was the only thing Nintendo didn't seem to have an interest in. So if you see this one area where you have some runway you're probably going to try to take advantage of it.

>>10793778
>The CD format had a rocky as shit start in the video game market and for all anyone knew at the time could have been a fad appealing to rich yuppies, which is exactly what those early CD consoles like the CD-I were doing. Then the PS1 showed up and a lot of things just fell into place.

Sony brute forced their way into the game market. There was nothing elegant or smart about their business strategy. They had more money than every other game company at the time. So Sony spent billions of dollars making the PS1 and locking down game studios with exclusive contracts. Microsoft similarly did the same. Which is the stalemate we have today with Microsoft VS Sony

Sega and Nintendo couldnt fight Sony head-on with money.

>but the minute Sony and Microsoft

-Sony's PS3 motion controls were an afterthought at best.
-Microsoft's kinect was terrible to use. While the technology was unique, it was poorly implemented and not suitable to gaming.

>Now Nintendo barely even acknowledges motion controls in the Switch.
>motion controls proved to be an actual fad

It has nothing to do with Microsoft or Sony copying Nintendo. And motion wasn't an actual fad either.

The reason Nintendo barely cares about Motion controls now is because everyone has a smartphone with motion controls built inside it.

The Nintendo Wii launched in 2006 before the iPhone was created. The Wii was the only system on the market that had motion controls. It was unique and interesting. Therefore the Wii was special for about 4 to 5 years during the time period where smartphones were still in their infancy. Once people had smartphones with motion controls, the Wii stopped being special.

Nintendo was smart to shift focus away from motion and jump onto portability and use a hybrid tablet gaming system.

>>10794004
I think you're underselling Sony's foray into motion controls. The PlayStation Move had a pretty big marketing push and Sony invested a lot into it's engineering. It wasn't an afterthought. They quickly pivoted away from it though once it turned out that a lot of what made the Wii so successful were owners who weren't exactly buying a lot of games or were buying very specific kinds of games while ignoring other major ones. It tapped into a different kind of consumer that didn't crossover all that cleanly with the more reliable consumer base that would keep buying new games/consoles.

That's what fucked over the Wii U. Nintendo assumed they could just ride that wave and put out a device that was similar to the Wii in both name and form factor. But it turned out that, no, a lot of those people weren't interested in upgrading. And that's the complication. You never know for sure. Nintendo stayed the course going from the NES to SNES. The Nintendo became the SUPER Nintendo. They added more buttons to the controller but it maintained a lot of what made the NES popular and they wanted to convey a lot of familiarity with the caveat that everything is even better now. There's not a lot different between that strategy and the Wii U...except in the results. But as was said a lot above, Nintendo knows how to pivot. Sony and Microsoft actually don't but they can absorb a shit ton of abuse as they slowly change course. Sega was in a weird place where they were throwing shit at a wall and seeing what would stick. A lot of people say they should have just not released anything during the Genesis's lifespan but that's a very western bias. The Mega Drive was in poor shape in Japan so either Sega would have had to write that region off as a total loss and hope for the best with the Saturn or look for an angle with things like the Sega CD. They made a lot of bonehead decisions but I don't think the Sega CD was one of them. That was at least based on something rational.

>>10776245
They hired an asshole who refused to release JRPGs for the Western Saturn which is insane.

>>10795380
There's no question the North American Saturn could have had more games, and some quality ones. After all it only got about 250 in total. But would releasing RPGs like Grandia and Lunar really have made a difference? Working Designs sold about 300,000 copies of Lunar on the PS1 with its massive install base. That's decent for the time but hardly notable. I have a hard time seeing the Saturn doing any better with a few anime RPGs under its belt.

>>10776312
I agree with this. PSO did influence a lot of things for it's time and it was revolutionary.

>>10795492
Saturn needed it's mascot characters to have their own games first. Then you can introduce more unknown games rpgs over time. No Sonic game for Saturn really hurt it. No big franchises from Genesis were given sequels on Saturn. Huge mistake.

>>10796218
Not having a Sonic right away may have been ok had literally anything else landed well. Bug! Clockwork Knight and Nights were all reasonably fun games but hardly able to carry the brand. They didn't necessarily need Sonic to be the Saturn's killer app but they needed SOMETHING to be the killer app. In Japan it was Virtua Fighter but even that they managed to fuck up with a shitty port they later apologized for with VF Remix.

Saturn failed because Sega (Sega of Japan specifically) prioritized Japan above all else...without waiting for the other regions to be ready for Saturn console release. They needed to wait at least 6 more months to 1 year, and have all regions to sync up for a worldwide Saturn release.