What if?

[Anonymous No.364030]

It's that time again folks! For another what if? Thread.

What if Sega and Atari made new consoles? Do you think they'd bring anything back from the retro goodness? What would the console names be? And how will they differ from today's consoles?

[Anonymous No.364201]

Atari: Atari 1973xl - GIANT console made of shag carpet and feux-wood panels. A rotary-joystick with one button but a full keypad.

Sega: Challenger 13 - Runs on 4 quad-core arm cpus and has a proprietary gpu. The battery pack is 6d batteries. Analog sticks on the rear of the controller with pinky-finger buttons far too large and often get stuck.
D-pad is made of razorblades.

[Bodacious Bob !!Q9+lWkcj9QV No.364231]

Atari: Something basic and safe, leading to mediocre sales.

Sega: Dreamcast 2, with Shenmue 3 and Half-Life 3, for good measure as launch titles, and more power behind it than 3 PS4's So basically a top of the line PC a year from now. With proper marketing and hype, It becomes the most successful platform release of all time.

[Anonymous No.364338]

[Anonymous No.364353]

Atari would be shit because of it's current situation. All it would do is play that mobile app with the Atari games.

SEGA would be a copy of the Wii, because they've been copying Nintendo an awful lot.

[Anonymous No.364417]

Atari - Probably something akin to the Ouya. A sort of "hub machine", with lots of retro content from its glory days. Probably nothing like disks or anything, all-digital, with new games focusing more on gameplay concepts and such, probably becoming a haven for indie games and side projects/kickstarters.

Sega - A big beast of a console, probably taking a overall design concept off of the Dreamcast. Has a robust online component, but not much in the way of social network integration, maybe allowing for stuff like netflix and such, but not much in the way of leaderbords and such. Games can come either via digital copy, or some new "solid" system, maybe SD cards or thumb-drive-ish things. Re-release of several Dreamcast titles, along with new stuff focusing on big worlds, action, and new, sometimes weird ideas.

saw a thread like this once, where someone played "what if", with Playstation, Microsoft, and Nintendo off the board by 1995. Presented console ideas and such, and people posted in-universe. Was cool as hell.

[Anonymous No.364453]

>>364030
Atari goes out of business two weeks into the R&D process due to lack of money.

Sega, on the other hand, actually has the money and experience to do this. Their new console would have come out a year before the WiiU and it would have been far more powerful than it. It would probably have a Blu-Ray port, but the games would be sold mainly on cartridges. This would raise prices a bit, yes, but it'd also improve performance and allow it to handle much larger games without any disk-swapping. It'd wouldn't do very well overall due to its high price and the fact that Sega consoles are a bitch to develop for, but it would have a small cult following of mostly hardcore gamers. It'd also be hacked within a month.

[Anonymous No.364472]

>>364201
>shag carpet

I lol'd

[Anonymous No.364516]

Theres a game about sega making a new console OP, its called hyperdimension neptunia.

Just a polite sage for not retro.

[Anonymous No.365567]

It would be AtGames.

Nobody wants to accept the fact, but these ARE the closest things you are going to get to a new Atari/SEGA system.

[Anonymous No.366559]

>>365567

No they aren't. The sound emulation is shit.

I love my AtGames handheld, but it's useful for pissing time and nothing else.

[Anonymous No.366672]

>both companies try to milk their nostalgia value and fail or barely scrape by with a sub par product with no new ideas
or
>huge investments
>hilarious aggressive marketting
>new IPs
>both consoles have smart innovations from outside the current Sony/Microsoft dick measuring contest
>Sega fills the gap between Nintendo and 'gritty/mature/brown' games

[Anonymous No.368247]

SEGA can't do it. They have had too bad of a reputation now for console hardware and the type of games they like to make don't appeal to mass audiences. A lot of the time they tend to be arcade inspired games.

[Anonymous No.368283]

They really need to just buckle the fuck down and make a clear plan on updating/revolutionizing and reviving the arcade scene outside of Japan. We're in a phase of game development where there's actually some call for immersion and interactivity with complex controls. Revitalizing and redesigning the arcade experience is the perfect solution to increasingly expensive and cumbersome home size hardware and convoluted button/trigger/bumper/joystick controls. It'd be a rough transition but it could work. For fuck's sake we're at a technological point where we could actually have a generic arcade cabinet capable of playing MORE THAN ONE GAME, store/load/and instal it all digitally, and even incorporate online gameplay. All things that would help rectify the financial and social short coming of the outdated classic arcade business model.

[Anonymous No.368298]

>>368283
I don't think the Japanese would move forward with digital, so that would be up to the west and you already know how many arcade games the west has produced over the last ten years.

[Anonymous No.368381]

They wouldn't make it half a console generation. Neither Sega nor Atari has what it takes to appeal to today's generation. They can make great games, sure, but gamers today expect shit like dubstep from [insert popular musician here], a cinematic 5 hour singleplayer, extensive focus on online multiplayer, and other things the two companies aren't experienced in. Nintendo and Sony built up their companies with decades of work in the field, but for Sega and Atari, it'd be like starting all over from scratch. Especially Atari, what the fuck have they done in the past 10 years?

[Anonymous No.368562]

>>364030
How about we make this optimistic?

Sega cooperates with madcatz, makes trackballs standard issue. They support a dpad+trackball controller, make it semi official, and eventually start making their own version.

Madcatz keeps making PXL's as well as starting a PC version of the dpad and trackball device.

[Anonymous No.368572]

Isn't Atari just Infogrames under a purchased name? Or did they go under and someone else buy the name?

[Anonymous No.368576]

>>368562
So, basically, this gives sega a big advantage in 3d shooters, eh?

[Anonymous No.368623]

>>366559
I'm not him but I want to thank you sir. Too many people hate on the handhelds like that and the supaboy but I see them the same way pissing away time nothing else, no reason to hate on that imo. I don't own one but I see so many posts ripping on supaboy YEAH ITS SHIT but does the owner actually take it seriously either?

[Anonymous No.368939]

I don't think it's entirely impossible. SEGA always based their consoles off of their arcade hardware and they're working on RingEdge 2 currently.

Maybe I'm a little optimistic because I'm a hardcore SEGA fanboy before anything else, but I think one day they'll make a comeback. The gaming industry is in desperate need of something new and since no one will take Nintendo seriously anymore, someone else has to step in. I might be the only one, but frankly I'm completely bored with all the mundane crap that Sony and Microsoft have to offer. I do like my Wii U so far and I loved the Wii, but Nintendo has got to step it up with the software if they want to be an overwhelming force in the market. I think the Wii U has the potential to be this generations hero, but if they don't start slamming out the software and fix some of the OS issues, it's going to fail.

Meanwhile, my Saturn is still warm from playing Mystaria earlier.

[Anonymous No.369137]

>>368939
I've had the thought that the industry might reach a point where it'd make sense for large publishers to release their own consoles just so they could have full control over their games. When the tech gets cheap enough to make this possible without huge financial liabilities, you might start to see it.

On the other hand, it seems likely that some new technical innovation is going to lead to some high-end hardware that can make games fundamentally different from what current consoles can do, whether it's in terms of physics or AI or player interaction or whatever. But it's not clear when that's going to happen, and the "graphics" thing is going to run out of steam eventually, evening the playing field between the big console manufacturers and publishers like Sega.

[Anonymous No.369562]

>>368247
Not arcade inspired. Arcade PORTS. The Dreamcast itself is almost identical to the Naomi arcade system hardware-wise, so arcade ports were easy.

Sega is still one of the leading companies as far as arcade hardware goes. Nobody can touch them.

[Anonymous No.371632]

Sega is pretty alright with its current condition as publisher now... just need to localize some really good games that have international fanbase.
(The same as Konami, however...)
I don't know about Atari.

[Anonymous No.371657]

>>371632
Atari doesn't exist anymore. OP either doesn't know that, or he's imagining alternative universes where they managed to straggle along to the present day.

[Thatmew !y.aZ6nV0iM No.371667]

Atari literally exists only in name, though. Remember Infogrames? They bought the Atari name about a decade ago and now use it. The actual Atari from the 70s-90s is completely gone.

[Anonymous No.371692]

>>371657
This sparks a question in my head. How's the current condition of arcade in your country, /vr/? because in my country arcade is still in a good condition, and most of them are Sega and Namco games. Also there are few Capcom games as well iirc

[Anonymous No.371695]

>>371692
What country?

[Anonymous No.371702]

>>371692
>>371667
After the video game crash, Bally-Midway acquired Atari's arcade division while the home division struggled under the Tramiels until finally pooping out in the mid-90s and being bought by Hasbro (and then Infogrames).

[Anonymous No.371706]

>>371695
uh? me?

[Anonymous No.371734]

>>371702
Not quite. The arcade division was spun out as its own company, Atari Games, which made a lot of notable arcade games before being bought by Midway in the 90s. Midway closed their "Midway Games West" division, which consisted of the former Atari Games, in 2003, before going out of business altogether.

[Anonymous No.371749]

>>364231
Don't forget Sega would include some ahead-of-its-time feature(s) on the console too.

But the marketing would suck, just like the DC, and it would ultimately fail to the inferior product from soulless Sony, again.

[Anonymous No.371757]

>>364353
>Sega
>copying Nintendo

Think you have them confused with Sony, mate.

[Anonymous No.371776]

Even if Sega made a comeback, I can't imagine them sticking around for long. They didn't have good foresight and make really stupid decisions.

Atari could probably make it work given they can secure some great 1st party games and don't make the same mistakes they made with the Jaguar.

[Anonymous No.371880]

>>371776
>They didn't have good foresight
>They didn't have good foresight
>They didn't have good foresight
The problem with SEGA is that they had too much foresight. The SEGA Dreamcast began to do things that were a whole generation ahead of its time. The trouble was, it did it in an era that wasn't technically ready for that format of gaming and the concept needed a lot more drive to make it successful. Back in 98, the Arcade was still a happening place- they needed to concentrate on the shared experience of the gaming and bring that to the home. Linking friends through private leaderboards alongside public leaderboards would've made sense, simultaneous multiplayer on games like Crazy Taxi, online Co-op lightgun/fightan games, online tournament play and team vs modes added into games would've made a huge difference to the online features of the Dreamcast. Plus, having in game unlockables based on online achievements would've really boosted the popularity of online play.

But SEGA have executives that are insane and a company structure that was too fragmented. SEGA of America/SEGA Technical Institute are fucking retarded. SEGA of Europe were actually pretty cool guys. SEGA of Japan were running the Saturn so well that it was still a viable platform when SoA was pushing for a new console. That just ended up making them confused by the white piggu's inability to run their shit.

[Anonymous No.374959]

>>371657
I do know Atari doesn't really exist apart from more of as a name. But What if as in alternate universe/if current owners decided to use the name to launch a console or so on.

[Anonymous No.374985]

>>364231
>Dreamcast 2

Stop that.

Stop it.

The only acceptable name for a new Sega console would be the Phoenix.

Stop with the Dreamcast 2 shit.

[Anonymous No.375040]

>>374985
i'll agree with this.

[Anonymous No.375269]

>>374985
But thats not the name of a planet. It needs to be the name of a planet.

[Anonymous No.375278]

atari and sega are just names now

[Anonymous No.375331]

>>364030
If they made new consoles, they'd be shit. Because neither one know how to make competent games anymore, and third party don't know how to make competent games.
What you're left with is two more shitbags in a pile of shit industry.
Sega would botch everything they touch and Atari would just re-release pong and tempest for the hundredth million time, maybe throw in the jaguar AvP for shits and giggles and hope their shit doesn't break down trying to play it.
The only way they'd differ from todays consoles is that they'd have a different brand.
Console makers aren't people interested in games or consoles, they're people interested in dollars and business. They make business moves to get green, beyond that, they don't give a fuck.
You can't really make a 'successful' console with only one developer the resources needed to maintain a library would be astounding and require a very specific set of leaders who know what they're doing. When I say successful I mean, for gaming, not for selling.

[Anonymous No.375351]

>>368562
>optimistic
>madcatz
Why would you in an attempt to make it optimistic, have them join with a company that reduces consumer confidence 1000%
I dunno but if you told me the hardware that comes with a console is made by madcats, you have my personal guarantee that I will never buy that system nor will I ever bother to pick it up cheap when it's out of it's date or take it for free if someone simply throws it out.
You might as well just throw on a label that says never buy this broken poorly made pile of shit.

[Anonymous No.375352]

>>374985
>The only acceptable name for a new Sega console would be the Phoenix.

Shit son, why no Nemesis if you want to go all cliché.

[Anonymous No.375356]

>>368939
>The gaming industry is in desperate need of something new and since no one will take Nintendo seriously anymore,
Yes, but since the gaming industry is so tiny compared to the casual video entertainment industry, it won't get anything new.

[Anonymous No.375617]

I'd like to see Sega make a new console. I don't play enough Sega games.

[Anonymous No.375784]

>>368247
>SEGA can't do it. They have had too bad of a reputation now for console hardware

Because of the Dreamcast ?
Fuck, you're a pillar of video game but you make one console that doesn't sell and that's it ?
The world is shit.

[Anonymous No.375816]

>>375784
That makes Nintendo shit too. Sony is now G- no wait, not Sony. Microsoft.

[Anonymous No.375881]

>>375784
>Because of the Dreamcast ?

They were in trouble since the end of the 16-bit era. The Saturn was an - albeit heroic - failure and the Dreamcast was just the last nail in the coffin.

Even Nintendo would be in trouble if they fuck up 2 times successively. Makes you wonder what happens after the WiiU.

[Anonymous No.376034]

>>364030
The original xbox is a spiritual dreamcast successor. Just now every know here microsoft is fucking it up.

Sega could really try a game console focused for arcade and gamble games.

[Anonymous No.376039]

Sega's newest console was a urinal.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/sega-urinal-games/

[Anonymous No.376052]

>>374985

>Not calling it Sega Vengeance.

it's not only 2dark2edgy, it'll show they want revenge for the Dreamcast.

[Anonymous No.376089]

>>364030

pure win. Console gaming is awful braindead nowadays that some old, yet air would up my hopes in the game industry again.

[Anonymous No.376127]

>>376034
Not really a "console" but they've been making Arcade machines behind the scenes at least

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards

[Anonymous No.376163]

>>376089
>pure win. Console gaming is awful braindead nowadays that some old, yet air would up my hopes in the game industry again.
I'd like to think of this eventuality as a breath of fresh air too, but, let's be honest, there's 80 % chances that Sega would just produce the same shit than everyone.

[Anonymous No.376162]

>sega
I liked when consoles are named after planets.
it would be neptune
I wish more companies would make this.
It would be succesful if it was good in the terms of marketing.

>atari
>big cat names
or just simple Atari 10000

[Anonymous No.376179]

>>371692
There's fruit ninja in my arcades now.

[Anonymous No.376210]

>>376179

[Anonymous No.376224]

>>376162
>imply it wouldn't be called Pluto

>Small
>Insignifcant
>Nobody gives a shit about

[Anonymous No.376240]

>>375881
To be fair,that was pretty much Nintendo's situation after the GameCube, two consecutive generations being left behind. Then they released the Wii and took the lead by storm.

[Anonymous No.376260]

>>376163
True, if anything i would still want sega to come back into the race just out of nostalgia, the 90's raditude is something i really miss nowadays.

[Anonymous No.376262]

>>375881
to be fair the WII wasn't a fuck up. it sold better than the other two, i believe.

[Anonymous No.376292]

The Atari brand has changed hands so many times now, there is no guarantee whoever buys it next could make anything worthwhile. IMO old Atari didn't make anything good either.

Sega is piss poor at marketing, whatever console they would make would no doubt be amazing, innovative, user-friendly, and fun, but it would fail.

Anything Atari brought back would be soulless cash-ins that have little or nothing to do with the original games. Sega is always bringing the retro goodness, though, you know they're rockin'

[Anonymous No.376280]

>>376224
>tfw pluto doesnt even counts a planet anymore
Anyway fuck microsoft sony and nintendo, their systems names lack inspiration, they dont even sound cool or something.

[Anonymous No.376306]

>>376179
If you burn it down, no one will ever know and we will never tell.

[Anonymous No.376314]

>>376127
Sorry, forgot to put "home" left at the console.
The snes did some way with gambling games.

[Anonymous No.376328]

>>375881

The Wii sold great, and the WiiU is selling better than the 360 or PS3 did in the amount of time it's been out, so I don't see how it is a failure.

[Anonymous No.376336]

>>376328

[Anonymous No.376347]

>>376336
This graph makes no sense.

[Anonymous No.376370]

>>376347
yes it does, you just can't read graphs.

however it seems dumb to choose the slowest sales month as a test. why not the best?

[Anonymous No.376384]

>>376370
I don't get what is relevant about it at all. It isn't measuring sales up to a certain amount of time after release, or even at the same date in time, so I do not understand how these numbers actually have meaning next to one another.

This actually makes sense. http://infogr.am/Console-Sales-After-3-Months-at-Retail

[Anonymous No.376392]

>>376384
>up to a certain amount of time after release, or even at the same date in time, so I do not understand how these numbers actually have meaning next to one another.
it's comparing each consoles worst month. it's in the title.

[Anonymous No.376401]

>>376384
It measures the weakest month for each console and says how many months into its lifespan it is. What's there not to understand?

[Anonymous No.376409]

>>376392
right, but that is totally irrelevant. Comparing the worst month for each doesn't mean anything without any sort of overall context. It's a shitty graph simply meant to make it look like Sony/Microsoft consoles are better.

[Anonymous No.376469]

>>376409
The kind of graph that you suggest is even worse, because it provides a false positive view on a system's sales. Let's say the Atari Jaguar sold an obscenely high amount of systems in a single month, but then sold how it did normally for the rest of the time. Your kind of chart would say that the Jaguar is the best selling system. Likewise with the Wii U, the bulk of its sales were in its launch period and then dropped off to obscenely poor sales. This graph holds no bias in that sense.

[Anonymous No.376558]

It isn't even that important how many consoles are sold. The PS3, Xbox360 and WiiU are sold with a loss and that's not really a new thing. The money comes from license fee for the games. And if you look at the library, the WiiU has a pretty grave prospect. It has no real system seller or exclusive titles and the third party support is sparse.

[Anonymous No.376863]

>>376558
The WiiU will have bayoneta 2 as an exclusive.

[Anonymous No.376886]

Sega is still the leader for arcade hardware. They might be out of the home console market, but they dominate the arcade industry.

[Anonymous No.376949]

>>376469
But with that same logic a console like, say, the FamiCon in Japan, which remained in production until 2003, would have a minuscule minimum sales and be catalogued as a failure. Both scales are dodgy.

[Anonymous No.377173]

>>376558
Indeed. The WiiU made the same mistake of the Saturn. They haven't put the software out there to support the hardware at release. If they're not careful, they'll end up trying to maintain too many similar systems over a short timeframe, with the Wii, WiiU, DS and 3DS all demanding the company's attention. These are similar to the problems that SEGA had at the time of the Saturn, where there were still regular releases on the Master System and Mega Drive into the Dreamcast era.

Furthermore, Nintendo is likely going to have to release another console in a shorter space of time. This risks the WiiU becoming a 32X of sorts, with many people seeing it as a weak upgrade that served as a boost to the original console but did not sustain it into the future, as was promised to the consumer.

The WiiU will need major work to make it a success as the Wii was

[Anonymous No.377380]

>>376863
>The WiiU will have bayoneta 2 as an exclusive.
>The WiiU WILL HAVE bayoneta 2 as an exclusive.
>WILL HAVE
That's where the problem is

A console's launch and the holiday season are the strongest sales periods for any system. When selling at a loss, you need to get strong games out there because that's where the profit lies (it's a razor and blade model of business).

The Wii U had a poor selection of games at launch. The Wii U has a poor breadth of games currently, but what's killing the console is the lack of releases on the horizon. All of its Killer Apps are untitled projects with unannounced release dates. Realistically, these projects may be out in time for Christmas 2013 but many are likely to run over into 2014, missing the boat for another year.

Included in this are the new 3D Mario game, the new Mario Kart, Pokemon Rumble, Super Smash Bros, Legend of Zelda and Bayonetta 2. For many other games, such as Pikmin 3, a Q2 2013 release date was given. What happened there?

This paints an absurd picture of a console released a year before its strongest titles are due to come out. There's a good chance many IPs will have missed TWO peak sales periods. That's no good. Maybe people will just hang on until the money-spinning games arrive before they get a Wii U. But don't forget, this will coincide with the launch of the PS4 (set to come out Autumn/Holiday Season 2013). Are people going to drop all dat dollar on a Wii U when they could go for the PS4?

Truly, this is a situation remarkably similar to that SEGA faced 15 years ago, where the approach of the PS2 staved the hand of many gamers torn between the systems.

[Anonymous No.377738]

>>377380
Interestingly enought this is not a problem only nintendo has, the PS3 and PSVita had the same issue, hell i don't even know if vita has an actual title worth making a purchase yet.
This industry is truly decaying.

[Anonymous No.377897]

>>375351
Because, poor build quality be damned, people had found it to be WORTH IT to replace the broken triggers and springs!

[Anonymous No.381242]

>>376558
sony was braking even on the PS3 slim, and now they are making profit per unit with the top loader PS3
I dont know about the WiiU, but the original Wii wasn't sold at loss

[Anonymous No.381287]

>>377738
Gravity Rush. That's literally it.

[Anonymous No.381296]

>>375784
>one console that doesn't sell
>Pico
>32x
>Nomad
>Sega CD
>Saturn
>Dreamcast
You might not class 32x and SCD as their own consoles, but they cost just about the same.
I love my old sega stuff, but if I were an investor, sega would really have to earn my confidence

[Anonymous No.381317]

>>377738
Gravity Rush is probably the only good game available in the international market

Its the PSP all over again, japan producing ok and good games that SCEA has no Idea on how to bring to the western market