>>3719039
the Saturn 3D pad is a bit naff looking, but it's oddly comfy
but yeah, it's a fuckton better than the DC pad for all the reasons you described
>>3719220
>armored core
>dead or alive
>ridge racer
>tekken
>madden
that would be enough to get most people to buy the machine, plus DVD (shit, I bought my PS2 for DVDs back then -- with the bonus feature that it also it played PS1 games)
and within a year, all of the big mega-hits the machine is known for came out
>>3719614
in some regions, they did exactly that (read: places where they didn't really expect people to use online anyway)
but it'd be a poor idea to have done it where you'd expect online play to be the biggest and expect people to buy the device specific modem (remember how no one bothered with PS2 online play?)
also, in '99, 56k was still pretty much the norm
>>3720554
really, that's about how things tended to go