/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8091046]

Do you think this release schedule would have saved, or at least helped Sega?

Discuss this timeline

[Anonymous No.8091062]

>>8091046
Fuck. No.

Scrap the 32X and Saturn project entirely, keep riding off Genesis sales, then release the 3dfx-powered Black Belt in '97-ish to btfo the PSX and N64 with amazing polygon graphics.

That's the only way Sega could have won, or at least not have to resort to becoming 3rd party and getting raped by Sammy.

[Anonymous No.8091074]

>>8091046
no and i feel like this is beating a dead horse but they shouldn't have released the 32x at all just the Sega CD and the Power Block Converter.
then released the saturn on the day it was suppose to.

but nobody knows what coulda saved sega in the
>hard ware business
but yeah also on top of not releasing the 32. they shoulda just kept releasing games for the Genesis that were good.
donkey Kong Country came out in like 1995 or something was an absolute classic

[Anonymous No.8091076]

>>8091046
Lack of DVD drive isn't what killed the Dreamcast and I'm sick of this stupid ass myth. The Dreamcast was going to fail no matter what because what killed it wasn't even lack of sales it was Sega hemorrhaging money due to multiple terrible decisions from the Genesis through the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.8091083]

Why did they even make a model 2 and 3 just keep making a model 1 while making the motherboard cheaper and cheaper to produce
sure it would frustrate people like us who want the perfect genesis or something but it wouldnt waste time and resources designing new model revisions for a design that was still good into 1995

>>8091062
is right
Ride out the genesis and strong arcade presence until 1997
release 3dfx Dreamcast

Releasing the neptune AND the saturn is totally bonehead

[Anonymous No.8091089]

Autism: The Thread

[Anonymous No.8091095]

>>8091089
*casts a reflection spell*

[Anonymous No.8091101]

>>8091046
What the point of the Neptune? Just make the Saturn 3d based and release in end of 1994.

>>8091062
That would been overpriced as fuck and die like the Neo-Geo.

[Anonymous No.8091123]

These threads are the gaymer equivalent of "how Hitler could have won the war" threads on /k/

[Anonymous No.8091127]

>>8091123
lmao

[Anonymous No.8091130]

>>8091046
No, this is completely retarded. First of all the Sega CD was fine. If the 32X didn't exist people would look back on the Sega CD a lot more fondly. It sold fairly well for an add-on even outselling quite a few next gen systems like the Jaguar and 3DO. The system that should have been scrapped before release was the 32X.

Next even the Saturn wasn't that bad, it was just handled horribly in the west from it's launch to being discontinued 2.5 years before it's successor was even out of the design phase. You could leave the Saturn hardware alone and just handle it's western launch and marketing better and end up with a better result.

>>8091062
>>8091083
>3dfx Dreamcast
No. This is equally stupid. A 3dfx Dreamcast would have been under-powered compared to what we got and most likely would have been more expensive to produce. 3dfx's days were numbered, even in 1998.

[Anonymous No.8091137]

>>8091101
>Just make the Saturn 3d based and release in end of 1994.
It could already do 3D, the problem was Sega couldn't come up with a video chip powerful enough to beat the Playstation's 3D.

>die like the Neo-Geo.
The Neogeo kept getting games for over a decade, zoomer-kun.

[Anonymous No.8091148]

>>8091137
>the problem was Sega couldn't come up with a video chip powerful enough to beat the Playstation's 3D.

VDP1 isn't even that bad to be honest. The biggest issues have to do with Transparencies. Basically it can't do additive blending for transparencies, even though it can do it for Gouraud shading. So only 50/50 blending is possible. It can only blend with VDP1 objects or VDP2 objects, not both. The pixel overdraw from drawing distorted sprites results in corrupting transparencies. And finally it's slow at doing 50/50 blending. If you're not trying to do transparencies, VDP1 is typically fine and able to hold it's own. It's just when you start doing transparencies that things become a massive headache of trying to work around the limits.

[Anonymous No.8091237]

Why aren't they making any new consoles?

[Anonymous No.8091274]

>>8091237
Unironically this.

If KFC can release a meme console why can't Sega release a small closed PC with Sega branding that plays Sega games?

Sega Neptune
$300
- Comes bundled with 20+ modern Sega games (bunch of Yakuzas, Sonic, Streets of Rage, Total War, Monkey Ball etc)
- Throw in some modern arcade games that never got an official home release

Limit it to 500,000 units. Or maybe a million. Boom.

[Anonymous No.8091280]

>>8091274
Why waste the time and resources when you can just release your games on Switch, Playstation, Xbox, and Steam?

[Anonymous No.8091394]

>>8091046
imagine if instead of wasting over 10 million dollars on the 32X, they spent that money on making a new Sonic game for the Saturn

[Anonymous No.8091465]

>>8091130
>underpowed
nope.
3dfx was more powerful

[Anonymous No.8091471]

>>8091274
>>8091237
The landscape is totally different now. Consoles make no sense to break into. Literally just unique form factor PCs at this point anyway. besides with the chip shortages why would sega ever even try.

you will never get your soulful console days back

[Anonymous No.8091478]

>>8091130
>3dfx's days were numbered, even in 1998
Sounds like a match made in heaven to me.

[Anonymous No.8091482]

>>8091046
> backwards compatibility
You do realise die space is not free.
Saturn was expesive enough without having to also include an entire genesis.

[Anonymous No.8091485]

>>8091394
>they spent that money on making a new Sonic game for the Saturn
Regardless, Sonic Team wasn't interested in Sonic at that point, they wanted to make their SHiTES into Memes bullshit instead. And by the time they realised they'd fucked up and had to scramble to develop a new 3D Sonic game (Adventure), it was already too late.

Besides, the Saturn wouldn't have been able to handle a fully 3D Sonic game anyway, which it needed to compete against Super Mario 64.

[Anonymous No.8091696]

>>8091465
>3dfx was more powerful
Voodoos may have been nice in PCs with 900MHz+ Pentium 3s and tons of RAM, but put it in a 200MHz console with only 8MB of VRAM and 16MB of Main RAM and it's probably not going to perform as well.

And again, the PowerVR and SH-4 were a lot cheaper and gave very good performance for their prices. Throw in that NEC was more capable of meeting production demands than 3dfx and it's a no brainer why Sega went with them.

A 3dfx based Dreamcast would have most likely cost more, had similar or worse performance, and probably would have had even worse shortages than the Dreamcast had in it's original Launch.

[Anonymous No.8091718]

>>8091046
Hint: Sony would have pushed SEGA out of the market either way. The only thing that could have saved sega would have been a massive CASH infusion.

[Anonymous No.8091732]

From Hideki Sato, on how Ken Kutaragi wanted sega out of the hardware business right from the very start. Think Sony got their way? Stay tuned...

[Anonymous No.8091738]

>Releasing the Neptune.

[Anonymous No.8091745]

>>8091696
You do realize that PowerVR SH4 could be run by the DC because it was optimized for the DC? PowerVR released PC cards too, that mostly performed worse than 3Dfx cards due to compatibility issues and weren't much less expensive than them. Also PowerVR chips needed a more advanced manufacturing process than other GPU architectures at the time, due to its tile based rendering, which was expensive and risky to adapt in the 90s. Sure their tile based rendering became a standard in the mid 2000s, but in the 90s it wasn't. I believe 3Dfx DC could be cheaper than the one we got now, and perform not much worse.

[Anonymous No.8091840]

>>8091095
Back to wizardchan.

[Anonymous No.8092083]

Reminder that the original name of the SEGA Master System is Sega System.

[Anonymous No.8092096]

>>8091046
Finally I could post the Dreamcast got no gaemz but a DVD drive

[Anonymous No.8092101]

32x is as close as worthless as a peaice of hardware can be. If your gonna keep an add on keep the Sega cd.

[Anonymous No.8092118]

>>8092101
This. I never got why people act like the Sega CD is equally as irredeemable as the 32X. Sure, it had a lot of FMV shovelware, but it also made up for it with a decent amount of solid exclusives, and a pretty good amount of enhanced ports.

[Anonymous No.8092132]

>>8091130
>First of all the Sega CD was fine.

lol

>Next even the Saturn wasn't that bad, it was just handled horribly

lol

Worst possible takes imaginable

[Anonymous No.8092135]

>>8091482
>Saturn was expesive enough without having to also include an entire genesis.

Did you guys even read the OP at all?

He put in a note that they would evaluate the PS1 and adjust the Saturn's hardware. In the OP's made up timeline, that would mean they'd probably move some chips around, maybe not even go with dual processors and make the overall unit less pricey.

[Anonymous No.8092183]

>>8091046
Basically Sega's plan was working well right until the launch date of the ps1 in Japan. If the n64 was the only competition the early launch would have been good.
The issue is how do you convince people to get Saturn instead of ps1, from my perspective it went from the launch of the Saturn to being on clearance within a flash. They could have tried a niche Japan import strategy but they were obsessed with capturing the sports game player, it like a gambler trying to get back their losses. But Sega did get what it always wanted which is success in Japan which people thought wouldn't happen.

[Anonymous No.8092935]

>>8092118
Hating genesis add ons is a meme from the eceleb gods and their followers born after its release. As for those who were around and wanted a Sega CD, their parents wouldn't buy it for them and they're still seething

[Anonymous No.8092967]

>neptune midway through SNES lifespan
>backwards compat saturn
>backwards compat dreamcast
no it would've killed them for good

[Anonymous No.8092985]

>>8091046
>only ever make the model 1 genesis
>while making it cheaper and cheaper to make and revising the motherboard to be cheaper no matter how hollow it gets
>removing the headphone jack and volume eventually
>removing the light like the genesis 3 eventually
>releases sega cd with just the cd model 2 as the only model made as cheaply as possible
>ride out sega cd+ arcade sales
>release 3dfxdreamcast

This is truly the Good Timeline

[Anonymous No.8093028]

>>8091046
A 1993 standalone system with better graphics just pisses off early adopters of the Genesis.
The 32X architecture also kinda sucks -- it's fine if you want to make games as if you have a slow 486 instead of a game console, but drawing anything to the screen is slow on it. It's just a bad idea, and it compromises everything after.

A 1996 launch of the Saturn might work.
Sega is probably absolutely scrambling to redesign everything though after the 1994 PS1 Japanese launch, but this means they're prepared. They are definitely not making up the gap between it and the PS1, but the Saturn isn't going to be some hyper-failure. A sensible architecture and no loss in consumer confidence helps.

A Saturn that isn't a fucking mess architecturally means that backwards compatibility on the DC isn't an unreasonable request.
A 2000 release puts it extremely directly against the PS2, which may or may not be an issue, but again, Sega is in a far better financial state because the Saturn wasn't retarded.

[Anonymous No.8093067]

>>8093028
One of the few sensible posts here.

[Anonymous No.8093081]

[Anonymous No.8093092]

>>8091046
Sega of america sabotaged Sega.
The refused to let the Genesis die.
>Muh library muh library they yelled.
The 32x and the CD were just worthless addons that didn't even make the system better.
They lost more cre3dibility because of them.
The Saturn should have started development way earlier and they should have put every resource in to it so people could tell they were in it for the long haul and not a quick buck. SoJ should have told SoA to fuck off.

[Anonymous No.8093097]

Sega should've also redesigned the Nomad into the Game Gear 2 for the latter half of the '90s instead of piggybacking off the NGPC.

[Anonymous No.8093112]

>>8093092
Genesis was the only successful console that Sega's ever had. Nakayama was retarded to kill it off to focus on an objectively inferior system that got BTFO'd hard by the PS1 and N64.

All Sega had to do was support the Genesis a tad longer and improve the SVP for 3D games until they had a fifth gen system that wasn't absolute shit like the Saturn ready to go.

[Anonymous No.8093115]

>>8091123
Thinking about it, they're also the equivalent of the Jonah vs. Ornella threads on /tv/. I'm sensing a theme here.

[Anonymous No.8093119]

>>8091130
>2.5 years before it's successor was even out of the design phase
So the Saturn was discontinued in 1996?

[Anonymous No.8093121]

>>8093112
Third parties sell consoles.
Sega had to reassure them that they would still be around in 5 years and that it was worth putting an effort in to developing for them.
That's where the 32x and the Cd fucked them.
They abandoned them almost immediately.
The PS1 looked like trash compared to the n64 but the PS1 had shit loads of third party developers who made their console what it is.
It's not all about how many polygons you can draw.

[Anonymous No.8093127]

>>8091732
This is the most tragic anime ever.

Where can I read more?

[Anonymous No.8093176]

Top 3 people that killed Sega:

Hayao Nakayama (ended Genesis when it was still booming in the West to focus on the Shiturn)
Yuji Naka (wanted to make a meme game about a flying jester instead of a new Sonic game)
Yu Suzuki (tanked Sega with Shitpoo's astronomical budget, only for it to flop hard)

[Anonymous No.8093180]

>>8093121
>The PS1 looked like trash compared to the n64 but the PS1
like, the PS1 had real advantages over the N64

in fact, the N64 as released is just an entirely baffling machine
it should be putting out textures way higher resolution than the PS1 (and it simply cannot, because the N64 has only 4kB of fast texture memory that every texture drawn to the screen needs to pass through; increasing the size of this alone would massively improve the graphics of the machine while increasing performance because you aren't constantly shuffling data into it from slower memory)
it should have way less slowdown than on PS1 (the main CPU is from the same family as in the PS1, but MUCH faster and with more features; the GPU is far more advanced than in the PS1 and you don't need to do shit like subdivide polygons when you get close like on PS1)
it should have more geometry on screen across the board with no effort (again, faster CPU and more powerful GPU, fewer wasted polygons since it doesn't need to reduce texture distortion)

an absolutely tiny handful of N64 games manage to give the PS1 the sound thrashing it deserves, a huge portion of the library just looks soundly mediocre and slows down wildly despite already running at less than 30fps

[Anonymous No.8093186]

>>8093176
You forgot Australia~kun (who is a lolcow nigger from planet cringe)

[Anonymous No.8093195]

>>8093176
So one person.

[Anonymous No.8094209]

>>8091046
No. The only thing that would have helped is if the Saturn had a completely different design. Cheaper to make, easier to develop for. They tried to make it similar to their arcade board (model 2) and it was a terrible mistake. Waiting until the hardware for the Dreamcast would have also been a dumb move. Kids are going to beg for the new hardware, and devs were ready to give them 3D gaming. If Sega didn't release something, they'd be even more fucked because nobody would keep developing for the Genesis. It already was showing quite a bit of age due to the hardware it used to keep backwards compatibility, and no amount of add-ons are going to fix that.

[Anonymous No.8094224]

>>8094209
>Nobody would keep developing for the genesis
>Devs and kids wanted 3d
Both false
Sega cd + arcade sales + not wasting any money in RnD is more than enough

[Anonymous No.8094240]

>>8093176
>Hayao Nakayama (ended Genesis when it was still booming in the West to focus on the Shiturn)
You know SNES had games until like 2000? What a fucking turd. If there was still returns, they should have still made it. By that time they clearly were not in the whole for every console, it was probably cheaper than ever to make it.

[Anonymous No.8094360]

>>8091062
the reason why genesis was popular and the saturn was not is solely because of marketing

[Anonymous No.8094524]

>>8091046
Just forget about the 32x, don't release Saturn early, make Knuckles Chaotix not suck and make Sonic 3D Blast actually 3D like the special stages were. That should make the Saturn successful enough to put off doing Dreamcast until 2000/2001 where it can have DVD functionality and better specs to compete in the 6th generation.

[Anonymous No.8094527]

3dfx dreamcast should have had controller backwards compatibility with genesis
And also this happens >>8092985

I think that would have been beautiful timeline

[Anonymous No.8094551]

>>8091274
This is the new Atari VCS you're describing, except that one also runs Windows and Linux. So, been done already. Just sell a games bundle for the VCS (if there's even any market for "VCS" games)

Alternately I suppose you can run these games on $19 Android shitbox hardware, so make a system for $70 or so like NES mini and Playstation classic etc.

[Anonymous No.8094584]

>>8092935
I had a Sega CD and it barely got any use after the first couple of months. Most of the games didn't make any use of the system besides having CD-quality audio and FMVs. Also the loading times were long as hell.

[Anonymous No.8094789]

>>8093180
N64 has Z-Buffer and Floating Point, yo.

[Anonymous No.8094951]

>>8094789
The N64 has a real FPU, so floating point isn't an issue.
Z-buffering really needed to be turned off for loads of shit on the N64, because god damn, that's eating up memory bandwidth like mad.

[Anonymous No.8096653]

>>8094360
not true. saturn tried to do genesis-style marketing for the first year or 2 of its life but couldn't compare because the software just wasn't there. being a clusterfuck to develop games on didn't do the saturn any favors.

[Anonymous No.8097161]

>>8096653
>saturn tried to do genesis-style marketing for the first year or 2 of its life
Early Saturn ads were New Age, pseudo-futuristic, pseudo-trippy shit. Not the Genesis style 90s "xtreme radical 'tude" shit.

[Anonymous No.8097167]

>>8094360
The reason the Genesis was popular and the Saturn was not was because the Genesis had awesome, great looking, fun games. The Saturn had terrible, awful looking, Sega of America shovelware.
Genesis actually had the latter too, but it they started that late into the console life after it was already a hit, and really ramped up the shovelware going into the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.8097176]

>>8097161
shout outs to this ad where the saturn severely damages the player's psyche and makes him shit himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP3ciD4Efr0

[Anonymous No.8097180]

>>8091471
this is ironic because I remember reading in gaming magazines all the time that PC gaming was on the verge of dying because of consoles lol

[Anonymous No.8097184]

>>8097180
Of course. Big money from Microsoft and Sony to pay shills to repeat until it (hopefully for them) became true. It didn't, of course.

[Anonymous No.8097189]

>>8097161
What about all those adverts where Sega attacks the Playstation, Saturn being so much better because it used two processors?

[Anonymous No.8098059]

>>8097180
>>8097184
Don't pretend pc gaming isn't dead

[Anonymous No.8098108]

>>8096653
Developing on the Saturn isn't the worst, especially after 1996 when Sega's SGL was available. Yeah, you were fighting an uphill battle, and the PS1 was easier, but if the Saturn hadn't fucking killed ALL of its momentum with that retarded early launch, developers might have put up with the machine since people would have actually bought it instead of just waiting for the PS1 after hearing $299. No point in dealing with any of this if no one has the system, but with an actual market, there would have been money to have been made.
Seriously, devs put up with the PS2, and that machine is fucking nonsense with its video hardware. Sega in 1995 was on top of the world, right until the Saturn's early launch.

It's a real shame about that texturing speed though -- if you ported a game straight from PS1, you'd have a major, major issue with how slow VDP1 is at drawing higher resolution textures vs the PS1's GPU.
Forward texture mapping has to cycle through every single texel to generate an output pixel no matter what, while UV mapping means that the PS1 can skip around in the texture based on how big the result drawing is.
You have to mipmap everything (manually, there's no hardware support) to get similar performance. It's added CPU time per polygon, and having the mipmaps means that you lose texture RAM space (of which you have 512k), but you gain a lot of fillrate.
There are other issues in play (the PS1's GTE makes lighting and transform calculations way easier and faster than on Saturn, unless you do shit like use the 2nd CPU for it or attempt to use the batshit insane DSP like Sonic R does), but texturing is the immediate biggest issue that would fuck ports to Saturn. Shit, I'd just draw flat color polygons if they were a certain distance away.

>>8094209
>They tried to make it similar to their arcade board (model 2)
>nobody would keep developing for the Genesis.
neither of these are true

[Anonymous No.8098778]

>>8098108
Why can't you admit it

[Anonymous No.8098990]

>>8098059
>Almost all most played games of all time are PC exclusive or started on PC
>Valve is a multi-billion dollar corporation with Gabe Newell being worth more than Trump
>But PC gaming is dead
The shit I read on here sometimes.

[Anonymous No.8100681]

>>8091046
>scrap 32X/Neptune, that shit was dumb
>delay Saturn until you could partner with 3Dfx to get a Voodoo GPU in it to replace the VDP1 and VDP2 and second SH-2 processor, and also make it B/C with MD carts/Mega CDs
>instead of releasing Nomad, make it into its own system to succeed the Game Gear and develop exclusive games for it, also make it compatible with your GG carts
>release the Dreamcast with a Voodoo3 and an SH-4 processor and can play your Saturn CDs

Sega has now been saved, thank me later.

[Anonymous No.8100687]

>>8091046
No you autist.

[Anonymous No.8101743]

>>8098059
Yeah no. There was a point that it was "dying" but it grew in the early 00s and now handily beats all consoles combined due to esports, streaming and exclusive hits like Minecraft before they moved to consoles.

[Anonymous No.8101747]

>>8101743
"2010s, excuse me. But mobile easily overtakes both PC and consoles combined. VR and cloud are abysmal and hopefully remain so.

[Anonymous No.8101831]

>>8098990
>>8101743
These aren't pc games though
We're getting shit indies and ports. Nobody is making games FOR pc. Nobody.
Look at the golden age pc landscape compared to today
There hasn't been a game I've wanted to play on my pc in over a decade

[Anonymous No.8101874]

>>8101743
>mobile makes more than PC and consoles combined
>arcade and handhelds are dead
>VR never becomes mainstream
Why are we stuck in the bad timeline?

[Anonymous No.8101890]

>>8091046
no because they keep doing dumb shit even today they never learn /thread

[Anonymous No.8102108]

>>8091471
>The landscape is totally different now. Consoles make no sense to break into. Literally just unique form factor PCs at this point anyway. besides with the chip shortages why would sega ever even try.

this is true thats it different, but not because of the actual tech.

its because the mass market of gamers consumes games differently now. Only fringe gamers would put up with all the trappings of a console now, especially with a newcomer to the market.

>>8091732
>half heartedly successful in america once

So, just a clue into how isolational and dysfunctional the SOJ and SOA relationship was. The only reason they could continue in the hardware biz after PS dropped was the groundwork laid in the US with the genesis. They actually beat NOA in moved consoles, but they considered beating Nintendo a half-hearted success? Talk about your head up your ass.

[Anonymous No.8102117]

>>8101831
Sure, but the financials which determine if a video game platform is dying or not has the data saying no to that question. The platform can be dead to you from an appeal and personal perspective but it's not dead as people think of video game platforms being dead long as people are pouring effort and time and seeing money come in at a steady pace.

[Anonymous No.8103216]

>>8091046
I doubt that Sega could have gotten Sega Saturn backwards compatibility working in the Dreamcast. The CPU's are all Hitachi, but the way the Saturn renders things is different from the Dreamcast. Saturn does raster sprites, Dreamcast has triangle based rendering.

[Anonymous No.8103237]

>>8094551
>This is the new Atari VCS you're describing, except that one also runs Windows and Linux. So, been done already. Just sell a games bundle for the VCS (if there's even any market for "VCS" games)

It's using an AMD Ryzen APU with Vega 3 on board graphics and 8GB RAM. I wonder if Sega could make a simaler device, and just have an all-in-one emulation machine that can run any of their classic console games. They could just run an online streaming service for their back catalog and even port some new games to it, like SOR4 or those Theme Hospital games.