/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9863789]

Alternate history challenge: Keep Sega in the console business by not doing the Sega CD (on top of not doing the 32X).

[Anonymous No.9863828]

You would still need them to not fuck up the Saturn either. In terms of specs, price, release date, complexity to develop for, and actually getting a lot of good software made for it.

If anything, that screwed them over far more than the SegaCD and 32X did. The Sattleview and 64DD's failures didn't fuck over Nintendo after all.

[Anonymous No.9863871]

>>9863789
I'd actually keep the 32X, release it a few years later at a way lower cost with a better line-up. In the meantime, shift priorities and specifically target the low-end of the market with the Genesis, not unlike what Majesco did irl. Keep pumping out games, do some wild shit with cartridge hardware in-house and let third parties put out budget games or whatever they want really. Acknowledge that the Genesis is long in the tooth, but recognize (and subsequently reward) the market of current owners, and then comes the 32X upgrade path —next gen for the budget conscious. You can pop it onto your existing Genesis, or you can buy the combo console. Still have titles like Doom (fix the music), maybe some other PC ports, Warcraft or Diablo? They're late to the party but it's a totally new audience. I'm rambling but I like imagining that world and could spitball about it for hours.

[Anonymous No.9863896]

Make Nomad the global Game Gear successor. Keep developing/re releasing 16bit titles for it. Create a late 90s redesign with battery life improvements. Maybe utilize 32X tech if it didn't gimp the battery too severely. Just like that, Sega has by far the worlds most powerful handheld until the GBA.

Get nips to actually care about the Saturn's success globally. Put genesis backwards compatibility into the Saturn as intended. Dont piss off retailers before launch. Launch a 2D Sonic 4 during its first 2 years. Release Adventure late in its lifetime or rework R into a 3D platformer/"runner" type game. Release Xtreme as a Sega PC title. Flesh out Burning Rangers into more of an action game instead of a tech demo. Release Virtua Fighter 3 on Saturn.

And above all else, DO NOT give Sony an entire year on the market between the Saturn and Dreamcast where you basically stopped all support for your current system.

[Anonymous No.9863901]

>>9863789
>Keep Sega in the console business by not doing the Sega CD

this is impossible. we've run this simulation a thousand times, and there's no way to avoid sega getting out of consoles after the dreamcast. the best scenario that can be mustered is the dreamcast hanging on until like 2004 before sega buckles at the prospect of HD development and bails out then.

[Anonymous No.9863950]

I'd funnel Saturn production costs into figuring out how to utilize cartridge+disc games to better utilize 32X and Sega CD cross-compatibility, then later release an all-in-one console for 32X/CD/Genesis for anybody who didn't already own them.
Nothing was inherently wrong with the 32X but it was clearly a last ditch attempt by Sega to keep the Genesis alive rather than actually utilizing it.
Meanwhile start working on a real successor in the Dreamcast with a projected release date in 1998.

[Anonymous No.9863965]

nobody's wish me on this but I think Sega would have been better off if they actually doubled down on the CD

[Anonymous No.9864000]

>>9863950
>I'd funnel Saturn production costs into figuring out how to utilize cartridge+disc games to better utilize 32X and Sega CD cross-compatibility

Focusing on games that require TWO failed addons as well as have to release in two pieces, cartridge and cd, sounds like SEGA would be sunk before even the Saturn came out in that world. Even the very very few 32XCD games didn't require a cartridge.

What possible benefit would having a cartridge for a 32XCD game even do? Faster loading? The cartridge holds a fraction of the data a CD can, that was the whole point of the CD, what tiny amount of data would you load faster in that scenario? Additional hardware? Not only would that make the cartridge cost even MORE, but that would make the already complex hardware an even bigger mess (some SegaCD games just ran entirely on the SegaCD unit itself instead of bother cross-talking with the Genesis side) but the bus connecting the Genesis and SegaCD IIRC was not that fast.

[Anonymous No.9864025]

>>9863828
Well, not doing the 32x and the SegaCD would give them more resources to develop the Saturn.
Also, not trying to always beat their competition by launching earlier their hardware

[Anonymous No.9864053]

>>9864000
>Focusing on games that require TWO failed addons as well as have to release in two pieces, cartridge and cd,
Nah bundle them together
The goal here is to not make it a failure
Sega didn't want to put any work into it

[Anonymous No.9864068]

lets fucking go, weekly no bro sega should have and would have won, it's just x/y/z happened

1. Keep working on the Sega CD, really don't think it was a bad idea. Release a combo console with both in them for people who have neither
2. No 32X, shoot everyone who thought it was a good idea.
3. Get on board with the shiturn. Ideally in this timeline you also make the shiturn far easier to develop for. Name of the game is the games, you had a good relationship with third parties with the Genesis, leverage that.
4. Provided the Shiturn goes well, you properly develop the dreamcast instead of rushing it to market (even though it was based and has good games) and now you can properly compete with the PS2/GC/Xbox. Alternately, do some sort of deal with Xbox to make the Dreamcast an even bigger monster since there was so much smoke about some sort of deal with Microsoft around this time. Now that I'm writing it out, an Xbox backed Dreamcast would probably have been their best bet and they should have done whatever they could to make it happen.

[Anonymous No.9864071]

>>9864053
>The goal here is to not make it a failure

Good luck with that, accessories rarely do well, and games that rely on accessories are not common for both that reason and because the dev knows there are significantly less potential customers who can buy the game if it relies on an accessory, much less two failed expensive ones that were a mess to develop for and even for the consumer to setup.

[Anonymous No.9864117]

>develop a better expansion chip for the Genesis than the fucking SVP, keep the Genesis alive for 2 years minimum during the Saturn's lifespan
>drop the Saturn's second 28.7MHz SH2, or ensure the programming libraries handle all the work of splitting the workload between the two automatically
>unify the Saturn's work RAM and video RAM, increase combined total to 4MBs
>use standard triangles on the Saturn instead of special snowflake quads to make it more attractive to devs looking to do multi-platform games
>launch Saturn with a 2D/3D Sonic game(2D gameplay, 3D graphics) focusing on levels built for running where Sonic goes faster the longer he runs uninterrupted
>don't drop all support for the Saturn immediately after announcing the Dreamcast, keep it alive after the DC launches for 2 years minimum
>lock down the Madden franchise before the 6th gen hits, ensure it's a Dreamcast exclusive with well developed and low latency internet multiplayer over a phone line
>use DVD drive in Dreamcast instead of trying to use the GD-ROM setup, drop VMU gimmick entirely and just use standard memory cards, and give the DC a better controller design
>give DC a C/C++ graphical programming library that acts as a drop-in replacement for DirectX
>drop the fishing controller entirely(yeah I like it, but how many fishing games and controllers did Sega expect to sell?)
>market the keyboard and mouse controllers to PC devs as a way to easily port their game to the console without having to use the controller
>create guide for PC devs to convert their games to run on the DC by changing calls to DirectX to DC programming library equivalent calls instead of pushing the slow WinCE environment
Hindsight is 20/20.

[Anonymous No.9864134]

>>9864117
Oh, nearly forgot.
>focus HARD on the built-in modem on the Dreamcast, encourage devs to put online multiplayer features in every game possible
>make 1-800(so it doesn't cost to dial to or download from) Sega network for people to dial into with news, leaderboards for games, and patches/new things for games players can download and save to their memory cards
>advertise how the DC is the console where you can always find someone to play games together with, and portray the PS2 and GC owners as sitting at home with a 2nd controller collecting dust

[Anonymous No.9864213]

ditch the cd and 32x. release the sega svp as a standalone cartridge and market it with the "lock'on technology" they introduced with sonic 3 & knuckles, then release the svp games as seperate cartridges. that would cut down on costs those specific titles and give the aging genesis a little boost. pour the money saved not developing of 32x into making the saturn better. on the saturn push really weedy japanese rpg, visual novel, and smhup stuff, but also west action and sports stuff to be the system that "has everything"

[Anonymous No.9864215]

ditch the cd and 32x. release the sega svp as a standalone cartridge and market it with the "lock'on technology" they introduced with sonic 3 & knuckles, then release the svp games as seperate cartridges. that would cut down on costs those specific titles and give the aging genesis a little boost. pour the money saved not developing of 32x into making the saturn better. on the saturn push games of as many geners as possible, including really weedy japanese rpg, visual novel, and smhup stuff, but also west action and sports stuff to be the system that "has everything"

[Anonymous No.9864262]

>>9863789
Keep putting out arcade games, make solid home ports. Focus on creating more console focused IPs like Sonic but don't forget about Sonic. Skip the CD but release the 32x and let it get at least 2 years of software support. Spy on Sony to see what they're doing with cd based hardware. Develop something more in line with the playstation for the Saturn but include backwards compatibility with the genesis and 32x(and the power base converter). Kidnap the children of some of the big 3rd party game developers and threaten to sacrifice them to Moloch if they don't develop games for the Saturn. You should probably do this earlier so you can actually sit down with these developers to get some insight on the new hardware coming out and what kind of architecture they'd be able to work best with. Consider it for the engineering of the Saturn, make their job easier. Then after all the 3rd party games are released actually sacrifice the children to Moloch to ensure enduring success.

Then when the Dreamcast comes out make it a DVD player as well because that's the only reason it failed.

[Anonymous No.9864308]

Don't alienate your engineers, developers and overseas retailers with the 32X and by rushing the Saturn out before it was fully completed and with games on it. It's that simple. Sony would have had a tighter competition out of the gate seeing there's plenty of good will towards Sega at that point, and with those two simple steps they wouldn't have burned their bridges in the west.
Furthermore, don't prioritize 3D over 2D, prioritize localizing as much games as you can for overseas in order to beat early competition with sheer volume of offerings. With better ground for Dreamcast, release the fabled DVD drive upgraded unit.

[Anonymous No.9864319]

>>9864134
Why would you want to introduce internet cancer even earlier?

[Anonymous No.9864479]

>>9864262
>Skip the CD but release the 32x
>>9864308
>don't prioritize 3D over 2D

[Anonymous No.9864486]

>>9864479
>>9864479
>don't prioritize 3D over 2D
In releases. Hype the fuck out of 3D in the marketing material, but don't stop the flow of games simply because 3D is "in" right now.

[Anonymous No.9864519]

>>9863789
>Keep Sega in the console business by not doing my favorite console
kek no thanks

I'll take SEGA CD over Saturn any day of the week

[Anonymous No.9864523]

>>9864519
then you are foolish

[Anonymous No.9864526]

>>9864262
>Skip the CD but release the 32x
>Skip the good add-on but release the one with forty games

[Anonymous No.9864531]

>>9864526
neither add on was "good"
But yeah at least the CD had a few good games

[Anonymous No.9864562]

>>9864068
>Release a combo console with both in them for people who have neither
They did that, in fact there were two of them, CDX and X'Eye. And they're both better than Saturn

SEGA CD was literally the successor to the Genesis, 32X and Saturn were the ones that had issues.

[Anonymous No.9864593]

>>9864215
From the way you described, the SVP essentially turns into Sega's version of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer.
It'd be mandatory to get plenty of studios developing for it — maybe copy Nintendo, funding some small, but talented kids to make a quirky, but impressive and appealing game.
At least 10 titles on launch day, one of them being Virtua Fighter is an absolute must.

[Anonymous No.9864610]

Letting the CDX or the Neptune act as an actual successor to the Genesis would've been fine. When you think about it that's basically what Nintendo did with the Wii, and it sold like hotcakes. Instead SoJ insisted on designing a completely different console with architecture so convoluted it's more difficult to emulate than the Dreamcast. And as a side effect we got no backwards compatibility or Genesis IP's to make up for it, not even Sonic.

[Anonymous No.9864632]

>>9864610
That's dumb. You're dumb. You probably don't even know why the Wii succeeded.

[Anonymous No.9864813]

>>9864262
>>9864262
>keep making arcades that nobody will buy because arcades are dead
You're retarded

[Anonymous No.9864830]

>>9864262
You do know the prompt also calls for Sega to also skip the 32X, right?

[Anonymous No.9864928]

>>9863789
It's a soulless alternative reality. From what I read, Sega wasn't ready for making 3d console, their arcade hardware was extremely complex and relied on assembly programming. So they had to find a partner for making an efficient 3d accelerator + sdk with C compiler

[Anonymous No.9864992]

>>9864632
The Wii was a product of the Gunpei Yokoi school of design that emphasizes affordability over raw power, which was demonstrated by the success of the Game Boy line. The CDX and the Neptune (or the CD and 32X add-ons in general) basically fall right into place with this, being slight upgrades to the existing Genesis hardware, while the Saturn went all out as a more powerful $400 machine with kind of a sad lineup throughout. Had they stuck with the CDX or the Neptune they would've been able to keep pumping out great games at a low price on hardware that was cheaper to own, just like the Game Boy and the Wii.

The Wii was basically just a souped up GameCube with a motion control gimmick tethered to it, that's it. Neptune would've served as a souped up Genesis with some 32-bit hardware baked in, but with a few more killer apps people would've easily eaten it up in 1995. I'm not some Nintendo fanboy either but it's just an example of how sometimes less is more and bigger isn't always better.

[Anonymous No.9865117]

>>9864992
I'll let it stew in your head how the $199 Gamecube and $299 Wii U failed against $299 PS2 and Xbox, or $399 PS4 and Xbox One.
Cheap = Good isn't even half of it.

[Anonymous No.9865220]

>>9865117
The Wii U failed for a lot of reasons, but the price wasn't one of them. Ignoring their primary audience the same way SEGA did with the Saturn however is.

[Anonymous No.9865263]

>>9863789
>Keep Sega in the console business by not doing the Sega CD. (on top of not doing the 32X)
That makes things easier. Sega CD was dead before S&K, it didn't extend the life of the Genesis at all. Just keep making Genesis games until the Saturn comes out, and don't rush it out.

>>9864215
I wonder how this thing could have pulled off Virtua Fighter.

[Anonymous No.9865276]

>>9865220
Leaned far too much on the gimmick, and it was expensive if you ever needed to replace the controller for whatever reason. The original claims was that you could have more than one too, but that was squashed after release, and even if it did happen the cost would have made it prohibitively expensive to do so.

Didn't help that whenever Nintendo comes up with a new gimmick, they basically force games to use it when the system is still new. Happened with the Wii and DS too.

[Anonymous No.9866359]

>>9864928
>So they had to find a partner for making an efficient 3d accelerator + sdk with C compiler
Could that mean 3dfx (which would mean "Blackbelt" happens in 1996, somewhere around N64's launch, given Voodoo wasn't RTM until late1995)?

[Anonymous No.9866520]

>>9863789
The right answer wouldn't have been dropping CDs, because there was some pretty substantial benefit to the tech.

The right answer would have been releasing what we know to be the Sega CDX as the second model Genesis, with a cartridge port for compatibility, and nudging developers in the direction of CD editions of their games, which would drive home the benefit of better profit margin for their games.

[Anonymous No.9866536]

>>9865117
The Gamecube didn't "fail" against the Xbox. It sold less but made quite a bit of money. Xbox as an enterprise cost MS $4 billion. MS waved it's big green dick around to establish itself because it could afford to play the long game. In a sense Sony did the same thing with the original PlayStation although that ended up being profitable. Nintendo's pretty good at knowing how to maximize it's position in a market without overextending itself. And the Wii U is a good indication that it's surprisingly competent at a course correction the second things start going wrong. Sony and MS on the other hand tend to throw good money after bad like the PS Vita.

[Anonymous No.9866546]

>>9863789
What I think would have helped is if the Sega CD was a bit more 32X-like and incorporated a better VDP. You'd have to change how it interfaces with the console, requiring a very different architecture, but the Genesis's limited color palette was it's Achilles heel as the 90s pressed forward. The system didn't really need more horsepower but it's visuals had trouble keeping up with the SNES, especially in still screenshots. The Sega CD being limited to the Genesis's stock palette hurt it's appeal since side by side the games didn't look THAT much better than regular ass Genesis games and still looked worse than a lot of SNES games.

[Anonymous No.9866549]

>>9866546
At some point it starts to become questionable why you're even making an addon rather than a standalone console.
If you have to add a CPU, RAM, and a VDP, what's the base hardware even there for?

[Anonymous No.9866559]

>Sega CD never happens
>Nintendo just quietly drops their Sony CD addon partnership due to "losing faith in CDs as a medium for video games"
>Sony doesn't feel like pursuing video games further
>3DO fails to get off the ground due to its strange and unproven combination of 3D graphics and CD media
>Japanese developers are no longer able to move to 3DO for cheaper royalties and more freedom and are instead forced to either go bust or play ball with the tyranny of Nintendo
>Japanese video game industry crashes in late 1994 as a significant amount of developers close their doors following reveals of the Nintendo 64 dev hardware and retail specs having astronomical development and publishing costs
>Japanese economy sinks even lower having massive effects on mid-90's global politics
All this because Anon hates the Sega CD. Was it worth it?

[Anonymous No.9866561]

>>9863789
It's easy: Sega just be Sony, with Sony money; make PS1. simples

[Anonymous No.9866568]

>>9866549
True, but if you put yourself in 1991 it makes more sense. Standalone CD consoles back then weren't exactly flying off the shelves. The Sega CD though didn't do terribly bad though. 2 million units, which adds up to about 1 out of 15 Genesis owners. In those early days of the format the brand recognition and the idea of souping up an already impressive machine made adoption a bit easier to swallow than if you were to give the impression that your two year old console is old hat already and they should buy the new thing.

[Anonymous No.9866631]

>>9866536
>And the Wii U is a good indication that it's surprisingly competent at a course correction the second things start going wrong.

My ass, going "Oh shit, this thing is NOT selling, pull it from shelves, discontinue immediately, rush out a successor!" is not "course correction". By that argument the Dreamcast was course correction for the Saturn.

>>9866549
>If you have to add a CPU, RAM, and a VDP, what's the base hardware even there for?

Moral support?

[Anonymous No.9866647]

>>9866559
>All this because Anon hates the Sega CD.
No? This is an expansion of the usual questions that often just discards the 32X.
>Japanese developers are no longer able to move to 3DO for cheaper royalties and more freedom and are instead forced to either go bust or play ball with the tyranny of Nintendo
>Japanese video game industry crashes in late 1994 as a significant amount of developers close their doors following reveals of the Nintendo 64 dev hardware and retail specs having astronomical development and publishing costs
They would probably embrace PC gaming, not collapse - with Falcom and Koei at the forefront (these two had RPGs and tycoon games that began on home computers). That would also help get the eroge stereotype associated with PC gaming there away earlier.

[Anonymous No.9866659]

>>9866631
You're comparing the Switch to the Dreamcast? You can't seriously be stretching that much. The Switch wasn't even planned. They basically said "fuck, the Wii U is a disaster let's figure this out" and rapidly got out a system that not only did well, rendered the previous one obsolete by quickly porting any game that was worth a damn. All while avoiding the stench of burned customers somehow when you discontinued the Wii U. No other company has been able to pull that shit off and I'm surprised it even worked for Nintendo. Somehow their failures roll off their back. Nobody holds the Virtual Boy against them the way they do the 32X against Sega.

[Anonymous No.9866665]

>>9866659
If Virtual Boy resulted in the N64 or the GBA being flops or failures, they would.

[Anonymous No.9866676]

>>9866665
Well that's just my point. Nintendo has a knack for compartmentalizing it's fuck ups so the damage doesn't impact anything moving forward. That's competent business savvy.

[Anonymous No.9866730]

>>9866659
>You're comparing the Switch to the Dreamcast?
Pic immediately came to mind

>>9866559
>Video games as a whole become irrelevant after 1994 and people focus more on traditional games
>As a result, /v/ is never created
>Without /v/, there is no /vr/, /vg/, /vm/, /vmg/, /vst/, or /vrpg/
>People quickly lose interest in 4chan and moot closes the site in the mid-2000's
Look what you've done now anon

[Anonymous No.9866760]

>>9864000
>the sega cd is a failed addon

[Anonymous No.9866762]

>>9864068
The CD wasn't a terrible add on, and yeah putting more time into the saturn and localizing some of those games that weren't would've got some attention. I can kinda see where your going with Microsoft and sega working hand in hand on the dream cast, that alone could've helped them both since Microsoft still struggles in Japan.

[Anonymous No.9866776]

Realistically there was nothing Sega could have done. Every option would result in a thread like this second guessing their decisions. The Mega Drive wasn't that successful in Japan but Virtua Fighter was. And that was 1993. Sega needed to get the Saturn out in Japan right away because their only reasonable avenue was to get Virtua Fighter in people's homes as soon as possible. Had they NOT rushed the Saturn the story would be "how could Sega have slept on next gen and let Sony get the PS1 out before them!" It was a no-win scenario.

[Anonymous No.9866827]

>>9866760
I keep noticing this trend not just in this thread but in general, then I started looking at some actual numbers
>SEGA CD has 204 games total, but 190 released in US
>Saturn has 1,107 games total, but only 258 released in US
>Dreamcast has 636 games total, but only 252 released in US
Then when you consider how long each was on the market, it didn't really do that much worse than the other two. They all basically had a lifespan of three years
>1992-1995 (SEGA CD)
>1995-1998 (Saturn)
>1999-2001 (Dreamcast)
Honestly having only fifteen games missing from the US library is not that bad compared to over 700. Even if it didn't have as much going on as the other two, it's hard to say for sure if it really failed as an add-on. That's still way more games than the 32X and the BS Satellaview combined, and around the same amount as the FDS.

[Anonymous No.9866846]

>>9866659
>You're comparing the Switch to the Dreamcast? You can't seriously be stretching that much.

Claiming that the Switch was Nintendo "course correcting the WiiU" is a bigger stretch than an ARMS character. The WiiU was a flop, got utterly dropped hard, and the Switch rushed out to replace it mid-gen. That's not "course correction", that's panic replacing a doomed product. It's main launch title was a freaking WiiU port that had been in the works for the WiiU since IT'S release, and other notable launch titles were a $50 set of motion-garbage Newgrounds-tier games that should have been a free pack-in, and still would not have compared to the Wii's free pack-in, or even the WiiU's pack-in. The Switch is now really struggling in terms of games it can run due to it's dated hardware.

The Dreamcast was also rushed out mid-gen because the previous console was an utter flop, and was trounced by the hardware of all the other consoles that released a year or two after it due to it's outdated hardware. To act like the Switch was "course correction" while the Dreamcast was just SEGA floundering is asinine. You think SEGA didn't try to "figure it out" with the Dreamcast? You think they just shat out anything while Nintendo were performing rocket science to release what was basically a Nvidia Shield?

Also the Virtual Boy didn't doom the rest of their portable line, Nintendo likes to act like gimmicky new hardware is just a new product line.... until it does well then it replaces the main lineup. Remember when Nintendo insisted the Nintendo DS was not a replacement to the GBA but "a third pillar"? And once it utterly blew up it suddenly was a GBA replacement? If the Virtual Boy blew up you can bet Nintendo would have called it the Gameboy's successor.

[Anonymous No.9866961]

>>9866659
>Somehow their failures roll off their back.
They're portable lineup was successful enough to get them to the Wii when their previous consoles were declining in sales, and then the 3DS did well enough to make up for the Wii U's failure too.
>>9866827
I don't think the SEGA CD really "failed", it was there, it pushed a moderate amount of units, and then it was discontinued when the Saturn arrived. It didn't seem to harm SEGA's relationship with retailers or developers either. I think they should've pushed the CD more and made more games showing it's capabilities off (that wasn't FMV movie games) instead of making the 32X.

[Anonymous No.9866970]

>>9866846
>Claiming that the Switch was Nintendo "course correcting the WiiU" is a bigger stretch than an ARMS character. The WiiU was a flop, got utterly dropped hard, and the Switch rushed out to replace it mid-gen. That's not "course correction",
That is the literal definition of course correction.

[Anonymous No.9866974]

>>9866961
Sega's problem was that showing off the Sega CD's capabilities was tough when you were mostly limited to still images in magazines. You can't really demonstrate sprite scaling, for example. That's why they needed to give it a better VDP to push more colors.

[Anonymous No.9866982]

>>9866970
Then the Dreamcast was too

[Anonymous No.9866986]

>>9863789
>never release sega cd/32x
>retain base by just releasing mapper chip carts
>pump focused resources into developing the Neptune/Saturn into an actual 3D console that blows people away

They would potentially still be around.

[Anonymous No.9866991]

>>9866982
The Dreamcast was the natural start of the next generation. A new console isn't automatically a course correction just because the predecessor failed. There's an obvious difference between the two situations. Had the Dreamcast been scrambled out in 1996 then you'd have a point.

Besides, it's irrelevant since the Dreamcast didn't succeed in the way the Switch did. So even if we do treat them as course corrections, it shows that Sega's scramble failed while Nintendo's version of a scramble did gangbusters.

[Anonymous No.9867002]

the world if the sega saturn never existed

[Anonymous No.9867021]

>>9863789
I am here to offer a radical new direction to this endless discourse of pseuds.

We all know Sega had the best games, they were ahead of Nintendo, NEC, PC, etc, etc. They were ahead of everyone in technology, design, and development, they not only had iconic base versions of games, but scaled down with new gameplay in alternate versions demonstrating they understood how gameplay also scaled. They were the undisputed masters but whether it was internal agents doing sabotage - obviously for the competition, infighting between branches (also plants) or other obtuse machinations such as failures of the press, the only way to get sega to succeed is to simply force people to buy their games. If they touch a Nintendo? Break their fucking skulls open. They grab a keyboard? Snap their wrists. They don't want an arcade cabinet at the ready? They don't deserve the privilege to stand at one.

My proposition is violence is the answer. Buy and play Sega, or else.

[Anonymous No.9867069]

>>9866991
The Dreamcast WAS scrambled out. The WiiU lasted from 2012 to 2017, 5 years. The Saturn lasted from 1994 to 1998, 4 years. Both the Saturn and Dreamcast came out mid-gen. But have weaker hardware than the competition. Both were made in response to the previous console flopping and rushing out a successor.

>Besides, it's irrelevant since the Dreamcast didn't succeed in the way the Switch did. So even if we do treat them as course corrections, it shows that Sega's scramble failed while Nintendo's version of a scramble did gangbusters.

If you view them in a vacuum yes, but that's not the case here. SEGA had been flopping since after the Genesis, Nintendo's system before the WiiU however sold like crazy, and they had their handheld division as well. If the N64, GC, and Wii were all also flops then the WiiU very well could have ended Nintendo's hardware lineup. PR matters quite a bit in a product being successful or failing.

Also Nintendo offered a gimmick that was enticing, it's basically a handheld with video out, while the Dreamcast due to it's rushed nature LACKED a big popular gimmick the PS2 had... DVD playback. The Switch now is struggling hard to run even decent looking modern 1st party games due to the rushed nature resulting in a weak SoC and low amount of RAM.

[Anonymous No.9867076]

Where can I hire a hitwoman to suffocate me in her massive jugs
I'm sick of living

[Anonymous No.9867081]

>>9867069
That's a bit disingenuous since generations in the 90s had much faster turnover than today.

[Anonymous No.9867083]

>>9867076
Pretty sure you posted in the wrong board

Also, try the giantess threads I guess?

[Anonymous No.9867086]

>>9867081
>generations in the 90s had much faster turnover than today

[Anonymous No.9867089]

>>9867069
>while the Dreamcast due to it's rushed nature LACKED a big popular gimmick the PS2 had... DVD playback.
DVD players were super expensive when the Dreamcast launched. The only reason Sony was able to put one in the PS2 was because they had a vested interest in the format's success owing to it being their own creation. And they sold the system at a loss, something Sega couldn't afford to do lacking Sony's conglomerate money. It's unreasonable to consider the lack of DVD an oversight.

[Anonymous No.9867094]

>>9867086
The Game Boy color came out 7 years after the original. And don't be a retard. The Game Boy is an obvious exception due to, ya know, having no competition.

[Anonymous No.9867097]

>>9867094
>9 years. I can't math. But over the Game Boy's life Nintendo kept trying to reinvent it with the Play It Loud, Pocket, Light, etc.

[Anonymous No.9867105]

>>9867086
The PS1 was around for a long time too, even after the Dreamcast. Seems like SEGA are the main ones who had this problem, though interestingly the Genesis was also still supported until 1998

[Anonymous No.9867110]

>>9867094
Not that anon but it did have competition in the form of Atari Lynx, Game Gear, and Turbo Express. They just didn't last as long for obvious reasons

[Anonymous No.9867129]

>>9867089
Don't forget the Xbox had it too. Yes, DVD players were very expensive when the Dreamcast came out.... that's why I mentioned it being rushed causing problems. The PS2 came out two years after the Dreamcast. Also selling the console at a loss is not a new tactic, about the only one who doesn't do it is Nintendo.

>>9867094
GBC wasn't considered a successor however, the Gameboy is officially listed as having lasted from 1989 to 2003. And 7/9 years is still significantly longer than the WiiU or Saturn. As others mentioned, it also did have competition, they all just failed.

[Anonymous No.9867201]

>>9867110
Yeah, though even the Game Boy was showing it's age by 1994. If not for Pokemon giving it a kick in the ass it might have been retired sooner.

[Anonymous No.9867208]

>>9867129
Which consoles sold at a loss prior to the PS2?

[Anonymous No.9867361]

>>9866974
True, but I think a larger problem that made the SEGA CD unable to be a mega hit was the fact that it was an add-on. Not saying it should've been a separate console, as that would've been worse, but the hardware was new enough that the Genesis it was attached to became a serious bottleneck to the addon hardware (the SEGA CD was basically it's own console minus the video output, which is why the price was so high). Using the Genesis as video output meant the palette couldn't be expanded, so as you said, in print advertisements, they looked too similar to the average person.

[Anonymous No.9867854]

>>9867361
Yeah the Genesis's architecture really wasn't built for expansion. The actual side port was only designed with a floppy drive in mind so its super limited. Had they had more foresight the add ons may have been more impressive. Though in fairness the PC-Engine CD was legitimately successful in Japan so Sega wasn't wrong for hopping on that bandwagon. And that add-on didn't improve shit.

[Anonymous No.9867860]

>>9863789
Sega CD is based and redpilled.

>no 32X
>Saturn backwards compatible with Sega CD
>Sega teams up with NEC to build a simple straight forward console
>Sega CD "classics" from mega drive released for Saturn

[Anonymous No.9867905]

>>9867361
Always funny when people post shit like this from a western perspective when both the FDS and CD-rom2 sold millions of units. NEC were smart enough to release a bundle unit with the Duo though, meanwhile Sega entered the market on the backfoot with no games and a much more expensive system because they added too much overpriced RAM to it.

The problem with the Sega CD is that they went all in on the FMV meme, which took up too much space. NEC couldn't even afford streaming video because of the emaciated RAM and shit CPU early on, so all the major games used sprite animation which had weaker color palettes, but looked far more impressive, and left more room for more important stuff, like voiced characters.

[Anonymous No.9867942]

>>9867905
What was the pricing like? My understanding is that the cdrom2 was much simpler to make.

[Anonymous No.9867960]

>>9867942
It's been a while since I checked so I might be a bit off, but the CD-rom2 was very expensive at launch given it was the first CD add-on, but by the time the Mega CD launched the Super CD-rom2 was about 50 bucks cheaper, and the all in one Duo worked out about 100 bucks cheaper than buying a mega drive and mega CD. NEC completely destroyed Sega in terms of pricing. Maybe the Mega CD being front loading added a bit of cost, but it's my understanding the major reason for the price difference was the RAM.

[Anonymous No.9867981]

>>9865276
Not him but it was literally just marketing. People were immediately confused and/or underwhelmed by the name and Nintendo's shitty ads. The Switch is worse in terms of hardware (and arguably library), but because it had Zelda on launch and its ads didn't suck, studios were much more keen to develop for it and people understood what it was.

The Gamecube failed for the same reasons. Lack of Mario/Zelda at launch, lackluster marketing and most importantly, lack of third party support because of the Mini CDs.

[Anonymous No.9867983]

>>9867981
>The Switch is worse in terms of hardware
lolwut?

[Anonymous No.9867987]

>>9864262
>backwards compatibility with the genesis and 32x
What is the obsession with backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility ruins consoles, its the reason why the genesis had a crippled color palette.

For the Saturn backwards comparability with the genesis would be pretty much grafting on an entire genesis, which would be a waste of silicon budget.

[Anonymous No.9867996]

>>9864610
>more difficult to emulate than the Dreamcast
Actually, emulating the dreamcast properly is incredibly difficult and has only recently been achieved. You see, the dreamcast supports real 3d, whilst modern gpus do not. Its a significant amount of work to fake proper 3d support on the 2d gpus we are more familiar with.

[Anonymous No.9867997]

>>9867983
Yeah? It's a low power handheld console. The only reason why it can hold a candle to the Wii U is because it uses standard ARM architecture with a shared memory bus compared to the convoluted Power PC tri-core its predecessor had. Even docked, its graphical throughput is like a third that of the Wii U

[Anonymous No.9867998]

>>9867997
Every single Wii U port runs better on the Switch, some much better (MK8 for example)

[Anonymous No.9868015]

>>9867997
>Even docked, its graphical throughput is like a third that of the Wii U
Where are you pulling that figure from?
What spec are you using to justify that statement?

[Anonymous No.9868037]

>>9867860
32X is based and redpilled.

>no Sega CD
>Neptune to be a successor of the Genesis
>don't have to bother with porting games to the CD format as they play natively
>$199 MSRP
>people would be hesitant to drop $100 more for the PSX that has no library
>devlopers pick it over the N64 because it's easier to develop on and they'd have a year or more to learn the system
>Sega don't have to juggle platforms yet again and can focus all their first party efforts on a single system

[Anonymous No.9868151]

>>9867998
Irrelevant to the discussion. I'm only talking about hardware, not actual optimisation of said hardware. The support for newer APIs is much more relevant to developers than graphical figures anyway.

>>9868015
The Switch has an underclocked Tegra from a Nvidia shield, the Wii U, while still being much less power hungry than the Xbox and Playstations of the era, had a TeraScale (2?) GPU running at 33W. Obviously, since there's no official figures and there's a massive difference in the architecture, it's all speculation, but the consensus is that Switch has slightly better performance docked and significantly worse undocked and the different. Either that, or it's straight up 2x worse than the Switch and only slightly better when undocked. I have no clue where I got the 3X figure from, that's what I remember when I was looking around the Switch launch. Accounting for modern memory bandwidth compression and Wii U's EDRAM, 3x the bandwidth of the switch doesn't seem unlikely, but obviously, that's comparing apples to oranges and in terms of real life performance, one is obviously better.

[Anonymous No.9868160]

>>9868151
>Obviously, since there's no official figures and there's a massive difference in the architecture, it's all speculation,
You only needed to say this from the start.

[Anonymous No.9868164]

>>9863950
>I'd funnel Saturn production costs into figuring out how to utilize cartridge+disc games to better utilize 32X and Sega CD cross-compatibility, then later release an all-in-one console for 32X/CD/Genesis for anybody who didn't already own them.
Yes, let's make the already expensive Saturn even more expensive! That'll show Sony!
Holy shit this thread is full of idiots.

[Anonymous No.9868168]

>>9867094
>The Game Boy had no competition
Except for the Game Gear, the Lynx, the WonderSwan, the Nomad, and all the other failures whose names have been forgotten.
Has /vr/ collectively started huffing paint?

[Anonymous No.9868183]

>>9868160
That's literally every console in existence tho retard.

[Anonymous No.9868197]

>>9868183
I can look up thorough specs for pretty much any console I want, either published for marketing or leaked from SDKs. Including the Switch and Wii U.
Just admit you made shit up and stop trying to save face.

[Anonymous No.9868208]

>>9868197
Share those resources with us then. I would really like to have a diagram of the architecture for every single console that's been as well as a comprehensive list of their specification, including FLOPs figures, memory bandwidth on all busses and decoding capabilities. For future reference of course.

[Anonymous No.9868269]

>>9868208
>I would really like to have a diagram of the architecture for every single console that's been as well as a comprehensive list of their specification,
This site is really good, although it doesn't go as far as Switch and isn't brilliant for giving benchmark figures, only discussing the overall architecture.
https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/wiiu/

>memory bandwidth
Wii U: 12.8GB/s
Switch undocked: 21.296GB/s
Switch docked 25.6GB/s
sources:
https://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/6465?cPage=13&all=False&sort=0&page=1&slug=nintendo-wii-u-teardown
https://daily.net/nintendo-switch-ram-specs/

> FLOPs figures
Wii U: This one was actually much harder to track down. Sources are poor and biased and disagree about whether it has 320 or 160 shader units, making for 352 or 176 GFLOPs respectively. With real world performance I'd have to guess the latter but truthfully I don't know.
Switch undocked: 170-255 GFLOPS
Switch docked: 427 GFLOPS
sources:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia-tegra-x1-preview/2
https://www.eurogamer.net/df-hardware-wii-u-graphics-power-finally-revealed
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/wii-u-gpu-base-specs-160-alus-8-tmus-8-rops-rumor-wii-u-hardware-was-downgraded.710765/

https://github.com/retronx-team/sys-clk and https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2016-nintendo-switch-spec-analysis also referenced to get docked/undocked Switch figures relative to stock Tegra X1

[Anonymous No.9868336]

>>9868269
So there's no figures for the microarchitecture of the GPU, because that's the real gist of it. Meaning you can't really deduce if the performance uplift is based purely on improvements in the architecture and the addition of more recent engines or the real IPC of the components themselves. That's why I said it was all speculation, nobody really knows. I seriously doubt that it's less than the Switch undocked, because it played X360 and PS3 games quite well.

[Anonymous No.9868354]

>>9868336
>So there's no figures for the microarchitecture of the GPU
We know that the Wii U is TeraScale 2 and we know the Tegra X1 is Maxwell. Those sorts of things are hard to compare though, IPC is a much more nebulous and load-dependent metric.
>. I seriously doubt that it's less than the Switch undocked, because it played X360 and PS3 games quite well.
You say that like Switch has any issues with 360 or PS3 games.

[Anonymous No.9868379]

>>9867981
Yes the marketing was horrible. A lot of people were confused if the WiiU was a new system or an accessory for the Wii. I still wasn't completely sure when it was first shown at E3 since all they showed were concept demos with the controller and didn't even show off the system, I had to freeze-frame the video to see that for a few seconds you could see what looked like the console box in the background.

But that was only a part of it, the WiiU was lacking in MANY other ways, and it's big gimmick didn't appeal to many while it kept it's price high. Nintendo literally refused to give it a pricedrop even on the final day, the most they did was cancel the 8GB version and put the 32GB version in it's former pricepoint.

Imagine a console with 8GB of storage in 2012, the same amount the Xbox had in 2001. The PS2's HDD accessory was 40GB and the PS3 launched with a 20GB and 60GB HDD. To say nothing that it was a joke specs-wise compared to the PS4 and Xbox One... and could not play DVDs or Blu-Ray movies unlike both of those.

>The Switch is worse in terms of hardware
Completely wrong. The Switch is no powerhouse, but it's more powerful than the WiiU. Granted, that's not saying much, and it's nowhere near the usual difference in power that console generations tend to have, but it is more powerful. Nintendo basically made a successor to the 3DS with video out that is more powerful by a little bit than the WiiU. It's basically like if the 3DS was more powerful than the Wii.

>Lack of Mario/Zelda at launch, lackluster marketing and most importantly

Very wrong. It failed for lack of games because they pissed off many of their notable developers in the N64 era and lack of features like CD/DVD playback. Also the N64 wasn't that great either while the PS1 did gangbusters, so people were favoring a PS2 over a GameCube. The GC however had what some consider the best Zelda/Mario games, it wasn't a lack of Mario or Zelda.

[Anonymous No.9868386]

>>9868379
The Wii U didn't need to install games, unlike the PS4 and Xbone. Many late PS3 and 360 titles needed to install games too. I don't think any Wii U games did.

[Anonymous No.9868391]

>>9867208
Genesis, Jaguar, Saturn, PS1. Probably Nintendo 64, I don't believe Nintendo had perspective-correct texture mapping at below $200.

[Anonymous No.9868410]

>>9868386
The WiiU still had it's games available digitally, as well as digital-only games. Xenoblade Chronicles would have taken up more space than the 32GB model even had free to the user.... and that game ironically was with only WiiU game that I know of that had an option of a 10GB download for faster loading.

You basically needed a USB drive for it.... except that it had worse support for USB drives than even the Wii. The ports were only 2.0 and had a very hard limit of 500mAh (Yes, that's part of the 2.0 spec, but many devices with 2.0 ports can supply more power to accessories that need it, even the Wii did) which meant you were limited to flashdrives (which the WiiU tends to WRECK due to how much it writes to them during normal operation) or a physical HDD with a Y-adapter to use up two USB ports for power.

... and then the Switch also came with 32GB.... which unlike the WiiU only stores save data internally.... and can only use MicroSD expansion... despite the fact that said 32GB is on a modular daughterboard they didn't think to use a larger NAND or offer models with a larger NAND down the line, despite it being possible to do that yourself with aftermarket parts and a hacked Switch...

[Anonymous No.9868415]

>>9868168
The anon you quoted probably meant "real competition".

[Anonymous No.9868459]

>>9868415
/vr/ loves to deliberately ignore the spirit of the conversation in order to "well ackshually" you.

[Anonymous No.9868464]

>>9868410
Oh no, a 2 dollar adapter!

Realistically, if you need more than 200gb on a console, you have fucked up somewhere in your life. Who needs to play more than 5 games at the same time?

[Anonymous No.9868465]

>>9868415
>>9868459

Pretty silly to argue that the Game Gear was not "real competition" to the Gameboy, at least in the earlier years. SEGA's whole "Ha ha it's a kid's toy that's only in black and white" advertising was in full swing for a few years for it. Not like the internet existed back then to know about the poor battery life, all most people saw was "black and white vs color".

[Anonymous No.9868469]

>>9868464
More than $2 if you don't want burn-down-your-house chinkware, and it's still taking up TWO USB ports that way. Also there are single games that take up more than 200GB these days retard, also only a poorfag would keep deleting and re-downloading games on a piddly 200GB drive. You have to go out of your way to even get drives under 500GB these days, how fucking 3rd world are you?

[Anonymous No.9868476]

>>9868379
The Wii U's tablet was also weirdly limited in ways that made it annoying. You had to stay so close to the system that it may as well have been wired.

[Anonymous No.9868487]

>>9868391
Are you sure about that? The PS1 maybe, but the Saturn was notoriously $400 specifically because Sega couldn't go any lower. I also doubt the Genesis was sold at a loss, at least as launch. Maybe near the end when they were trying to clearance them for cheap but that's not in the spirit of the question.

[Anonymous No.9868496]

>>9867981
The Gamecube didn't come anything close to failing, come on now. We know what failed systems look like.

[Anonymous No.9868502]

>>9868465
The Game Boy effectively didn't have any competition by 1994ish. Yes there was TECHNICALLY competition throughout it's lifespan but if any system is worthy of that hyperbole it's the Game Boy.

[Anonymous No.9868507]

>>9868487
Genesis was sold at loss since the $150 price drop.
Saturn was sold at loss for its entire life. Sega replaced the Saturn in Japan first because every Saturn lost $100 and every Dreamcast was a profit.

[Anonymous No.9868513]

>>9868502
So what was the GBA's competition? That thing only lasted 5 years in Japan, about as long as the WiiU did. Japan likes potables FAR more than the US or UK does. To say that the Gameboy lasted as long as it did just because there was no competition is misleading at best.

[Anonymous No.9868536]

>>9868513
GBA was released to kill the NGC and the Wonderswan, and was killed early by the looming PSP.

[Anonymous No.9868542]

>>9868507
Wait that fucking thing cost $500 per unit to produce and distribute? That's absurd. In what universe did they think that was a good idea?

[Anonymous No.9868550]

>>9868536
The GBA also kinda sucked balls. It had too few buttons for a lot of the games it was trying to support and because the original model had a shitty screen every game was forced to sport a garish color palette. It also wasn't all that inexpensive.

[Anonymous No.9868562]

>>9868542
Well no, memory (and chips in general) price had a good drop in 1996-1997, but they had to make price cuts to stay in the game. The components got cheaper, but the loss stayed the same.
As to why, well it has like 11 processors and a CD drive, and Sega doesn't own fabs. They have to buy it somewhere or buy fab times. Sony owned fabs at the time and their chips were sold to themselves at cost or for nothing. The quote "Real men have fabs" is about situations like this, where you have absurd chip cost that wouldn't exist if you own fabs.

[Anonymous No.9868565]

>>9868542
The SP made the screen plenty usable and a handheld at $99 is hard to beat in terms of price.
But technology was moving fast at that time, much like during the 4th and 5th generations of home consoles, so it was obsoleted fairly quickly.

[Anonymous No.9868570]

>>9868562
This is why Nintendo made the right call with the N64. It was impossible to fight Sony on it's "home turf" so to speak so going in an entirely different direction that didn't let Sony dictate standards was a better call in the long run.

[Anonymous No.9868579]

>>9868565
The SP didn't help matters because the games themselves still had to account for the original model so no matter what you were stuck staring at oversaturated palettes. And I'm more talking about the game prices, which were often $49.99. It wasn't exactly a budget system.

[Anonymous No.9868595]

>>9868570
I believe it was to cushion the Nintendo 64's cost with high cartridge licensing cost. Again, I don't buy for a second that the Nintendo 64 had perspective correct texture mapping at $200 for the entire machine. Not having to include a CD drive is just a side thing. Nintendo tried to make a 64DD and Zip drives and disks were even more expensive than CD.
And Nintendo did use DVD drives in Gamecube and Wii and Bluray drives in Wii U anyway, the joke was on them for 16 years and Sony dictated the standard.

[Anonymous No.9868601]

>>9868579
Maybe at the start, but they dropped off significantly. I'm not an expert, but I'm going to guess that falling ROM prices helped a lot. At the start of the generation games were often 4MB but by the end they would regularly be 16 or even 32MB.

[Anonymous No.9868613]

>>9868595
The N64 cut corners in a lot of ways. It had no dedicated sound hardware and the unified RAM architecture were obvious ways it kept costs down. Plus not having an optical drive in the mid-90s itself made a big difference. It doesn't have a lot of components under the hood.

[Anonymous No.9868687]

>>9868542
>That's absurd. In what universe did they think that was a good idea?

Apparently this one, which explains why they dropped out of the hardware market over 20 years ago.

[Anonymous No.9868707]

The Fenrir guy in the Saturn thread reminded me why nobody likes Saturn

Forget the Saturn, keep the SEGA CD and 32X

[Anonymous No.9868892]

>>9868459
Speaking of which, this thread has admittedly been derailed into other topics, such as Nintendo hardware stuff.

[Anonymous No.9869661]

>>9868707
Not him, but I sold my Saturn twenty years ago but kept my Genesis/SegaCD model 2 combo. I’m glad to still have the Genesis/SegaCD and may buy a modded Saturn later.