Do we have a definitive reason why the Sega failed?
How could a power house able to contend with Nintendo and win in some cases immediately slip and fall because of Sony? Sony, who even worked with Sega to mess up Nintendo at some points.
There has to be more to it than that. Is the key the Saturn, or is it with the 32x and even with the Sega CD?
Is it possible Sega could have survived if they had just released a true Sonic game as a Saturn launch title?
>>3124493
They had like 3 consoles in 4 years no one gave a fuck about. Are you seriously so dense?
>>3124493
1. Saturn price. The Saturn was too expensive and it did similar things to the PS1. There are theoretical arguments that it was more powerful, but that wasn't seen in practice. If it had been an equal price to the PS1, competition would have roared.
2. The 32X. Sega toyed with the idea of the Sega Neptune for years before cancelling it and releasing the 32X for the Genesis. Even if people didn't buy it, it severely damaged Sega's reputation and definitely affected Saturn sales.
And that's it.
Being irrelevant out of an entire console generation is also what easily killed Atari. They totally missed the 16-bit/Genesis/SNES era, and by the time they released the Jaguar it was too late for them. Sega effectively entirely missed the 5th generation and by the time they released the Dreamcast it was also too late.
We've had a lot of threads on this lately.
32X, hiring Bernie Stolar, constant fights between the American and the Japanese divison in general, bad planning and some bad luck.
>>3124503
>If it had been an equal price to the PS1, competition would have roared.
Is this just speculation? I mean I can see why that would make sense, because it would be a lot harder for the average family to choose between two 200 dollar consoles, especially when one had the Sega name on it and one had Sony.
>>3124493
Sega bombed in the 8-bit Generation. The Master System was great but they still bombed. They made a profit, but it was small.
They dominated the 16-bit, true, but they didn't do much else after that. The Sega CD is a bit of a blunder, and the 32x was a fucking nightmare. Then they started stuffing the Genesis into everything like laser disc players, airplanes, and portable systems.
>>3124505
What did Bernie do? I thought he propelled the Dreamcast
>>3124512
I mean, I'm American, but you must be 'murican. You realize the Master System is still hot in the land of the hue, right?
Because Sony was a tremendously more devastating opponent than Nintendo right out of the gate.
Sega had always made riskier decisions than Nintendo but with srs business men punching on any little vacated portion of the market they quickly became deadly while Nintendo could hang on for decades longer by shrinking and laser focusing on their core customers.
>>3124523
It was also even with the Nes in Europe and even outsold it in some countries but you can't fail in two of the three most important markets and call it a victory. That's why we do consider Saturn to be a failure even though it did pretty good in Japan.
>>3124519
People blame Bernie for being a yes-man to the fact that SoJ would forbid certain games from being localized that they thought wouldn't sell well (like Grandia and the rest of Shining Force III since Part 1 sold like crap). Bernie was told that Saturn wasn't Sega's future, since even Japan thought it was a mistake and rushed to start R&D on the next system to replace it.
>>3124574
People who blame Bernie are idiots.
hurrr durrr muh weeb game nobody gives a fuck about woulda saved the saturn
>>3124587
Nobody outside of Japan bought JRPGs that weren't called Final Fantasy in the 90s and that was a fact for any console.
>>3124493
4 reasons.
1. Failing to brace for the death of arcades (Sega was heavy into arcades)
2. The 32X addon. The money and time for this turd should have gone into the Saturn. (the SegaCD was break even and helped make the Saturn have good optical drive)
3. They fucked the launch of the Saturn and then idiot prevented good games from coming because they were foreign, 2D, or did not appeal to Chad/Tyrone. Then he cut short the console's life for no reason "The Saturn is not our future."
4. They stopped selling the Sega Pico educational handheld in USA which was making profit and would have helped Sega design handhelds in the future.
>>3124493
I think the 3D Sonics and their take on F-Zero proved that they were also-rans all along who just got lucky in the early 90s.
If you want to know where Sega lost all of its money take a good look.
Then remember that Sega were trying to price match Sony who were trying to price match Nintendo.
also sega pissed off retailers. The saturn came out during E3. They announced it and it was going to be only at toys r us at the start. They thought "oh man sony can't compete with that." then sony showed the price tag and the saturn was pretty much dead to consumers at that point.
>>3124613
What exactly are we looking at here? The comparative abundance of chips on the Saturn board?
>>3124593
>[citation needed]
>>3124618
>The comparative abundance of chips on the Saturn board?
Yes
>>3124613
wat diddy meen bye dis?
>>3124619
I really think the first JRPG to have sales numbers in the millions was FF7. I think maybe Mario Rpg sales were in the high 100k but nothing like FF7.
>>3124623
What I was trying to say is that the manufacturing costs for the Saturn were much much higher than for the PS1 and (particularly) the N64.
And despite that Sega were forced to price match to stay competitive which invariably meant that they were losing bucket loads of cash anytime somebody bought a Saturn.
IIRC the saturn was harder to program for compared to the playstation and n64.
>Do we have a definitive reason why the Sega failed?
Only about three dozen. Sega's downfall was due to infamously bad in-house communication between Sega of America and Sega of Japan among other international issues, terrible marketing and pricing decisions and a slew of absolutely shitty third party peripherals and handhelds most people didn't even know existed and still don't.
Dreamcast was its death knell when they left that gaping wide hardware security hole untouched in most units that shipped to stores other than really late manufactured ones and knowledge quickly spread of how easy it was to pirate. Then PS2 came round the corner as the cheapest DVD player on the market plus boasting all the third party support and stabbed it in the heart.
Some things are just too pure for this shit world senpai.
>>3124659
>le piracy hurts sales meme
>>3124659
The DVD player thing was really big deal. I know people that bought ps2 because it was a "cheap" dvd player.
>>3124661
o_o
>>3124664
I know people who bought the ps3 because it was a "cheap" bluray player, it's a pretty fucking brilliant business move
>>3124664
It was only a big deal before 2002 but Dreamcast was dead by then.
I actually don't think piracy had a big impact on Dreamcast. Only a privileged few had the means to pirate 1 GB games around the year 2000.
What hurt Dreamcast was that the "arcade in the home" experience lost its novelty, and Sega were charging way too much money for arcade ports in proportion to what people were willing to pay.
Also the console had too much of a focus on weeb shit. There's no way on fucking earth that a game like Shenmue has mainstream Western appeal and yet Sega plowed a fortune into developing that game.
Also the PS1 was still very strong then, and I think consumers were happy with what they already had,
>>3124659
I thought Dreamcast piracy did not become commonplace until after the console was discontinued.
It took time to figure out the MIL-CD exploit.
nobody gave a shit about bringing the arcade experience into the home any more.
>>3124765
Do arcade machines even exist anymore? Maybe I'm moving in the wrong circles these days but all I see is those touch screen spot the difference machines in pubs.
I used to cheat by crossing my eyes and making them into a stereo pair but they cottoned onto that and tilted the images.
But as for proper arcade machines, the only ones I've seen in years are in my local market - MAME PCs in retro cabs managed by a local market stall owner (who sells retro games and vintage toys).
>>3124503
The DC was too early if anything. It was a 6th gen console that had to compete with 5th gens.
>>3124789
Well if it couldn't compete with 5th gens, how could it be expected to hold its own against 6th gens?
>>3124775
Yes, in Japan.
In fact, Sega is actually still a big manufacturer of arcade systems.
1. Releasing add-ons that they dropped support of soon afterwards left a bad taste in people's mouths, so they wouldn't take the plunge with Saturn.
2. Lack of developer support outside of Japan.
3. Related to 2, having hardware that was technically accomplished, but more difficult to develop for than ps1. Not excelling in polygon output which is what was trending at the time (outside of Japan anyway).
4. Lack of games outside Japan.
5. Not having the coolness factor like ps1, which was marketed at the clubbing and young adult scene. Ps1 was marketed as an abstract lifestyle brand rather than just a kids toy that people 'wasted their time with'. It was suddenly social and cool to have a few rounds of tekken after the pub with mates. The whole symbols on the controller and controller in general, product placement in music videos like Freestyler by bomfunk mcs
>>3124791
It came out 4 years after the ps1. Even if there hadn't been a Saturn that generation would have been lost by the time the DC showed up. Anybody who would have wanted a 3d console would have had the time to by one from Sony or Nintendo. It's why now console developers race to have their consoles released within a week of their competitors. If you're not there to offer your own flavor of the new hotness, then you'll be lagging behind from day one because your competition is already established.
If you come out too early then you'll be fighting against the established generation before you, and your opponents that come out later will have better technology available to use. The dreamcast was a middle child.
>>3124493
>Do we have a definitive reason why the Sega failed?
The morons running the company had no idea how the home console market worked, and they fired the guys who did.
>>3124613
>If you want to know where Sega lost all of its money take a good look.
Sega was actually profitable until 1998, when they killed the Saturn and launched the Dreamcast.
Saturn made more profit than the DC did, funnily enough.
>Any other reason than SoJ vs SoA
Underageb& the thread.
I grew up on Sega consoles. I still remember when Sega pulled out of the console biz. Felt like a piece of me died. In someways I'm still butthurt about it. (I still have dreams about a new Sega console)
>>3124927
Source on that? It sold less copies but profit is different.
>>3124793
The only arcade games remaining that still manage to turn a profit are card games. You might say it still counts but it's very different from the frantic action gameplay of yesteryear.
>>3124593
right so your telling me no one would've bought
Lunar 1-2
Lunar Magical School
Grandia
Tatics Ogre
Castleviana SOTN
Vandal Hearts
Suikoden
On the Sega Saturn? Are you retarded?
>>3125109
What is that?
Are losers playing solitaire in shopping mall arcades now?
>>3125109
Mahjong and Gundam games still do well along with pretty much anything centered around online play. I imagine the Kancolle game coming out will have a 2005 iM@D level fanatical following when it comes out.
>>3125162
It's basically M:tG or Yugioh type games, but with the Three Kingdoms or Sengoku period as themes that you play online. Japan eats up CCG shit.
>>3124574
>>3124585
Bernie was against localizing games that were in 2D because the rise of the 3D games had NA's attention and were embracing it as the future. Too bad the Saturn shit the bed at doing 3D but was a tank at 2D sprites and parallax scrolling.
>Bernie was told that Saturn wasn't Sega's future.
No. Bernie SAID that Saturn wasn't Sega's future in 1998 over a year before the Dreamcast was released, killing all third party interest in it.
Couple this with the shitty E3 reveal, the high initial cost over the PSX, the pushed forward schedule to release it in the summer (that they did not tell the devs about resulting in shitty, buggy launch titles), no flagship Sonic title, and the list can go on.
A huge reason is that the Saturn never had a "straggler" market. I wanted a Saturn but by the time I could afford a new system (I was 7 at the time) it was dead and the DC wasn't out yet. Went with a 64 and got the PSOne later. It really needed that $99 + $20 greatest hits period Sony had.
>>3125170
I hope so, seemed like the Kancolle thing was exactly like the browser game but with better graphics. The exact type of thing that could be done better on a cellphone.
>>3125213
The Bernie defenders come from the "SoA did nothing wrong, blame the Japs" crowd.
Really they both screwed up pretty badly.
>>3124682
It didn't. How many people did you personally know in 2000 who could download 1GB size games or even gave a shit enough to
>>3125128
>Grandia sold
>Lunar sold
Someone's the real retard
>>3125292
Pirated DC isos were often 300-200mb split in a million zips of 50mb. It was very 56k friendly.
>>3125264
This guy gets it.
If Sega had kept supporting the Saturn for a few more years instead of dropping everything to try and claim first place in the console wars, they would still be making consoles today.
>>3125292
I know this might sound incredible for you millennials, but there was once a time when people pirated physical media directly.
That is, you had street vendors from who you could buy CDR games for a fraction of the price.
>>3125292
What is BlockBuster for 500 alex
>>3125295
Even in an absolute and unrealistic best case scenario, with 56K maintaining its peak speed throughout, it would still take you 10.5 hours to download a 300 MB ISO. Even that is a long time to be without a phone line at a time where people still expected others to use landlines.
>>3125373
If a vendor tried that shit openly where I live they would have been quickly arrested.
Not everybody wanted to go down to the ghetto where the cops don't patrol just to get a CD-R with Crazy Taxi scrawled on it.
This thread comes up everyday now. Sega stopped making hardware because they didn't sell enough Dreamcasts, accessories, and games to make their hardware business profitable. No great mystery.
>>3124927
>Saturn made more profit than the DC did, funnily enough.
I find this a little hard to believe when supposedly the Saturn cost more money to manufacture than the Dreamcast.
And this was in 1998.
>>3124498
I actually tried to give a fuck but I remember going store to store to check Saturn prices and as it turned out, they were not trying to scam me, Saturn was pretty fucking expensive. Then came the Dreamcast with a price I could afford. I enjoyed that console but I remember I was pretty much the only guy who owned one.
>>3125907
There was a sense of loneliness that came with owning a Dreamcast.
