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Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

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Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#11

Post by drzaiusx11 »

dismalaf wrote: post #9

Ugh sometimes I wish for an alternative universe in which Dreamcast had won over the other consoles of the day. It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. On one hand it was massively impressive for the time, on the other, most people's desire to buy another console was probably at a low and then PS2 and Xbox stole the show. It probably also didn't help that Sega Genesis was a fiasco with all the wei…

Personally, I love the "fiasco" of secondary add-ons to consoles across the generations, from the Cassette drive from Atarti 2600 to Sega CD and 32X.

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#13

Post by alt227 »

dismalaf wrote: post #9

Ugh sometimes I wish for an alternative universe in which Dreamcast had won over the other consoles of the day. It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. On one hand it was massively impressive for the time, on the other, most people's desire to buy another console was probably at a low and then PS2 and Xbox stole the show. It probably also didn't help that Sega Genesis was a fiasco with all the wei…

> It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64.

> then PS2 and Xbox stole the show

So in your opinion, when was a better time to release th Dreamcast?

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#14

Post by alt227 »

alexjplant wrote: post #6
philistine wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hideki Sato made a fatal mistake that killed the Dreamcast. The use of an obfuscated and strange disc format should have protected the system from piracy, but they did not think it through. The discs were barely larger than CDs (700 MiB to 1000 GiB) which made it perfunctory to excise videos and music to fit the game on a traditional CD. Once that was possible, the only problem was to boot the system from a pirated C…

There were numerous reasons the Dreamcast failed in the market and piracy is pretty far down on the list of those. The loss of major sports franchises and dearth of must-have games relative to competitors, Sony's hypewave marketing ("the PS2 is a supercomputer in your living room"), consumers and developers wary of a repeat of the CD/32X/Saturn debacle, trans-Pacific dysfunction between Sega's Japan and US branches..…

> I fail to see why you want to make one guy culpable for a hardware security hole

I dont necessarily agree with the guy you are posting to, but if Hideki Sato is being bestowed the glory of 'Designer of all Segas consoles' then he also needs to hold responsibility for their failings, of which there are many.

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#16

Post by kilpikaarna »

trzy wrote: post #4
monitron wrote: post #2

If you want to appreciate his work today, consider reading these lovely articles about the systems he helped design: https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/master-system/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/mega-drive-genesis... https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/dreamcast/

Cool articles :) I got into emulation in the late 90s and eventually wrote both an NES and Genesis emulator. I always appreciated how cleanly organized Sega’s systems were, at least superficially considering the memory and register layouts. You should take a look at Sega’s arcade systems, which were very cool, especially the Model 1, 2, and 3. Supermodel, an open source Model 3 emulator I co-wrote, and MAME have good…

Thank you for you work!

It's easy to forget today, but the Sega home consoles were always secondary to their arcade business. The main reason the Saturn sold even as well as it did was because it was the only way to play versions of the heavy hitters: Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Daytona USA and Sega Rally in the home, in any fashion approaching the arcade (though still quite cut down). Those Sega 3D arcade games were absolutely mind blowing back in the early-mid 90s, and the pace of technical progress and new ideas was unlike anything since.

And the Dreamcast was conceived from day one to make it easy to port games from the Sega Naomi arcade system, and those arcade ports are probably the main reason people still play the Dreamcast to this day.

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#17

Post by Paianni »

alt227 wrote: post #13
dismalaf wrote: post #9

Ugh sometimes I wish for an alternative universe in which Dreamcast had won over the other consoles of the day. It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. On one hand it was massively impressive for the time, on the other, most people's desire to buy another console was probably at a low and then PS2 and Xbox stole the show. It probably also didn't help that Sega Genesis was a fiasco with all the wei…

> It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. > then PS2 and Xbox stole the show So in your opinion, when was a better time to release th Dreamcast?

Their hardware business was doomed by 1998, FF7 and Gran Turismo had given PlayStation momentum that neither Sega or Nintendo could hope to match, but Sega was in a particularly tough spot because of years of misguided decisions.

They could have extended the Saturn's lifespan to 2000 and thrown their lot in with the PS2 after release, but it seems many people at SoJ were emotionally attached to the idea of selling consoles.

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#18

Post by dismalaf »

alt227 wrote: post #13
dismalaf wrote: post #9

Ugh sometimes I wish for an alternative universe in which Dreamcast had won over the other consoles of the day. It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. On one hand it was massively impressive for the time, on the other, most people's desire to buy another console was probably at a low and then PS2 and Xbox stole the show. It probably also didn't help that Sega Genesis was a fiasco with all the wei…

> It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. > then PS2 and Xbox stole the show So in your opinion, when was a better time to release th Dreamcast?

Either same time or before the N64 or closer to when the PS2 and Xbox were released. Sega missed an entire generation but then released between generations. Also they released right as N64 and PS1 games were arguably at their peaks.

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#19

Post by SilverElfin »

alexjplant wrote: post #6
philistine wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hideki Sato made a fatal mistake that killed the Dreamcast. The use of an obfuscated and strange disc format should have protected the system from piracy, but they did not think it through. The discs were barely larger than CDs (700 MiB to 1000 GiB) which made it perfunctory to excise videos and music to fit the game on a traditional CD. Once that was possible, the only problem was to boot the system from a pirated C…

There were numerous reasons the Dreamcast failed in the market and piracy is pretty far down on the list of those. The loss of major sports franchises and dearth of must-have games relative to competitors, Sony's hypewave marketing ("the PS2 is a supercomputer in your living room"), consumers and developers wary of a repeat of the CD/32X/Saturn debacle, trans-Pacific dysfunction between Sega's Japan and US branches..…

You may call those a debacle. But I think it was a great time in the world of gaming and electronics in general. Commercial failures aren’t necessarily a bad thing. They can still be fun.

Re: Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

#20

Post by throwanem »

monitron wrote: post #2

If you want to appreciate his work today, consider reading these lovely articles about the systems he helped design: https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/master-system/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/mega-drive-genesis... https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/dreamcast/

Worthy of the HN black bar, I feel.
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