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It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

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Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#31

Post by gryson »

danbmil99 wrote: post #28
gryson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't have any real evidence of this but my intuition is that Sony allowed their American arm more latitude and gave them more credibility with regard to designing the market strategy. In reality, the exact opposite happened. Ken Kutaragi (creator of the PlayStation) and Norio Ohga (then-president of Sony) were outraged that the Sony executives in America were not following their instructions, and they fired the v…

That's interesting. As I said I work with Sega so I didn't have any first-hand experience with Sony at that time. So given what you're saying here I'll amend my perspectives to say that Sony Japan just understood the American Market better than Sega Japan.

I wouldn't say that the Japanese side of Sega wasn't aware of the issue of pricing the console too high. In fact, Hayao Nakayama often spoke of this in 1994 - he was very sensitive that a high-priced console would not sell in America (and used the 3DO as evidence). He was quoted a few years back as saying that the reason he approved the 32X was because Sega of America were insistent that the Saturn was priced too high to ever sell there (the quote is in the book Sega Mega Drive Collected Works).

However, the 32X failed spectacularly, and that left Sega with nothing but the Saturn. Their response was to price-match the PlayStation, which seriously pushed them into the red. There wasn't much that could be done at that point.

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#32

Post by kipchak »

corey_moncure wrote: post #23
gryson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't have any real evidence of this but my intuition is that Sony allowed their American arm more latitude and gave them more credibility with regard to designing the market strategy. In reality, the exact opposite happened. Ken Kutaragi (creator of the PlayStation) and Norio Ohga (then-president of Sony) were outraged that the Sony executives in America were not following their instructions, and they fired the v…

How ironic given that the Net Yaroze, N64, and then PS2 were all black.

Maybe the goal was to keep the design and implications of the "Nintendo Playstation" design?

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#33

Post by ErikAugust »

gryson wrote: post #17
danbmil99 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company was deeply involved with Sega Saturn development at that time. One of the problems was a serious rift between Sega of America and Sega Japan. SOA was committed to the idea that the Sega Genesis had a few more years of life in it, and that the American audience was not as interested in new technology for its own sake. They were, rightly in my opinion, concerned that a change in platform would benefit the co…

>I don't have any real evidence of this but my intuition is that Sony allowed their American arm more latitude and gave them more credibility with regard to designing the market strategy. In reality, the exact opposite happened. Ken Kutaragi (creator of the PlayStation) and Norio Ohga (then-president of Sony) were outraged that the Sony executives in America were not following their instructions, and they fired the v…

"he American side wanted to make all kinds of changes - they hated the name PlayStation, they hated the grey color (they wanted it to be black)"

I have to love that these aesthetics the Americans were upset about made no difference to the success of the PlayStation.

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#34

Post by kipchak »

jklinger410 wrote: post #18
egypturnash wrote: post #2

I feel like the whole 32x mess was an important part of this mistake. "Hey let's release a weird upgrade pod for our successful last-gen console almost completely simultaneously with our next-gen console, I am sure developers will be happy to split their efforts across two machines! Especially if both of them have really weird architecture that's hard to program on."

Not to argue with your point because it is certainly valid, but the N64 had that expansion module for DK 64 and a few other games, yet managed to survive that.

If i remember right the expansion module was included with DK64 which helped ease the pain a bit.

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#36

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

danbmil99 wrote: post #8
egypturnash wrote: post #2

I feel like the whole 32x mess was an important part of this mistake. "Hey let's release a weird upgrade pod for our successful last-gen console almost completely simultaneously with our next-gen console, I am sure developers will be happy to split their efforts across two machines! Especially if both of them have really weird architecture that's hard to program on."

My company was deeply involved with Sega Saturn development at that time. One of the problems was a serious rift between Sega of America and Sega Japan. SOA was committed to the idea that the Sega Genesis had a few more years of life in it, and that the American audience was not as interested in new technology for its own sake. They were, rightly in my opinion, concerned that a change in platform would benefit the co…

I remember being a child at the time and thinking the 32X was a neat, if somewhat pointless add-on.

Somehow we got one, but I think it was after Sega had already pulled the plug on it, so there were some pretty insane discounts at the time where you could get the console, Virtua Fighter, and Star Wars Arcade for like fifty bucks. Great for consumers! But I'm guessing Sega wasn't making much (if anything) from it at that point.

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#37

Post by macspoofing »

gryson wrote: post #14

This narrative has been pushed quite heavily by former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, but it leaves a lot out. Kalinske claims the Japanese president of Sega, Hayao Nakayama, forced him to launch the Saturn in NA before Kalinske was ready, and because of that, the Saturn failed and Kalinske resigned shortly after. As always, it's best to approach with caution when CEOs are assigning blame for company failures unde…

Great comment, and I agree. I do think Kalinske's rationalization is bullcrap ... but it also alludes to some truth, namely that Sega America and Sega Japan were not aligned on console strategy and were downright adversarial - and that certainly contributed to the failure of Saturn.

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#38

Post by lostgame »

Oh, fantastic! I love reading everything about this period of history.

The Saturn is my person favourite console and I greatly enjoy writing homebrew for it.

If you haven’t, and this is of interest to you; check out JO-engine, a fantastic FOSS Saturn homebrew development kit.

https://jo-engine.org :)

Re: It’s 25 years since Sega of America made its biggest mistake

#39

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

danbolt wrote: post #3

I’m been doing some Nintendo 64 development lately, and sometimes all ask the CEO at my workplace for advice or insights as he worked on Nintendo 64 games when he was younger. It’s not uncommon for him to finish the conversation with noting that he worked on Sega Saturn before the Nintendo 64, and the former was difficult to work with due to its particular architecture.

My understanding is that the Sega Saturn was a nightmare to program for. Everything else at the time rendered with triangles, while the Saturn uniquely used quadrilaterals.

It's also been a huge pain to emulate.

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