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

forbes.com

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

#41

Post by raiyu »

The article misses the point entirely. It wasn't about launching early, or not having enough games, or wait times.

It comes down to pricing.

In gaming, the same thing has always played out. The console that can deliver the best value wins.

$399 vs $299 is a huge difference. That's the equivalent of $500 vs $750 today.

And don't forget that this was a huge step up already from the $150-199 price point of Super Nintendo.

At the end of the day, when it comes to mass appeal, it isn't the better technology that wins, but the one that combines the best price and performance, and people always underestimate that price is the bigger factor than performance.

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

#42

Post by klodolph »

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…

I agree that this is way more complicated.

Nobody knew what 3D hardware would look like in 1994, they were too busy inventing it. For example, the Saturn provides quads as your primitive, which seems weird to anybody looking at the Saturn today. The PlayStation and Nintendo 64 both used triangles.

You might have various reasons to prefer the Nintendo 64 or PlayStation, but from a developer's perspective, the main reason you would prefer the Saturn is probably because of its 2D performance. But a higher price point for better 2D performance is a tough sell.

It's also interesting to look at the different companies through the lens of what their strengths are. Sony has generally had pretty solid hardware design, Microsoft has generally made systems that are easier to develop software for, etc.

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

#43

Post by lostgame »

subsubzero wrote: post #9
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."

Totally this, and if I recall the upgrade was like $170 itself which was really expensive for teenagers at the time, plus it was confusing, sega genesis, add the 32x, Saturn comes out in a few months, oh and also sega CD has been around a for a year or so, it felt really disorganized. I felt the only thing sega had going for it was non-censored games, mortal kombat for snes had non-red blood in the fights, genesis di…

Well, they had great sports games; which didn’t matter to me at all, superior console ports of arcade games, and, of course, Sonic.

And then they utterly failed to launch a major original Sonic title for the console. shakes head

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

#44

Post by bitwize »

bluedino wrote: post #7

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I wonder why Sega made decisions like using quads instead of triangles, and dual CPU's.

It allowed for repurposing of sprite-drawing hardware the Japanese were already familiar with. Most Japanese programmers at the time were at complete sixes and sevens with the sort of triangle-based, texture mapping 3D hardware that had been developed in the west. I guess Sega thought it would be either a faster path to developer success, or easier to implement in hardware, if the Saturn's 3D engine resembled the sprites that game and console makers already knew, rather than gamble on unfamiliar triangle rasterization.

Nintendo collaborated with SGI on the N64, giving them a HUGE leg up on ALL the competition with respect to rendering techniques -- perspective-correct, filtered textures when even the PlayStation could only do affine transforms on textures (leading to the "texture warping" phenomenon). But even their programmers had to come to grips with 3D, which was hard. One reason StarFox 2 was cancelled was because Nintendo wanted to use its camera code in titles like Super Mario 64 (and did NOT want word of this getting back to Argonaut).

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

#45

Post by simonh »

raiyu wrote: post #41

The article misses the point entirely. It wasn't about launching early, or not having enough games, or wait times. It comes down to pricing. In gaming, the same thing has always played out. The console that can deliver the best value wins. $399 vs $299 is a huge difference. That's the equivalent of $500 vs $750 today. And don't forget that this was a huge step up already from the $150-199 price point of Super Nintend…

You're blanking on the 99s. It's the difference between $500 and $666 today.

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

#46

Post by Scoundreller »

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.

Heh, my friend believed it turned his 64bit system into a 68bit system.

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

#47

Post by robdachshund »

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…

You're missing three part where Kallinske was trying to make a deal with Silicon Graphics for the hardware that Nintendo ended up buying for the n64. This would have been a much better outcome. Sega Japan shut it down simply because Kallinske came up with it and they weren't going to answer to Sega America.

Kallinske was also agaisnt the 32x.

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

#48

Post by masklinn »

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.

The expansion pak was only required for 2 or 3 games, and bundled with one of them.

Most of the games with epak support used it to increase quality and / or framerate, the game worked fine without. It was also relatively cheap ($50).

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

#49

Post by masklinn »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #39
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.

> Everything else at the time rendered with triangles, while the Saturn uniquely used quadrilaterals.

Isn't that still the case? I know that quads are used quite a lot for modelling but is there any modern system which uses quads for rendering?

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

#50

Post by mikeryan »

raiyu wrote: post #41

The article misses the point entirely. It wasn't about launching early, or not having enough games, or wait times. It comes down to pricing. In gaming, the same thing has always played out. The console that can deliver the best value wins. $399 vs $299 is a huge difference. That's the equivalent of $500 vs $750 today. And don't forget that this was a huge step up already from the $150-199 price point of Super Nintend…

The article covers that fact pretty clearly at the end no?
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