Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 119 posts

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

#51

Post by Firehawke »

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've read in the past (sorry, don't have the link right now) that Sony also did some hardball with licensing.

In particular I've been told that they threatened Capcom over Mega Man 8 and X4, saying that if those didn't also show up on PSX, Capcom would lose their publishing license on PSX. If true, that would certainly add a bit of heat on licensees to publish on PSX and would result in Sega losing a lot of third-party exclusives.

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

#52

Post by Firehawke »

klodolph wrote: post #42
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 rea…

Better 2D performance and more RAM. The lack of RAM kneecapped the Capcom fighting game ports on PSX.

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

#53

Post by mdasen »

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #10
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."

> I am sure developers will be happy to split their efforts across two machines 2.5 machines. There were a few SegaCD+32X games.

I remember being a kid and not knowing what kind of Sega I was supposed to want. Sega CD came out in 1992 and CDs were the new thing - most of the next-gen consoles were CD-based. But the 32X was newer (1994). But when the 32X was released, we already knew that the Saturn was coming. The Saturn was released in Japan the day after the 32X was released. It also meant the release of three consoles in less than three years.

For parents who had no interest in the systems, Sega seemed like a way to just keep spending money. First the kid wants Sega CD, then they want 32X, then they want Saturn. During the CD and `-bit` wars, Sega's lineup was weird and hard to decipher. Even if you were a kid that might know why a Saturn was better, how do you explain it? "Yea, it's the same 32-bits as the 32X and the same CD as a Sega CD, but it's better dad/mom!"

Nintendo had an easy story: it's been over 5 years since you bought me a Nintendo and this one goes from 16-bit to 64-bit! Sony had an easy story: it's 32-bit, only $299, CD-based, and Sony is the best name in all electronic stuff!

If you'd convinced your parents to buy a 32X for Christmas 1994, you weren't getting a Saturn 6 months later. "And what about the Jupiter that'll be out in another 6-12 months?" any parent could retort.

Sega burned developers with too many machines to develop for. Sega burned consumers with too many machines that would be quickly abandoned.

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

#54

Post by Narann »

masklinn wrote: post #49
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Quads are used as geometric data primitives because they allow consistent subdivision. But quads are not good as a rendering primitive compared to triangles. Triangles are rasterizer-friendly because they are composed of two edges and its quick to know if you are inside or outside two edges.

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

#55

Post by jdietrich »

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…

>The Saturn was difficult to develop for

That's something of an understatement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn#Technical_specific...

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

#56

Post by robin_reala »

Firehawke wrote: post #52
klodolph wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

Better 2D performance and more RAM. The lack of RAM kneecapped the Capcom fighting game ports on PSX.

The Saturn’s RAM expansion pack helped too: https://sega.jp/fb/segahard/ss/ram.html

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

#57

Post by Narann »

macspoofing wrote: post #35

Not just Sega, but Nintendo as well. The N64 was a moderate success, but if it was a CD-based system and came out a year earlier, Nintendo would have cut the PSOne at the knees and maintained console dominance.

Sega fall was far more important than Nintendo in this era. N64 had world wide acclaimed games that Saturn couldn't even hope for. And most of those games couldn't have been created on a CD-based system at that time that imply very slow loading.

N64 fall was mostly due to:

* Lack of texture memory. Having nice looking game was hard and need tricks because you couldn't rely on big textures.

* (Very) bad developer API (actually ABI). Having being in N64 emulation, you truly see they have no idea how 3D rendering was supposed to be exposed.

* Cost heavy support (cartridge).

But even without fixing the last one, the both firsts killed the third party dev investment.

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

#58

Post by sitkack »

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 wise sage once said, https://youtu.be/Vhh_GeBPOhs?t=2 when you aren't number one, you can't afford shenanigans.

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

#59

Post by danbolt »

danbmil99 wrote: post #16
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.

Peculiar is an understatement. The development tools were also a nightmare

Whelp at least we got Radiant Silvergun!

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

#60

Post by som33 »

schnevets wrote: post #15

There's something beyond the obvious nostalgia factor that makes these 25 year old video game business stories so captivating. It might be from these massive corporations moving with a gut-driven, ride-or-die mentality or the fact that the only indicator that matters is sales. In comparison, today's gaming industry is fragmented beyond all recognition. The audience has grown and matured, but every major player is a u…

It's because the internet has given control of software to companies. Pre 2005 the only control game companies had over software was a few PC RPG's that had been rebranded mmo. In an internet enabled world, every game can be made client-server and have in game stores.

The internet is what ruined gaming because it gave corporations and developers too much power and control of the software and the ability to deny ownership, dedicated servers to their customers.

Post reply on HN