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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

#61

Post by defen »

ErikAugust wrote: post #33
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…

"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.

Sounds like a classic case of bikeshedding - the execs in question probably weren't qualified to have opinions on hardware design or software development, so instead they focused on entry-level stuff like the name and the physical appearance.

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

#62

Post by kevinmgranger »

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…

It's pretty ironic that Sony almost made the same mistake with the PS3 at $599.

I say _almost_, because it might have benefited Sony as a whole anyway.

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

#63

Post by interestica »

ErikAugust wrote: post #33
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…

"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.

I inherited an NES (something my parents would otherwise never have allowed to happen) and never owned another game system. My knowledge of the game systems were pretty removed. But, I know that I cognitively grouped the PlayStation with the SuperNintendo and my desktop computer at the time precisely because of the matching colours. I think it was an intentional design association that helped "understand the place" of those devices ("this is a computer"). Kinda like how my earliest tv was a huge carved wooden piece of furniture with fabric accents. The design told you "this is furniture".

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

#64

Post by zerocrates »

jacobush wrote: post #30
som33 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CD based Sega system was a great idea but not as an add on, the reality is the cost of hardware back then and the nature of the console market being technology illiterate was the issue. I was one of the few who got the original Sega CD, the early version one that mounted underneath the genesis. It had cool games like Darkwizard. The real issue was the cost of add on peripherals were too high to get any kind of mark…

Anecdotally, I knew a bunch of people with PS1, maybe one of them knew how to pirate games.

Yeah, the console I anecdotally associate with particularly easy/common piracy is the Dreamcast.

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

#65

Post by jonny_eh »

sitkack wrote: post #58
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.

Hard to remember, but in North America at the time, Sega was #1.

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

#66

Post by a_e_k »

chrisseaton wrote: post #40
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.

How do you even render a quad? What if it isn't planar? Does it curve or crease?

In higher-end rendering, a quad that can be non-planar is called a bilinear patch. Yes, it can curve (cross sections tend to give parabolas), and while you won't get infinitely sharp creases you will get saddle-shapes.

See, e.g.: http://www.sci.utah.edu/~kpotter/publications/ramsey-2004-RB...

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

#67

Post by jandrese »

jdietrich wrote: post #55
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...

The Saturn always struck me as overdesigned and underengineered. So many custom chips to program and coordinate and a high unit cost when the simpler and more flexible approach taken by Sony ends up being just as good and cheaper almost all of the time.

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

#68

Post by larrik »

arprocter wrote: post #22
vmception wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now its just "lets do a mid-life separate SKU with the same name and everything is compatible, but at least the airflow is better, maybe cheaper to manufacture, and maybe it outputs higher resolution" its a better outcome, reminds me thats what happens when we allow companies to fail

There was a Genesis 2 and a corresponding Sega CD2 which were smaller than the originals

The Sega CD2 was actually vastly better, in my recollection. I explicitly got that one and attached it to my full size genesis back in the day.

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

#69

Post by balls187 »

The Sega Saturn was the first console I purchased with my own money.

The Saturn had some great games.

Three of the Four launch titles were great: Daytona (Rolling Start....), Virtua Fighter, and Panzer Dragon were far better than anything else available.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 was far superior on the Saturn compared to the PS version.

And Guardian Heroes (available now on Xbox Live Arcade) is probably one of the best, most underrated sprite based beat-em-ups.

Ultimately Sony crushed the competition with titles like, Resident Evil 2, Tekken 3, FFVII, Twisted Metal, etc etc. Which is crazy considering how strong the N64 was.

It's sad that Sega laid an egg, but the Saturn had it's time and place.

I'm really looking forward to what the Series X can do with it's project X-cloud. My feeling is that it's going to move towards PC gaming--once your console can no longer play games natively, it will switch to pixel streaming.

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

#70

Post by riffraff »

jacobush wrote: post #30
som33 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CD based Sega system was a great idea but not as an add on, the reality is the cost of hardware back then and the nature of the console market being technology illiterate was the issue. I was one of the few who got the original Sega CD, the early version one that mounted underneath the genesis. It had cool games like Darkwizard. The real issue was the cost of add on peripherals were too high to get any kind of mark…

Anecdotally, I knew a bunch of people with PS1, maybe one of them knew how to pirate games.

Anecdote-wise, everybody in my home town who owned a playstation had pirated games.

You don't need to know how to make illegal copies, you could just buy them for 1/10th of the original price on the street.

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