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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

#81

Post by brutus1213 »

jonny_eh wrote: post #71
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…

And there's far less meaningful innovation in gaming today. VR was pretty promising, but has failed to be transformative. The new consoles' graphics frankly don't look much better than current ones IMHO, despite having 10x or 100x the performance. Game streaming is the most interesting and disruptive technology, once the major players figure out the right business model. Back in the 90s, opening a gaming magazine was…

Ha .. I miss those days and have been curious what was different. I have chalked it to youth but maybe you have a point. Opening up gaming magazines was an experience that poems should be written about. I remember old magazines on Amiga and even Nintendo Power that I'd keep in my bedroom as some of my most hallowed possessions.

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

#82

Post by dylan604 »

Narann wrote: post #54
masklinn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Triangles are rasterizer-friendly because they are composed of two edges

Huh? Can you elaborate on how a triangle has 2 edges opposed to 3?

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

#83

Post by gryson »

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…

Oops - made a mistake here. The American side wanted the PlayStation to be WHITE, not black. I went back and checked the book. Quote:

>First he [Michael Schulhof - CEO of Sony Corp of America] objected to the color of the console. [He] insisted that gray was unacceptable in the U.S. market, and that the console must be white. Neither did he like the design or the logo mark. Their approach was to object to everything on grounds such as the results of market research: "We can't accept such an unusual controller. The design is too small for American hands." What is more, they insisted that they would set the U.S. list price themselves and they disapproved of the name PlayStation. The "Play" in PlayStation, they said, was reminiscent of "Playboy" and might be misconstrued. With one issue after another, the criticism was relentless.

>...Maruyama carefully assessed the likelihood that U.S. management would respect the intentions of management in Japan. He concluded that it would be impossible for managers steeped in the conventions of the game industry, and he decided to replace the lot except for a select few. In January of 1996, Sony established subsidiary SCEI America in San Francisco, simultaneously replacing most of the managers and launching a new management team. Maruyama comments: "We swept the organization clean of all the old obstacles. We realized that we had to manage our own business."

I previously transcribed more of this excerpt here:

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?34167-Sega-and-...

And here is the news story about Michael Schulhof being forced to resign:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-12-06-19953400...

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

#84

Post by cptskippy »

As a teenager with a job, the cost wasn't really an issue and the launch window meant there was plenty of time to save up the difference. What killed the Saturn for me and my circle of friends were the games.

I remember we rented a Saturn with all the games from Block Buster for like $50 for the weekend and were thoroughly unimpressed. Not long after, a Playstation popped up at Media Play (remember that store?) with demos you could play. I remember specifically going there multiple times to play Battle Arena Toshinden.

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

#85

Post by bsder »

fl0wenol wrote: post #73
kevinmgranger wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that it was a Blu-Ray player saved it because families could justify the purchase for that feature alone (and typically tacked on the bluetooth remote too)

People forget that the PS3 was BY FAR the cheapest Blu-Ray player for almost 18 months.

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

#86

Post by schnevets »

som33 wrote: post #60
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 owner…

I noticed this while searching for quality mobile games to help pass the time in quarantine. "Always on" completely changes the gaming medium since that constant relationship between developer and player means the product should never "end".

I don't like to think of new technology as "ruining" something, but maybe art is the one exception. After all filmmakers stubbornly stuck with 24 fps even when frame rates improved.

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

#87

Post by chc »

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.

It's hard to say if that's entirely true. Sony did end up changing the system's color and making the controller bigger and bigger on subsequent iterations of the PlayStation, so apparently they came around on those ideas.

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

#88

Post by BearOso »

dylan604 wrote: post #82
Narann wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Triangles are rasterizer-friendly because they are composed of two edges Huh? Can you elaborate on how a triangle has 2 edges opposed to 3?

For any span of pixels, you render from one edge to another because your y-coordinate is fixed. You only have to consider 2 edges at a time during rasterization. You can subdivide a quad easily, though, so it's not that much of an advantage.

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

#89

Post by lostgame »

jonny_eh wrote: post #71
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…

And there's far less meaningful innovation in gaming today. VR was pretty promising, but has failed to be transformative. The new consoles' graphics frankly don't look much better than current ones IMHO, despite having 10x or 100x the performance. Game streaming is the most interesting and disruptive technology, once the major players figure out the right business model. Back in the 90s, opening a gaming magazine was…

VR will be a lot more exciting when we hit ‘retina’ VR, where immersion will be much more effective. The screen dooring effect of the original Vive and Oculus was a huge negative for me.

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

#90

Post by Figs »

dylan604 wrote: post #82
Narann wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Triangles are rasterizer-friendly because they are composed of two edges Huh? Can you elaborate on how a triangle has 2 edges opposed to 3?

I assume they mean for scanline rendering where you trace two edges at a time while drawing the scanline between them.

Basically, the way it works is that you arrange the 3 vertices of a triangle from top to bottom, then take the middle vertex and split the triangle along the scanline from that vertex to the opposite edge. Each "half" of the triangle can be rendered by simply drawing a scanline between the two edge positions, stepping down to the next line, advancing the two edge positions, and repeating. (See "Bresenham's line algorithm" and "Digital differential analyzer" on wikipedia for efficient ways to compute the edge positions.) Note that if the middle vertex shares a scanline with another vertex, the other "half" of the triangle in this algorithm has a height of zero lines, and can just be ignored.

It's a simple, straightforward way to rasterize a triangle that can be implemented efficiently.

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