They weren't. Too busy arguing with each other.

Wasn't there miscommunication between the US and JP offices of Sega? IIRC the 32x was solely a US idea.

>>748902739

Yup. US thought the Genesis had a few years left (and the 32X would help), Japan was ready to dump it and push Saturn.

The 32X was an SoA idea. Because they didn't want to jump to the next gen.

They very quickly realized it was a bad idea.

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>>748902578
>what was Sega thinking???
*what was SoA thinking???
the exact same thing Saban thought when they comissioned more Zyuranger footage to make a second season of power rangers instead of adapting the next season Dairanger "this shit is making us a lot of money, we can't jump to the next thing, it's not as financially safeTM!", making the inevitable eventual transition to the next product a mess and fucking up both the old thing and the new thing for greed and cowardice
this happens a lot in business

Is there any way Sega could have survived Sony entering video games?

>>748904678
not making a shitty console

>>748904779

If Sega and Japan cooperated.
If the Saturn wasn't designed to primarily work with sprites.
If Bernie Stolar was never born.

>>748904678
no
people love to imagine hypotheticals about If They Had Done Everything Right but if you look at all the contenders (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) it's massive megacorporations with billions to burn
people treating sony like an underdog entering the market back in the day is hilarious
For sure sony and microsoft (even nintendo, really) have made 10x more fuckups than sega did but they can handle any loss

>>748904678
making dev kits for the Saturn before release would've been a good start.

>>748905038
microsoft has more money than sony and they were and remain an underdog

>>748905151
how did it have games on release if there were no dev kits?

>>748905038
That's always been my thinking
It's hard to beat a company more than 10x your size that has billions in the bank that it can burn to sell its consoles more cheaply than yours so it can eventually make the money back with licensing fees over the life of the console
Nintendo did manage it, but they were probably a bit larger than Sega, went in a different direction with the N64, and they had excellent first party games each gen
Wasn't Nintendo on the ropes after the Gamecube? I seem to recall reading that they would have gone bankrupt if not for the Wii's huge success

>>748905250
Nah Nintendo's always had an insane amount of money in the bank since they've been around so long, but they might've considered pivoting away from video games if the Wii hadn't exploded

>>748905327
>but they might've considered pivoting away from video games if the Wii hadn't exploded
They still had Pokemon

>>748905201
microsoft is not an underdog by any stretch of the imagination
underdog doesn't mean losing
if you enter the ring with a shotgun and full body armor and still get your ass kicked you're not an underdog
any company without microsoft's bank account would have left consoles long long ago

>>748902578
In a perfect world SOJ would have a white monkey and SOA would've had a yellow one yelling at their board members and managers and we would've avoided the 32X entirely

>>748905327
>but they might've considered pivoting away from video games if the Wii hadn't exploded

people forget how popular the ds was

>>748906068
This. And like >>748905557 said, Pokemon kept them alive during the N64/Gamecube years

>>748902739
>>748902792
>>748902904
Wasn't the idea of the stopgap between the Saturn JP's idea then America said a new whole console would be stupid and came up with the addon? Even if Japan got their entire way the other outcome would've been just as disastrous and I don't see the Saturn as is performing that much better even if both sides of the sea worked together and the launch going perfect.

>>748904678
I think at best Dreamcast would've performed a bit better and lived out its gen fully and by proxy its IPs would've had more value and gotten some stronger post console initial titles. There's a possible weird alternate universe where Microsoft enters not as purely Xbox but a SEGA Xbox production and the SEGA name lingers around longer as marketing. Once we go past that point I think the nature of games and genres changing has more effect than console brand, the western dominated market and the brown and bloom gen was coming no matter what and SEGA would've eventually lost more control till the SEGABox became a purely Microsoft production due to their large economic corporate differences and Microsoft being in better position to understand Shootan gaems and multiplayer online connection.

>>748902578
The 32X was SoA's decision because they thought the add-on would make the Genesis last several more years. SoJ was already developing the Saturn at that point because the Mega Drive flopped over there and they wanted to start over.

90s Sega was basically two different companies being two different things at the same time and constantly butting heads over it.

>>748907694
>Wasn't the idea of the stopgap between the Saturn JP's idea then America said a new whole console would be stupid and came up with the addon?
This is correct, Sega of Japan thought the fucking Atari Jaguar was going to be a major deal and wanted a new console to compete with it. Sega of America made it an add-on instead.

>>748904678
probably not. I believe that if sega were to not fuck up on such a tremendous scale in gen 5, they probably would have competed a little harder, but I think sony ultimately would have still cleared them out with gen 6.
The DVD player function of the PS2 was an insanely efficient way to sell to parents.

What do we think of Tom Kalinske?

>>748907879
>Atari Jaguar was going to be a major deal
Hindsight is 20/20 etc etc

I don't blame the nips for feeling threatened even if they went about it in the most retarded way

>>748904678
>Is there any way Sega could have survived Sony entering video games?
No way. SEGA was smart to START making consoles but they should have dipped before Dreamcast. Nintendo survived and thrived and eventually dominated, PS became sort of the default console for a while, PS1-PS2, if SEGA survived they would have been wiped out during the Wii/360/PS3 generation.

>>748902578
In theory some of the things SEGA did wasn't a bad idea but I think in a way they remind me a lot of Sony. They think way too highly of themselves, they're lazy, they're willing to throw money into complete money pits because they think they're gonna 10x their money.

>>748902578
The Sega Genesis was a fluke in a long line of failed Sega consoles.

>>748904678
I doubt it.

Sega was a decent console maker but Sega's true strength was always in the arcades. When arcades started to die off everywhere that wasn't japan. It was over.

>>748902578
>put a little console inside your console for a slight speed boost
What were boomers smoking?

>>748905250
>Wasn't Nintendo on the ropes after the Gamecube? I seem to recall reading that they would have gone bankrupt if not for the Wii's huge success
Yeah and they've said so. "If the DS succeeds, we will rise to heaven, but if it fails we will sink to hell" Yamauchi.
Nintendo needed more time to build up more system sellers and prove to the market and third parties they're not only relevant but the best gaming company. That's why I've believed for some years now that Nintendo will make a home console again. Nothing Nintendo ever did was about leaving powerful hardware behind, it was all about avoiding mega expensive games during a time it didn't even make any sense.

>>748902578
Sega has always been retarded.

>>748908146
Just a soulless self-serving suit that wrote a book on how he did everything right and SEGA Japan did everything wrong.

>THE FOX ABSOLUTELY HAD TO BE CALLED TAILS, FUCKING NIPS WANTED TO CALL HIM MILES (like miles per hour) OOOOOMG THAT WOULD'VE NUKED THE FRANCHISE!!!!!
yeah ok buddy, stfu.

>>748908146
>What do we think of Tom Kalinske?
Overrated.
1 - Don't sell sega with shitty arcade game but with a real console game instead
Just obvious business sense, SEGA should have been doing that already
2 - Price
Same thing
3 - The edgy marketing
This is just cola vs pepsi marketing, it's nothing new

>>748908146
He had an ego issue but he's still better than Bernie "I was a sony plant" Stolar

>>748902578
And yet it still made more sense than the Atari jaguar. Seriously what is it with American console makers having their heads up their asses from the 80s to about 03? ( then promptly put their heads back in their asses by about 2013h

>>748908146
He knew what the fuck he was doing, SoJ fucked him over.
>but his ego!
It was an earned ego. He's the reason Sega has any relevancy today

>>748908146
lying cunt
people from both soa and soj have called him out on it too

>>748908745
"we must save the genesis at any cost"

>>748902578
Sega really made fuckup after fuckup between the Genesis and Dreamcast. The U.S. Saturn launch came only six months after the debut of the Sega 32X. At one point, Tom Kalinske revealed that he thought the 32X and Saturn markets could co-exist, with casual gamers embracing the 32X, and hardcore types going for the more expensive Saturn.

>>748904678
Not releasing the Saturn by complete surprise at $400 ($850 in today's money) with no Sonic game.

>>748904678
By not releasing an overpriced console for one. The Saturn had a certain appeal and did generally well in Japan but it did nothing better than the PS1 while costing 33% or $100 more in 1995 money. If the Saturn had matched the PS1 in price the more robust first party development combined with a strong brand would've tilted it into a fair fight.

>>748902578
They weren't

>>748904678
Being a puppet of Microsoft and releasing the Dreamcast with dual analog controls.

>>748907694
>There's a possible weird alternate universe where Microsoft enters not as purely Xbox but a SEGA Xbox production and the SEGA name lingers around longer as marketing
That's always seemed plausible to me, given the relationship they had on the Dreamcast. And if Sega hadn't poisoned their brand image that a new MS console was less risky than attaching their name to an established gaming brand like Sega.

>>748909789
>Seriously what is it with American console makers having their heads up their asses from the 80s to about 03? ( then promptly put their heads back in their asses by about 2013h
Are we somehow pretending that the 360 was a good piece of hardware considering its failure rate? The original Xbox is the only decent piece of hardware from Americans until the Series X but even then we have to consider the dumbass decision to release the Series S.

>>748908187
It wasn't hindsight when it was obvious to anyone familiar with the US games market that Atari was the boomer nostalgia brand and the Jaguar was doomed to failure. Sega of Japan's problem is they got high on their own farts and refused to understand anything about non-Japanese markets, then blamed the American and European branches (usually American) for Japanese fuckups. Overrating Atari, Japanese fuckup. Wanting an upgraded Genesis, Japanese fuckup. Loading retail space with too many peripherals when big box stores weren't going to dedicate more shelf space to irrelevant junk, Japanese fuckup. Snap Saturn release pissing off retail stores that weren't involved, Japanese fuckup. Refusing to port over a large chunk of the Japanese Saturn library at the height of the anime boom, Japanese fuckup. Refusing to tard wrangle Naka and letting his stupidity tank multiple big titles, Japanese fuckup.

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>>748902578
they were a few decades ahead of everyone else

>>748918765
There would've gigaflopped if they were released 6 months before the PS5/Series X like the 32X with the Saturn.

If you want an idea of how much of a fuck up sega was at this time just look at the the leaked internal SoA documents from mid to late 90s

>>748907694
>Wasn't the idea of the stopgap between the Saturn JP's idea then America said a new whole console would be stupid and came up with the addon?
No, kalinske is a bullshitter. Former soj and soa people have both confirmed that the story is a lie, the 32x was something that soa always wanted to do.

>>748920657
Joe Miller (R&D head) and Michael Latham (producer) both confirmed that it was Japan that wanted a knee-jerk response to the Jaguar that would've been a new upgraded Genesis console. SoA "always wanted to do the 32X" in the sense that they felt it would be better to make it a peripheral to the existing Genesis, instead of releasing a brand new upgraded Genesis right before releasing the Saturn. They did not come up with the idea to make a knee-jerk response to the Jaguar in the first place, SoJ did.

>>748918653
>Are we somehow pretending that the 360 was a good piece of hardware considering its failure rate?
RROD was nowhere near as bad as the fat PS3 GLOD, Microsoft fixed all impacted consoles for free and it stopped being an issue around 2008, and the Piss3 was an over-engineered expensive shit machine anyway that they had to scale down to the slim just to recover so between PS3 and 360 the 360 was just better by default for most of the gen.