Why did the Sega Saturn fail so catastrophically?Give me the full context.
>>12150440It was simply shit compared to consoles it was supposed to compete against. That is all.
>>12150440The US is the biggest video game market on the planet and SoA fucked up catastrophically:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQPFKMx21Sk
>>12150440Every other console had a billion amazing 3D platformer exclusives, Mario, Banjo, Crash, Spyro, etc. Saturn didn't even have one.
>>12150446Then how did the Saturn sell more than the N64 in Japan?
>>12150447Mahjong porn games
>>12150440Games dried up. Marketing was unfocused. Competition was too strong. Genesis won by having a strong mascot, steady stream of strong games and great marketing. Saturn had to use industry reels not meant for the public, as public ads because they bumped the launch up suddenly by months. Also exhaustion from people buying a genesis, cd, 32x, then expected to upgrade (with no killer title in the US)
>>12150440https://youtu.be/gQPFKMx21Sk
>>12150440Insistence on using Japanese parts, particularly the shameful Hitachi chip doomed it.Check Powerslave source code: POKE,POKE,POKEit was over on day 1
>>12150440big part of its downfall was there before it even released, incremental upgrades were a dead end trap that sega unfortunately went full bore ahead on, pissed off and confused retailers and consumers, killed brand loyalty.
>>12150445You can't make Americans buy gay jester game even if you had all the money in the world to use for marketing
make /vr/ a board with only 10 infinite threads
>>12150475The Hitachi stuff was pure behind the scenes deal. Thanks to it, Saturn was (and had) a shamefur dispray.
In 1994, the electronics company Sony released the PlayStation.
>>12150440EL CHATGPT DE LOS BOARDS OF VIDEOGAMESPlease stop with your troll threads.jesus this board is worse tahn /v/ is like michael murray film groundhog day,le americano berando estolarle crocle tekken 3el oso de los putos huevos: banjojust permban nintendo topics and this board will be good again
>>12150446>Every other console had a billion amazing 3D platformer exclusives, Mario, Banjo, Crash, Spyro, etc. Saturn didn't even have one.This is a big part of it. Saturn was doing okay until 97 where it fell off a cliff and PS1 took off like a rocket. People underestimate how much influence one or two games can have, in fact if it wasn't for Sonic the Hedgehog I honestly believe the Genesis would have died in 93 with 10mil sales. I call these types of games Snowball games because they get the ball rolling downhill.The Sega Saturn had lots of games but what they really needed was a game that made people say "I want it" to the point where they buy the console. They needed a 3D Sonic game by mid to late 96 that was every bit as good as Crash and Mario 64. Also a fully 3D Phantasy Star game would have gone a lot way. You know what the Saturn's big titles were, Nights and Virtua Fighter.What about all the Saturn's other problems? They all become less relevant if there is a good snowball game that sells consoles. Even if the Saturn's 3D leaves a lot to be desired or its complicated to code for, developers will code through broken glass to put their game on a system that is selling well.
>>12150523America is the gayest nation on the planet now. They would have bought it if it released today. The game was ahead of its time.
Bad support for devs.Poor or entirely lacking marketing.Too much of the good wealth made on the thundering success of the Genesis wasted on stupid shit like the 32X, instead of spending it on the Saturn.
>>12150440The biggest reason is Sega shooting themselves in the foot with the surprise launchIt caught a bunch of retailers off guard and they swore to never work with Sega again. Saturn launched with no good launch games so gamers weren't willing to make the jump when they could wait for a PS1 or N64. Then to top it all off, Sony walks up an hour later and says their pricing the console a $100 less than the Saturn.
>>12150578>I could get ps1 with Tekken or Crash>or I could get Saturn with errm Mr Bones ?
>>12150445>SoA fucked up catastrophicallyholy COPE
>>12150440playstation did everything saturn could do better and cheaper.
>>12150449>Genesis wonThat was a draw at best. Sega started off really strong but SNES had surpassed it well before the era ended.By nearly any metric you look at, SNES won the generation.Genesis wasn't a flop/failure, but it didn't finish in first place either.
>>12150670>It caught a bunch of retailers off guard and they swore to never work with Sega againKB Toys and I think Walmart boycotted the Saturn cause they were so angry.
>>12150440Is Bernie Stolar on the spectrum?
>>12150624Nice projection, Moishe.
>>12150440Bernie was right and I'm sick of revisionist faggots claiming that some hyper obscure 2D platformer from Japan if it were brought to the US would save the console.
>>12150792No, but he is inbred.
>>12150829It needed some kind of identity, being a 2D powerhouse would have at least been something. As it was, Sony had an answer for everything Sega did, plus their own stuff.
>>12150836>2D powerhouseaka it plays a few Capcom and SNK arcade ports slightly better than PlayStation but only if you get expensive RAM carts
>>12150440No DVD player
>>12150440gipsy curse
>>12150829>was rightwhen did this happen?>>12150892if someone had any brains they should have bundled the ram cart with every console and just ate the loss because the software across the board would have been far better. you could then do near perferct/100% perfect ports of their arcade titles without cutting back on things.
>>12150440https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_(console)
Has Bernie ever apologized or shown regret for fucking over the Saturn in America before he passed away in 2022?it’s been a long time already
>>12151102I doubt he gave a fuck about the shittturn like most people did
>>12151035Shinto black magic from Nintendo.
>>12150568Basado
were you there the day bernie became a 'was'?
Perfect storm of bad choices from both SoJ and SoA.A). Before releasing their hot new console, they released TWO pricey add-ons for the Genesis that were poorly supported and then abandoned. They were meant as stop gap solutions to keep the Genesis ahead of the SNES, and they failed. Any SEGA fans who bought at least one probably didn't have the desire to buy the Saturn on release. Their parents sure weren't eager to drop a few more hundred on a new console after getting the CD or 32X add-on just a couple of years prior.This turned off their customers.B). Dual-CPU console using a GPU chipset that draws polygons as quads instead of triangles like everyone else. Wanna port a PC game to PS1 or N64? No biggie, a lot of your source assets will be mostly reusable with some tweaks. Wanna port to Saturn? Need to re-do all models and probably textures too. Characters, levels, items, everything. Devs looking to make a multi-platform game for all three consoles face the same issue. Lotta re-use between PS1 and N64, gotta re-do everything for the Saturn.This turned off their third-party devs.C). Surprise early launch because...reasons. SoA decided to push the Saturn out the door before the announced release date, and communication with retailers was shit. So some retailers had Saturns sitting in the backroom while others were selling them, and the ones not selling were wondering why they were told they couldn't sell until X date but everyone else was. Many retailers got so upset about getting shafted like this, they pulled SEGA or Saturn altogether out of their stores and just stopped selling them. PS1 and N64 were sold everywhere, but Saturns only in certain stores.This turned off retailers and hurt the Saturn's presence on shelves for the rest of it's lifespan.So, less customers willing to buy to start with, less 3rd party support than the Genesis enjoyed, and being sold in less locations than it's competitors. It was doomed.
It would be nice if /vr/ could grow out of the played-out "let's do apologetics for second-rate Sega consoles that didn't have anywhere near as many good games as the Genesis had" routine, but hey beggars can't be choosers so I guess you guys win
>>12150440It was either Nintendo or Other at the time, and PlayStation was other as well as $100 cheaper.
>>12151324>Surprise early launch because...reasonsSoJ felt that being first to market was incredibly important, since it helped so much against the SNES. The funny thing is surprise launches ended up becoming a phenomenon later on with Apple. They had the right idea, they were just retarded about it.
>>12151038>they should have bundled the ram cart with every consoleThere's some compatibility problems with that. Certain games don't work with the 4MB cart and vice versa
>>12151324You forgot no mainline 3d Sonic
>>12151038Wouldn't the more sensible choice at that point just to be to have included more ram into the base console? The ram pool for the actual system was pretty good for the time anyway.
>>12150440- Sega made two expensive expansions which failed and it alienated all consumers.- They considered third party support being an afterthought. They couldn't even get any devkits to their second party devs, like the teams tasked to port Virtua Racing and Sim City 2000. This alienated all developers from Sega.- Sega of Japan did not give a fuck about the global market, as far as they were concerned if the system sells well in Japan, then it is a success. They had a golden goose in Virtua Fighter which sold a ton of Saturns in Japan, but it had no international traction like Sonic. They completely ignored Sonic because it sold nothing in Japan.- In North America in the 90s, you had to book store inventory space in half a year or a year in advance, and have to be able to re-buy inventory from retailers. Sega did a surprise launch which went against the plans of all retailers. They did not expect it, and could not prepare any marketing or ads. This is why you did not see Saturn presence anywhere in the 90s, because nothing was ready. This alienated all retailers, who then sent all their inventory back to Sega. So not only were they unable to put Saturns on the shelves, they also had to rebuy all stock of Game Gear, Genesis, 32x, Sega CD systems, games, accessories.- Sega of Japan was losing a lot of money on making the Saturn and they wanted to stop its production as soon as possible. As early as 95 they were asking Nvidia and 3DFX to give them a new chipset they could launch by 1996. Bernie Stolars job was never to make the Saturn big, it was to make all developers transition to the new Sega system, which meant Saturn was on life support after 1996.tldr: Sega had no idea how to run a console business, they just wanted a system to sell their own games on like Nintendo.Sony had no idea either, but they did everything that everyone asked them to instead, and learned from that. Sega only learned once they could no longer afford consoles.
>>12151835>There's some compatibility problems with that. Certain games don't work with the 4MB cart and vice versaThere are three SNK games that did not adhere to Sega's warnings and read memory from the wrong addresses. It's not a fault of the cart, it's a fault of those games.
>>12150440>Why did the Sega Saturn fail so catastrophically?299
>>12150440It was goodBut people just weren't ready to accept how good it was (for $100 more than a Playstation)
>>12150836Oh yes marketing your console as outdated crap would surely do numbers! Face it zoomer, 3D was in. 2D was out. No one gave a F&^K about 2D until youtubers hyped up pretentious out of date tripe years later to look informed about gaming. The only informative thing is that you're g@y. Adios I'm out of heeeerrreeeeee.
>>12150440Lacks an actual development kit for an entire year. Sega played shenanigans with its launch that pissed of third party devs. It was a nightmare to code for. Bernie Stolar convinced Sega to prematurely kill Saturn in the west further pissing off third party devs. RIP.
>>12150440The Saturn did not fail "catastrophically".In fact, it might be the most successful failed console.Sega of America overmarketed niche Genesis add-ons, everyone who was dumb enough to buy them hated Sega going forward. In Japan no one had a Mega Drive in the first place, so this was a non-issue.Sega of America also hated the console from the beginning and was butthurt that Sega of Japan would not let them develop yet another competing platform. Sega of America's master plan was to market 5 pieces of hardware in a 3 year span (Genesis, CD, 32X, Saturn, Nvidia Console), when Sega of Japan said no, they purposefully sabotaged Saturn by never giving it a higher marketing budget than Genesis for any year of its existence.
>>12153078Don't forget the overproduction of Genesis games by the "genius" of Sega America Oh boy i hate SOA
>>12153078>The Saturn did not fail "catastrophically".It generated so much losses, both in finance and reputation, that Sega nearly went bankrupt after having the Dreamcast on market for two years. It took a 85 billion yen personal donation from a company chairman, and exiting the console business, for them to stay afloat.
>>12153097>the overproduction of Genesis gamesThat was Atari with the 2600, not Sega.
>>12151324all this plus no EA sports games support
>>12153174Sega did the sameLook at Sega FY 1997
Die
>>12153078>>12153171No, he's right. The Saturn did well in Japan and was actually head of the Playstation early on. Sega's dire finances were more from pre-Saturn blunders. The Saturn was a failure but not a catastrophic one.
>>12153171You can't blame one console for Sega's financials. They were in dire financial straights because they researched, developed, and released 5 consoles or addons in roughly 6 years. Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, Nomad, Dreamcast. All this while also making millions of Game Gears and Genesis consoles that would never sell. And the Saturn, 32X, and Dreamcast all were based around complicated Super H hardware with proprietary enhancements that they sold at a loss to undercut their competitors. Even the supposedly "off-the-shelf-parts" Dreamcast, which cost billions of yen to develop.Combine this with the fact that Sega only had 2-3 years of profitability in the US, from 92-94, and the fact that Dreamcast's "success" is a total myth, it sold less units than Saturn, and more than half of those were in the US during the launch quarter, before it immediately fell to Saturn level low numbers in every region. They were doomed from the minute they chose to release the 32X and to run the Genesis as a co-equal console with Saturn for Saturn's entire lifespan. .>>12153174Sega produced millions of genesis consoles and copies of games in 1996 and 1997, they sold roughly 100,000~ of them. Most games being shipped to US retailers in lots of 200,000-500,000 copies would end up selling less than 10,000 units. Genesis sales fell off a cliff after 1995 when people saw what PS1 could do, it didn't just happen to Saturn. Sega produced so many excess Genesis consoles that even though they were dirt cheap to produce, being ancient 80s PC hardware by 1997, they still couldn't turn a profit on them, and even at $99 they still couldn't move all the units.Sega of America had a pattern. Pretend it's 1993 and people want Genesis forever. If it doesn't work, blame Saturn. Only assign idiot programmers to Sonic Xtreme. Then blame Japan and Yuji Naka. It worked pretty well until their financials leaked, and google translate got good enough for Sega of Japan employees to tell the real story.
>>12150440What did they bring to the table that Sony didn't? That was a question that even Nintendo had to answer, and they couldn't figure it out until the Wii. Parity is not acceptable against the playstation. You have to be different, or you will get crushed.
