How did SEGA lose the console wars?

[Lucumo]

I miss the old days of video game advertising where they would just straight-up shit talk their competition out in the open.

Sega Japan went far beyond that.



And their Saturn commercials were really great too.



Unfortunately though:

Spoiler

 

[911 Jumper]

∆ That Japanese advert was very cool

I owned a DC twice in the early 2000s (no longer have one). I bought my first one because of Shenmue, this was when the PS2 was on the horizon. It was a nice little machine with a vibrant selection of quirky games. Looking back now though I do feel it is a little overrated. The number of games I genuinely liked was rather small.

 

[Jarpie]

What Taxalot wrote earlier, Playstation killed pretty much all other consoles at the time, they put so much fucking money into marketing Playstation and managed to build a lot of hype around it that no other console stood a chance, maybe except Nintendo if they hadn't fucked up N64.

By the time Dreamcast rolled around, Sony had managed to build huge fervor around PSX so most teens and young adults were already waiting for PS2 because of that.

I think people doesn't really take into the account that Sony brought a lot of credibility with their name alone to Playstation, a lot of "normies" bought into it because Sony was behind it, who were one of the biggest electronics companies around.

 

[Sunsetspawn]

Sega's legacy

 

[Absolutely Harambe]

Didn't the Saturn do pretty well in Japan tho? I mean, that's the reason why Segata Sanshiro is an advertising legend.

Saturn did better in Japan, that much is certain but not well enough apparently.

Saturn did about as well as N64 in Japan but Sony Playstation trounced both with two-thirds of console sales in that generation, and Saturn did poorly in America and Europe. Chronologically, Saturn at first was competitive with Playstation but sales faded away in 1997 as it was overtaken by N64 and Playstation zoomed ahead.

 

[nbohr1more]

Sega of America (SoA) knew how to market and cater to gaming audiences.
Sega of Japan constantly failed to capture the imagination of it's own territory and kept imposing their incorrect ideas on SoA.
SoJ became jealous of SoA's standing and worked to undermine them without realizing that doing so put their whole company in jeopardy.

Examples:

SoA wanted to keep the Genesis going a bit longer and milk the tail end of the product similar to what Nintendo did with the SNES
via the use of expansion chips in the cartridges
SoJ said the expanded cartridges were "too expensive" and forced SoA to sell the 32x ( basically a beefed-up expansion chip that could be shared between cartridges ).
SoA rightly believed that this "product" would confuse and frustrate consumers.

SoA was negotiating with ex Silicon Graphics engineers who would eventually make the graphics hardware for the N64 and Gamecube.
SoJ said the hardware was excessive and wasteful, they felt that better programmers could achieve similar results with weaker hardware.
That "Silicon Graphics" group got purchased by ATI ( now AMD ) and their work is now part of the graphic chips that all modern consoles use.

If SoJ had just swallowed their pride and let SoA steer the ship, Sega would probably still be in the console business.

 

[Ravielsk]

If SoJ had just swallowed their pride and let SoA steer the ship, Sega would probably still be in the console business.

True but I also think a major part of it all was that after Genesis Sega's game line up started visibly lagging behind Nintendo and even late comer Sony. By the end of the SNES/Genesis generation it was clear that the market was moving away from arcade style games towards more long form less demanding style of game(RPGs, point'n'click, adventure, horror games and so on) but SEGA firmly remained focused on arcade style experiences. So while the N64 and PSX were loaded with all these "new" genres the Saturn was still mostly a home arcade machine.

The market was still there but it was rapidly shrinking and SEGA did little to mitigate that on Saturn. With Dreamcast they got better but they still had the natural disadvantage of releasing a new console by the end point of a generation so for the average person it made no sense to invest into a Dreamcast that seemed relatively barren compared to the PSX(and initially also the N64). Considering the launch window they had plenty of games but if I had to make a choice back in the day the PSX was no-brainer while the Dreamcast was at most a "maybe".

If they had launched a year or two earlier it would have been a very different story but that was most likely just straight up impossible.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

How could they fail with an ad like that? I recall some of the horrible SOA ads… yeesh.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Saturn, in Japan, allowed for edgier games to try to both keep up with Sega's fame and to try to fight Sony, but it quickly earned a reputation of being a home for porn games, which also happened to the Vita and extended its lifespan on Japan. It's difficult to come back from that. I have to wonder if Sony didn't try another handheld bc of it too.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

They deserved to go under. Imagine having to deal with this on a daily basis:



The Dreamcast wasn't much better, either. You could break the cases just by staring at them with a hard look on your face. And they used to have the best cases with the Mega Drive and Master System.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Man I do so love my mega drive clamshell cases. The sega CD cases though…. Eh… why?

 

[ADL]

Consoles of that era were sold on exclusives and aside from Golden Axe and Jet Set Radio, I couldn't care less about Sega's exclusives. Maybe Eco the Dolphin but I wasn't begging my parents to buy a Saturn/Dreamcast for a small handful of games.

 

[Azalin]

Saturn also had a more complicated hardware using two co-processors if I remember correctly, that gave it more power than the Playstation but made it harder to develop games, I think Sega didn't provide great development tools either while Sony made a push to get as many third party developers on their system Sega made it harder for them.
If you account Saturn's early release that mean that its catalogue was pretty poor, especially at first, and most of them were first party games, generally arcade ports, while Playstation had a larger more diversified selection of games, sales were not what they needed them to be.
If you add Sony's aggressive price strategy then Saturn was pretty much dead

SoA wanted to keep the Genesis going a bit longer and milk the tail end of the product similar to what Nintendo did with the SNES
via the use of expansion chips in the cartridges

That was a mistake too, releasing Saturn early and focusing on it ,they mostly abandoned Mega Drive while SNES kept getting good games in 95/96 like Chrono Trigger,Super Mario RPG, Yoshi's Island,Donkey Kong Country 2&3,Earthbound,Lufia 2,Killer Instinct ,Castlevania Dracula X and Japan only rpgs like Tales of Phantasia,Star Ocean,Seiken Densetsu 3,while Mega Drive got what,Vectorman 1&2?
They could have gotten money from the Mega Drive in 95 too,they left easy money on the table

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The MEGADRIVE SEGACD 32x Power brick nightmare was something to consider. Sega j, Sega usa, anx Sega Europe didn’t exactly communicate the best. USA censoring was an issue and I really think Japan held back a lot of games they didn’t want to spend money on via translating. I haven’t looked at the spreadsheet in a while which shows all region games released (and when) vs USA, Japan, Europe exclusives. Every console seems to have this issue.

I do enjoy watching the various YouTube documentaries from different people on this and I do hope SEGA can make some sort of comeback (by releasing more games in their library for different devices) but retro consoles anniversary packets is probably the best we’ll get and the quality varies. Look at Atari VCS and the myriad of releases. Sone atari enthusiasts aren’t impressed with some of these. The colecovision and intellivision really didn’t get any release (Amico is busy I believe).

I’m guessing true gaming enthusiasts don’t want an emulator in a box but maybe some upgraded hardware for the original system with good quality controllers and a decent library. Honestly, usb hub the controller with support for 4+ players and include 9-pin or w/e adapters (i don’t know what saturn or dreamcast used having never owned those systems)

I really wish some of these companies could get their shit together. Nintendo has the fucking habit of shitting on their catalog and support for older consoles. Sega is nigh non existent, i believe Playstation also fucks up on compatibility for all their games catalog to the latest console, Xbox I have no clue, atari messed up on their offline/online system, colecovision doesn’t exist, and intellivision fucked up their launch and pissed off many supporters.

The next Gen is rumored to have NO physical media, light gun on modern screens is getting better but still needs work so most consoles avoid that genre, VR exists (dunno if it is any good), and online libraries will cost you and hopefully not monthly subscription fees but I bet that is likely if not what is done already (I only have gog, Steam, and a few other libraries but not the big 3 consoles having NO CONSOLE myself).

 

[Falksi]

So the past few years I've become good mates with a few people who used to work for SEGA in that era, primarily as testers and producers. Their take is an amalgamation of a lot of what's already been posted, but the key points are:

1. The mishandling of the 32X & Saturn - This threw the consumer out completely, everyone was waiting for a new console and the 32X arrived to confuse matters. Not only that, but the Saturn was priced at $100 more than the Playstation, and the Playstation handled 3D better and was easier to pirate games for too. A simple case of Newer Trend + Cheaper Price = winner for Playstation. This has already been covered loads, so I'll move on to the lesser known points.

2. SEGA of Japan sucked SEGA of America's cocks big time when they were frontrunners in the gaming market, few people there ever truly expected SEGA's David to actually make Nintendo's Goliath it's bitch, but for a period around '93/94 it did. However, when things swung the other way SoJ got very pissy with SoA and the in-fighting created a ton of problems. If you'll notice, some excellent SEGA IP's with bags of potential such as Eternal Champions, Kid Chameleon and Comix Zone etc. only ever got 1 entry (Eternal Champions got a CD extension, but not a sequel), and that's largely because SoJ dropped those franchises like hot coals due to them being SoA products. In fact we were meant to be getting another IP altogether called Dimension Raiders....

.... but again, SoJ kyboshed it.

3. SEGA misjudged the RPG market. Bernie Stolar is to thank for this one, he had some unpopular policies anyway, but he was firmly against focusing on RPGs at a time when RPGs were just starting to boom. Playstation sold on stuff like Final Fantasy 7, Stolar limited a lot of the RPGs which got Japanese releases to that region only and refused to bring them West. This often gets overlooked, but I personally think it was a huge error when you consider the Saturn outsold the N64 in Japan. Had Saturn players had more alternatives to Sony's Wetsern JRPGs I think the fight would have been far more balanced.

4. SEGA didn't follow up it's successful IPs on the Saturn. This is just mental when you think about it, SEGA DID NOT RELEASE A SINGLE TRADITIONAL SONIC GAME ON THE SATURN How suicidal is that? lol. The Saturn had a compilation disc of the earlier Sonic games, a Sonic Racing game, and Sonic 3D Blast revamped from the Megadrive to it, but that's it and they didn't give their flagship mascot his own Saturn platform-based entry. Then you have other franchises which they dropped to such as Streets of Rage, and even those which survived morphed with the likes of Golden Axe becoming a 1-Vs-1 fighter. I mane, how the hell did they not port Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder from the arcade on to the Saturn? lol. Imagine Nintendo not releasing a Mario or Zelda game for the N64 lol. Like I said, suicidal.

So basically, they were caught between a mishmash of bad decisions and in-fighting which dragged them down for years to come. And it's a huge shame, because since joining this forum I've played through over 300 games on the SEGA 8 & 16-bit systems, and they're fucking superb.

Spoiler

I mean, just look at Eternal Champions for a premise for a fighter. Street Fighter - bad nazi fetish guy wants to rule the world, some sub plots and a tournament ensues. OK premise, but it's hardly movie-worthy stuff is it? Eternal Champions, "An omniscient being known as the Eternal Champion predicts that mankind will soon fade from existence due to the untimely and unjust deaths of key individuals throughout history who were destined for greatness. Seeking to restore balance to the world, the Eternal Champion gathers these souls from time moments before their deaths. The Eternal Champion only has enough power to restore life to one of these individuals, so he organizes and holds a fighting tournament between them, where the victor will be able to regain their life and change their fate while bringing balance to the universe, whilst the losers will be forced to die just as history recorded." I mean that's a thousand times better and could have spawned so much.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I remember seeing Jonathan Blade and thinking Lieutenant commander Geordi la Forge has been working out.

 

[flyingjohn]

Sony, simple as that.

 

[newtmonkey]

There's a great book on this topic, titled Console Wars:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/console-wars-blake-j-harris?variant=32205937279010

It's definitely worth a read for anyone interested in what was going on behind the scenes at this time, though it's definitely written from a pro-SoA perspective.

According to this book, Sega basically lost it once SoJ executives started jockeying for power and influence after seeing SoA clawing up from like 10% of the US market, to competing with NoA, to gaining majority share of the market in just a few years. There was some kind of change in leadership in Japan, and at this point SoJ started dictating policy to SoA, when up to that point SoA was basically left to do its own thing. The SoJ executives were probably tired and ashamed at being shown up by the Americans, and they figured since they had top market share in the US now, they could just take over and coast on it... to disastrous results.

 

[Azalin]

4. SEGA didn't follow up it's successful IPs on the Saturn. This is just mental when you think about it SEGA DID NOT RELEASE A SINGLE TRADITIONAL SONIC GAME ON THE SATURN How suicidal is that? lol.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.I mean Nintendo had Mario 64 as a release title for the N64 while Sega never made a Saturn Sonic game,I mean that is monumentally stupid

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Sega Sanshiro needed to come to the west. And shitty translation games or uh reimagining like Last Battle was ridiculous.

We'd never know it was Fist of the North Star EVER.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Sega Sanshiro needed to come to the west. And shitty translation games or uh reimagining like Last Battle was ridiculous.

We'd never know it was Fist of the North Star EVER.

99% of people back then had no idea what FotN was and didn't care. That game was quite popular in Europe and saw success in arcades as well as the home console. The lack of anime license likely did it more good than bad considering how incredibly niche anime was even to the gaming market.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.I mean Nintendo had Mario 64 as a release title for the N64 while Sega never made a Saturn Sonic game,I mean that is monumentally stupid

It had Tomb Raider early which was a big deal. NiGHTS went toe to toe with Mario 64 in magazine courage of the era, if not even more. Especially during Christmas with Christmas NiGHTS. And you can't under estimate DAYONTA USA or Virtua fighter home console ports. As big as Sonic was the Saturn didn't struggle for iconic games. Fighting Vipers got more attention than Tekken did until 3 came out.

 

[Azalin]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.I mean Nintendo had Mario 64 as a release title for the N64 while Sega never made a Saturn Sonic game,I mean that is monumentally stupid

It had Tomb Raider early which was a big deal. NiGHTS went toe to toe with Mario 64 in magazine courage of the era, if not even more. Especially during Christmas with Christmas NiGHTS. And you can't under estimate DAYONTA USA or Virtua fighter home console ports. As big as Sonic was the Saturn didn't struggle for iconic games. Fighting Vipers got more attention than Tekken did until 3 came out.

They created Sonic during the Mega Drive era to be their mascot/signature character,his games were Mega Drive's best selling ones.They invested time and money to make him successful and then you don't make even one Sonic game for your next console and basically through all that time and investment out the window?That's stupid, they should have had a Sonic game if not available as a launch game announced at launch and available during the first 6 months. Oh and the end results showed that they didn't have nearly enough iconic games as they needed

 

[Great Deceiver]

99% of people back then had no idea what FotN was and didn't care. That game was quite popular in Europe and saw success in arcades as well as the home console. The lack of anime license likely did it more good than bad considering how incredibly niche anime was even to the gaming market.

A lot of people knew what HnK was in the West in the late 80s and early 90s.

Also Last Battle never came out for arcades, what the fuck are you smoking

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.I mean Nintendo had Mario 64 as a release title for the N64 while Sega never made a Saturn Sonic game,I mean that is monumentally stupid

It had Tomb Raider early which was a big deal. NiGHTS went toe to toe with Mario 64 in magazine courage of the era, if not even more. Especially during Christmas with Christmas NiGHTS. And you can't under estimate DAYONTA USA or Virtua fighter home console ports. As big as Sonic was the Saturn didn't struggle for iconic games. Fighting Vipers got more attention than Tekken did until 3 came out.

They created Sonic during the Mega Drive era to be their mascot/signature character,his games were Mega Drive's best selling ones.They invested time and money to make him successful and then you don't make even one Sonic game for your next console and basically through all that time and investment out the window?That's stupid, they should have had a Sonic game if not available as a launch game announced at launch and available during the first 6 months. Oh and the end results showed that they didn't have nearly enough iconic games as they needed

Sonic 3D blast and Sonic Jam were both on the Saturn. It's no excuse but it's there. And Sonic is playable in NiGHTS in some fashion I think? Should have had a bigger game but Sonic wasn't totally forgotten on the Saturn.

99% of people back then had no idea what FotN was and didn't care. That game was quite popular in Europe and saw success in arcades as well as the home console. The lack of anime license likely did it more good than bad considering how incredibly niche anime was even to the gaming market.

A lot of people knew what HnK was in the West in the late 80s and early 90s.

Also Last Battle never came out for arcades, what the fuck are you smoking

They really didn't. It's not even very popular now outside of the one meme. You seriously over estimate the popularity of anime outside of the kiddy dubs like transformers.

Sega and Nintendo both released arcade machines where you paid for time on a console. Last battle was part of the mega drive games included in the arcade collection.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Fist of the North Star was one of the first "different" animes out there, the west had been watching anime since the 60s but localization efforts made them look and feel like average cartoons. It's just that America was always behind the times and trends.