Why Did Sega Fail? A look at the 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast.
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Episode 63 - Why did Sega fail? Join me as we examine Sega's fall from the top while answering why did Sega exit the home console market. Was it the 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, or something else?
Follow me on twitter to keep up to date on the latest happenings concerning this channel. Also for those post containing the occasional farm animal.
/ jenovi
-Jenovi
Retro Impressions
We combed through around 120 pages of interviews that have yet to be translated from their native Japanese. Huge thanks to Mike Krow (Space Asylum) / evillepandas and Gryson: from mdshock.com for their work on translating documents and helping search for information relevant to the topic at hand.
Pixel animation by Wayne:
/ wanyodos
Some of the Sources used.
1. www.sega-16.com...
2. Playing at the next level - A History of American Sega Games
3. MAN!AC_DE_1995-05. PG 25
4. GamePlayers_US_0902 PG 20
5. NextGeneration_US_13 PG 12
6. Billboard Mag Jan 7th '95 PG 92
7. www.thefreelib...
8. segaretro.org/...
9. Next Gen 8 PG 29
10 segaretro.org/...
11. segaretro.org/...
12. edge-online.com/features/making-playstation
13. Edge Magazine 66
14. Edge Magazine 67
15. Sega Annual Report 2000
16. Sega Annual Reports 1998-2017
17. pubs.iir.hit-u....
18. Next Gen V3 #4
19. Next Gen V3 #1
20. Nikkei Electronics magazine September 22, 1997
21. Next Gen V1 #5
22. Audio and video interviews with numerous past Sega employees.
Segments were used from the following videos.
• PlayStation - Launch C...
• The Console Wars -- X...
• Video
• DreamCast Japanese com...
• Segata Sanshiro Commer...
• E3 1995 - Sega Saturn ...
• Japanese Sega Mega Dri...
• "SEGA" SG1000, MARKII,...
• Sega SG 1000 Mark II C...
• Sony PlayStation: The ...
Videos not used but of interest.
• E3 1995 (Sega's '95 Saturn Release announcement.)
#32X
#Saturn
#Dreamcast
The complete failure of Sega to bring most of their established IPs to the Saturn (never mind Sonic) is truly baffling.
@@35mm21 I think there was a sense with both Sonic and SoR that they had exhausted the formula on the Mega Drive (especially as SoR 3 wasn’t as good as SoR 2) but it seems very short sighted. Compare with how Nintendo treats its IPs - they’re the main reason you buy a Nintendo console.
We didn’t even get Revenge of Death Adder on the Saturn.
Sega’s hardware design was complex and challenging, making it hard for developers to optimize their games for the Saturn. The Saturn had two main processors, two video processors, and several other chips, which required a lot of programming skills and resources to use effectively
@@hamoodZX none of that prevented Sega from bringing its established IPs to Saturn.
Like Vectorman, Eternal Champions, Ecco the Dolphine, Streets of Rage, Chakkan the Forever Man, Comic Zone, Alex Kid, etc.
Your content is literally some of the best on RUclips
Wow! Thank you, Dan, those words mean the world to me. Especially coming from you.
@@Jenovi MORE THAN WELCOME MATE... HOPE TO SEE MORE
I would agree!
Not a bad person to have in your corner, good to see this!
You know you've made it when the one and only DJ Slopes is sending you praise! Keep up the good work!
We really need to debunk this 'short press conference' thing. The press conference for Sony was long, boring and felt corporate. Only the price section was short and obviously done for effect, which clearly worked. In fairness the bit where they tell you the price is rarely 20 minutes long, usually pretty short, the only difference is you don't usually bring someone up specially to do the announcement.
Fantastic work my friend. Great pacing, research, VO, beautiful editing, everything was top notch! I think between you and I we can now officially bring the number of people on RUclips that have pointed out how successful the 32X was out of the gate all the way to... two. Lol. Seriously man, I know you put a ton of time and effort into this one and it shows. You should be proud.
Thanks Yahel, it's much appreciated. The 32X and CD-i need all the support they can get in this anti console culture war that's plaguing the world.
Great work. It's honestly baffling that people put Sega's failure at the feet of the 32x. No one thing killed Sega's console business, just like no one thing killed WCW, but people love to oversimplify in hindsight.
Thanks Joe. Great point there.
@@jesuszamora6949 Russo was the booker. Who hired him?
@@NotaPizzaGRL True... Turner, maybe?
The reason for Sega's failure was primarily Sega of Japan's ineptitude
they both were decent at one time and were mis managed by leadership. Both are very simple in the same way.
Now that I really think about it, Sony was INCREDIBLY lucky. Both of their competitors tripped over themselves one way or another: SEGA imploded. Nintendo doubled down on a dead format, took forever to release the N64, and chased away most of their 3rd party support.
Very valid points.
Yuup
That is giving Sony way too little credit. They designed a balanced forward-thinking piece of hardware, made it easy to program for, worked hard to support devs, and tapped the young adults market. Even if Sega didn't implode and directly succeeded the Megadrive with Saturn, their SH2-VDP design was less suitable for the 3D age.
@@Aggrofool exactly. Sony did a great job showing people how to do 3D. Take the Dual Shock controllers for example. The 2 analog design was brilliant. N64 had an ugly, clunky design and the Saturn lacked analog stick. The Saturn was stuck on the fence b/w being a 2D or 3D system. N64 was still using cartridges and this costed them 3rd parties. PS1 used CDs which was clever
@@vulcanraven9701 For me the best controller design to this day.
Sega were very innovative and ahead of their time but they were also too arrogant and untrustful of their other market that they self-destruct their own company. The Genesis was doing great, all they had to do was let it run til the Saturn came out. Saturn would had a heads up over the PlayStation had Sega made it backwards compatible with Sega CD games, I mean the Saturn had a cartridge slot and a disc tray right so why couldn't it work like that. Also turning the Saturn into a proprietary machine makes it not attractive to older consumer, before the Saturn the Sega Genesis and SMS used the universal 9-pin ports (the same port Atari and Coleco also use) for their controller.
All the Saturn had to do was used that and had the Saturn become backwards compatible with Genesis peripherals just like how Genesis is doing that for SMS and it would had work out great. The 32X should had never being consider cause then Sega would just be confusing their own consumers. Had Sega bring success to the Saturn, they could had save the Dreamcast for another 2 years and not launching it til the year 2000 and beyond when the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox arrive. My thoughts on Sega is that they are too desperate to launch their products that they forgot to rethink strategy on how to market it.
32x made things worse off for the momentum of the Saturn especially in NA/PAL. Took most of the developers from games like Virtua Racing, Star Wars Arcade and many more from the Saturn which could have beefed up the launch lineup as well. Backward Compatiblity with the genesis and sega cd would have help alot in America and Europe as well. Even they could have a released an adaptor so you can play genesis and sega cd games including enhancing with with the Saturn graphics too.
We love how you blame SEGA and NOT CSK Holdings for everything.
Don't think so at all -- none of the other more successful systems were BC and were each standalone consoles.
Gen/MD was already dead in Japan , that's why they wanted a new system out.
They released a new console at the right time , just did it so poorly in NA that they'd never recover here.
@@GDLenter They all blew it with the wrong marketing and business decisions. If it was release on Saturday of September 2nd and had everyone involved, the Saturn would have did well in the NA and PAL market.
great points - you got it right.
I may easily speak on behalf of the whole post-Soviet space (name it Russia and near). In the Soviet times no consoles went to the Soviet market. First ones came in 1993. There were two ones of cult status. First, the cheapest one was Dendy - illegal Taiwanese clone of NES (nobody over here knew it was a clone, nobody ever saw real NES). The second one was Sega Mega Drive, it was the highest summit of everybody's dreams. SNES cost more, its cartridges were usually not pirated and thus cost very much. I am the forever fan of Mega Drive. It's the dream from my youth. The former USSR and Brazil were perhaps two territories where Sega 16bit console gained an absolute cult status.
Sega should've took a page out of Nintendo's rule book, and built the 32X technology into the Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges.
Nintendo used the Super FX chip in that way and so did Sega when they introduced the Virtua processor.
The problem was that SVP chip ballooned the cartridge price to nearly $100 for Virtua Racing, the only game to take advantage of it.
At the the time the argument was:
-do you pay $100 each time a game used the chipset (but didn't enhance the number of onscreen colors or the audio),
-or the one time $150 price of the 32X which brought polygons, audio and color enhancements to new games going forward?
The latter made more sense at the time. They should've either released the Neptune alongside the 32X or just the Neptune alone as a Super/Ultra/Hyper Genesis...
Ideally though the Saturn should've had Genesis backwards compatibility and we wouldn't have needed a 32X.
@@lazarushernandez5827 I know your comment is over a year old, but wouldn't encorporating backwards compatibility with the Saturn balloon the price of the Saturn even more back then?
That would've been another factor.
@@G.L.999 The original Genesis had the chips on its motherboard to be backwards compatible with the Master System, the power base converter provided the necessary pass thru for the SMS carts and cards to work. Among the many chips the Saturn had on its motherboard, one of them was a Motorola 68000, the same chip that was the Genesis/Megadrive's main CPU. It would not have been that expensive to incorporate, considering if Sega had not made the mistake of the 32X in the first place.
Again this is looking back at the whole situation, back then they did what they thought the situation called for. 🤷♂
@@lazarushernandez5827 I really don't understand where people are getting this idea that it wouldn't have been expensive to incorporate backwards compatibility with said system, when in fact adding said hardware parts only increases hardware's overall retail price(which is why the SNES wasn't backwards compatible).
@@G.L.999 At that point in time, the Genesis CPU chipset wasn't very expensive (the 68000 would have cost us $15 back in 1984 and the Z80 was around $7 back in the late 70s, Sega buying in bulk in the 90s would have got them even cheaper).
Sega could have incorporate it into the design of the Saturn; raising its price a bit, or they could put the bulk of it in an adapter; the Genesis 2 was around $80-90 retail in 1994, (that's with a power supply, controller, hardware to output to the TV etc...) an Adapter that didn't need its own power supply, that used the Saturn's controllers and video hardware would have been cheaper than that.
The SNES was not backwards compatible for other reasons too; Early Nintendo did not really believe in it. In it's time the NES was the most popular console, Nintendo didn't bother with BC on the SNES because there was a high probability the consumer already owned the NES.
Nintendo also knew how to move on to the next generation, unlike Sega who at one point was supporting between (depending on the market) 5 to 7 different platforms at the same time: SMS, GG, Gen/MD, SCD, 32X, 32X+CD and Saturn (as well as their hardware).
Console wise, Nintendo didn't embrace BC until the Wii, which was directly compatible with the Gamecube, the Wii U could play Wii games directly too.
On the handheld side, most of the successors were directly compatible (at least the first iterations): you could play Gameboy/GB Color titles on the GBAdvance/SP, you could play GBA games on the DS but not the DSi (GBA cartridge slot removed), you could play DS games on the 3DS but not GBA titles.
Great video, as usual. I'd also say that there's also the fact that Sega of Japan & Sega of America were pretty much an oil & water mix, and rarely really worked well together. Tom Kalinske's ideas for the Genesis were admitted to generally being disliked by SoJ's heads, including making Sonic the Hedgehog a pack-in, but Hayao Nakayama would constantly allow Kalinske to go ahead like them, and since the Genesis was a success everywhere but Japan, they couldn't really argue otherwise. Once the Saturn became a success in Japan (finally giving SoJ what it wanted for so long), though, suddenly Kalinske was forced to do as his SoJ bosses ordered him to do, regardless of if it truly made sense or not, like the early Saturn launch & killing off the Genesis.
Then, when Bernie Stolar joined SoA, he pushed for the creation of the Dreamcast, as he didn't want to support the Saturn, even though it was a major hit in Japan. Stolar got his wish, but pretty much had to leave SoA before it launched abroad, & while Peter Moore loved the Dreamcast, he knew Sega just had to leave console making. Meanwhile, Sega of Europe was pretty much just forced to follow whatever line was being towed. Sega's time as a first-party company was really a case of never being able to truly make it big worldwide, as it either was big everywhere but Japan, a failure everywhere but Japan, or just a failure in general. And I say this as a Sega kid of the 90s.
Thank you for the post. Great read! I think what most people feel/know about Bernie Stolar is revisionist history at best. The man was terrible for the company over all and unlike Kalinske, disregarded the greater good of those under him and around him in order to make decisions that were ultimately terrible IMO.
Pretty much. Sega never had the ubiquity Nintendo enjoyed, nor the appeal to third parties that Sony enjoyed, and their mostly-incompetent Japanese management never really helped. Honestly, as much as I enjoy the Genesis and Sega CD, Sega never really deserved success.
Hilariously, Kalinske would resign not long after the blowback from the early launch, leading to Stolar's own brand of retardation.
Nice video, I knew a lot of the info, but you structured it in a good way that gives insight to the broader picture. My takeaways:
1. Sega should have launched the Saturn on the original release date in the U.S market. This has been talk to to death already, but it can't be overstated what a catastrophe the surprise launch was. Had they launched the console on the original release date: A. Would have still had full retail support. B. Would not have soured press and fan support. C. Would have allowed the 32X another year to rack up sales, as it was doing quite well in the North American market, as you stated. D. Would have allowed more time for software development.
Sega was too worried about Sony, but Sony still was a newcomer to the gaming market, while Sega was a household name due to success of the Genesis. Should have ridden that success into the new generation, instead of offering a silver platter for Sony to dine off due to their mistakes.
2. Sega should have launched the Dreamcast with the same release in Japan as the U.S. Saturn was still doing quite well in Japan, should have allowed that console to continue to ride it's success and also not rush the Dreamcast to market. They had issues with their parts suppliers, they may have even done well to rethink the console in some way and offer a more powerful console released later on. One more year would have done wonders, and I think it would have launched much better in Japan, as well as in the U.S.
3. It really seems the Dreamcast killed off Sega, as you stated, Sega was still in the green up until the Dreamcast launch. Okawa really saved Sega by donating that 85 billion yen, what a guy.
Thank you so much for this amazing comment. I love hearing from others who share my interest and this was a great response. I think your takeaways mirror my own. There was a massive lesson to be learned from Atari (in ‘93) who amassed 2.5 million preordered in Europe and decided to not launch the console there until it was essentially to late and dead. If you watch my Unreleased Jag part one, the first half covers this. Anyways, bad launches paired with dramatically under filled preorders have been a fair indicator that trouble is on the horizon.
@@Jenovi Sure, I'll check out that video as well. I saw your video in my "recommended" feed, and was thinking "Oh no, not another one of those Sega failure videos" but decided to give it a chance and I'm glad I did. It was very refreshing to see someone who went in depth and didn't blame all the usual suspects as everyone else seems to follow the exact same narrative.
Thanks for the great video, you've got yourself a new subscriber.
Okawa DID NOT save SEGA. He tried to SELL all of its IPs off to the highest bidder and tried to Dissolve SEGA's gaming divisions. He wanted SEGA to become like NEC, and move away from Video Gaming altogether. When he died, he left $3 Billion in Debt to SEGA, that was incurred by HIS company CSK and the horrid non gaming investments THEY had made throughout the 90s.
Your comment is not only inaccurate, its also misguided.
Saturn Did launch as scheduled, it had a botched test market 4 months prior.
Sony was trying to Drive both SEGA AND Nintendo out of business. Sony wanted a MONOPOLY. They wanted to be the only Game Console manufacturer on the market.
2. No they should haven't. You don't understand. Dreamcast was originally planned for a February 5,1999 launch in Japan. Isao Okawa ordered SEGA to rush the console out for Christmas 1998 or else he'd force Sega to announce a Quarterly Operating Loss.
3. No. The Dreamcast did NOT kill off SEGA. That is Ludicrous to claim such poppycock. CSK did NOT even Bankroll DC. SEGA got it bankrolled by various Partners like Microsoft,Toshiba,NEC. CSK didn't want to fund SEGA's gaming divisions anymore and SEGA was looking for a new Parent. They weren't in any Red or anything like that.
@@Jenovi Atari (and Commodore for that matter) are an even more screwy kettle of fish. Atari cancelled their 32-bit Panther, which would have been ahead of everything else at the time, to develop the Jaguar, which ended up being released when Atari no longer had the money to support it. If they'd gone with the Panther, they might have lasted a generation or two more, maybe even still been around today. However, Leonard Tramiel lacked his dad's business savvy.
Beautifully done. I hope this gets just as many views as the YT big timers, your research and presentation are superb.
Thank you very much for the kind words. At this point, it's all up to the RUclips gods.
Jenovi Gotta love that almighty and mysterious algorithm!
It's refreshing to see a more positive view on the 32x. One of the big problems, i think, is that people don't contextualize it properly. Comparing it to the Megadrive in 1995 is a mistake because it was a console that had been on the market for a full cycle. If we compare it to the position the Megadrive and Snes were in after a year (or, to be honest, pretty much any other console) it was in an acceptable position in terms of hardware sales, current software availability and future software availability.
Thanks for the great comment, I’m glad you enjoyed this one. Yeah, I fully agree with you.
I bought a 32. Had potential. But was treated like the red haired step child.
@@robzilla730 It was a stop gap, and a bad idea as an add on. This lesson was new to Sega because not many major consoles before then had sold a major add on that served to split the user base.
If Sega had sold the 32x as a complete console things might have gone better.
You know, ironically Sony looks like Sega during the late 90s right now.
Low supply and low number of exclusives, add the fact that Microsoft has a budget console mirroring the PS1 and that Sony is moving exclusives to PC.
We might be witnessing the end of Sony as a console manufacturer
Great video. Ultimately what killed Sega, was Sega. They didn't need to beat Sony, just selling 20-30 million would've helped Sega a great deal but they couldn't even manage that due to top down incompetence.
One or two guys on RUclips tell the correct story and each have around 10K followers. Dozens of other RUclipsrs tell the same wrong 32X rehash and they have 500K followers.
Proof of an idiot world and it can be seen on all fronts of our world. Sad thing.
This most spreed a bunch of wrong info
That simply isn't true. This same story has been told in about a thousand videos. Anyways, bottom line is that the 32X was unsupported trash with zero good games.
Idiocracy, it's real.
Showing the sale losses from Dreamcast era convinced me that 32X was not the source of Sega's failure...actually impressed that Nintendo can still find ways to survive in the face of giants Sony and MSFT.
@@R2MintOptions The Saturn was Sega's biggest failure ever..they lost lots of loyal customers, major third party developers and retailers bc of this absolute mess. By the time the DC got released it was already too late people weren't eager to buy a Sega system with a ridiculously short lifespan anymore.
Sega Japan Vs. Sega America = self-implosion.
saturn vs milking genesis.
Dude, you really know your stuff! I was gutted when Sega ended tgier console run, I had both Ps2 and Dreamcast, still have my original DC and still play it a lot.
Thanks Commander. This video took an incredible amount of time to pull together. I appreciate the comment and thank you for watching. Happy to hear you have a Sega console that's getting used.
I've been feeling guilty giving my dreamcast and mega drive more love right now than I have my Saturn maybe I should enjoy a flick on it
This randomly popped up in my suggestions, and was curious about it.
I hoped that it wasn't just another "32x bad, Saturn bad, both killed them hardly" since the people who say that usually don't look far enough into it, or just following the crowd, but it didn't as it did delve deep enough into the subject, good job mang.
I think I would add to the Nintendo part that, they had the Gameboy to back them up in case the N64 wasn't doing well, so it was a secondary crutch whereas Sega didn't have anything to back them up from any failures, which is quite sad.
(Also funny how Sony is the one that buys everything unlike their statement in the vid, how times changed)
You hit the nail on the head. Thank you for the comment.
@@Jenovi no problem, I like watching your stuff.
Remember the “third pillars” of the DS and Switch those were used in case they didn’t sell well they can go back to The game boy advance and 3DS and WiiU
Why oh why did the virtua boy exist? I swear Nintendo took money from all eye doctors.
True, Sega should not have killed their Gamegear. Brilliant system: way ahead of its time:
@@chromeleeches7429 I think the Virtua Boy was viewed as an interesting experiment. I owned one and frankly it was just so close to being a good system. So damn close! Just the freaking eye strain kept it from being a good system. Not that it wasn't major, just the single issue itself. Everything else could have been manageable or would have been fixed as the eyestrain was fixed.
It would never be a great system, but it wouldn't be the joke it is now.
That was a really good video. After you did those videos about all the canceled games planned for the 32X, I was thinking to myself that most of those games might've immediately sold me on a 32X, and I do remember I never had a Genesis until the Nomad came out in 96, which is when my parents started buying me loads of Genesis games for it. With that said, I think it does make perfect sense that closing the book on the Genesis and the 32X as soon as they did was a huge mistake, especially with stuff like the Nomad and Sega Channel. Since they were still profitable during the Saturn days, they could've turned their fortunes around if they played their cards right with it, even if it still meant they had to bow out of the console race. It's sad thinking about all that, but it is what it is and there's some very important takeaways here.
Thanks Elk for sharing this. Always enjoy reading other peoples take on the topics I cover.
I know your comment is over 2 years old, but t's definitely one of those "How much longer could the Dreamcast have held on for until it would be discontinued?" kind of things! Makes ya wonder.
Sega needs to make consoles and handhelds again. And by the way, you forgot to talk about the Sega CD.
I’ve had a few people comment on the Sega CD not being included. It honestly just wasn’t relevant to the story at hand, but I did include it in the trifecta pixel art😄. Absolutely fantastic systems and one of my all time favourites. I even have a video discussing the launch games.
Last time Sega tried to make a console it nearly drove the whole company bankrupt, not to mention out of all the Sega consoles the Genesis was the only one that saw actual worldwide success, everything else flopped.
@spartanx darth STFU you sega clown...sega will never be the name that playstation is..... when sega has a system that sells over 155m get back to me
I’ll be honest. I like Sega games, not their consoles. All the great Dreamcast games got re released on other consoles. And for the 16bit? I don’t think Sonic, Streets of Rage would be that difficult to put on a SNES. But the 16bit era is a different story.
Sega never sold as much as it's competition. Even if they make a new console their reputation is tainted for life.
Very rarely do I watch an almost 30 minute video on youtube without getting bored and skipping though. Well done sir. Subscribed.
😆 thank you! I’m not sure how I let it balloon into something so long. I thankfully was able to cut it down to its current size. Really appreciate this comment and I’m frickin happy you enjoyed the video.
I was a tad offput that you didn't mention how the U.S. launch of the Sega Dreamcast was a massive success; in fact THE most successful console launch in American history up until that point.
Instead you only mentioned that it had a bad Japanese launch.
I know this is about Sega's failures, but leaving out the astoundingly successful U.S. launch of the Dreamcast, and only mentioning the horrible Japanese launch, really paints a very mispercieved picture to viewers that are new to the Dreamcast, Sega & it's history.
Aside from that though, you did a very good job with everything else, and it's good to see the whole "32X doomed Sega" theory being properly dispelled.
Well done
The Dreamcast was amazing.
Around November 2002 a friend of my family asked me did I want to buy some old Sega stock from his shop to clear invintory for the Dreamcast also being ended, at time I was just turning 22 and was genuinely tempted however I was more interested in spending my cash on blondes, brunettes and redheads for some reason.
To this day I can't remember if it was 100 pal 32x's and 90 pal Saturn's or vice versa, plus hundreds of games.
Whole lot was gonna cost me about £1000 but I couldn't get the cash up and he DUMPED IT ALL rather than take what I could give him.
I genuinely believe it was the majority stock of 32x's in Northern Ireland as he often bought out of date systems and tried to sell on budget prices at later date.
If only I'd known, I could have stored them and sold them brand new boxed 25 years later and retired lol.
Well, I'm a sucker for redheads so I can fully understand. To the comment, thank you. I love reading about other peoples experiences especially coming from another region.
A typical Saturn developer quote:
Working Designs' Victor Ireland speaks from the perspective of a
third-party publisher: "[The Saturn] was really hard to develop for if
you wanted to take advantage of its parallel processing, and the tools
weren't very friendly. We were one of only a handful of developers in
the US that had a Japanese UNIX dev system because we were localizing
Japanese games. People doing it from scratch were using Windows/DOS
based dev kits from England. Neither was really all that friendly, and
we never got the system debugger working right on the UNIX system. When
you have an expensive console with tepid support from retail, it's
easier to justify going with the new guy that has a cheaper console
with bigger buzz. Developers went with Sony."
This was a very good video Jenovi, I appreciate the time and work that you put into this, and it show tenfold, as a kid I was the only Sega guy, so this makes me feel better about that.
Thank you. Glad to hear you enjoyed this.
Same
I was a Sega guy and my brother a Sony guy. Once DC died I went Xbox. To this day I'm an Xbot and my brother still a Sony Pony 😆
I knew one person through someone with a Saturn and never played it until way after it was dead. While everyone in my area had a PS1 and usually n64 as well.
I love the Dreamcast dearly, one of my favorite consoles along with the 3DO and sega cd add on of course =)
The Dreamcast was my first Sega console I ever owned on Christmas of 1999. Though I eventually sold it and all the games I had for a GameCube since SSBM enticed alot as a kid. I would eventually get Dreamcast again 10 years later for nostalgic reasons; along with most of the games that I sold and bought again.
@@G.L.999 nice! It's so good, really holds up well
@@SegaCDUniverse Wow. You actually responded despite your comment being over 2+ years old. Thanks.
I also subbed to your channel btw. Keep it up.
@@G.L.999 thanks buddy. Yep, I always enjoy the interaction on here :)
Great video. Like the 1983 crash, a lot of people tend to point to ET being the reason when it was nothing more than just the hammer than drove the final nail into the coffin. Lots of people like to say it was the PS2 that brought Sega down, but it was just another hammer than drove the final nail into the coffin. Sega as a whole simply dropped the ball a long time ago. The Genesis/Mega Drive as a success outside of Japan, while it was a distant third to Super Famicom and PC Engine in Japan. Then, the Saturn succeeds in Japan and is a colossal failure outside of it.
A lot of people give Stolar crap as to why Saturn failed in the US. I know saying "Saturn isn't our future" wasn't the smartest thing to say but by no means does he deserve the blame. It wasn't his fault that the Saturn launched prematurely with a crappy launch line up and that developers had trouble working with its architecture. He was given a bad hand and he chose to fold.
I think Dreamcast was a great way to get their footing back, but they were losing money on it. Stolar sold it at $199.99 against the wishes of Sega of Japan. Try to imagine Starbucks selling their $7 coffee cheaper at cost (aka try to imagine getting a Starbucks coffee at $0.03) and that's what Stolar did with Dreamcast. Sadly, they were losing profits and it drove them out of the console business.
Not to mention Sega did not have a strong and dedicated handheld division to back them up financially like Nintendo did.
Yes, they had a very strong arcade/amusement division in Japan. But it was a dying breed everywhere else and was costing Sega a lot of financial hurt.
Great video! Had no idea Sega was still profitable until 1998! A lot of factors caused Sega's downfall and it's unfortunately, if only Sega had taken Sony up on there offer to make a console with them things could have been so much different today!
There was serious consideration given to that. Sony later would push Sega hard to exit the console market and distribute software on the PSX (Around the time the Saturn launched). Funny how things work out.
And even accept the offer of the N64 chip, Nvidia NV2 chip or having Lockheed Martin help out with the hardware in the Saturn or with the Real3d chipset. Things would have been different for sega.
Sega of Japan didn’t want to sadly
Where I lived the Saturn was a console that existed only in game magazines. I ended up knowing more people who bought a dreamcast than a saturn.
I knew about 2 ppl with a Saturn and 2 ppl with a 32x. Everyone else had genesis snes ps1 or eventually n64. Everyone had a dreamcast. When dreamcast first came out it didn't have any competition.
Where are you at?
Yea, growing up nobody even knew a system between Genesis and Dreamcast even existed and I knew people who had both of those but not a Saturn.
Five years later and this is still so good. Bravo, my friend.
Sega failed due to a variety of factors that snowballed together. A lot of people don't realize that major problems have the potential to be fixed especially in a corporation. A bunch of little problems are hard to nail down. Yeah the 32x was a problem but so was infighting within Sega of America and Sega of Japan. Rushed SDKs, unfocused Western support. Exit of major 3rd party devs. Financial structuring problems the list goes on.
All this adds up to a sad state of affairs. I still believe Sega didn't deserve the hand they were dealt but at the same time there were quite a few things they should have known better about.
I wish I had a time machine so I could have been a developer at Sega back at the release of the Genesis. Everyone always looked like they were having a great time :(
SEGA did NOT fail.
The Blame lies ENTIRELY on SEGA's then Parent Company CSK Holdings, and its owner Isao Okawa. CSK didn't even bankroll Dreamcast and Okawa HATED Genesis and its success. On top of that, Okawa wanted SEGA OUT of the console race as early as before Saturn was even out.
Dreamcast could've been good if half-life was ported quickly then there would be cs and other stuff hence dreamcast can connect to internet while ps2 and gamecube can't
@@segaunited3855 I know your comment is over 2 years old, but why did Okawa hate the success of the Genesis/Mega-Drive? And why did he want Sega out of the market asap before the Saturn was released? I'm baffled on his reasons why he felt justified at the time to do something like that? Do you have any theories as to why he hated Sega's success in the console market? Because something like that definitely warrants a video explanation from Jenovi(or anyone for that matter).
@@G.L.999 Simple. Okawa HATED Video Games. He and CSK was constantly investing in Non Gaming Ventures that failed almost Yearly. He only ousted SEGA out of the Home Consumer business once he took over as SEGA's CEO himself in 2000. Remember, When Hayao Nakayama was CEO and President, SEGA was a Hardware Company. When Okawa took over, they suddenly went Software. One of his goals was for SEGA to end up like NEC and abandon Video Gaming Altogether.
@@segaunited3855 Wow. Jenovi should definitely look into this! Thanks for replying much appreciated. Have a good one.
Sega was not losing the 16-bit market in 1993. They held back Nintendo until 1994 or just as Sega was about to pull the plug on the Genesis. Kalinski knew this decision was foolish and tried to keep it alive as it was selling well in the US.
I would argue they would have never lost the market had they not withdrawn support for the hardware. Sega was on fire in ‘94.
@@Jenovi
Oh definitely agree with you there.
Yes, genesis was the system that single handedly brought success to sega in the home console market. They should have kept manufacture the Genesis 3 to compete with the snes jr.
18:16 a plan so convoluted and backwards, it takes a few mental gymnastics to even try to comprehend...
“Hey, we’re not making our sales targets, so let’s lower the bar and refuse to sell some hardware do we can make believe that we are making money”
“We’re too damn proud to admit that we make a MASSIVE error when we did the surprise launch, so we’ll try to fabricate circumstances so we can feel better about our poor judgement. Take _that_ Sega of America!”
I swear, these people should have become politicians given how far their heads were up their asses.
Seriously! Yeah, it boils down to corporate saying, we expect XYZ, then the president of something.... say Sega of America doing this BS to try and make those numbers fit.
People don't realize that all manufacturing cost is upfront, so you have to be able to survive 2-3 years of losing money before owners have bought enough games to offset manufacturing costs. Sega had blown through their Genesis money keeping the Saturn afloat and couldn't hang on long enough to enter a profit zone on the DC.
The Mega Drive still had untapped potential under the hood for the ambitious programmer. If the 32x was supported alongside the Saturn, I can really see the logic now. I think the big mistake was discontinuing the 32x or not releasing a cheaper version of it standalone to the £400 Saturn. You left out that the Saturn sold with 2 control pads and a game unlike the PS1 1 control pad and no game. So the base units actually cost the same amount. But that is still too expensive. I couldn't afford a Mega Drive at launch and that was only about £150. It was Master System until people were selling their Mega Drives cheap and I would have been happy to continue that pattern with a 32x if it had the games. Also the developers would have been more well versed in the SH2's and inclined to develop for the Saturn, maybe even porting games to the 32x.
RUclips suggested me this video and it was great! I went to the comments to see what people were saying and... wtf? 174 comments only? Only 3.205 view? This video is awesome and more people should see it!
Congratulation on shedding new light (with supporting data) to the topic. I honestly think this video deserves to be seen by at the very least 100.000 people if not 1 million. I've never really been a Sega fan, but I love watching videos about the company
Thank you so much. One of the nicest comments I’ve ever received. So happy to hear you enjoyed it.
@@Jenovi There's things you don't know about SEGA of the 90s. You need to study they're corporate structure at the time to understand what went wrong.
Or friends at AG met and spoke to Tom Kalinske in 2017 and he revealed lots of shocking things.
We also met two SEGA former inside employees who explained everything that happened behind the scenes with Dreamcast.
This was very well documented. I haven't seen any other videos on SEGA's hardware downfall as good or in-depth as this one. I'm kind of shocked it has so little views when it clearly deserves more.
Thank you. Appreciate the love.
Throwing Heavy Rain and Edith Finch on there made me feel emotional for no reason.
I love both of those games and their OSTs. Couldn't help but use it.
Jenovi Both so good
Sega failed because Sega of Japan asserted itself over Sega of America. SOA had the pulse of where gaming was headed at that time. SOJ got wrapped up in a outdated business plan and were really dismissive of SOA's ideas and input. I was a huge Sega fan at this time, and they ran me off. I bought AND LOVED my Dreamcast, and it just felt like they bailed on everyone who supported them. Like a nasty divorce. Great Video my man, you just got yourself another sub. keep up the good work #geeksUnite
Great comment! Thank you for the support. “Like a nasty divorce.” Yeah, it kind of was.
Personally, what I think Sega should have done was...
[1] Not release the 32X.
[2] Also, not release the Saturn.
[3] Sega of Japan should have let Sega of America do their own thing, which was consistently make money for Sega of Japan.
[4] What Sega _should_ have released was the Neptune, a console based around the MegaDrive with built in Mega CD and 32X hardware in one standalone unit.
[5] Immediately start work on the Dreamcast, making the Dreamcast the successor to the Neptune.
I like the Neptune idea, but make the CD drive a 2x instead of the 1x speed of the Mega CD. Basically a Genesis compatible Saturn (maybe not so complicated to program for).
@@lazarushernandez5827 They could still released the Sega Saturn with both of those features, the problem is the pricing on parts in which Sega can't afford. The Saturn had a cartridge port and a disc tray, the only problem is it can't play Sega CD games and Mega Drive / Genesis games. The 32X shouldn't even exist as the Saturn itself is already a 2D powerhouse. A lot of those games on the Sega 32X could easily become larger games on the Saturn, games like Doom and Mortal Kombat II should had cartridge RAM support so it makes them feel and play closer to the arcade but since Sega never persuade third party to focus on the Ram card support, most just doesn't support it, the few that does such as Capcom had done such wonderful ports for the Saturn making their games look and plays true to the arcade exprience than their waterdown PS1 ports. That's the reason why the two Saturn ports plays like crap despite offering more contents whereas the 32X versions plays better but lacks contents.
For the Dreamcast part, Sega did everything right except for the controller, I feel it's a step back from the Sega Saturn 9 button controller. Seven buttons, an analog stick, a d-pad and a slot for the memory card just doesn't cut it. Even when Bleem try to support the Dreamcast with a PS1 emulator, they still had trouble remapping most of the buttons to the Dreamcast due to the awkward layout of the controller and the lack of buttons. Whereas the PlayStation had 8 actions button plus START and SELECT as well as extra L3 and R3 via the pressable analog sticks, that like 12 buttons total. The Dreamcast could mimic the diamond layout easily plus two of the shoulder buttons and the START button but they had to sacrifice the L2, L3, R2, R3, and the SELECT button as the Dreamcast doesn't had those or buttons equivalent to those.
@@VOAN "The Saturn had a cartridge port and a disc tray, the only problem is it can't play Sega CD games and Mega Drive / Genesis games. The 32X shouldn't even exist as the Saturn itself is already a 2D powerhouse."
So was the MegaDrive. The 32X added 3D capabilities to the MegaDrive. My thoughts are that the 32X should have existed as hardware inside Sega's 5G console, which itself would also incorporate a MegaDrive (possibly powered by a 68020 or even 030 instead of the original 68000) and Mega CD (with a 2x drive as noted by Lazarus Hernandez instead of a 1x drive) rather than an addon for the already ageing, but still popular, MegaDrive.
That way, you would have had a 5G console that was already backwards compatible with one previous generation. Theoretically, you could also add a Power Base Converter and have *TWO* generations of backwards compatibility with the Master System (and maybe an added cartridge slot for Game Gear games)
"For the Dreamcast part, Sega did everything right except for the controller, I feel it's a step back from the Sega Saturn 9 button controller. Seven buttons, an analog stick, a d-pad and a slot for the memory card just doesn't cut it."
Personally, I think the Dreamcast had way bigger issues than it's controller.
"Even when Bleem try to support the Dreamcast with a PS1 emulator, they still had trouble remapping most of the buttons to the Dreamcast due to the awkward layout of the controller and the lack of buttons."
That's only a problem if you're running Bleem to play PS1 games, how well suited was the Dreamcast controller to _Dreamcast_ games?
IMHO what finally killed off the Dreamcast was the release of the PS2 with DVD support.
A _single layer_ DVD has nearly 5 times the capacity of a GD-ROM as used by the Dreamcast. A _dual layer_ DVD has about 9 times as much capacity. There was no way Sega could compete with that.
I mean, I get why you'd go with the controller argument, PS4 and XBOX One controllers are pretty much the same, all the various platforms have sort of standardised on the PlayStation Analogue format, but even at the time of the Dreamcast, the controllers were different. The Gamecube controller had only one shoulder button and different face button layout and prior to then there were massive variations between the platforms and their controllers.
@@VOAN Agree even could have seen of the canceled 32x games released on the Saturn too. For the Dreamcast they could make it look similar between the Saturn 3D controller and the original xbox controller as well.
@@GeoNeilUK Or with a Sh-2 or 32-bit Risc CPU higher or same MHz as the Saturn and a Motorolla 68k series as the sub and i/o Cpu for backward compatiblity for the Sega CD and Genesis. Also have a coprocessor for 3D geometry and can rival the PS1 GTE. Plus, enhance the hardware of the Sega CD and Genesis to 5th gen standards to render quality 3D/2D close to the Saturn but performs. Also, to program easier as well.
Another great video! Love the graphical information and pixel art, and you've got a great speaking voice!
What a mess Sega was in! This video should be shown in college business classes. So many mistakes were made. It's a shame, because the Saturn and Dreamcast are a ton of fun. I wonder how things could have been if they had made better business decisions at the time?
The ultimate question for sure. I'm just happy Okawa stepped in to save Sega from Bankruptcy. We've received so many amazing games since then. The man in my mind is the biggest hero in all of gaming history. An absolute legend who put the good of the company, and the people connected to it above everything else.
I think the biggest mistake was Sega of Japan and Sega of America being seemingly at war with each other. If people don't know which part of the compant they're supposed to be dealing with, they end up dealing with no part of the company.
@@Jenovi Very true. I actually didn't know about Okawa's rescue before this video. He definitely saved the company, not to mention many peoples' livelihoods and jobs as well! If only we had more business people like that in the world, that actually cared about their companies and not just making money. The world would be a better place.
I feel that Sega of Japan did Tom Kalinski dirty and their continual bad decision making was their own demise.
@EightBit Man Kalinske arranged two alternatives to the Saturn, both better. One was the Sega Sony Playstation. The second was the silicon graphics chipset. Both were rejected by Japan. It was also Japan's idea to do the kamikaze style secret launch of the Saturn. That said Kalinske does share much of the blame for the 32X. But as Jenovis data shows, both 32X and Genesis support were cut too soon and deprived Sega of much needed revenue. Hayao Nakayama is ultimately the one to blame for the stupid decisions from 1995 and onwards.
@EightBit Man Just like with many corporate successes, it took the tenacity of one person to ultimately convince the stubborn management that his vision was right. As for the N64, its only shortcoming was the use of cartridges. If Sega used the same chipset they would have used a cd rom drive, and just maybe things would have turned out differently. As for Nintendo and Sony, it was actually Nintendos own power trip that made them pull out. They didn't like giving Sony the power to publish games on their joint system. It is probably the same reason Sega of Japan wouldn't approve the same deal. Nintendo went with the weaker Phillips because they were able to have more control in their partnership.
@@AdamCoate Not only that, but while the N64 was never even in the same league as the PlayStation, it sold pretty damned well outside Japan.
As for Sony "not being into it," yeah. Most of the Sony board wanted to leave gaming behind after Nintendo humiliated them at CES, it was only because Kutaragi had the CEO's ear that the PSX came out at all. Like you say, it took a single man's tenacity, and let's be real, nothing happens at companies of the size of Sony without some serious head-butting. The PSX was the result of Ken Kutaragi's faith in the system and his will to see it through.
Even today they still make bad decision, MUSHA should had been on all 3 of the Sega Mega Drive/ Genesis Mini.
@@AdamCoate I know it will be better than Saturn that we know.
well fucking done. I learned about the fact about the owner giving back his share in the company not too long ago and thought it among the great things SEGA has ever done, this was the most honorable. Unlike many conglomerates today, his take: A business should stop at one generation. What I make goes back into the business [not to my family].
Credit to SEGA for trying despite the turbulance between Sega of America and Sega and Japan and Sony's success.
the visuals in this video were superb and the analysis was excellent. Keep up the good work
Thank you so much. He's honestly my hero. The man saved Sega and so many jobs connected to the company.
Ex Megadrive and Dreamcast owner here 😍
Ex entire sega collection here....sigh
The 32x was a massive failure
Going for a total surprise launch of the Saturn is a totally baffling decision. How did they not realize it would cause massive problems for everyone?
Sega of Japan had no clue how the American industry worked. Toy retailers in the 90s had far more pull than they did elsewhere.
It was customary for these consoles to come out 6-12 months earlier in Japan so their stores were already prepared.
I still think to this day that if Sega Of Japan listened to Sega Of America we would of seen much better results from Sega but Sega would've ended the same way that they did.
Sega failed mainly because they ignored where the market was going. All they had to do was look at what other companies in the industry were doing (both Sony and SGI had approached them with 3D hardware and they refused them). When they started developing the successor to the Gensis/MegaDrive they had planned a 2D machine when the industry was going towards 3D. This only had one SH2 CPU. Later they saw what Sony were going to deliver and in a panic they started developing a machine that could compete, which would become the Saturn.
In order to make up for the losses incurred in developing the weaker machine, they modified it to be a Genesis addon. The more powerful machine still did not have a 3D processor inside it, and relied on multiple processors running in parallel to achieve 3D by transforming sprites. Awfully complicated to do. That's what you get when you build a system in just one year.
After suffering massive losses, they attempted to recapture the market by launching the Dreamcast. A great console, was easy to program, had a modem included... but one major defect. THAT DAMN JOYPAD lacked enough buttons and d-pads necessary for many titles to be ported. NO games = no sales.
Nintendo had realised that controllers needed to change for 3D games back when they lauched Nintendo64. Sony's joypads at first lacked the 2 analog dpads but were quick to rectify that mistake. Did SEGA even notice?? No!
I had a happy childhood on SEGA consoles but looking back, they were like a games company that didn't know their market. I used to cringe at mistakes they used to do. Just WHY didn't they launch a 3D system when everyone was doing 3D and you were the king of 3D in the Arcades? And why on earth not give Dreamcast a decent controller?
The mystery of the original 1993 Saturn design must be solved. I've read contradicting stories on this subject, and most of what gets passed around to this day feels like little more than high school gossip. The story you tell is one version, where Saturn 1.0 featured a single CPU and was comparable in performance to 32X. The system underwent massive changes in response to word of Sony's PSX project. The second story also involves Sega making revisions to Saturn in wake of Playstation, but the changes were far more modest. The console already had 2 SH-2 CPUs, and the only addition was one or both of the Video Display Processors.
To make matters worse, both stories were published in Next Generation from 1995-99. They first reported the "minor changes" story in their second, issue, then later changed to the "32X" story in later articles. Finally, in a March 1999 article, "From Genesis to Dreamcast," they returned to the first story.
NG February 1995: "Sega's kneejerk [sic] reaction was to delay Saturn's development program by a few months to incorporate a new video processor into the system. Not only would this boost its 2D abilities considerably (something that Sony's machine was less proficient at); but it would also provide better texture mapping for 3D graphics."
In addition, this article states that the 32X arose from the "Jupiter" project from Saturn's early development, where two systems were planned, one that used cartridges and a second that used CD-ROM. In the end, the low-end Jupiter was scrapped, but incorporated into 32X, which also used the same twin CPUs running at a slower speed.
I know this wasn’t directed to me, but I wanted to hop in with a comment. I’m quite busy at work this weekend but will sift though my research material and discuss this a bit more when I can. It was a bit outside of the scope of the topic at hand so I didn’t cove it due to time. Most of my material was sourced right from Sato himself and cross verified with additional articles and interviews. The long and short is this was in the works for some time and the articles and stories people tell are not exactly correct though they have some basis facts. I think it’s fair to state both machines (Saturn and PSX) started in with an emphasis on 2D. Anyways, it could be a fun subject to tackle in a future video. The 32X was never connected to the Saturn as in it’s not the result or off shoot of a failed idea.
I turned 18 in 99. A friend and I got a place together and pooled our money . Had every system hardware and game released for years.
The Saturn and 3DO were revolutionary.
The Dreamcast was WAY ahead of its time and was an amazing piece of hardware. You can still see it in all the baddass arcade games you can find in local arcades. A lot of people have no idea.
Shadow Fall the Dreamcast was incredible. It was shockingly forward thinking in a way we have never seen before or sense.
I think the Saturn and Dreamcast would have done much better and Sega would be still making consoles today if they had skipped the 32X. Should have been Genesis, SegaCD, Saturn, Dreamcast. The Saturn would have filled the market of the 32X and wouldn't have been competing with the PSOne or the N64. And the Dreamcast would have had more time before the PS2 came out.
But even with that, Sega was known for making bad decisions and selling add-ons instead of focusing on software.
For me I was a Nintendo fanboy till the Sega CD came out, then I started to look at the Genesis as something I wanted to own. My schoolmate and friend at the time was a Sega fanboy. He owned the Master System, when I had the VCR Nintendo. Then he got the Genesis, and I got the Super Nintendo. Then halfway through the life cycle of the "16 bit gaming" I started looking at my friend's Genesis and seeing it in stores and in magazines, and was starting to feel like jumping the Nintendo ship! So I finally broke down and saved up money and bought a Genesis and CD unit. Loved it!! Even got the gun thing for it! Then I skipped the 32X, and the PSX and Saturn came out. My friend got both (his family is rich). But he didn't play the Saturn as much, so his little brother broke it during a fight, and I bought it off him with all the games. Fixed it, was just the power switch that was broken, so I wired up an alternative switch on the side to power it on/off. Worked fine! Loved the system! Then when the PSX got cheaper, I got one as well. Loved that system more lol! The 3d games just looked better! Then my friend got a N64. By that time I was working in fast food and was able to afford buying more expensive things. So I then got myself an N64. But the PSX was better IMHO. Then the Dreamcast was announced. For the first time in my life (and last) I plunked down the money to pre-order it. My rich friend was amazed! He felt it wasn't going to be that good and wanted to hold out for the PS2. I knew this was going to be better!! So we drove up to the local mall at 11pm, on 09/09/99. I had the cash on hand, just enough for the system, Sonic Adventure, and an EMU. Still my friend was in awe, maybe because I was the poor kid about to blow a big was of money!! So we waited in his car, getting hyped up to go in. The the time was ready and the Babbages put out a sign stating it was time to get in line and come in. We ran across the parking lot and got in line, I think we were 3rd in. By midnight they started letting us in. I plunked down the money, got my pre-order, walked out of the store, and high fived my friend. We went back to my place told my mother to not bother us, were going to be up for a while! We were blown away by the system and games (it came with a demo disc)!! I think we played it till 6am, and then he went home and I went to bed. Instead of me going over his house to play it, he had to finally come over mine! Then we got an apartment together went to the same college, but we still played the hell out of the Dreamcast!! More so than any other system! I even got the PS2 a few years later.. **cough** MGS2. But we only played the Dreamcast together. I would play the PS2 in my room, but the Dreamcast came out to the living room for parties or when we both had some free time to play some awesome games.
Till this day I still look fondly of that system!! And I still own all those systems. They sit in storage, but I still own them.
And that's my long boring story of loving and owning Sega consoles.
Really well put together.
Thank you Brandon, I appreciate that.
The thing about that E3 announcement of the ps1, is that the dude who said “299” came up only after a much longer presentation about the ps1. I think people have started to think the only thing sony said was “299” but it was just the only thing that one guy said, not the only thing sony said during their presentation.
The ability to upgrade your current gen console to next gen was a fantastic idea, but SEGA really dropped the ball in the execution.
I think that was more due to the limits in technology at the time. FPGA and SD cards weren't a thing yet tmk. It's one thing to add a modem or hard drive but quite another to add new hardware to upgrade the existing one. What I didn't understand was why they couldn't just fix the wires that weren't connected for the YM2612 so that it would be easier to have clean sample playback? Or why sprite scaling couldn't be included from the start?
Hey Jenovi, you should do a mini documentary on why Nintendo's and Sony's partnership didn't work out. Because it seems like there's more to the story as to why they broke up their partnership. Details that end up getting ignored and glossed over! The internet ought to hear and see a more thorough analysis on what 'really' happened behind the scenes!
Sega didn't fail. Their consoles did. Sega to this day are a thriving multinational software company, and their flagship IP is one of the most popular and loved icons of our time.
I don't really see much putting the brunt of the blame on the 32X. The only real problem with it was the notion of launching it so close to to the Saturn and then abandoning it.
Really, despite the company remaining profitable until the Dreamcast's launch, I think it did so because the way they handled the Saturn screwed so much up. The sales were enough to work out, but they absolutely destroyed trust in the North American market across the board. Developers, retailers, and consumers. If any one decision could be blamed, it's the surprise early launch.
Developers were already upset that they didn't get devkits until late, and had to completely overhaul designs when they discovered that the Saturn used quadrilateral meshes for its 3D models instead of the standard triangles used by everything else ever. Finding out they suddenly had to have their games ready months earlier made things even worse, not to mention them noticing that Sega was intentionally curbing sales.
As you noted, the selected early launch obliterated their relationships with North American retailers. The consumers either were betrayed by Sega's sudden change or never even had exposure to the Saturn. I only vaguely remember it. Also, "The Saturn is not our future" really didn't help.
When Saturn screwed up the North American launch, its sales in Japan were still very good, but ruining that in Japan for the Dreamcast meant it had no market to rely on. They handled the NA Dreamcast launch very well, but it was too little, too late. The market here was too uncertain of Sega, so there was no way to recoup the development cost for the Dreamcast.
While there were problems with the Japanese Dreamcast launch and the overall business model that spawned the 32X, I'd say the brunt of the blame goes to how Saturn was handled.
Loved this post! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Once consumer goodwill has been eroded, it’s hard to regain. For Sega, having back to back Generation issues, the end result isn’t shocking.
@@Jenovi the 32x was really powerful I wish it got at least one more year or at least some better support it was a sucses they should of just of had supported it. I feel like a lot of people think the 32x is bad since it has a lack luster library but in reality the 32x was a really powerful piece of hardware and with it short develop meant time it is amazing how powerful it is
Unlike most I think Sega should of had stop developmeant on the Saturn and should of had focuses on the 32x which was all ready doing good
The fact the company was profitable until 98 makes their decision to abandon the Saturn, simultaneously pissing off fans and 3rd parties - ESPECIALLY EA - all the more baffling.
The 32X was a waste of R&D costs, game development resources, and marketing money. It was a big first step in destroying Sega as a console manufacturer
Here in UK I knew nobody who had a 32X I hardly remember them in the shops. Always strange for me how well the N64 did as the Mega Drive was massive all my friends had one. I think the damage was done and the Saturn was OK we had both as teenagers I had Saturn and my friend had PS I remember at the time the games we both had seemed more complete on PS more levels etc. The first time I saw a Dreamcast I traded in my recently brought PS and Saturn in for it, it blew my mind. Its a shame it never took off here really was my favourite machine of all time. But those bloody controllers. Nice video bro love the channel.
Thank you so much for this comment. Really a joy to read another perspective.
Another UK native here the megadrive was marketed as the cool teenage kids console and the master system was also popular here and was aimed at young kids here while the Snes and NES was seen as the uncool babys console, nobody knew about the 32x or cared for it I only knew one person who had the mega cd add-on most people waited for the Saturn release but their marketing and games line up was poor plus no sonic game at launch Sonic at Sega's peak here was more popular in the UK than Mario and few people bought the system and Sony pretty much used Sega's cool kids console style of marketing the people I know who had Saturn's swapped them for the ps1, Sega's marketing and game release in UK with Saturn was so poor that when the Dreamcast was released the damage was already done then people found out how easy it was to pirate for the system and people started buy them but then Sony pretty much said we have the new cool console and a dvd player In one and you can still play all your old PS1 games
Sega of Japan apparently ran stress tests on the proposed single chip design from silicon Graphics and found it caused issues with sound and frame rates so rejected it.
Sega of Japan is a poor business decision in itself. If you look up "Poor Business Decision" in the dictionary, you get a picture of the Sega of Japan headquarters. There is a reason why the Genesis was a huge success in the US and a failure in Japan.
32X should have been scrapped, with the games being developed instead released on the Saturn, and the Saturn should have been built with Genesis game compatibility in mind, like the Genesis was with Master System games.
R.I.P. Sega. You made my childhood awesome
but you are forgetting 1 thing, maybe the DC caused the downfall, but them releasing so many consoles in such short time span, is what caused frustration with developers and also with customers, so they didn't even bother with the DC>
I'm sure there were some, but I've interviews a number of developers and really haven't heard this said. What they were upset about was the lack of proper development tools, hardware, and support. Something Sony absolutely knocked it out of the part with.
Rushing to launch in Japan in 1998 was the biggest mistake. Sega should have doubled-down on the Saturn and pushed the Dreamcast out to 99. That would have allowed for DVD and lowered production costs. Alternatively, had it pushed to 1999 and not ditched NVidia, a Saturn released globally in 1999 could have featured a NVidia chip far and away superior to the PS2.
Botched launched are near impossible to rebound from. I agree, it was a huge mistake.
Absolutely loved this deep dive into the topic, and you really did present a solid case for your argument. Looking forward to more videos like this man!
Thank you! Really happy to see my Saturn loving friend give approval.
Tom kilinski looks like Dick Jones from RoboCop.
He really does!
Omg, I just watched RoboCop two days ago, no
Also it's Tom Kalinske
*People lets make jenovi famous.. His content is paramount.. Its just not discovered yet.. Lets change that!!*
Thank you Hugo. This is such a nice gesture. I'm happy you're finding joy in watching my videos.
SEGA will always be my favourite... no other game company has ever managed to fill the void in my gaming heart since they dropped out the console market... i buy SEGA games on all systems (Sonic Mania, MegaDrive Collection, Shinning Resistance etc on XBOX ONE, PS4 & Switch) just because I love SEGA so much that I just want to try to pretend that every system I play a SEGA game on is a SEGA system... but I know deep down it is never the same, SEGA always had unique hardware that was just so good, it was never like the competition and stood out, for better or worse, SEGA consoles were never like the competition but today all systems games look and play almost identical. I honestly believe if SEGA came back they would break the mould again and revolutionise the gaming market... i can only dream :(
I don't understand one thing: If the Dreamcast has sold 70 million software against the 50 million software of the Sega Saturn, why was the Saturn more profitable?(And The Dreamcast sold units are 10,6 Million versus the 9,5 Million units of the Saturn)
Funny enough, I'm writing a continuation of this as we speak to discuss the Dreamcast a bit more in depth. You appear to have the numbers flipped for software and a bit lower than what we know to be accurate. I don't have the numbers in front of me atm, but I believe the Saturn outsold the Dreamcast Software wise by around 60%. Something close to 95+ million units vs around 60 million for the Dreamcast. Of course, there are other factors, but this IMO this is the largest elephant in the room.
@@Jenovi
The fact that the Saturn has surpassed (I even doubt 60%) the software sales of the Dreamcast is possible as it may even be impossible:
Ok, the Saturn had 1000 games against the 650-700 of the Dreamcast, but we all know how generally the best-selling software for Dreamcast have sold more than those Saturn (Ex. Sonic Adventure = 2.5 Million units / Virtua Fighter = 1.9-2 million units).
I think that rather 70 million software units for Dreamcast against about 85 million software units for Sega Saturn, but then again, I still believe that the Dreamcast has sold more software and that the data mentioned above are the most likely.
Rather it can be said that the Dreamcast was profitable for a period but that due to the high production price of some games (Virtua Tennis or especially Shemnue 1 and 2) the Dreamcast has begun to concretize the losses seriously.
The Dreamcast, rather than losing money by itself, probably asked for too many finances for online infrastructures and games.
What a great, informative video!! I think one of Sega’s main problems from the Master System on was being out of sync with the other players in terms of their hardware refresh schedule. So, come the mid 90s, you have the Mega Drive, which honestly was manufactured to compete with the Famicom, not the Super Famicom. It’s actually amazing that they were able to get as much time out of the Mega Drive as they did. But anyway, come 96/97, the Genesis was so long in the tooth that it simply wasn’t a viable platform anymore, while the SNES, with it’s many cartridges expansion chips, was able to bridge Nintendo until the N64 came to fruition. The 32X might have won Christmas one year, but I don’t think it ever could have been a viable platform going into the very late 90s. Being a Genesis expansion, it was hobbled by a lot of the Genesis’ limitations (such as screen resolution)
I’ve been thinking about tackling this topic as well.
I think your question regarding wether or not the Saturn or Dreamcast “failed” is an important one.
You should, it’s an interesting area to discuss. I did a quasi part two called, Did Piracy Kill the Dreamcast. It’s an examination of what exactly went wrong. I’m quite proud of that video.
@@Jenovi I’ll check that out, but this one was really great.
Awesome video as always man, so interesting I actually waited until the video finished before commenting haha. Sega still make some of my favourite games to this day.
I’m ecstatic they are still around. Super excited for the Mega Drive Mini. You getting it?
I think you underspoke on the fact that Sega of America and Sega of Japan were going out of their ways to screw with one another around the time of the 32X. Otherwise a pretty informative video.
Even if SoJ and SoA weren't acting like hardware rivals at the time I think Sony was still in a position to blow them out of the water regardless. In the end, Sega handled its IP very poorly through out the span of many of its consoles. Hell, some would say they still haven't got their act together on trying to make money on the names and games that drew people to the Genesis. I remember reading an article where a Streets of Rage was cancelled for the Dreamcast because the current president of operations had never heard of it. But, in America, one could attest the Dreamcast was a dead man walking not more than 6 months after its release.
I think the Sega America / Japan rivalry is vastly overstated and it's due in part to revisionist trying to change history and paint themselves in a better light. It's not to say there wasn't disagreements, but everything Sega did was mandated by Japan. If Kalinske did things against them he would have been gone like Bernie Stolar was. Both Sato and Miller have both made it clear that the 32X was in fact started in '93 in Japan with SoA brought on board in '94. The Streets of Rage situation is really interesting as Treasure made SoR 4 for the Saturn in hopes of convincing Sega to license them the brand. Sega didn't feel it was good enough / close enough to the series in style to cary the name. This would later release as Fighting Force. The Never Heard of It is from Sega of America under Bernie Stolar.
Dreamcast had its own issues, really. Piracy being piss-easy, people waiting on the PS2, a lack of reputation in the west after all of Sega's past bullshit.
That Sega STILL refuses to acknowledge anything aside from the Genesis isn't cool. They have a wealth of great games that could find a market nowadays if they just tried.
@@Jenovi It wasn't Treasure who came up with Fighting Force, it was Core Design, the studio behind the original Tomb Raider.
After watching this I feel like an expert in the game console business.
Woot! Part 2 is coming soon under the title, "Did Piracy Kill the Dreamcast?"
I parshally blame Burny stolar for killing the saturn. it's already bad enough that sega fucked up the launch outside japan, but then Burny Stolar didn't want any 2d or rpgs released in the US, which esentially put a wrench in the localization of various titles (I'm looking at you shining force 3!). the fiew rpgs that survived his wrath were all localized by a third party, Working designs, who were a supporter of sega consoles ever since the sega cd came out.
You are correct to blame him.
You, Dan and Lord X are the best sega bois
Thanks! Dan is a fantastic guy. Don't know Lord X, but he makes solid videos.
@@Jenovi thank for response, was watching you since 32x videos days. It's good to see that you invest in your channel as much as you do.
I could be wrong, and if so please correct me. Microsoft had surely been looking at entering the home console market in the mid to early 90’s when Nintendo was originally teaming up with Phillips, before Sony sort of ran with their idea ( Sony / Phillips). A business ran as tightly as Microsoft doesn’t just get into a new market without looking at or compiling a lot of money into R&D and the market.
The fact that Sega outsourced the Dreamcast’s operating system to Microsoft didn’t end them, however, it was their final nail in the coffin.
I have no idea why Sega did not anticipate Microsoft to enter the market. If the contract was vaguely written to exclude Microsoft from the hardware console market, it may have been voided by their bankruptcy. Bad business move through and through.
Microsoft omitted any security codes from the Dreamcast that would have prevented the consumer from sharing or downloading ROM’s, burning them into cd’s, uploading to P2P, or just renting from blockbuster after ripping the cd’s image to their hard drive.
Microsoft clearly had heard wind of Sega’s potential exit in the hardware market. They surely had heard or seen the figures on how Sega Saturn was expected to make profit off of software royalties alone.
This is too big of a coincidence by companies who are far too smart for it to just be an “accident”.
Someone either got some cash from Microsoft sharing insider secrets on the profit revenues of the Saturn, or Microsoft had been planning entry into the home console market for 15-20 years. Arguably both.
You cannot tell me Microsoft wasn’t keen on the p2p capabilities of consumers with ROM’s and emulators. Or that they had left out a key important of a modern consoles operating system.
I think more detrimental may have been the Sega Saturns load times , it’s outrageous price . Let’s not forget that adjusted with CPI ( inflation) , 499.99 has a buying power in today’s economy equivalent of $873.65 . Add a 6% tax into that and you are well over 900 dollars for a system that was short lived and had terrible load times compared to the N64’s cartridges.
All in all I learned a lot from this video and will definitely subscribe. Keep up the good work!
Going from memory here, so bare with me in case I get something wrong. The relationship was Nintendo / Sony... then Nintendo / Phillips. Nintendo dropped Sony for Phillips. I did a video on this called from PS-X to Playstation (or something like that). Looking at Microsoft and Sega, they developed this version of Windows CE together. Ultimately it was an option for developers, but Sega went another way with their own non Microsoft OS which proved to be much more popular. To be clear, CE wasn't on the hardware, but could be bundled with a game on the same disc. The system would boot CE from the disc, then the game from the same disc. That's my understand at least. I assume the partnership was in part founded out of a desire to more easily port Sega games to the PC, something Sega had been doing for a while. The other thought is it was an attempt to make porting PC games to the DC easier. Neither panned out.
Great expose! I can't get enough of the history of retro consoles.
Each and every time someone covers their history, some new information is revealed. ^_^
The little red headed boy in your video, is he your son. Jenovi?
Thank you. Yup, I got all three of my boys involved. Each about the age I was when these systems came out.
@@Jenovi 3? I thought there was only one boy. you used all three of your boys? sheesh, they must be triplets as they all look identical.
Sorry to say but they take after their mother, not you. hahah However, their handsome boys and they look like they were enjoying being included in your documentary.
Looking forward to your next post. ^_^
The Dreamcast controller was a carpal tunnel inducing, ergonomic disaster. That sure didn't help.
At the end of the day, what undid SEGA as a console manifactor, wasn't a single event, like the 32X... partialy a string of unlucky events sure, but it was mostly SEGA's own string of bad choices.
It's always like this... and Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft know that too with their own successes, fails, and eventual comebacks: It's always a chain of events where the people in charge of everything hold the biggest share of responsability.
Yep. Sony and Nintendo have their bases, because they feed their bases. Sega never understood that. Selling hardware is important, but you have to keep your consumers happy after the sale, and their quick turnaround on hardware post-Genesis left them no room to do that.
From a UK viewpoint, the Mega CD and 32X fiascos were the final straw for a lot of loyal Mega Drive owners like myself.
I bought a Mega CD on Day 1.
£270
Sega pretty much ignored it's sprite handling abilities, then we are told the SVP chip and 3D is the future, sprite scaling, old hat, cue MD VIRTUA RACING and SVP chip.
No other SVP chip games 32X and Saturn the future and Sega push Virtua Racing out improved yes, on 32X, but platform seen as nothing more than a stop gap.
Sega push Virtua Fighter out again on Saturn, only this time they are so over stretched, they can't code it in-house, Time Warner handle it.
You can't try and sell the same title to your consumers on 3 seperate systems and expect loyalty.
The PlayStation screamed cutting edge and Sony clearly meant business.
I jumped to PlayStation, picking up a Saturn many years later and never regretted it, still bought a Dreamcast on day 1 and a 32X when i got into Retro, but it was an easy choice when it came to PlayStation or 32X or Saturn.
Sega had simply lost our trust.
11:01 thru 11:22: Maybe it's just me, but I interpreted that dialogue as an anime/manga fight waiting to happen.
Well, to make a long story short, if Sega of Japan didn't act like dumbasses between late 1994 and early 1998, they would probably still be around making consoles. Great video.
Thank you.
I'm still a little miffed that my Saturn wasn't backwards compatible with 32X carts.
Is that your son in the beginning of the video? I just had my first child a little boy and I hope to get him interested in my passion for retro games at a young age,
I started on nes, Genesis and arcades at 3 with my friend and my dad
Yeah, all three of my boys are in the video in fact. The best part of making this was getting their feedback on games we played while I collected footage.
Also, congrats on your child. There's nothing more rewarding than raising a family.
The title is somewhat misleading because Sega did not fail totally, just at being a hardware manufacturer.
The #1 reason Sega failed at being a console manufacturer is Microsoft. That's it. There simply isnt enough room in the market for 4 hardware manuacturers.
Microsoft has deep pockets like Sony, maybe even deeper in the early 2000s and could fund a console that was practically half a generation ahead of Dreamcast and considerably ahead of Sony's. Microsoft could afford to take a hit on every console sold during a whole generation and not even turn a profit for several years without breaking a sweat. A smaller company like Sega couldn't and had to make perfect decisions at every move to stay afloat. They had some mishaps with launch numbers and piracy but even those mishaps pale in comparison to the juggernaut called Microsoft that would soon be eating up total market share and making the DC look more like a suped up N64 than a current gen console.
Last thing that I'd like to point out is that though the Saturn game to console sales were 10:1 vs the Dreamcast's 6:1, the Saturn had a lifespan of 6 years in Japan vs 3 for the Dreamcast, and roughly a year of the Dreamcast's year did not go well between the botched Japanese launch and things transitioning towards the end, so the Dreamcast really only has 2 years on the market. Given enough time and a more favorable market (No xbox), DC game sales would have surpassed Saturn's in a shorter amount of time.
I hope my viewpoint makes sense and would love to see a video discussing this topic with the same quality you put into this one!
Great video! Subbed!
I will never forget Bernie Stolar's quote "The Saturn is not our future". I remember being so mad at that, and in 1998 having to import everything from Japan to play new games on my Sega Saturn. However; Dreamcast still had one of the best launches in North America from a software perspective.
As a 32X fanatic, where did you get that "Look Now" footage from?
I need to have it!!!
I never cared for the sega master system and genesis even though i own both system later on down the line, but the 3 systems you mentioned should've done good especially after the first 2 systems success minus The Mark 1 2 & 3 😢.
Such great production values Jenovi and a very interesting dive into this. I had no idea how long Sega was actually profitable into the Saturn's life, that really surprised me. I would love to see a counterpoint video to this about how Nintendo financially survived the PS1/PS2 where Sega failed. Riding on the success on the GB I assume?
Thanks! That sounds like a fantastic idea for a follow-up. I'm by no means qualified to answer an N64 era question. We had one and I was never a fan. Not to say there are no good games, but for the most part, it's all first party stuff. While the N64 fell apart in Japan, it had what I feel can be considered reasonable success in the US. The GameCube however, really struggled. Even without knowing the figures, I imagine Nintendo wasn't making a ton of money on their home consoles but they weren't losing either. Furthermore, as you've said, the GB and GBA sold an incredible amount of units. Not really the same market but it's worth noting that Sega also had a very successful amusement division during this same period. Anyways, I'm just rambling on. I'll really consider this as a topic.
Well, Sega were able to keep themselves afloat because the Saturn did so well in Japan, which was/is not something to sneeze at.
Nintendo, well, they've always run very frugally, which has allowed them to survive the highs and lows. The Cube wasn't exactly not sold at all, it only sold slightly less than the OG Xbox in the US, and probably did a lot better outside. There's plenty of room between the world-shattering success of the PS1/2 and poverty.
Nice vid. When a titan like Sony enters the playground, companies like Sega and Nintendo look like primary school kids squabbling. All companies make bad decisions, Sega just made too many, consecutively. Releasing so much hardware every 20 months or so was not a winner, or fair to the consumer.
Yup
Of course, none of these issues would have if Sega never got involved in the console business.
Correct me if I am wrong. But didn’t Sega also have a big problem with people pirating their games in the Dreamcast?
I’ve got you covered. ruclips.net/video/8d2xuRwYUt4/видео.html
@@Jenovi oh sweet! I didn’t know that you that you covered this. Thanks for the link.
Sega really was at the top of their game during the 16bit gen. Even though they are out of the hardware game, Sega still makes an publishes some really amazing games. It's just a shame that sonic hasn't been good since leaving the 2d world.
FULLY AGREE!
Mania
The existence of Sonic the Hedgehog is a mistake considering why his Saturn games aren't all that popular.
In The Netherlands Dreamcast distribution was really bad. Only one big chain of stores carried it, and of course specialist gameshops carried it. On launch day we had to go to Amsterdam from my mid sized town to buy it.
That's interesting. Do you recall console availability before that? How is it now days?
@@Jenovi Yes I do. In the 8-bit days Commodore 64 and Master System were sold everywhere and NES to a lesser extent. I wasn't aware of the Atari 7800 and the Atari 2600 was still available, but looked very dated to me as a kid. Mega Drive and SNES were also very widely available after that. I also saw Jaguars that were discounted more and more. CDI's were sold a lot in electronics stores. I wasn't even aware there was an Amiga cd32 at the time and I only heard of the 3DO. I saw the Mega CD and 32X only in game stores and large warehouses in Amsterdam. Saturn was initially widely available, but lost it's store presence more and more later. PS1 was everywhere and N64 was a distant second, but was still widely available. Nowadays most brick and mortar toy, music and electronics stores have closed. But the stores that remain carry all consoles and specialist game stores often have retro games as well.
@@Jenovi oh and, while Dreamcast and Saturn were available at the international European launch, the Mega Drive only arrived in early 1991.
Thank you for sharing this.
I'm genuinely confused about where you're getting a lot of this information. The 32X was not made to ease developers into learning the Saturn. It was originally pitched as a Saturn alternative for the North American market, because SOA didn't have faith in the Saturn's hardware specs and believed that they could instead use the Genesis' existing user base to make their next generation move. They successfully convinced SOJ, who lost faith in the leadership of their American counterpart due to the 32X's massive failure, and as a result of finding out about the excess inventory costing the company a ton of money. So the 32X was less a Japanese mandate and more the last time they trusted Kalinske's leadership for the American branch.
Also, cartridge-based tech was more expensive. CDs were cheaper. So again, I'm really not sure where this info came from.
Good video, I enjoyed it. In my judgment, what fundamentally did Sega in was launching the Sega Saturn in 1994 directly against Sony without an obvious competitive advantage. Instead, they should have taken a different route that could have given then a differentiating factor. For example, launching the Sega Saturn in holiday 1996 with graphics on par or better than the N64 and with a beefy launch lineup could have given them exactly the edge they needed. Launching the Saturn in 1996 would have had the added benefit of giving the Genesis 32X a decent lifespan and provided additional consumer confidence that Sega doesn't abandon their new products.
Sony and Nintendo had so much going for them at the time in different ways. The only way I can see Sega doing well in the console market was if in holiday 1996 consumers were blown away by the Sega Saturn's graphical power and launch lineup. It would have to be apparent on its face that the Saturn was to be taken seriously and had a future.
Really appreciate you post.
It wasn’t the only one Sony asked sega for a partnership, they said no. Eventually that gave birth to the psone .
I see the 32X as a pebble kicked down a hill that collects crap until it's a giant Boulder. Yes, it wasn't the breaking point, but it was the sign of poor decisions and things to come.
Very interesting take.
If Sega exited the console business after the Saturn, my theory is that they would license their games to the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64.
Ofncourse
It doesn't matter anyway because David Rosen opposed the decision to make home consoles. It is no wonder Sega almost went bankrupt.
I'm glad about the credits, for the music being using, at the end.
I really wanna get my hands on a Saturn now and a 32x and SEGA CD. Long expensive road this collecting business. I'm going to Tokyo next year hopefully I can get a good deal
Japanese Saturn is the bees knees imo. All consoles worth owning for life.
I'm really glad I found this channel. Great commentary.