Very interesting and timely since today i picked up an odd little 2001 game off the shelf no one obviously wanted by 3DO on PS2 called "Portal Runner". Gave it a quick go once i got it home and could have seen this one working on the 3DO console! wow. On the back of the manual is a nice add saying...."Available soon from 3DO - Godai - elemental force" and i just looked up some gameplay video....again, another very suspiciously looking could have seen this game working on the 3DO console style. ....and i already had abandonment issues before 3DO abandoned us all....lol
Prototype Sega M2? It actually existed? Where? Also wow nice one IBM! What a colossal fuck up. I would have loved to have seen the M2 com out. Back in the 90s it vanished and I had no idea why.
@@mintydog06 If they still exist, a collector probably doesn't have them.... Probably still in the hands of someone who worked on the project, or they were destroyed
Yeah, the DC's beautiful super-sampled RGB 240p & VGA 480p outputs really stood the test of time and look immaculate to this day, especially on a nice 480p CRT monitor (upscales superbly too).
I'm not so sure that was a good thing. I loved the Dreamcast, but its commercial performance was dire (too little much too late, sadly). If Sega had found success with the M2 (which was plausible), then maybe we could have had other nice Sega consoles.
@@sjake8308 No, Sega gonna Sega they'd have found a way to screw it up somehow. This is the same Sega that turned down what would become the N64 in favor of the Saturn.
@@sjake8308M2 would have performed worse than Dreamcast. In the US, the general consensus was that Sega was releasing too many consoles and abandoned too quickly. Sega had lost the trust of consumers. In Japan, the Saturn was Sega's most successful console, the PS1 did not outsell the Saturn until Final Fantasy 7 was released. Sega abandoning Saturn that early in Japan would have been a big problem. Dreamcast didn't do well in Japan, maybe due to this issue. It seemed like Dreamcast should have been released in 1998 in the West and 1999 in Japan rather than what actually happened. Dreamcast actually was doing well in the United States, it's just that piracy, the DreamCast failing in Japan and Sega running out of money doomed the Dreamcast.
Wow...imagine having to be the people showing this completely kneecapped demo to Sega executives...talk about a recipe for a very awkward and tense meeting.
My alternative Sega timeline: 1994 32X, 1996 Sega M2, 2001 Naomi 2 DC. Sega should've canceled the Saturn and never released it, because it tanked their sales in the West. The 32X could've kept the Genesis going as a stop-gap until the M2. I think a Sega M2 in '96 or '97 would've been awesome. The M2 would've been a true 3D console, not a 2D/3D hybrid like the Saturn.
I've really learnt to love the Saturn because of MiSTer, outside a few games that I played on someone else's Saturn back in the day, all the great Saturn games are new to me, and there are many I'm finding out, not to mention it probably has by far the best music/audio of that generation thanks to the powerhouse SCSP hardware (even better FM-synth than the model one SMD), I think what Sega should have done was skip the MegaCD & 32X, and just concentrated resources on the Saturn and its library, that would have built more hype and kept consumer confidence in Sega, not to mention perhaps given them time and resources to work on Sonic 4 as a launch title for the Saturn (I'd of made it a 2.5D game), along with a Golden Axe 2.5D game, Streets of Rage 3, and so on, they just didn't get the launch and marketing right sadly (for the western market that is). Better development tools/software would have helped too, something they learnt the hard way with the Saturn and fixed with the DC, Nintendo also had to learn this lesson with the N64.
@@Wobble2007The 32X was a waste of time and money. The American division milked the Genesis/Mega Drive too much with the 32X because they didn't agree with the Japanese division.
You have to look at it from a wider perspective though. The Saturn did incredibly well in Japan, comfortably trouncing the N64 and putting up a solid fight against the PS1. The Saturn would probably have done better in the West as well had Sega not gotten nervous and pulled a surprise launch to get ahead of Sony. The 32X was, realistically, never going to compete against Sony or Nintendo regardless of the market, it's hardware was kneecapped by being tethered to the Mega Drive and wasn't even in the same ball park as the PS1. Sega using the M2 in 1996 makes no sense because they'd already put years and significant money into developing the Saturn hardware, which had already released in 1994. They were also presumably starting work on the Dreamcast, which would develop into far better hardware than the M2 anyway. The solution was simple. Never release the 32X, hold off until the original intended US launch date for the Saturn & match Sony's price.
When M2 disappeared, it was obvious that games were moved into SEGA's next console. But, i still think best solution for SEGA would had been calling NAOMI as "Dreamcast Arcade", and advertising directly on Arcades, -that those new games would soon come into home as well. -Everyone was blown away with the likes of House Of The Dead 2. SEGA had their strength on Arcade scene. -That was their piece of the cake.
"Dreamcade" sounds like it would have worked as a name, I love HOTD2 on DC, was my first lightgun game, couldn't get enough of it, shame Point Blank never got a DC port, love that too, HOTD3 on OGXB is a top draw game as well, I have HOTD Overkill on Wii, which is decent, but doesn't really play the same as trad lightgun games, not quite the same feel as a proper IR lightgun, but you can play it with a real lightgun via Dolphin, so none of that cursor nonsense, just point & shoot.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I think Sega's goose was already cooked at this point. They had earned reputation for abandoning platforms at this point (Saturn, 32X, Mega CD, Game Gear), so why would people buy or develop for one of their platforms? Most sensible folk simply waited for the PS2 once that was announced.
@@sjake8308 I think it was the DVD features of the PS2 that really sealed the deal there as well. The Dreamcast was a fantastic system, but the timing was wrong. Sega had already damaged their reputation in the west pretty severely, and the Japanese consumers saw no real need for Sega to make another platform as the Saturn was still doing quite well in the Japanese market. In an alternate timeline, Sega held off like Nintendo, and released the Dreamcast instead of the Saturn. Had the Dreamcast come out a few years earlier with the same or similar specs, I think they could have held up much better against Sony.
You really do learn something new every day! I don’t recall any of this, even though I bought Saturn magazines (that started to cover Dreamcast development near the end) and other gaming mags. Interesting, thanks✌🏻
I was always a little curious how this console seemed to have gotten so far in the development process and then disappeared completely (besides the obvious "circa 2000 Sony eating everyone's lunch"), this explains a lot
I never knew this but If the dreamcast lost to the ps1 I doubt the M2 would do better even with 18 more months. I always heard the M2 capabilities were comparable to a regular 3DO that was overclocked with more RAM is that true? I also wonder how this compares to the 3Dfx gpu SEGA passed on too.
The Dreamcast lost partly because Sony announced the PS2 (along with a slew of promises that they'd fail to deliver on), so when Sega spent ~$500m trying to get Dreamcasts into people's homes, most simply carried on playing on their PSXs and waited for the PS2.
@@sjake8308 It's as simple as this. The sheer hype (which was, in hindsight, overblown) for the PS2 killed the Dreamcast before it could even get off the ground. There was nothing Sega could have done. Sony had the money and the marketing budget that Sega didn't.
I did not know this. Very interesting, if I understand this meeting happened after the Saturn had been released? Because if that's the case I think it was probably for the best that they did not go with the M2 for a 96/97 release. I don't think it would've been a good move to launch a console right after the release of the Saturn in 94/95. Wasn't that the main complaint against the 32X? I even think the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast in 98 was to early.
The problem with the 32X wasn't so much that Sega abandoned it, it was that they went to market with it in the first place. The Saturn was also a losing horse (the wrong hardware at the wrong price point), so cutting their losses sooner would have made some sense.
I think if Sega went with the M2 INSTEAD of the Sega Saturn, then it could have possibly saved Sega, although they would have needed a stop-gap solution in the meantime, an all in one uber32x (basically a more powerful 32x)/SegaCD/Genesis system could (and should have) been that solution. While it wouldn't have been as powerful as the Saturn, it would have been almost as powerful, given Sega CD owners the ability to "upgrade" to Sega's successor system, and been backwards compatible with 3 systems! I think the Saturn's lack of backward compatibility really hurt it. Such a system would have been enticing to Nintendo owners because now they essentially would have gotten 3 new systems in one. Sega actually did make one or two 32xCD games, taking advantage of the rare combo, proving that it was possible. But if Sega went with the M2 after the Saturn, it's harder to say. The M2 wasn't as powerful as the Dreamcast, but sometimes what's more powerful on paper isn't everything. It would have come out sooner though, and that may have given Sega more time to recover, but ultimately it really depended on the games.
Dreamcast should have been a pc module as well as a console. Slapping a complete Sega unit into a pc cd drive space would have absolutely changed budget pc gaming for a decade imo ESPECIALLY with the dc online compatability
That isn't just an f-up that is a total train wreck. It does make you wonder if it was the last straw on a bigger issue.Because it sounds like the presented something worse than the original 3DO. I guess it is one of those things, where if they cannot get the demo right how likely are they to get the rest of it right? They would be gambling on what could be rather than what they could see and that is a giant risk. In retrospect the M2 is awesome tech but if you have to ship a new console in a year or two, you cannot wait to see where it ends up. Also as an aside, I have not seen that system layout diagram before. Did Bulldog have its own Geometry engine? If so that put it WAY ahead of what was happening in the GPU space at the time. That means it would be closer to the T&L engines of the Geoforce in 2000. Very interesting to see.
Agreed, for the mid '90s this is really impressive stuff. I think the problem the demonstration highlighted is that Sega wouldn't be in control of the fabrication process and they'd have to trust IBM (who had just managed to screw up the prototype).
@sjake8308 Existe um Abismo Técnico de Hardware, entre o Sega Dreamcast e esse M2, Dreamcast sendo um Hardware de Sexta Geração, enquanto esse M2 é Hardware de Quinta Geração...
That really sucks... I think Apple also abandoned PowerPC due to IBM's incompetency... Previously I had heard a rumour (maybe on the Arcade Attack podcast) that the sticking point between Sega and 3DO was that Trip Hawkins want to be CEO of Sega of America in exchange for selling them the M2 hardware. The tech failing during the demo certainly does sound more plausible... but that does sound a lot like Trip 😅
@ the timing is an interesting question. I tend to think a Panasonic M2 couldn't survived the Dreamcast and then PS2. But if the Dreamcast is out of the picture, it might just have been enough...
The other problem is: After the demo they tell them "oh we have a dual CPU architecture in the planning", and coming hot of the Saturn that probably also made SEGA go "EEEP!? NOT AGAIN!" (joking :P )
Haha this one works well. Which is to say most of the games you see running barely touch the second cpu. Battle Tryst uses it a bit for the cpu character but mostly you are seeing one cpu do 95% of the work
Alternate timeline for sure. Those games don't look like that huge of a leap in 2024 eyes. But I remember EGM Hyping things as a bigger leap. D2 was one of those games they talked a lot about. The thing about the Dreamcast that still amazes me is how good it still looks even though S-Video. The Behar Bros SCART cable makes things look modern. I don't think the M2cast would have aged as well.
If you bear in mind that this was fairly early in the life of the PSX and N64, this is actually really impressive (and these games were still in development).
If they bought the M2, it would have been another mistake for SEGA. The Saturn did not sell well, and having a console that was, in terms of power, in-between N64 and Dreamcast, would have looked as an upgrade more than a new generation (32X anyone??). Yes, it is true that things dis not go well with the Dremcast as well, but, at least in that case, they had the hardware, and it was powerful and innovative. If SEGA converted Daytona 2, SCUD Race, (with an appropriate force feedback controller) and people would have bought more console units, maybe developers would have invested more in a fantastic machine, although with some weak points (aka GDROM, no second level cache and not much RAM).
Awsome vid, what a fu by IBM, I bet someone/s got fired after that 250 million dollar mistake, consoles were so much more interesting back in the day, I wish we still had consoles with bespoke heavily optimized CPU's & GPU's, built for one thing only (gaming), along with custom audio hardware, though to be fair PS5 has the Tempest 3D audio engine, which I hear only good things about (don't own a PS5 yet, if ever), but even that just uses extra GPU cores from the AMD APU to process the HRTF audio, it is at least proper, full-fat HRTF though, like Creative EAX on PC or Nvidia Soundstorm on the XBOX, the last generation of consoles with custom audio hardware, (DC/GC/PS2/OGXB), and they all had some banger GST's and great sounding game engine level sound-effects etc, Rogue Squadron 2 & Eternal Darkness on GC, ICO & SOTC on PS2, Max Payne 1/2 & Crimson Skies on OGXB all standout as amazing sounding games, Dreamcast has tons of banger soundtracks and great sound engines, Black Matrix (Japanese composers are on another level & produce some of the best synth period), Segagaga (Sega devs underrated swansong with beautiful classic sounding synth, almost sounds like FM-synth in parts, sadly it's as Japanese as it gets and impossible to understand if you don't speak Japanese like most of us, here's hoping for a translation one day), Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure games, you know the Dreamcast almost had a full version of it released as a PCI add-on card for PCs along with a GD-ROM drive, that would have been dope af, can still find the original press release online lol.
Everyone downplays the Saturn, but I thought it was a beautiful machine and is my favorite console by a mile. 3D graphics were never good enough until the PS3 era, so prioritizing 3d for the 5th and 6th generations was a massive mistake. 3d games, in those days, were not fun, and, if we are being honest, they still aren't.
The biggest problems with the Saturn was that the console was too expensive and it was too hard to develop for. Bear in mind that games often looked worse on the Saturn than the PSX and Sega expected us to pay ~£100 more for their console. This is why people ran it down.
I love the Dreamcast but I really think that Sega should have just skip this generation ( ps2 and GameCube) and come in 2004 with a new console. In 6 years they could have prepared a fantastic new concept and not rushed to make it
I don't think it would have saved Sega in the slightest. By all accounts the M2 hardware is on par with, or maybe slightly better than the N64. The Dreamcast was a significantly more capable machine than that, and it was still crushed by the mere suggestion of a PS2. The hardware was not the issue, the issue was dwindling finances (there's multiple factors at work there), a loss of faith from consumers (especially in the west) & competition with FAR deeper pockets. The only timeline in which Sega survives as a hardware manufacturer post-Dreamcast is one where Sony utterly drops the ball with the PS1 & never takes off as competition to start with.
I love the Dreamcast. It’s maybe my favorite console. However Sega overspent by a huge degree on the Dreamcast and once you look at the numbers that did more damage than the Sega Saturn! The M2 would’ve been a huge win for Sega.
The strategy for the Dreamcast actually made sense: It was basically the same strategy that Microsoft employed with the XBox (loss-lead to get systems into homes to build a market share). The difference is that Microsoft could afford to lose $2 billion and Sega couldn't afford to lose even a quarter of that and simply ran out of capital.
which means it didn’t make sense for Sega. Building two consoles and deciding on Dreamcast and having to settle a lawsuit for the other console doesn’t make sense. Heck it’s a lesson they should’ve learned with 32X and Saturn!
The Dreamcast is a lot more powerful (much faster CPU and double the RAM, plus dedicated graphics RAM), but it also came 2-3 years later. Technology was moving really quickly back then.
Looks like IBM FU Atari first then they FU 3do. Good thing that they learned something at last and not FU Nintendo and Microsoft. Truth be told M2 was 96 tech (or 97 at best). And releasing a new console in 96-97 would damage SEGA reputation even more especially on the Japanese market. And for 98 DC was a powerful and efficient design. The only downside - you can't just port the game from PC without reworking code for efficient use of SH CPU and tilebased GPU.
Back when consoles were fun. I miss all the goofy, bright arcade style games we got back then. It's shame none of the newer games trying to recapture that magic do it for me.
@VideoGameEsoterica Right. More powerful hardware has allowed devs to push things into a more realistic direction. This is good and bad. Maybe I'm just too old...
As far as I can see, there are two different things at play here: 1) Technology was moving very quickly in the mid '90s and nobody really knew where the future of gaming lay (2D? 3D? FMV?), whereas the industry has been solved (more or less) for a long time now. 2) The industry was much less corporate than it is now.
@@RyRyTheBassGuy It's not that you're old, it's the fact that, back then, videogames were new and it was fun watching the games and technology evolve. We lost all that right about when Sega through in the towel. The only way to bring that kind of magic back would be full, realized virtual worlds, where we could actually see visual improvements with the tech.
I normally love your stuff but you really buried the lede with this explanation about the chip manufacturing fault. You had great info in this video, but it was like pulling teeth to get to it.
I just got Facetime'd by a drunk spaniard in his underwear that swears this will run on his SuperSega FPGA.
Hahaha I’m sure he would say that
Inigo Montoya? That guy's hilarious!
@nickparsons337 🤣
@VideoGameEsoterica I was wondering if anyone would get the reference; and it happened to be you. Lol. Great video man. Keep em coming.
Plenty more coming
Very interesting and timely since today i picked up an odd little 2001 game off the shelf no one obviously wanted by 3DO on PS2 called "Portal Runner". Gave it a quick go once i got it home and could have seen this one working on the 3DO console! wow. On the back of the manual is a nice add saying...."Available soon from 3DO - Godai - elemental force" and i just looked up some gameplay video....again, another very suspiciously looking could have seen this game working on the 3DO console style.
....and i already had abandonment issues before 3DO abandoned us all....lol
3DO tried. They really did. Almost went the distance too
Incredible history, so cool.
Glad you enjoyed!
Prototype Sega M2? It actually existed? Where?
Also wow nice one IBM! What a colossal fuck up.
I would have loved to have seen the M2 com out. Back in the 90s it vanished and I had no idea why.
It existed as the in house M2 prototype. Just a board
@@VideoGameEsoterica I'm guessing it's never turned up for any collector to buy?
Not that one no
@@mintydog06 If they still exist, a collector probably doesn't have them.... Probably still in the hands of someone who worked on the project, or they were destroyed
Thank God IBM F'd up...we ultimately got the more powerful machine.
I’d have loved to have seen it happen though
Yeah, the DC's beautiful super-sampled RGB 240p & VGA 480p outputs really stood the test of time and look immaculate to this day, especially on a nice 480p CRT monitor (upscales superbly too).
I'm not so sure that was a good thing. I loved the Dreamcast, but its commercial performance was dire (too little much too late, sadly). If Sega had found success with the M2 (which was plausible), then maybe we could have had other nice Sega consoles.
@@sjake8308 No, Sega gonna Sega they'd have found a way to screw it up somehow. This is the same Sega that turned down what would become the N64 in favor of the Saturn.
@@sjake8308M2 would have performed worse than Dreamcast. In the US, the general consensus was that Sega was releasing too many consoles and abandoned too quickly. Sega had lost the trust of consumers. In Japan, the Saturn was Sega's most successful console, the PS1 did not outsell the Saturn until Final Fantasy 7 was released. Sega abandoning Saturn that early in Japan would have been a big problem. Dreamcast didn't do well in Japan, maybe due to this issue. It seemed like Dreamcast should have been released in 1998 in the West and 1999 in Japan rather than what actually happened. Dreamcast actually was doing well in the United States, it's just that piracy, the DreamCast failing in Japan and Sega running out of money doomed the Dreamcast.
Wow...imagine having to be the people showing this completely kneecapped demo to Sega executives...talk about a recipe for a very awkward and tense meeting.
I dunno why they just didn’t fall on their swords and say they had to delay due to fab issues
@@VideoGameEsoterica Did any of the folk attending have to fly there? If so, it may have already been too late.
@sjake8308 that I don’t know
Why didn’t IBM just delayed the meeting instead of showing a lemon.
3DOs meeting, not IBM. Execs from Sega were already on the way
I definitely didn't know about this, great video!
Most people never knew about it. Glad you enjoyed the vid!
My alternative Sega timeline: 1994 32X, 1996 Sega M2, 2001 Naomi 2 DC. Sega should've canceled the Saturn and never released it, because it tanked their sales in the West. The 32X could've kept the Genesis going as a stop-gap until the M2. I think a Sega M2 in '96 or '97 would've been awesome. The M2 would've been a true 3D console, not a 2D/3D hybrid like the Saturn.
I’d love to have seen that timeline in action
I prefer sega cd (32x hardware) in 1993 worldwide or Early 1992 in jp. Sega saturn m2 console in 1996/1997 in PAL.
I've really learnt to love the Saturn because of MiSTer, outside a few games that I played on someone else's Saturn back in the day, all the great Saturn games are new to me, and there are many I'm finding out, not to mention it probably has by far the best music/audio of that generation thanks to the powerhouse SCSP hardware (even better FM-synth than the model one SMD), I think what Sega should have done was skip the MegaCD & 32X, and just concentrated resources on the Saturn and its library, that would have built more hype and kept consumer confidence in Sega, not to mention perhaps given them time and resources to work on Sonic 4 as a launch title for the Saturn (I'd of made it a 2.5D game), along with a Golden Axe 2.5D game, Streets of Rage 3, and so on, they just didn't get the launch and marketing right sadly (for the western market that is).
Better development tools/software would have helped too, something they learnt the hard way with the Saturn and fixed with the DC, Nintendo also had to learn this lesson with the N64.
@@Wobble2007The 32X was a waste of time and money. The American division milked the Genesis/Mega Drive too much with the 32X because they didn't agree with the Japanese division.
You have to look at it from a wider perspective though. The Saturn did incredibly well in Japan, comfortably trouncing the N64 and putting up a solid fight against the PS1. The Saturn would probably have done better in the West as well had Sega not gotten nervous and pulled a surprise launch to get ahead of Sony. The 32X was, realistically, never going to compete against Sony or Nintendo regardless of the market, it's hardware was kneecapped by being tethered to the Mega Drive and wasn't even in the same ball park as the PS1.
Sega using the M2 in 1996 makes no sense because they'd already put years and significant money into developing the Saturn hardware, which had already released in 1994. They were also presumably starting work on the Dreamcast, which would develop into far better hardware than the M2 anyway.
The solution was simple. Never release the 32X, hold off until the original intended US launch date for the Saturn & match Sony's price.
When M2 disappeared, it was obvious that games were moved into SEGA's next console.
But, i still think best solution for SEGA would had been calling NAOMI as "Dreamcast Arcade", and advertising directly on Arcades,
-that those new games would soon come into home as well.
-Everyone was blown away with the likes of House Of The Dead 2.
SEGA had their strength on Arcade scene. -That was their piece of the cake.
They should have leaned more into the Neo Geo marketing style
"Dreamcade" sounds like it would have worked as a name, I love HOTD2 on DC, was my first lightgun game, couldn't get enough of it, shame Point Blank never got a DC port, love that too, HOTD3 on OGXB is a top draw game as well, I have HOTD Overkill on Wii, which is decent, but doesn't really play the same as trad lightgun games, not quite the same feel as a proper IR lightgun, but you can play it with a real lightgun via Dolphin, so none of that cursor nonsense, just point & shoot.
@Wobble2007 I’d have bought that console haha
@@VideoGameEsoterica I think Sega's goose was already cooked at this point. They had earned reputation for abandoning platforms at this point (Saturn, 32X, Mega CD, Game Gear), so why would people buy or develop for one of their platforms? Most sensible folk simply waited for the PS2 once that was announced.
@@sjake8308 I think it was the DVD features of the PS2 that really sealed the deal there as well. The Dreamcast was a fantastic system, but the timing was wrong. Sega had already damaged their reputation in the west pretty severely, and the Japanese consumers saw no real need for Sega to make another platform as the Saturn was still doing quite well in the Japanese market. In an alternate timeline, Sega held off like Nintendo, and released the Dreamcast instead of the Saturn. Had the Dreamcast come out a few years earlier with the same or similar specs, I think they could have held up much better against Sony.
7:56 M2 is like "Um...no, I'm not playing this..."
Haha it’s not a free turning motor like Dreamcast
You really do learn something new every day! I don’t recall any of this, even though I bought Saturn magazines (that started to cover Dreamcast development near the end) and other gaming mags. Interesting, thanks✌🏻
Edge covered it a bit but most of it is from devs from 3DO back then
@ Cool, Edge is one I only bought occasionally. Love learning about this sorta stuff, all the history.
I was always a little curious how this console seemed to have gotten so far in the development process and then disappeared completely (besides the obvious "circa 2000 Sony eating everyone's lunch"), this explains a lot
It got so far it was finished. Then sat for a year. Then got cancelled
I never knew this but If the dreamcast lost to the ps1 I doubt the M2 would do better even with 18 more months. I always heard the M2 capabilities were comparable to a regular 3DO that was overclocked with more RAM is that true? I also wonder how this compares to the 3Dfx gpu SEGA passed on too.
It would have been interesting to see what could have been
The Dreamcast lost partly because Sony announced the PS2 (along with a slew of promises that they'd fail to deliver on), so when Sega spent ~$500m trying to get Dreamcasts into people's homes, most simply carried on playing on their PSXs and waited for the PS2.
@@sjake8308 It's as simple as this. The sheer hype (which was, in hindsight, overblown) for the PS2 killed the Dreamcast before it could even get off the ground. There was nothing Sega could have done. Sony had the money and the marketing budget that Sega didn't.
But M2 was compatible with DVD. So they could have sent a slightly upgraded model out in 99 with DVD. Bear sony at their own game
I did not know this. Very interesting, if I understand this meeting happened after the Saturn had been released? Because if that's the case I think it was probably for the best that they did not go with the M2 for a 96/97 release. I don't think it would've been a good move to launch a console right after the release of the Saturn in 94/95. Wasn't that the main complaint against the 32X? I even think the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast in 98 was to early.
Yes this was after Saturn hit
The problem with the 32X wasn't so much that Sega abandoned it, it was that they went to market with it in the first place. The Saturn was also a losing horse (the wrong hardware at the wrong price point), so cutting their losses sooner would have made some sense.
I think if Sega went with the M2 INSTEAD of the Sega Saturn, then it could have possibly saved Sega, although they would have needed a stop-gap solution in the meantime, an all in one uber32x (basically a more powerful 32x)/SegaCD/Genesis system could (and should have) been that solution. While it wouldn't have been as powerful as the Saturn, it would have been almost as powerful, given Sega CD owners the ability to "upgrade" to Sega's successor system, and been backwards compatible with 3 systems! I think the Saturn's lack of backward compatibility really hurt it. Such a system would have been enticing to Nintendo owners because now they essentially would have gotten 3 new systems in one. Sega actually did make one or two 32xCD games, taking advantage of the rare combo, proving that it was possible.
But if Sega went with the M2 after the Saturn, it's harder to say. The M2 wasn't as powerful as the Dreamcast, but sometimes what's more powerful on paper isn't everything. It would have come out sooner though, and that may have given Sega more time to recover, but ultimately it really depended on the games.
Somewhere in all this theory crafting I feel like Sega would still be making consoles today. Sadly that’s just not what we got
@@VideoGameEsoterica But maybe... in an alternate universe!
Dreamcast should have been a pc module as well as a console. Slapping a complete Sega unit into a pc cd drive space would have absolutely changed budget pc gaming for a decade imo ESPECIALLY with the dc online compatability
Like the 3DO Blaster
That isn't just an f-up that is a total train wreck. It does make you wonder if it was the last straw on a bigger issue.Because it sounds like the presented something worse than the original 3DO.
I guess it is one of those things, where if they cannot get the demo right how likely are they to get the rest of it right? They would be gambling on what could be rather than what they could see and that is a giant risk.
In retrospect the M2 is awesome tech but if you have to ship a new console in a year or two, you cannot wait to see where it ends up.
Also as an aside, I have not seen that system layout diagram before. Did Bulldog have its own Geometry engine? If so that put it WAY ahead of what was happening in the GPU space at the time. That means it would be closer to the T&L engines of the Geoforce in 2000. Very interesting to see.
Yes it has a setup engine baked in. It was def more advanced than anyone gives it credit for
Agreed, for the mid '90s this is really impressive stuff. I think the problem the demonstration highlighted is that Sega wouldn't be in control of the fabrication process and they'd have to trust IBM (who had just managed to screw up the prototype).
@sjake8308 super impressive. Hence why I love it
Ainda bem que a Sega lançou o Dreamcast que conhecemos...
Was it? They lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the Dreamcast and ended up being bought out by Sammy.
@sjake8308 Existe um Abismo Técnico de Hardware, entre o Sega Dreamcast e esse M2, Dreamcast sendo um Hardware de Sexta Geração, enquanto esse M2 é Hardware de Quinta Geração...
How is m2 emulation these day?
I’ll have a video on the rest of the arcade games soon
What’s the overhead shooter featured throughout the video?
Tobe Polystars
That really sucks... I think Apple also abandoned PowerPC due to IBM's incompetency...
Previously I had heard a rumour (maybe on the Arcade Attack podcast) that the sticking point between Sega and 3DO was that Trip Hawkins want to be CEO of Sega of America in exchange for selling them the M2 hardware. The tech failing during the demo certainly does sound more plausible... but that does sound a lot like Trip 😅
Never heard any confirmation of that myself. This is from mouths of the engineers that were in the meeting
So the hardware would've not been ready in 1996 to compete with the n64 and ps1 correct?
@ the timing is an interesting question. I tend to think a Panasonic M2 couldn't survived the Dreamcast and then PS2. But if the Dreamcast is out of the picture, it might just have been enough...
@maroon9273 it could have shipped end of 96
This is like a nightmare scenario for any presentation
Not the grenade you want to have to fall on
Dave needle did own the original prototype of the original opera console. It was the size of a small coffee table.
The wire wrap board. Very early
The other problem is: After the demo they tell them "oh we have a dual CPU architecture in the planning", and coming hot of the Saturn that probably also made SEGA go "EEEP!? NOT AGAIN!" (joking :P )
Haha this one works well. Which is to say most of the games you see running barely touch the second cpu. Battle Tryst uses it a bit for the cpu character but mostly you are seeing one cpu do 95% of the work
1:00 Bulldog ASIC sighted!
Haha you know it
1:50 looks like saturn game
Very similar in design to Virtua Cop
@VideoGameEsoterica thank god we got dreamcast then that's "4x" more powerful than saturn or 3do2
Alternate timeline for sure. Those games don't look like that huge of a leap in 2024 eyes. But I remember EGM Hyping things as a bigger leap. D2 was one of those games they talked a lot about.
The thing about the Dreamcast that still amazes me is how good it still looks even though S-Video. The Behar Bros SCART cable makes things look modern.
I don't think the M2cast would have aged as well.
That’s the thing. These titles are basically launch day stuff. Imagine 3 years later what it could look like
If you bear in mind that this was fairly early in the life of the PSX and N64, this is actually really impressive (and these games were still in development).
If they bought the M2, it would have been another mistake for SEGA.
The Saturn did not sell well, and having a console that was, in terms of power, in-between N64 and Dreamcast, would have looked as an upgrade more than a new generation (32X anyone??).
Yes, it is true that things dis not go well with the Dremcast as well, but, at least in that case, they had the hardware, and it was powerful and innovative.
If SEGA converted Daytona 2, SCUD Race, (with an appropriate force feedback controller) and people would have bought more console units, maybe developers would have invested more in a fantastic machine, although with some weak points (aka GDROM, no second level cache and not much RAM).
Sega’s timing was always off after the Genesis sadly
If it's a day that ends in "y", it's a day you're thinking of the 3DO M2!
🤣 so much history to talk about
Much like F-Zero! 🤘
Awsome vid, what a fu by IBM, I bet someone/s got fired after that 250 million dollar mistake, consoles were so much more interesting back in the day, I wish we still had consoles with bespoke heavily optimized CPU's & GPU's, built for one thing only (gaming), along with custom audio hardware, though to be fair PS5 has the Tempest 3D audio engine, which I hear only good things about (don't own a PS5 yet, if ever), but even that just uses extra GPU cores from the AMD APU to process the HRTF audio, it is at least proper, full-fat HRTF though, like Creative EAX on PC or Nvidia Soundstorm on the XBOX, the last generation of consoles with custom audio hardware, (DC/GC/PS2/OGXB), and they all had some banger GST's and great sounding game engine level sound-effects etc, Rogue Squadron 2 & Eternal Darkness on GC, ICO & SOTC on PS2, Max Payne 1/2 & Crimson Skies on OGXB all standout as amazing sounding games, Dreamcast has tons of banger soundtracks and great sound engines, Black Matrix (Japanese composers are on another level & produce some of the best synth period), Segagaga (Sega devs underrated swansong with beautiful classic sounding synth, almost sounds like FM-synth in parts, sadly it's as Japanese as it gets and impossible to understand if you don't speak Japanese like most of us, here's hoping for a translation one day), Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure games, you know the Dreamcast almost had a full version of it released as a PCI add-on card for PCs along with a GD-ROM drive, that would have been dope af, can still find the original press release online lol.
Consoles were way more interesting back then. Engineers developing entirely new silicon for systems vs picking off the shelf components
We ended up with the better machine! IBM smh…..!
Hah
Everyone downplays the Saturn, but I thought it was a beautiful machine and is my favorite console by a mile. 3D graphics were never good enough until the PS3 era, so prioritizing 3d for the 5th and 6th generations was a massive mistake. 3d games, in those days, were not fun, and, if we are being honest, they still aren't.
The biggest problems with the Saturn was that the console was too expensive and it was too hard to develop for. Bear in mind that games often looked worse on the Saturn than the PSX and Sega expected us to pay ~£100 more for their console. This is why people ran it down.
I def don’t downplay it. Everyone around here knows I love Saturn haha
I had 47 arcade PCB and many arcades at some point. Sold it all because they were high maintenance. Should I get an FPGA? Please say yes lol.
Yes. I got my MiSteR ages ago and have never ever regretted it. With the new Mister Pi I think it's almost a no brainer
Haha yes
So worth it
@@VideoGameEsoterica Mister Pi website does not work right now. They have a problem with their SSL.
Might as well have been the IBM M2 😉🤣
Haha they had a lot of involvement in fabricating it
I love the Dreamcast but I really think that Sega should have just skip this generation ( ps2 and GameCube) and come in 2004 with a new console. In 6 years they could have prepared a fantastic new concept and not rushed to make it
They’d have been gone too long by then to have survived
@ perhaps but making the Dreamcast was definitely the end for them too.
I don't think it would have saved Sega in the slightest. By all accounts the M2 hardware is on par with, or maybe slightly better than the N64. The Dreamcast was a significantly more capable machine than that, and it was still crushed by the mere suggestion of a PS2. The hardware was not the issue, the issue was dwindling finances (there's multiple factors at work there), a loss of faith from consumers (especially in the west) & competition with FAR deeper pockets. The only timeline in which Sega survives as a hardware manufacturer post-Dreamcast is one where Sony utterly drops the ball with the PS1 & never takes off as competition to start with.
I love the Dreamcast. It’s maybe my favorite console.
However Sega overspent by a huge degree on the Dreamcast and once you look at the numbers that did more damage than the Sega Saturn!
The M2 would’ve been a huge win for Sega.
Cheap console with more power than anyone else in the mid 90s sounds like a win
Unless the m2 console is release in 1996 jp/na and 1997 in eu.
The strategy for the Dreamcast actually made sense: It was basically the same strategy that Microsoft employed with the XBox (loss-lead to get systems into homes to build a market share). The difference is that Microsoft could afford to lose $2 billion and Sega couldn't afford to lose even a quarter of that and simply ran out of capital.
which means it didn’t make sense for Sega.
Building two consoles and deciding on Dreamcast and having to settle a lawsuit for the other console doesn’t make sense.
Heck it’s a lesson they should’ve learned with 32X and Saturn!
This would have been the better move for sega. Dreamcast came too late.
Sega was def struggling by the time Dreamcast hit shelves
How would it have stacked up against the Dreamcast we got?
Footage is in the vid. Close but not Dreamcast levels of graphical fidelity
@@VideoGameEsoterica Kinda what I figured. The Dreamcast was a beast of a machine, especially in VGA :)
Such a good console
It would've been weaker to the dreamcast.
The Dreamcast is a lot more powerful (much faster CPU and double the RAM, plus dedicated graphics RAM), but it also came 2-3 years later. Technology was moving really quickly back then.
It's almost a coincidence IBM f***** up those chips. How close were Microsoft and IBM back then? What console came out a few years later?
We’re talking near to 8 years previous so I doubt it
I'm sure Microsoft already had the Xbox being developed for a few years before their January 2001 announcement date
Looks like IBM FU Atari first then they FU 3do. Good thing that they learned something at last and not FU Nintendo and Microsoft.
Truth be told M2 was 96 tech (or 97 at best). And releasing a new console in 96-97 would damage SEGA reputation even more especially on the Japanese market.
And for 98 DC was a powerful and efficient design. The only downside - you can't just port the game from PC without reworking code for efficient use of SH CPU and tilebased GPU.
I’d have loved to have seen what happened for fun all the same
@VideoGameEsoterica I'm too, but in timeline where SEGA ditched Saturn (it was bad design anyway even without dual CPU) it could make MUCH more sense.
Back when consoles were fun. I miss all the goofy, bright arcade style games we got back then. It's shame none of the newer games trying to recapture that magic do it for me.
It was just a diff era in the medium. Like how movies in the 80s just hit diff. Every medium has diff periods that have diff vibes
@VideoGameEsoterica Right. More powerful hardware has allowed devs to push things into a more realistic direction. This is good and bad. Maybe I'm just too old...
As far as I can see, there are two different things at play here:
1) Technology was moving very quickly in the mid '90s and nobody really knew where the future of gaming lay (2D? 3D? FMV?), whereas the industry has been solved (more or less) for a long time now.
2) The industry was much less corporate than it is now.
@@RyRyTheBassGuy It's not that you're old, it's the fact that, back then, videogames were new and it was fun watching the games and technology evolve. We lost all that right about when Sega through in the towel. The only way to bring that kind of magic back would be full, realized virtual worlds, where we could actually see visual improvements with the tech.
@sjake8308 the Wild West of console development
I normally love your stuff but you really buried the lede with this explanation about the chip manufacturing fault. You had great info in this video, but it was like pulling teeth to get to it.
Every story has a narrative. This one I just told in the order that felt right
😀👍🇧🇷
i dont buy it, executives should be smart enough to understand prototyping snafus are a thing
Just the story from the devs in the room
Executives aren't especially smart. The smart folk work in R&D or strategy.
To be honest the M2 hardware isn’t all that impressive. The visuals reminds me of an improved N64.
Remember this is just all launch day stuff too. Imagine 3 years down the line
Given that the N64 didn't launch until '96 (or '97 if you live in a PAL region like I do), I'd say this hardware was pretty impressive.
The juvenile potty mouth is unnecessary.
Huh?