It seems like the SHOCKING NEWS disclaimer is used only an ironic capacity around these parts, but I want this thread to be about legitimately surprising developments in the gaming industry. My interest in games started during the NES era (late 80's/early 90's), so I've been present for all sorts of major happenings in our young industry. I lived through the greatest console war of all time (SNES/Genesis), Sony's bold entrance into the gaming market, the Nintendoomed years of N64 and GC, the birth of the fighting game arcade scene, the slow and painful demise of arcades a decade later, the early days of PC game modding and its staggering growth, the awkward transitional phase of early 3D game development, Square merging with Enix, Microsoft buying Rare, Sony's world domination with the success of the PS2, FF7 bringing JRPG's into the mainstream limelight, births of countless IP's the continue to be relevant to this day... the list could go on and on.
But the news story that I'll never forget reading in an issue of EGM was Sega's decision to get out of hardware and the Dreamcast ceasing production.
Being that I was only in ninth grade at the time, I mustn't have been following gaming news closely enough to have seen the writing on the wall. While I often frequented the gaming sites of the time, online gaming news wasn't as ubiquitous and up-to-the-minute as it is today. It wasn't until reading the January (or maybe February) 2001 issue of EGM that I found out Sega was ceasing production of the Dreamcast and exiting the hardware market altogether. My ignorance toward Sega's financial problems with the Dreamcast made the news all the more surprising, and what was even more difficult for me to comprehend at the time was the idea of there being no more Sega consoles in the market. Since I was born (1986), Sega and Nintendo had always been the major players, with Sony being the wildly successful new upstart. The 32-bit generation had mainly consisted of consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, and I had never even considered the possibility of that changing after the release of the PS2.
The article also went on to speculate about Sega characters like Sonic starting to appear on other consoles now that they would not be bound to Sega hardware. That notion blew my mind at the time as well. Sonic and Mario in the same game? Impossibru! Kids nowadays probably play Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games and think nothing of it, but those two characters sharing the screen was unthinkable before Sega quietly stepped away from the console race.
Knowing more about the situation now, I can clearly see why Sega had little choice but to back out when they did. It's unfortunate because the Dreamcast was arguably their best console since the Genesis (or perhaps ever), but Sony's PS2 and Microsoft's impending entry into the console wars really did muscle out the straightforward gaming machine that was the Dreamcast. But looking back, the Dreamcast's demise and Sega's shift to being software-only was the most shocking news story of my gaming life.
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What news story was the most shocking for you? Good or bad, try to think of happenings/announcements/mergers/demises or other pivotal moments in the industry that left a lasting impression on you.
But the news story that I'll never forget reading in an issue of EGM was Sega's decision to get out of hardware and the Dreamcast ceasing production.
Being that I was only in ninth grade at the time, I mustn't have been following gaming news closely enough to have seen the writing on the wall. While I often frequented the gaming sites of the time, online gaming news wasn't as ubiquitous and up-to-the-minute as it is today. It wasn't until reading the January (or maybe February) 2001 issue of EGM that I found out Sega was ceasing production of the Dreamcast and exiting the hardware market altogether. My ignorance toward Sega's financial problems with the Dreamcast made the news all the more surprising, and what was even more difficult for me to comprehend at the time was the idea of there being no more Sega consoles in the market. Since I was born (1986), Sega and Nintendo had always been the major players, with Sony being the wildly successful new upstart. The 32-bit generation had mainly consisted of consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, and I had never even considered the possibility of that changing after the release of the PS2.
The article also went on to speculate about Sega characters like Sonic starting to appear on other consoles now that they would not be bound to Sega hardware. That notion blew my mind at the time as well. Sonic and Mario in the same game? Impossibru! Kids nowadays probably play Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games and think nothing of it, but those two characters sharing the screen was unthinkable before Sega quietly stepped away from the console race.
Knowing more about the situation now, I can clearly see why Sega had little choice but to back out when they did. It's unfortunate because the Dreamcast was arguably their best console since the Genesis (or perhaps ever), but Sony's PS2 and Microsoft's impending entry into the console wars really did muscle out the straightforward gaming machine that was the Dreamcast. But looking back, the Dreamcast's demise and Sega's shift to being software-only was the most shocking news story of my gaming life.
__________
What news story was the most shocking for you? Good or bad, try to think of happenings/announcements/mergers/demises or other pivotal moments in the industry that left a lasting impression on you.
