Thaedolus
Member
This doesn't seem true at all. It was still their best-performing console in Japan, the market they sacrificed the West for that very generation. Hell, they saw fit to release MegaCD and 32X add-on props for the MegaDrive Mini in Japan when that was the MegaDrive's smallest market out of the Big 3.
If they're willing to do that for Mega CD and 32X, there's not much reason for them to run from their Saturn legacy. Besides, it's seemingly gotten a lot more popular in internet circles and the retro gaming community the past decade; global sentiment towards it isn't the same was it was in the '90s.
That's the thing about anecdotal evidence; you can't fully use that as a widespread case. Like Saturn, Neo Geo also had a niche appeal (actually, a much narrower niche appeal), but again, that hasn't stopped SNK from releasing the Neo Geo Mini. Even if those Neo Geo ports are relatively easy to do, things from the costs of IC securement, motherboard design/prototyping/testing/manufacture, casing design, marketing, distribution etc....that stuff adds up. It's "cheap" compared to what Sony and Microsoft are going to be doing next year with their new systems, but it's not cheap.
They wouldn't need to aim the Saturn mini at the mainstream market. IMHO I don't see why they can't aim a bit upwards price-wise but make sure there's features present to make it worth it. Like the online connectivity that new Capcom plug 'n play seems to have (at least for firmware updates). Also I think a Saturn mini would actually generate more interest than a MegaDrive one, simply because unlike MegaDrive, SEGA hasn't exhausted Saturn through minis going back over a decade. Never mind that Japan in particular would be a pretty strong market for it.
That's the way I see it, anyway.
Eh, you’re right that I’m talking anecdotes, but throwing out a SoC system is fairly trivial at this point. A raspberry pi costs less than what, $40 retail? Get yourself that volume discount, a cheap plastic mold, and boom you have a mini console at probably $20-30 or so.
I might be underestimating how hard Neo Geo is to emulate vs Saturn and certainly Saturn was more mainstream, but I really hear like zero non-gamers nostalgic about the Saturn. My older brother is somewhere between mainstream and me and he forgot there even was a Sega console between Genesis and Dreamcast untok he saw my game room this year. Granted, he probably doesn’t know what a Neo Geo is either...but if putting out a Neo Geo is trivial, and Saturn is difficult (even if that’s just the perception), then I could see why one would get to market and not the other
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