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[A Black Falcon]

Blast Wind and Hyper Duel... two of the more valuable Saturn shmups now, both in the triple figures on EBay. They'd still be expensive if they'd had US releases, but maybe slightly more affordable... it's really, really too bad we missed out on those two. And lots of other games, Grandia and the three Lunar games most obviously. (Magical School Lunar has a full translation and guide online (see Lunarnet), but playing a game with a paper or online guide isn't anywhere near the same thing as playing it normally... and it seems like a pretty solid game, too, from what I've played of it. Not quite as exceptional as the original two Lunar games, but pretty good, and way better than anything we've gotten out of the franchise this decade... I didn't hate Lunar Legend or Dragon Song as much as some people, I actually thought they were fun in fact, some of the time at least, but I wouldn't disagree with anyone calling them disappointing compared to the older games, that's for sure.

Then, at SEGA, we had supported SEGA well and had a good relationship with the Japanese and US side. Bernie arrived and all that went to hell. The biggest, and most obvious slap in the face was E3 that year. We had paid SEGA to be in their booth (something like $25,000 - maybe $50,000? I don't remember) and literally weeks before the sold-out show with no way to get booth space on our own at that point, Bernie tried to pull the rug out and rescind the deal. We went around him and got SoJ to FORCE him to honor the deal, but since we planned to show FOUR new Saturn games at a show where Bernie wanted to show NO Saturn support, he put us in a walled off area OUTSIDE the SEGA booth proper, BEHIND it, completely out of sight. He didn't want us ruining his storyline of the dead Saturn with announcements of four new releases, consequences to us be damned. I cancelled the games the day before the show once I saw what they did.

E3 '97, right. Stolar joined Sega in July 1996, after Kalinske finally gave up and quit. Incredibly stupid... but still, as I said, he had nothing to do with the system's failure, all of that was in place before he got there. He just didn't make it do any better, and made decisions that hurt Sega more than they helped it.

Crap. I can't believe I made a stupid post in a thread created by Vic Ireland. I do have to say one of the reasons I bought a Saturn was the promise for great RPG's like we got on Sega CD ala Lunar and Lunar 2. I still have both btw. Huh, all these years my Sega hate has been misdirected at Kalenskie instead of Stolar.

He didn't make the thread, he just posted in it... but anyway, there are lots of people responsible for Sega's failure as a hardware manufacturer... but yeah, Kalinske really isn't one of them, as that Sega-16 interview shows. That even he couldn't do anything but watch Sega fall from first to out (after doing a lot of the work to GET them to first) says a lot about how messed up Sega was then.

Anyway, there are a lot of people to blame, on both sides of the Pacific, but because the Japanese branch was the top one, they're probably more responsible. They were the one to decide to kill Genesis worldwide in fall 1995, to decide on the Saturn's hardware, the price, launch date, etc. Kalinske didn't want to launch early or at $400, it seems, but they said he had to, so he did and it was a disaster. But the two main sides of Sega were so far apart that it's hard to imagine what kind of system we could have gotten had they actually been working together, Sega passed on so many good ideas (see various camineet threads) that they had a whole bunch of options that would have been better than Saturn.

System power isn't the most important thing, of course, and just improving that wouldn't fix everything, but if in the process you also dealt with the infighting, got rid of the 32X's existence, don't discontinue the Genesis in 1995, etc, it'd have made a big difference. Oh yeah, and don't do really stupid things that get your fans angry at you like try to kill 2d games and RPGs when a bunch of your most devoted fans actually WANTED games like that. I know the mass market didn't, so it would make a lot of sense to put the focus elsewhere, but when a good chunk of your most devoted fans actually do want games like that, you shouldn't ignore or oppose them as much as Sega did. But that's just stating the obvious.

*Inserts requisite link to The Scribe articles* http://www.goodcowfilms.com/farm/games/www.eidolons-inn.net/segabase/SegaBase-Saturn(Part1).html

 

[beat]

I had just bought Visual Concepts for $10 million.

Best bargain ever?

 

[Azih]

I will say that the guy did manage to pull of an extremely great console launch with the DC (still the best launch lineup ever) and that he seems to be right that SoJ did not support the console as much as they should have. Of course Sega did not have any money by that point so that would explain the lack of support.

But killing a console years before its replacement? Man not even the Xbox got that treatement. It was put out to pasture when the 360 was imminent.

 

[Cheerilee]

Bitmob: If we could send you back in time, with the benefit of hindsight, what would you do to make the Dreamcast survive and thrive?

Bernie Stolar: It’s called money. And a commitment from the company.

Soooo.... Bernie himself would do nothing. He'd just go back in time and expect someone else to do something about it (even though that obviously didn't work the first time around). Not exactly worth the risk of a time paradox.

Bitmob: Could you see the Dreamcast struggles coming before you left Sega?

BS: No. When I was pushed out, I assumed that the company would continue [supporting the Dreamcast]. Mr. Okawa was very close friends with [Masayoshi] Son-san, who was the chairman of [tech investment firm] Softbank. They indicated to Mr. Okawa that if we have a modem put into the system -- we spend the extra money to put the modem in -- that we should just meld the hardware online and not go through retail...that we should just abandon retail.

So do I believe there could’ve been a turning point where they would abandon this? The answer is yes.

To this day, you still can’t abandon retail. Retail may have shrunk -- there may not be as many storefronts -- but retail’s the whole point. Look at what Best Buy’s doing. Look at what Wal-Mart’s doing. Look at what GameStop’s doing.

Wow. That's crazy stuff.

Spoiler

(Oh wait, not it isn't. Who's to say that digital distribution, if fully backed in the 90's by a heavyweight like Sega, wouldn't have taken off?)

I sure am glad Bernie averted this disaster and saved the Dreamcast... after getting fired... with... his crazy mind power ability to get people to do as he wills without actually physically doing anything about the situation.

Bitmob: A lot of gamers swore off Sega hardware after the days of the Sega CD, the 32X, and to a lesser extent, a poorly supported Saturn. Do you think this backlash affected the Dreamcast?

BS: I don’t think there was a backlash at all. The Dreamcast was very well accepted. Dreamcast won the 128-bit generation! Cake was served!

Fixed.

Bitmob: So how do you see Sony now? Do you still feel that way?

BS: It’s a very corporate culture. The team that’s there right now -- I hired a number of those individuals -- they’re terrific people. They’re really trying to make this work.

AKA: This is hard to say since these people were once my friends but... PS Triple!!! $599 US dollars! Massive damage! Sony's going third party. Suck it down losers! Aaaahhh... that felt good.

BS: I think they [Sega] are going through some really difficult times. I don’t believe they have the content, developers, and producers there that they had at one time.

vs

BS: Let me just say this: It was a great team of people who were there at the time. When I got to Sega, there were 300 some odd people, and I took the staff down to 91 people, and we built it.

I'd laugh but... people got fired.

We love you Vick!

Now here's some honest-to-goodness truth.

 

[A Link to the Past]

This interview was pretty weak, for someone who did so much bad. The interviewer basically set up the pins so Stolar could knock them down. :<

 

[SamBishop]

I will say that the guy did manage to pull of an extremely great console launch with the DC (still the best launch lineup ever) and that he seems to be right that SoJ did not support the console as much as they should have. Of course Sega did not have any money by that point so that would explain the lack of support.

But killing a console years before its replacement? Man not even the Xbox got that treatement. It was put out to pasture when the 360 was imminent.

I kinda wonder how I possibly could have slipped through the ID checkpoint when I was 19 during the launch party and getting in, but I will totally agree. Ozomatli was amazing, and the bar had a gigantic brain pulsing over it, and the games were incredible. I did PR for the company that provided the DC arcade stick, and I still genuinely believe it's the best peripheral that has ever been made for a system. Soul Calibur (still two words back then) was, hands-down, the longest I've ever spent with a launch game. Absolutely incredible work, and it still kinda blows my mind to this day that stuff like Blue Stinger was there day and date with Soul Calibur.

I also worked on Tokyo Xtreme Racer, and was happier about having that title than any other game I ever did PR for. Between that game and the ASCII Arcade Stick, the Dreamcast was my dream system. It completely nullified all the Army Men games we shipped. Except Air Attack. Yeah, I know Kudo before he looked like a super-shade-wearing douche. Dude's cool, though (or was, I haven't talked to him since), and I'm consistently amazed how connected this industry really is.

 

[Red Scarlet]

The Saturn died early because I got a Hikaru cover of MKR for the Saturn and not an Umi one.

 

[dave_d]

To be blunt about one of Bernie's points I really can't see them doing digital distribution right. I mostly base that on their support of the ethernet adapter. For those that didn't know about this alot of the online titles would only work online if you used the modem. (Which was annoying for those of us on the cutting edge with cable modems.) I think a game like Alien Front was modem only. (Oh, and Sega Rally was modem only and only in Japan.) Oh and sometimes they'd even remove support for it when it came to the US. (PSO actually supported the ethernet adapter but they removed the screens to set it up in the first place. Fortunately you could download the Japanese web browser to set it up.) Anyway so given that they couldn't even properly support an ethernet adapter I can't see digital distribution being handled well at all.

Hey that reminds me, did they ever release an ethernet compatible browser here in the US?(Actually what games did official support that adapter in the US?)

 

[radioheadrule83]

I always had the impression that Dreamcast could have survived if SEGA had been in the financial position to support it. They had 10 million consoles out there long before Gamecube and Xbox got there, but they bled so much money trying to fight the PS2 (ie. the free SEGAnet deal and stuff like that) that eventually the guys up top just pulled the plug... it probably was the console with the easiest piracy method I've ever seen as well

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

I always had the impression that Dreamcast could have survived if SEGA had been in the financial position to support it. They had 10 million consoles out there long before Gamecube and Xbox got there, but they bled so much money trying to fight the PS2 (ie. the free SEGAnet deal and stuff like that) that eventually the guys up top just pulled the plug... it probably was the console with the easiest piracy method I've ever seen as well

They didn't lose all of that money due to the Dreamcast, by my knowledge the Dreamcast was sold at a profit, it was the dying arcade market and their past financial disasters catching up with them that was hurting SEGA.

 

[A Black Falcon]

They didn't lose all of that money due to the Dreamcast, by my knowledge the Dreamcast was sold at a profit, it was the dying arcade market and their past financial disasters catching up with them that was hurting SEGA.

No, the Dreamcast was sold at a loss. They lost lots of money on Dreamcast, hundreds of millions I'm sure, just as they had done with Saturn before it.

You're right that the fading arcade market hurt them too, but they were not making money on consoles. Sega lost money every year from 1998-2001... and I don't know if they were making money in the couple of years before that either, I highly doubt it.

I always had the impression that Dreamcast could have survived if SEGA had been in the financial position to support it. They had 10 million consoles out there long before Gamecube and Xbox got there, but they bled so much money trying to fight the PS2 (ie. the free SEGAnet deal and stuff like that) that eventually the guys up top just pulled the plug... it probably was the console with the easiest piracy method I've ever seen as well

This, however, was also absolutely true. The DC had better hope of making money than Saturn. The install base was larger than Saturn's ever got to, in shorter time. The amount of money lost per unit was less and dropping. If Sega had been able to afford to keep going, you're absolutely right that they'd have been in a decent position, really. Unfortunately, they weren't able to afford it. Sega had always had far smaller financial resources than many of its competitors, and weren't anywhere near as good at compensating by focusing on making a profit as Nintendo has always done...

Hey that reminds me, did they ever release an ethernet compatible browser here in the US?(Actually what games did official support that adapter in the US?)

http://dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com

 

[Alex]

As a massive Working Designs fan back in the day, this is a pretty wild thread. Really sounds like Saturn could've been so much more. It had some really great niche software and amazing imports, but bleh.

One change in gaming I would've always loved would've been to get Grandia in the US on the Saturn by WD. PSone version wasn't quite as good and was done back when SCEA couldn't localize a game to save their lives.

 

[Kasumi1970]

That was Tom Kalinske, probably SEGA's greatest President. He really was the defacto figurehead for a video game company.

Here's one of the last interviews with him, about 10 years after SEGA:

http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id=214&title=Interview: Tom Kalinske

It wasn't Tom Kalinske that wanted to release the Saturn early in America It was the President in Japan that wanted to. Tom Kalinske wanted to wait to get the software ready for the 3rd party. Unfortunalty the President of Sega japan thought they knew better becuase the launch was a success in Japan becuase of Virtua Fighters 1. I remember Tom Kalinske wanted to use a hardware that was close to 3dFX 3d cards in computers, but the President of Japan wanted to go with the hardware from one of his Golfing buddies at Hatachi.

 

[kiuju2k]

Yeah it really sucks. I remember the days of Saturnworld and Daves Sega Saturn and pc page, I always look back and think its funny how we all thought that a WD grandia was in the bag.

I think that Sega should have stayed on Nintendo's pace. Maybe Saturn would have had a chance. Can you imagine what we could have gotten.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

No, the Dreamcast was sold at a loss. They lost lots of money on Dreamcast, hundreds of millions I'm sure, just as they had done with Saturn before it.

You're right that the fading arcade market hurt them too, but they were not making money on consoles. Sega lost money every year from 1998-2001... and I don't know if they were making money in the couple of years before that either, I highly doubt it.

Jesus what a terribly ran company. If I took the place of SEGA's chairman during the final development of the Dreamcast I'd:

A. Make sure it was sold at a profit. ($300 US Launch)

B. Hold off the launch in Japan by a some months. (Releasing the Dreamcast during the N64's and the Playstation's prime? Yeah okay)

C. Push the online component with more software

D. Really concentrate on getting third parties on board

E. Be sure that there is a steady stream of big releases for the consoles first 18 months


All way easier said than done but IMO these things were a necessity.

 

[A Black Falcon]

Jesus what a terribly ran company. If I took the place of SEGA's chairman during the final development of the Dreamcast I'd:

A. Make sure it was sold at a profit. ($300 US Launch)

B. Hold off the launch in Japan by a some months. (Releasing the Dreamcast during the N64's and the Playstation's prime? Yeah okay)

C. Push the online component with more software

D. Really concentrate on getting third parties on board

E. Be sure that there is a steady stream of big releases for the consoles first 18 months


All way easier said than done but IMO these things were a necessity.

If you read the interview this thread was about, he says how he convinced Sega of Japan to launch the DC in the US at $199, not $249 like they had wanted to... hoping to sell more, but the backfire of how much more money that lost was almost certainly not worth it. One of the many things on the list of things he did badly.

So yes, on point A, it should have started at $249 at least. On B, maybe do that, but much more importantly, move UP the US launch by months, as much as possible. They needed it here much sooner. Also, keep Saturn going until the end of 1998 -- NO "Saturn is not the future" in May 1997! No doing what vireland described here that they did to him in E3 1997...

On C, they were somewhat pioneering it, I don't know how much faster they could have gone. (Someone mentioned dialup issues... the issue there is just that most people only had dialup, so the issue of supporting broadband didn't seem that important. Not too many people were using it. But the link I gave shows you which games are online now, which were, and which types they support.)

On D, yeah, of course. It'd probably have required that stronger hardware that the divided Sega couldn't produce, and lower licensing fees like Sony had, but they needed to put a lot more effort into it.

And on E, yes, absolutely. This required money though, and as has been said in this thread already, Sega didn't have enough of it. They had enough to put a big effort into the US launch... but after that their efforts almost immediately began to fade, while Sony's hype machine just got bigger and bigger. The resulting impact on sales was predictable.


Going back to the Saturn though, because that's where the money problems really got serious in their importance, I think that shutting down most of Sega's internal American development wasn't a great idea. I mean, on the Genesis Sega built up a sizable Western developer base either working in Sega (STI, most notably), or in partnerships with American developers like Blue Sky Software. It was an important part of the Genesis' victory. But in the Saturn days that all fell apart, one part at a time... the lack of success was part of why of course, but it was also part of the cause, not just a reaction to the problem. Where were the Saturn (or Dreamcast) equivalents of Western-developed, Sega-developed or published games like Kid Chameleon, Sonic Spinball, The Ooze, Vectorman, Vectorman 2, the three Jurassic Park/The Lost World games, Spider-Man, Taz-Mania, etc, etc... again I know that without the success here it makes a lot less sense for developers here to work on the system, but again that lack of titles from the beginning was one of the symptoms of the problem going in, not just an effect of the failure later.

And again of course, it all ties in to my pinning the core of the issue on Sega's internal disunion (the US-Japan division that played a key role in crippling them... just read that Kalinske interview...), and other assorted inabilities to make good decisions.

Sonic X-Treme of course was a victim of Sega's internal mess and infighting (Yuji Naka's famous 'they can't use MY engine' part, some misunderstandings, etc), but there was more than just that of course. It's pretty sad, Sega always had amazing games and consoles, but they just couldn't figure out how to work together and build a lasting business model... pretty sad.

 

[Dragona Akehi]

As a massive Working Designs fan back in the day, this is a pretty wild thread. Really sounds like Saturn could've been so much more. It had some really great niche software and amazing imports, but bleh.

I miss WD to this very day.

One change in gaming I would've always loved would've been to get Grandia in the US on the Saturn by WD. PSone version wasn't quite as good and was done back when SCEA couldn't localize a game to save their lives.

Pretty much. I still remember watching the Lunar bonus discs with the Interviews and in one interview with Vic, there was this awesome poster of Grandia in the background, and I was always surprised when it was released in the US by SCEA of all people.

What could have been...

 

[dave_d]

On C, they were somewhat pioneering it, I don't know how much faster they could have gone. (Someone mentioned dialup issues... the issue there is just that most people only had dialup, so the issue of supporting broadband didn't seem that important. Not too many people were using it. But the link I gave shows you which games are online now, which were, and which types they support.)

I don't know if I'd agree with that though. I mean yes more people had dial up back then but they were probably less likely to be serious about on-line gaming than somebody who use a cable modem.(Hell, the XBox didn't even come with dialup, just ethernet. Yes I realize it was 3 years later.) Also you'd think they'd could get some network development libraries so coders would just write the network code once and it would just use whatever hardware that was there.

BTW thanks for that link. Still I didn't see it mention how the network code on PSO was crippled. (Now that was a really stupid decision. Almost as stupid as not getting out a Sonic game within the first year of the Saturn release. Sorry to rehash that one but that was stupid.)

 

[Hcoregamer00]

The Saturn died early because I got a Hikaru cover of MKR for the Saturn and not an Umi one.

High Five!!!!

Umi is the best girl in Magic Knight Rayearth.

 

[TheRagnCajun]

hrmm..

 

[A Black Falcon]

I don't know if I'd agree with that though. I mean yes more people had dial up back then but they were probably less likely to be serious about on-line gaming than somebody who use a cable modem.(Hell, the XBox didn't even come with dialup, just ethernet. Yes I realize it was 3 years later.) Also you'd think they'd could get some network development libraries so coders would just write the network code once and it would just use whatever hardware that was there.

Three years later makes a huge difference. In 1998-1999, most people had dialup. By 2002 or so a lot of people still did, but the switch to cable was happening fast. And note in between the two the PS2 supported both, and initially games weren't broadband-only.

BTW thanks for that link. Still I didn't see it mention how the network code on PSO was crippled. (Now that was a really stupid decision. Almost as stupid as not getting out a Sonic game within the first year of the Saturn release. Sorry to rehash that one but that was stupid.)

There is a US web browser with broadband modem support, the Web Browser 3.0. 1.0 and 2.0 are dialup-only as you know, but the rarer 3.0 disc supports the broadband adapter. I'd assume that the broadband modems came with a 3.0 disc, right? Not sure about that, but either way the 3.0 disc has broadband support.

Also, the part you're looking for is here, in the "Getting Online with your Sega Dreamcast" guide in the Guides section: http://dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com/phpBB2/guides_getonline.php#4

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

And on E, yes, absolutely. This required money though, and as has been said in this thread already, Sega didn't have enough of it. They had enough to put a big effort into the US launch... but after that their efforts almost immediately began to fade, while Sony's hype machine just got bigger and bigger. The resulting impact on sales was predictable.

Maybe that extra money could have came from selling the Dreamcast at a profit?

Also as for B, I was putting myself in the shoes of someone at SEGA during the tail end of the Dreamcast's development.

I agree with everything else though. People always wonder how and why SEGA did such stupid things and it was due to an arrogant and abusive mother company that refused to believe what was going around with her and neglected her child, in which resulted with a snot nosed child company that at times rebelled for the sake of rebelling even if what they were doing was just plain stupid.

 

[IrishNinja]

Sonic X-Treme of course was a victim of Sega's internal mess and infighting (Yuji Naka's famous 'they can't use MY engine' part, some misunderstandings, etc), but there was more than just that of course. It's pretty sad, Sega always had amazing games and consoles, but they just couldn't figure out how to work together and build a lasting business model... pretty sad.

ive heard Naka namedropped here on GAF as some kinda prima donna, what were the details on this "MY engine" bit?

 

[Xisiqomelir]

Damn, how did I miss this thread? Bernie Stolar whitewashing history hoping everyone forgot all the shit that went down a decade ago, and Vic Ireland just demolishing the lies with some straight up truth. This is why I love GAF.

p.s. You are awesome, vireland.

 

[Hawk269]

This brings back some memories of the Saturn launch...The early launch that is. I use to be an Assistant Manager at a one of the few retailers that received the Saturn as part of the E3 suprise launch. The Store I worked at was about 30 min from the Convention Center and I remember the Sega folks coming in with all kinds of display boxes to try to make a nice display.

It was a total shock to many that we had the system and the few games they were launching with it. It did sell out very quickly..since a ton of people were coming straight from the E3 show when Sega announced the suprise launch. I would say 3/4 of the units sold were from people outside of the state.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

The Saturn's "surprise launch" had to be quite possibly the stupidest fucking move I could have ever imagined for a company to do.

 

[A Black Falcon]

Maybe that extra money could have came from selling the Dreamcast at a profit.

Also as for B, I was putting myself in the shoes of someone at SEGA during the tail end of the Dreamcast's development.

I agree with everything else though. People always wonder how and why SEGA did such stupid things and it was due to an arrogant and abusive mother company that refused to believe what was going around with her and neglected what her child said, in which resulted with a snot nosed child company that at times rebelled for the sake of rebelling even if what they were doing was just plain stupid.

Oh yeah, and one thing I didn't mention, they shouldn't have just abandoned the handheld market in 1996-early 1997. They should have either made a new handheld or released a new version of the GG with a smaller form factor and better battery life. Unless they were losing money on the GG business (which honestly I doubt), just ditching the whole thing because they were in second or whatever was dumb. But I guess the GG was only successful in the US and maybe Europe, so who cared about IT, right?

Unless they actually expected the Nomad to do something... um, if so, yeah, they were doomed in the handheld market. "Look at our next handheld, it has maybe half the battery life of our last one, when the last one's biggest problem was its short battery life! Buy it now!"

ive heard Naka namedropped here on GAF as some kinda prima donna, what were the details on this "MY engine" bit?

Short version: When Yuji Naka heard that the Sonic X-Treme team (STI, Sega of America's internal team that had made Kid Chameleon, Sonic Spinball, The Ooze, and Comix Zone on the Genesis, and worked along with (more experienced) Japanese teams on Sonic 2 on the Genesis and Die Hard Arcade for the arcades and Saturn) wanted to use the NiGHTS engine for the game, because of how perfect it would be for it, he immediately said that they could not. He wasn't willing to share, particularly not with Sega of America! I mean, they were Sega of Japan's rivals, not friends, right?

Now, for the full story. This is 1996, and Sega's working on its last hopes of actually having any success in the US. To do this they really needed a big Sonic game, that year. There are several big stories about this, you can find them if you look... it'd be easier than me trying to remember it all. I'll look for the links later. But anyway, the game's whole development was a massive confusing mess. There were several teams at STI working on different versions of the game at the same time, each with completely different game engines. One team was supposed to be doing levels, the other boss fights. One was developing on PC, meaning to port it over to Saturn later. The 'levels' team started working on their own engine, but when they saw the NiGHTS engine the programmer (Christian Senn) wanted to use that instead because of how perfect it would be. Because of how Sega of Japan and Sega of America (and Sonic Team and STI) were rivals as much as parts of the same company though, Naka didn't like that and when he heard about it he banned them from using it, period. (It's kind of funny, because just a few years earlier Naka had been working together with some STI people on Sonic 2... things sure fell apart fast.) Senn had to go back and start working on his own engine again.

However, things kept going badly for the project. A bit later on there was a disastrous meeting with Sega higher-ups where they decided to drop the 'levels' engine and only use the 'bosses' one for the whole game, because they thought it looked better in the demonstration they had been shown... but evidently they had only seen an old, bad version of the levels engine, while the current version was actually in much better shape and doing okay. They had to abandon it anyway because it was orders. This left everything on trying to port the entire game over to the boss-fight engine, which hadn't been designed for full levels... as a result they had an absolutely insane work schedule. The staff couldn't keep it up and two of the lead programmers both got sick and had to leave for a while. That was it for any hopes of Sonic X-Treme in 1996, and Sega canceled the game entirely instead of pushing it into 1997.

They had always had a replacement plan, you see... and it worked out really well, too. I mean, remember how great the reception for the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast was? Because that was the replacement. (And then Sonic Team did Sonic Jam, tossing in that little 3d mode... as if to say "we could have done it if we wanted to, but didn't" or something...)


There were also some other things going on, check out the following. Some links:

IGN did a feature on it last year, found here. http://retro.ign.com/articles/877/877660p1.html It's a good, mostly accurate article. I know of only one factual error; they refer to Chris Coffin as a man, while she (one of the lead programmers who got sick) is actually a woman. Whoever wrote the IGN article didn't seem to know that.

Sega-16 Chris Senn interview: http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id=107&title=Interview: Chris Senn Mostly Genesis related of course, but a bit of other stuff too.

Site compiling known Sonic X-Treme information, with lots of stuff from Chris Senn: http://www.senntient.com/projects/xtreme/sxc/index.html

FAQ from that site: http://www.senntient.com/projects/xtreme/FAQ.html

I think I'm forgetting something, links-wise, but can't remember what at the moment.

Maybe that extra money could have came from selling the Dreamcast at a profit.

That would have helped, but really they had to come in with a better financial situation. Sega had lost so much from the Saturn and the fading of arcades, just lessening the losses from Dreamcast wouldn't solve the whole problem. But yes, it certainly would have helped.

Also as for B, I was putting myself in the shoes of someone at SEGA during the tail end of the Dreamcast's development.

I don't think an earlier American launch would be at all unreasonable or that much harder to do, though.

I agree with everything else though. People always wonder how and why SEGA did such stupid things and it was due to an arrogant and abusive mother company that refused to believe what was going around with her and neglected what her child said, in which resulted with a snot nosed child company that at times rebelled for the sake of rebelling even if what they were doing was just plain stupid.

See above Yuji Naka story for yet another example of that attitude.

... I mean, they were angry at Sega of America for actually being successful? Childish for sure. They wanted to match that? Sure, good idea... but they did it in a way that completely ignored all th reasons that the Genesis had succeeded here and in Europe, dooming them to failure everywhere EXCEPT for Japan! Great idea there guys...

 

[Hawk269]

Well, the Saturn had to die at some point, but the PROBLEM was that premature Bernie killed the Saturn more than a year before there was a replacement! The Dreamcast didn't arrive as the Saturn was killed off. He was talking up the DC in all the interviews while he still had an underdog system still selling at least SOMETHING and keeping the fans happy, but he decided that NOTHING would be better than SOMETHING and gambled that by shutting down Saturn in the USA it would force Japan to speed up the DC work and release, which didn't work - at all. He just ended up with angry retailers, fans, and a huge nothingness to sell for more than a year. It was a mortal blow to SEGA and even the DC couldn't overcome it.

Hey Vic....I know there is no way in hell you would remember, but back in the hey day of Working Designs, you guys were so great to me. I met you at your booth while I was working at a retailer that I rather not mention. One thing for those that are reading about Working Designs is the care they had about the fans and that showed in the games they released. I still remember getting all kinds of swag that I would use in the store I worked to promote the games. It was great and I really miss WD.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

... I mean, they were angry at Sega of America for actually being successful? Childish for sure. They wanted to match that? Sure, good idea... but they did it in a way that completely ignored all th reasons that the Genesis had succeeded here and in Europe, dooming them to failure everywhere EXCEPT for Japan! Great idea there guys...

Did they get all of this West vs East stuff more sorted out when the Dreamcast was released? I seem to have forgot how that all went.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Did they get all of this West vs East stuff more sorted out when the Dreamcast was released? I seem to have forgot how that all went.

Are you kidding? They still have this problem.

 

[vireland]

Hey Vic....I know there is no way in hell you would remember, but back in the hey day of Working Designs, you guys were so great to me. I met you at your booth while I was working at a retailer that I rather not mention. One thing for those that are reading about Working Designs is the care they had about the fans and that showed in the games they released. I still remember getting all kinds of swag that I would use in the store I worked to promote the games. It was great and I really miss WD.

I don't remember you specifically, but I *completely* remember the huge amount of store-level support we got from you and others like you. The shows were always a blur because we were just meeting one enthusiastic fan after another. Lots of sore throats at the end of the day! That kind of support is what kept me up nights thinking of the next cool promotion or premium we could to to really blow the fans who supported us away. I did and still do appreciate that level of support from you!

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

Are you kidding? They still have this problem.

Well no I'm not. My SEGA corpate knowledge starts becoming very scarce after the Saturn.

They still do? What are some examples?

 

[A Black Falcon]

Did they get all of this West vs East stuff more sorted out when the Dreamcast was released? I seem to have forgot how that all went.

Well, you do remember how Sega fully designed two consoles that generation, right? One was designed by the American hardware team, with 3DFX graphics hardware. The other was designed by the Japanese team, with PowerVR hardware. When the Japanese design was chosen, that was the last straw for a lot of Sega of America's remaining hardware people, and a bunch of them left. One problem solved!

They also "solved" some of the problems by doing things like closing STI in 1997. They won't keep trying to steal Yuji Naka's engines when their studio is closed! As I said in my post before last...

Going back to the Saturn though, because that's where the money problems really got serious in their importance, I think that shutting down most of Sega's internal American development wasn't a great idea. I mean, on the Genesis Sega built up a sizable Western developer base either working in Sega (STI, most notably), or in partnerships with American developers like Blue Sky Software. It was an important part of the Genesis' victory. But in the Saturn days that all fell apart, one part at a time... the lack of success was part of why of course, but it was also part of the cause, not just a reaction to the problem. Where were the Saturn (or Dreamcast) equivalents of Western-developed, Sega-developed or published games like Kid Chameleon, Sonic Spinball, The Ooze, Vectorman, Vectorman 2, the three Jurassic Park/The Lost World games, Spider-Man, Taz-Mania, etc, etc... again I know that without the success here it makes a lot less sense for developers here to work on the system, but again that lack of titles from the beginning was one of the symptoms of the problem going in, not just an effect of the failure later.

Maybe I'm wrong about that, as far as the Dreamcast goes, if so correct me, but I don't remember a comparable effort on that console.

So overall, sure, Sega now isn't as divided as it used to be, yes. Part of this was done by closing the American hardware and software divisions and making Sega of America more like what Nintendo of America used to be... though remember that one reason that Sega had always had a strong American branch was that the company's founder had actually been an American who had founded the company to import games to Japan. Later Japanese people took on the leadership of the company, but that legacy probably was part of why the branch grew so strong.

Also though, because Sega is out of hardware now, there's less to argue about (just software now, not hardware too...). But overall, I don't know how united Sega is today, or even this decade in general. Presumably more than they were in the mid '90s, though not completely or anything, but I don't know any details. It'd be interesting to know, though, they seem to keep their arguing now a little quieter than it used to be, at least.

Are you kidding? They still have this problem.

... Yeah, far from surprising.

 

[jtb]

Jesus christ, just reading the past couple pages and all the links just reminds me how fucked up the management was at Sega. They could have had it all, and they fucked it up soooo much, all due to petty infighting and one stupid decision after another

 

[Man God]

It's frankly amazing that they were even successful during the early part of the Genesis era. I mean, they still had the crazy infighting with Japan, horrid localization standards, and a number of other issues that had little or next to nothing to do with SOA in general. I guess even a stopped watch is right twice a day though...

Stolar has always come off as quite the dick though.

 

[Tiktaalik]

JParish's 9/9/09 article on the Dreamcast's death I think has some interesting points.

Today, Dreamcast inspires a certain poignance among Sega fans. The system didn't merely bookend the company's hardware legacy; it was a truly remarkable finale. The system's failure seems to have taught the company a lesson that's been taken directly to heart: Catering to the hardcore market is a recipe for failure. The Dreamcast's hardware and software were both designed to appeal to diehard gamers, and while they were quick to support the system (and continue to regard it fondly a decade later), their devotion alone couldn't keep the console afloat.

Major publishers like Sega have decided it's best to leave quirky niche games to quirky niche publishers and focus instead on sure things. There are probably just as many people these days who'd buy a game like Space Channel 5 as there were ten years ago -- but now there are far more people who'll buy Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games.

That, ultimately, is probably Dreamcast's most enduring legacy: To be the bellwether of change. As the first console to build on the PlayStation generation, it was the first entrant into the risky, expensive industry that videogaming was evolving into. Sega did very little wrong with the console's launch save, perhaps, overestimating the receptiveness of the market. That single miscalculation was enough to mark Sega as the last, and biggest, casualty of the console wars.

In many ways the Dreamcast was the ultimate hardcore gaming machine. It's obvious in retrospect that the Dreamcast's games the holiday season the PS2 came out demolished the PS2's lineup, and yet the Dreamcast just couldn't sell fast enough to maintain cash flow. Looking at the PS2, with it's mass market DVD player, and a previous generation of more casually gaming fans, it's clear that they were more appealing to the masses.

I feel I must agree with Jeremy Parish's point here, that long before the Wii arrived on the scene and taught the industry the importance of the audience outside the hardcore, the Dreamcast taught the same lesson, and was an early example that relying too much on the hardcore is not the way to success.

 

[Man God]

The Gameboy was the real set in stone demonstration of that principle but no one really thought to equate that to consoles, at least until Nintendo really tried it for the first time on the console scene with the Wii.

Also I'd argue that the Dreamcast was a continuation of the Saturn's hardcore edge. Most of Saturn's games and marketing was directed at the hardcore Sega fan and the hardware bascially screams out its X-core nature!

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

It's frankly amazing that they were even successful during the early part of the Genesis era. I mean, they still had the crazy infighting with Japan, horrid localization standards, and a number of other issues that had little or next to nothing to do with SOA in general. I guess even a stopped watch is right twice a day though...

Stolar has always come off as quite the dick though.

Well with the Genesis (the beginning of it anyway) Sega of Japan actually let Sega of America do their thing.

 

[∀ Narayan]

Jesus christ, just reading the past couple pages and all the links just reminds me how fucked up the management was at Sega. They could have had it all, and they fucked it up soooo much, all due to petty infighting and one stupid decision after another

Indeed. It's quite baffling.

This thread makes me very sad.

Tired faith all worn and thin
For all we could have done
And all that could have been

 

[Vormund]

Well with the Genesis (the beginning of it anyway) Sega of Japan actually let Sega of America do their thing.

Well wasn't it partly because of the Genesis' success in the US that things started to go sour?

I recall SOJ getting a bit annoyed that they weren't doing as well in their home market.

 

[GillianSeed79]

Sorry to harp on the Saturn launch but holy shit. I was a high school freshman and got a job as a dishwasher to buy that. I nearly lost a finger too. Virtua Fighter, Daytona and Panzer Dragoon were great, but it was like there were 6 games for like 6 months after launch. I remember buying a PS1 out of sheer boredom and never looked back. Imagine buying a console today and there are only 4 games for nearly a year.

 

[ethelred]

High Five!!!!

Umi is the best girl in Magic Knight Rayearth.

Hmm...

Sorry to harp on the Saturn launch but holy shit. I was a high school freshman and got a job as a dishwasher to buy that. I nearly lost a finger too. Virtua Fighter, Daytona and Panzer Dragoon were great, but it was like there were 6 games for like 6 months after launch. I remember buying a PS1 out of sheer boredom and never looked back. Imagine buying a console today and there are only 4 games for nearly a year.

No need to imagine. Nintendo's not going anywhere any time soon.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

I always thought it would be nice if Bernie got another chance at the front of a big game company. If it was going to happen, I think it would have happened by now though. Could you imagine a Nintendo with Bernie doing brand development and trying to build the company a second identity for hardcore gaming?

 

[Phoenix Fang]

This thread makes me really sad.

I used to find it funny how people went about putting the blame on Peter Moore. I'm glad Victor came in here and put some truth into this.

 

[IrishNinja]

aw man, yeah, good point. when sega talk would come up on kotaku, there's a choir of people laying the entire mess at Moore's door. seeing the patterns and mistakes built up over time makes so much more sense than pigeon-holing someone who i dont even think was there for most of the fuckups.

 

[dave_d]

Three years later makes a huge difference. In 1998-1999, most people had dialup. By 2002 or so a lot of people still did, but the switch to cable was happening fast. And note in between the two the PS2 supported both, and initially games weren't broadband-only.

But part of the problem is that it isn't 3 years later. They didn't start releasing a decent volume of online games until late 2000/early 2001. The Xbox was ethernet only and that was late 2001.(Admittedly they didn't really got online for a while but you could use tunnelling software for playing halo.) Plus really they shouldn't have been supporting specific communications hardware at all. I mean you'd expect they'd do things like PC programmers had been doing for years where you write socket code and then it's the TCP/IP stack's job to figure out how to turn that into actual data going out. (And you'd develop that once and just use it in every game that needed that.) Actually most of the games that supported it pretty much came out after the DC was dead which says alot about how well they planned this out.(Although I think Quake 3 supported it and that came out in 2000. Why they didn't use whatever it used in everything I have no idea. You'd think they could grab that one library and use it over and over.)

There is a US web browser with broadband modem support, the Web Browser 3.0. 1.0 and 2.0 are dialup-only as you know, but the rarer 3.0 disc supports the broadband adapter. I'd assume that the broadband modems came with a 3.0 disc, right? Not sure about that, but either way the 3.0 disc has broadband support.

I don't know if they eventually shipped a browser with it but I bought the ethernet adapter as soon as it came out in the US(You could only get it from Sega directly btw) and it came with no software at all. (A bigger FU was announcing a few weeks before PSO and the adapter came out that BTW, no ethernet support. I actually bought it specifically to play PSO. I think they claimed they couldn't support it because they were worried about PPPoE support if they did release it with that functionality so they disabled the setup screen. Good work Sega)


Oh, you didn't mention another about the SoJ/SoA fighting. They cancelled Eternal Champions for the Saturn because SoJ was worried about it stealing sales from Virtua Fighter 2.

 

[Rentahamster]

I found it mind boggling that I had to import most of my Saturn collection to make it worth a damn. Whenever I'd showcase an arcade perfect X-Men vs. Street Fighter (among other good games) people's heads would explode and we'd all wonder why none of these great games were available in the US.

 

[dave_d]

Hmm, found an old r.g.v.s thread where they mention that Sega didn't even write their own stack. (Apparently some company named Access wrote it and they wrote it for the Japanese market.)


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sega/browse_thread/thread/ac2f1d6230081c4b/a2cc4807083f079a?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=phantasy+star+online+pppoe

Actually it mentions SoA did their own and of course you'd have to include a different library and everything and maybe break stuff. (Wow, another case of SoJ and SoA doing their own things and doing stupid stuff. Who'd have guessed?)

 

[Andrew2]

I'll say again, but the only individual that ever mattered when it came to SEGA was Kalinkse, but its sad to say from the time he left SEGA the company have been runned into the ground by the knuckle-heads that came after him.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

Sega did very little wrong with the console's launch save,

No.