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[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Why bother to buy when you own 2/3 of the home console market? They will go to you regardless.

But that's just it; when Sony entered the market, they didn't own any large portion of it. Nintendo and Sega did. So what happened to cause so much of the 3P for the other two, to choose PS1 instead? That doesn't just happen unless the ones who already have the market at the time mess up in monumental ways to make alternatives look suitable.

PS1 was easy to develop and had a major multi billion dollar company backing it, the Saturn was poorly designed to the point where british third party developers like Psygnosis were developing their own commercial dev kits because Sega of Japan was only willing to help developers who wanted to do exclusives, the Nintendo 64 was much easier to code despite still being harder than PS1 and it was easier to show off its capabilities in real time rendering and western developers had a major support with that system.

Eh, some of this is debatable. Generally the Saturn had the hardest time with 3D because it (nor the PS1) did "real" 3D; they faked it, in Saturn's case through textured quads. There's a DF Retro video with Tomb Raider that shows this perfectly, how the Saturn mapped quads in a pseudo-3D space to give the impression of 3D. Basically their Superscaler sprite technology taken to its logical limits.

But was the Saturn really that hard to program for? They did throw in a 2nd VDP late in development, and the same with the CPU. The bus for the CPUs was too narrow for them to both operate simultaneously (not that they did anyway, one was master and other was slave IIRC) and one spent too much time waiting for data from the other. But, Sega did give full documentation of Saturn's specs the same way older consoles did. I just don't think Sega were ready for the challenges shifting to 3D would bring to 3P devs and publishers, and I think they were too narrow-minded to believe 3P wouldn't have an issue with dual processors simply because Sega's own arcade teams were familiar with that programming environment.

The N64, from some of the reading I've done on it over time, I actually don't think it was "that" much easier to develop for versus the Saturn. It had a better (and real) 3D chip, but RAM latency was complete garbage in that thing. No audio processor either, so basically audio had to be ran in real-time and handled like in older systems. Nintendo were also very restrictive with the microcode, and some of the default libraries were apparently pretty lousy. Then there's the limitations of the cartridge format itself; the fact N64 ever got ports of games like RE2 is a miracle.

Yes true PS1 had a multi-billion dollar corporation backing it, but so did the PC-Engine, PC-FX, and 3DO. Companies just as big as Sony at that time (at least in Japan) tried and failed with their consoles, so it was never a guarantee the PS1 was going to succeed just because of Sony's backing. Honestly, I think Sony benefited a lot from having prior working experience with both Nintendo and Sega, and also through their Sony Imagesoft publishing label. They didn't jump into the market raw with a console like Matsushita/Panasonic did. Even if the 3DO Company was formed by Trip Hawkins, it wasn't EA.

And, if PS1 were even somewhere in the ballpark of a failure like the PC-FX, I think we'd of seen Sony pull out of gaming the same way NEC did. Japanese companies weren't and aren't interested in years/decades-long loss-leading strategies for entire divisions just to hopefully pull something through in the end or outlast competitors through huge, deep pockets. That seems to be a distinctly American big corp strategy, at least in tech, among the larger tech companies.

The OG Xbox which also had a multi billion dollar company backing to make the most powerful and easy to code hardware, while the PS2 was the hardest this time but not on Saturn levels, Microsoft managed to get massive support pre-launch compared to the Gamecube, at its launch window, you had games like Max Payne, Silent Hill 2, half of EA Sports and Nascars that were released for the Xbox but not on Gamecube, by 2003 you had third parties dropping out partially or entirely the support for Nintendo's console.

Wait I remember playing a Nascar game on Gamecube xD. Maybe post-2004 those stopped coming to Gamecube but I definitely remember playing a Nascar game on that system back then.

When it comes to Xbox and Gamecube in terms of power, I'm actually surprised with a few things because it's not as clear-cut as I'd of normally though. There are some areas where Gamecube has an obvious advantage in, I believe polygon count is one of them. Generally though both were more powerful than PS2, though PS2 had an advantage with particle fillrate.

And for the organic thing: Back then it was easier to develop a AAA game in just 1/1,5 years that would lead to an acquisition following some titles, and some studios take very long or don't want to be acquired at all, it took Sony 20 years to acquire Insomniac, games nowadays take 5+ years which means it would take multiple generations to consider into an acquistion.

Mostly true, but even so, back in 4th-gen/5th-gen we still didn't see that many acquisitions among platform holders. These Sega documents have also been a bit eye-opening for me because we see that acquisitions were a part of their plans to get things stabilized and going well again...that shows me a strong parallel between the intent of acquisitions Sega had, and that Microsoft have been doing (and are trying to continue to do) for gaming.

These aren't the types of acquisitions (or mergers, in the case of when Sega tried merging with Bandai) done from positions of strength and market confidence. They really are akin to last resorts to try injecting a line of life into otherwise failing gaming organizations. When Sony acquired Psygnosis, you can argue it was for a somewhat similar purpose except, it coincided with PlayStation's start altogether. There was nothing "struggling or failing" prior to that, in terms of a gaming platform. As for Sony acquiring Insomniac, that one feels like it was done to both consummate a long-term partnership, and to protect a valued developer asset from being acquired by a direct competitor. There wasn't a massive revenue stream or IP add that came with acquiring Insomniac outside of the revenue they already generated working on exclusives for Sony, with IP Sony themselves lent them.

That was, hands down, a talent acquisition, so intent to stimulate a shrinking gaming unit isn't present like it's been with Microsoft's publisher acquisitions, or with some of the acquisitions Sega seemed to be entertaining. I am not trying to say or insinuate, though, that acquisitions with intentions like those of Microsoft's are inherently bad. However this brings into question "to what degree" do they need to be pursued and, well, in Microsoft's case they have some very strongly combative/potentially anticompetitive motivations behind their gaming acquisition strategy that go well beyond just wanting to boost up their gaming division.

I'll stop there, though, because this isn't necessarily about Microsoft. I did just want to explore the similarities in (at least some) motivating factors behind the acquisition ideas (and actions) between Sega and Microsoft all these decades apart. It's fascinating in a way, how aspects of history repeat themselves.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Oh ya, I forgot about Rare and KI. Maybe they had some other games too (I was thinking about their 1980s days).

I didn't have a Saturn, but the sounds of what I read it was a machine good for 2D fighters, 2D shooters and JRPGs. That's great for the Japanese market, but other regions like action games, sports, racers (at the time when racing games really picked up as a showcase game for any system).

As for Model 2 to Saturn, ya the gap was so big the Satrun version looked bad. Daytona is a great example. But what they should had done is adjust the home versions more. It sounds like many of their arcade ports didn't add a lot of extra content. Maybe if Daytona dropped from 40 cars to 20 it would had helped.

Then again, maybe the system was so difficult to develop for it didnt really matter and it was destined to be a tough slog no matter what. Maybe no matter how good some arcade ports were on a modest Saturn machine, people were just sick of arcadey home ports. And they'd rather try out Gran Turismo which is a total 180 vs the typical Sega racer.

Edit: I forgot CDX too.

I have one caveat to this: people weren't sick of arcade ports by 5th gen. Far from it. In fact you mention a suggestion that Sega should've done, that many on PS1 did. Tekken and Ridge Racer were big early hits for PS1, both were arcade ports. The Street Fighter Alpha games were quite popular; also arcade ports. A lot of the PS1's best games are actually arcade ports or sequels to arcade ports that stick closely to the originals in heritage, like Strider 2.

What many of those games did well, though, was doing exactly as you said: adding a ton of more content for the home version to make the port worthwhile. Namco were great that that, Capcom eventually became great at it too when looking at the port for SFA 3 for example. Sega...were not great at this. Outside of exceptions like Time Warner's Virtua Racing port (which was done by a 3P dev), often times when Sega ported arcade games to Saturn, you didn't get any extra content. Just the same content as the arcade version with maybe a "Saturn Mode" that gave a few different rule implementations like unlimited continues, more extra lives, and an arranged OST.

But outside of that, a lot of their Saturn arcade ports were pretty barren. That I think hurt public perception, it's probably one of the reasons otherwise great games like Sega Rally sold poorly in NA. Why spend $50 for a game you could rent for a weekend and play through the whole way, even if you can't necessarily master the mechanics?

The question always was "who's gonna develop software for it?" - you don't sell hardware just because it can play games from years ago, without new titles to promote alongside the console it will quickly be forgotten.

Maybe in some way Sega thought some of their 1P could continue to support Genesis/MegaDrive longer with more 1P content, and the Nomad would've acted as a format choice in their ecosystem to access the content, if they wanted something portable. Nothing wrong with that in concept, it's just that Sega didn't have the 1P spread to do that AND support arcades AND Saturn with worthwhile content, and 3P were becoming disinterested in making 2D games. If they were still making 2D games, they didn't want to worry about optimizing them for older 16-bit technology.

So perhaps practicality-wise, there wasn't going to be much for Nomad outside of what Genesis games were already on the market by that time. Tech was evolving rapidly in gaming during that era. The rate of tech evolution has slowed significantly since then, and we reached levels in gaming I'd say last gen, where you have hardware generally "good enough" for a lot of the more modest 3D games on the market (and virtually anything 2D), even some of the best 3D games when you're talking about very skilled developers who can optimize like crazy.

That's part of the reason I think, for example, Sony doing a PS4 Portable would do a lot better in the market than Sega doing Nomad. That, plus other factors like PS5 being BC with PS4, PS4 just having a much larger install base and software library than Genesis/MegaDrive ever had, the gaming market being larger in general today, acceptance of portable gaming being massive compared to back in the '90s, etc.

 

[Dane]

But that's just it; when Sony entered the market, they didn't own any large portion of it. Nintendo and Sega did. So what happened to cause so much of the 3P for the other two, to choose PS1 instead? That doesn't just happen unless the ones who already have the market at the time mess up in monumental ways to make alternatives look suitable.

Basically its how console generations races work, its more about your competitor screwing up rather than you surpassing it, imagine an F1 or whatever car race where your oponents crash through instead of passing through the finish line. Xbox One downfall was mostly on its disastrous reveal that made millions of 360 owners dropping out.

But was the Saturn really that hard to program for? They did throw in a 2nd VDP late in development, and the same with the CPU. The bus for the CPUs was too narrow for them to both operate simultaneously (not that they did anyway, one was master and other was slave IIRC) and one spent too much time waiting for data from the other. But, Sega did give full documentation of Saturn's specs the same way older consoles did. I just don't think Sega were ready for the challenges shifting to 3D would bring to 3P devs and publishers, and I think they were too narrow-minded to believe 3P wouldn't have an issue with dual processors simply because Sega's own arcade teams were familiar with that programming environment.

The N64, from some of the reading I've done on it over time, I actually don't think it was "that" much easier to develop for versus the Saturn. It had a better (and real) 3D chip, but RAM latency was complete garbage in that thing. No audio processor either, so basically audio had to be ran in real-time and handled like in older systems. Nintendo were also very restrictive with the microcode, and some of the default libraries were apparently pretty lousy. Then there's the limitations of the cartridge format itself; the fact N64 ever got ports of games like RE2 is a miracle.

Yes true PS1 had a multi-billion dollar corporation backing it, but so did the PC-Engine, PC-FX, and 3DO. Companies just as big as Sony at that time (at least in Japan) tried and failed with their consoles, so it was never a guarantee the PS1 was going to succeed just because of Sony's backing. Honestly, I think Sony benefited a lot from having prior working experience with both Nintendo and Sega, and also through their Sony Imagesoft publishing label. They didn't jump into the market raw with a console like Matsushita/Panasonic did. Even if the 3DO Company was formed by Trip Hawkins, it wasn't EA.

The Saturn was way harder, the design was a monstruosity that technically was just a bit more powerful than the PS1, due to its multiple processors and CPUs, especially with the latter, it was a pain in the ass that required entirely assembly coding, Sega of Japan didn't bother to make a good support except for third party exclusives, they were akwardly wary of multiplatform developers.

The N64 had two issues outside of the cartridge, lack of audio processor and a very small texture cache, but it was very more powerful and easier to developers than the Saturn, also Z-buffer. Some developers like Acclaim and Midway really did superior versions on it, Rush is an example.

3DO wasn't exactly a billionarie company at all, they had backings with major multi billion companies to manufacture their own consoles and sell in their countries (Goldstar, Matsushita, Panasonic), the entire pricing thing was decided by 3DO company to have customers footing the bill while developers only had to pay a symbolic value to develop and publish, that's why it was $699, and it went pretty far on support and even sales wise at 2 million dollars while being multiple times more expensive than Genesis and SNES. PC Engine actually did decent numbers in Japan and outsold the Genesis, but their irrational lack of support with USA and no official release in Europe is what killed it, PC-FX was an entushiast beast that was too expensive and Japan only.

Wait I remember playing a Nascar game on Gamecube xD. Maybe post-2004 those stopped coming to Gamecube but I definitely remember playing a Nascar game on that system back then.

When it comes to Xbox and Gamecube in terms of power, I'm actually surprised with a few things because it's not as clear-cut as I'd of normally though. There are some areas where Gamecube has an obvious advantage in, I believe polygon count is one of them. Generally though both were more powerful than PS2, though PS2 had an advantage with particle fillrate.

EA released the missing games in the follow ups for Gamecube, but even one Nascar got cancelled, NCAA dropped out after 2004, and NHL after 2005. Sega had dropped out 2K brand for the console in 2003 after paltry sales, while Xbox versions were selling twice the units.

These aren't the types of acquisitions (or mergers, in the case of when Sega tried merging with Bandai) done from positions of strength and market confidence. They really are akin to last resorts to try injecting a line of life into otherwise failing gaming organizations. When Sony acquired Psygnosis, you can argue it was for a somewhat similar purpose except, it coincided with PlayStation's start altogether. There was nothing "struggling or failing" prior to that, in terms of a gaming platform. As for Sony acquiring Insomniac, that one feels like it was done to both consummate a long-term partnership, and to protect a valued developer asset from being acquired by a direct competitor. There wasn't a massive revenue stream or IP add that came with acquiring Insomniac outside of the revenue they already generated working on exclusives for Sony, with IP Sony themselves lent them.

That was, hands down, a talent acquisition, so intent to stimulate a shrinking gaming unit isn't present like it's been with Microsoft's publisher acquisitions, or with some of the acquisitions Sega seemed to be entertaining. I am not trying to say or insinuate, though, that acquisitions with intentions like those of Microsoft's are inherently bad. However this brings into question "to what degree" do they need to be pursued and, well, in Microsoft's case they have some very strongly combative/potentially anticompetitive motivations behind their gaming acquisition strategy that go well beyond just wanting to boost up their gaming division.

Sony doesn't need to make massive moves because they're in a leadership position, and just with the fact that Microsoft was filling up their first party in 2018 after years of closures and just 4 studios under it, they bought Insomniac, then MS bought Zenimax and Sony bought Bungie, in the meantime Sony talked to every developer and attempted to make Starfield exclusive after snagging Ghostwire and Deathloop, and made FF16 exclusive despite FF13 and 15 selling well on Xbox. Microsoft saw the opporunity to acquire ABK and keep CoD on the same way as it happens with Minecraft, as a revenue stream than having it exclusive.

 

[Fatal Chuck Yeager]

But that's just it; when Sony entered the market, they didn't own any large portion of it. Nintendo and Sega did. So what happened to cause so much of the 3P for the other two, to choose PS1 instead?

The reason is because many of those 3P were on or were working on releases for the 3DO and/or the M2, and the natural progression in environment, flexibility, and least cost after that was the PS1. Why would these games choose the Saturn or N64 given how those consoles were run, their environments, how they worked with third parties, the costs involved, the availability and lack of hiding or lack of transparency on tools and other set backs? You even had the previous consoles to go buy, 3DO opened the dev friendly door and Sony filled up the house.

Also PC-Engine didn't fail.

But was the Saturn really that hard to program for? They did throw in a 2nd VDP late in development, and the same with the CPU. The bus for the CPUs was too narrow for them to both operate simultaneously (not that they did anyway, one was master and other was slave IIRC) and one spent too much time waiting for data from the other. But, Sega did give full documentation of Saturn's specs the same way older consoles did. I just don't think Sega were ready for the challenges shifting to 3D would bring to 3P devs and publishers, and I think they were too narrow-minded to believe.

The fact Saturn has many of the same or similar flaws as the jaguar DESPITE having documentation transparency makes it pretty self-explanatory that yes, it was really hard to program for.

I would use the term inefficient over "hard" however. Since it wasn't that devs couldn't figure it out, it was that they couldn't find a quick or efficient solution that wouldn't force them to climb a bunch of other hurdles to get the same results they could get elsewhere.

I have one caveat to this: people weren't sick of arcade ports by 5th gen. Far from it. In fact you mention a suggestion that Sega should've done, that many on PS1 did. Tekken and Ridge Racer were big early hits for PS1, both were arcade ports. The Street Fighter Alpha games were quite popular; also arcade ports. A lot of the PS1's best games are actually arcade ports or sequels to arcade ports that stick closely to the originals in heritage, like Strider 2.

People weren't sick of arcade ports to an extent, but it's also undeniable that they weren't reaching out as far as they used too and some early games did well only because of the novelty of 3D being new for home gaming consoles.

Ridge Racer one did well but it was a launch game, and it wasn't a game that would sell 1M in one region by itself and selling several million WW. Tekken didn't start out like that either but starting with Tekken 2 they improved the 3D rode the wave of texture models, effects, and FMV and there wasn't any competition worth their salt on the platform at the time of its release giving it all the glory and leading to the success of Tekken 3.

If not mistaken each Ridge Racer did worse each entry in chronological order except for Rage Racer which from what I recall did worse than 4. Need for Speed ended up being the dominant mutli-million selling racing game after it left the 3DO along with of course, Turismo.

Other arcade ports were not doing so hot, some did well critically but they weren't selling like they were on the previous consoles.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Basically its how console generations races work, its more about your competitor screwing up rather than you surpassing it, imagine an F1 or whatever car race where your oponents crash through instead of passing through the finish line. Xbox One downfall was mostly on its disastrous reveal that made millions of 360 owners dropping out.

Eh, I'd say it's a bit of both. Yes the "winner" of a gen does owe some of that to competitors screwing up, but if the winner doesn't provide something of value themselves, they don't simply win by default. If that were the case, the 3DO or Jaguar would've done much better since Saturn/PS1/N64 weren't even out yet nor was there much known about any of them. So in the 32/64-bit market of '93, you'd think one of them would have just "done way better" if the other screwed up.

Neither did, though, so most still went to Nintendo and Sega. That still means Nintendo & Sega had to provide a lot of quality and value to customers; if they were just as crap as Jaguar & 3DO, they would've cratered, too.

So with XBO, yes the terrible reveal was part of it, but also a lot of hardcore/core 360 gamers started picking up PS3 following 2009 as MS 1P/3P exclusives stopped focusing towards that crowd and more towards the casuals with Kinect, or just turning into the same games for their Big 3 IP (Halo, Gears, Forza). Sony had to still provide lots of 1P quality and variety to attract those gamers, otherwise they might've still stayed with 360, or gone to PC, and PS3 would've never been able to restore its brand image among gamers if Sony didn't step up to the plate.

It's always a combination of a winner screwing up and a competitor actually providing what people are looking for, that's how we get those shifts.

The Saturn was way harder, the design was a monstruosity that technically was just a bit more powerful than the PS1, due to its multiple processors and CPUs, especially with the latter, it was a pain in the ass that required entirely assembly coding, Sega of Japan didn't bother to make a good support except for third party exclusives, they were akwardly wary of multiplatform developers.

Saturn didn't "require" assembly-only programming. It's just if you wanted the best results, you needed at least some parts to be programmed in assembly language. That was also the case with a lot of PS1's most technically impressive games, too. However, Sony offered better tools and support, and it was easier to do assembly on PS1 than on Saturn because of the way the systems were designed.

I would also say, SoJ did try offering great dev support, that's what the SGL (Sega Graphics Library) was for. It simply took them too long to help 3P get up to speed because the SGL 1.0 wasn't even ready until around mid-1995 IIRC. That meant first-generation Saturn software couldn't leverage it. Sony had tools for 3P at least from early 1994 to help them get used to PS1 development.

Agreed on SoJ seemingly being wary with extending early support to 3P the way Sony did, though. Although that wasn't just a Sega issue; Nintendo were just like it, maybe even more so. Companies like Nintendo and Sega felt 3P making games on their systems was a privilege for the 3P, so you can argue to some extent they took them for granted. Sony didn't nor were they in a position to take 3P for granted.

The N64 had two issues outside of the cartridge, lack of audio processor and a very small texture cache, but it was very more powerful and easier to developers than the Saturn, also Z-buffer. Some developers like Acclaim and Midway really did superior versions on it, Rush is an example.

I don't think San Francisco Rush got any Saturn versions, though. There were PS1 ones however.

And yes true N64 having Z-buffer for 3D made it easier for that than Saturn (and PlayStation), but the cartridge situation really hamstrung that system. They weren't even expandable with coprocessors the way the SNES cart system was designed, partly I would assume because the N64's 3D chip wasn't really Nintendo's design, but Silicon Graphic's. And, I guess with the increased size of N64 games and cost of ROM chips not dropping heavily that gen the way RAM chips did (assuming, here), being contributors.

Plus I don't think it would've been easy for Nintendo to get Silicon Graphics to design a 3D coprocessor chip for cartridges.

3DO wasn't exactly a billionarie company at all, they had backings with major multi billion companies to manufacture their own consoles and sell in their countries (Goldstar, Matsushita, Panasonic), the entire pricing thing was decided by 3DO company to have customers footing the bill while developers only had to pay a symbolic value to develop and publish, that's why it was $699, and it went pretty far on support and even sales wise at 2 million dollars while being multiple times more expensive than Genesis and SNES. PC Engine actually did decent numbers in Japan and outsold the Genesis, but their irrational lack of support with USA and no official release in Europe is what killed it, PC-FX was an entushiast beast that was too expensive and Japan only.

I would've said time ago that your idea as to PC-Engine's Western failure was true, but there's a documentary video on Youtube channel CreativeCatProductions that has an excellent analysis on the PC-Engine's sales in both Japan and the West. Just to summarize: a lot of the info most people have on PC-Engine in the West comes from a single article from 2014. Most of the talking points people have about the PC-Engine & Turbographx-16 come from that article, but definitive reasons to why the TG-16 failed in the West, or what happened to sales in Japan, aren't in that article.

However, the CCP video does some great theorizing to conclude that most of PC-Engine's Japanese sales were thanks to the Japanese economic boom of the late '80s, and its sales growth slowed significantly a year after Super Famicom released in Japan. PC-Engine (sans Duo) sales totaled 6 million, while MegaDrive's totaled 3.58 million, or 1.67:1 ratio. SFC sales reached > 17 million in Japan, so > 2:1 ratio for that system over PC-Engine. But the thing is, the sales amounts steadily dropped down for both PC-Engine and MegaDrive in Japan shortly after SFC released, and the PC-Engine did have an extra year head-start over the MegaDrive as well. If you removed that you'd have numbers closer to 5.4 million to 3.58 million.

What seemed to really kill the PC-Engine in the West was a terrible pricing strategy with tons of add-ons for basic features the Genesis & SNES came with out of the box, along with a weak software release schedule at the times that mattered against new Genesis & SNES releases in the same timeframes. NEC did all of those peripherals because with the contract arrangement, they made little to no money off software sales (Hudson did), so NEC had to sell extra hardware to make a profit off the system. They produced way too many Turbographx-16 systems early on and were stuck with a glut of surplus in warehouses no one wanted to buy.

That's why they started up the direct mail-order group, had to try pushing systems through QVC late-night programs, etc. I imagine they basically went through what we now know Sega of America went through only a few years later with Genesis/32X/CD/Pico/Saturn surpluses that retailers didn't want to order and customers weren't buying in large amounts when retailers did order them.

PC-FX...I wouldn't say that was an enthusiast beast at all. It was an extremely niche system that appealed to otakus, but not much else. They neglected genres the PC-Engine was strong at, and neglected doing a lot of actual 2D games for it, too. That's why games like Zenki are so rare on the system. I'd say the real enthusiast beast that gen was the Saturn; lots of great 2D games (including many instances of superior 2D games vs. PS1), big focus on fighters, shmups, 2D action games, and a healthy amount of 2D JRPGs and puzzle games, while also allowing for Video-CD support, karaoke, online gaming (Netlink) etc.

The PC-FX offered none of those qualities, that's why it was quickly forgotten.

EA released the missing games in the follow ups for Gamecube, but even one Nascar got cancelled, NCAA dropped out after 2004, and NHL after 2005. Sega had dropped out 2K brand for the console in 2003 after paltry sales, while Xbox versions were selling twice the units.

Yeah, all true. Sports games just did horribly on GameCube as a whole; the fact OG Xbox had XBL for online while Nintendo's online was basically for show, only hurt GameCube further.

Sony doesn't need to make massive moves because they're in a leadership position, and just with the fact that Microsoft was filling up their first party in 2018 after years of closures and just 4 studios under it, they bought Insomniac, then MS bought Zenimax and Sony bought Bungie, in the meantime Sony talked to every developer and attempted to make Starfield exclusive after snagging Ghostwire and Deathloop, and made FF16 exclusive despite FF13 and 15 selling well on Xbox. Microsoft saw the opporunity to acquire ABK and keep CoD on the same way as it happens with Minecraft, as a revenue stream than having it exclusive.

Some of what you're saying here is simply not true, or was not substantiated. Sony talked to "every developer" and yet the amount of actual 3P exclusives they have is minuscule compared to 3P multiplats. If that rumor were ever true, we would've seen a lot of other Japanese 3P exclusives (timed or not) for PS5 console-wise, so I think that alone shows the rumor to have been false. If anything, Sony did a lot of talking for marketing deals, and of course they would leverage their position in the market for those deals; they've earned that position, and it's attractive to 3P publishers who'd like a platform holder to help in promoting their games to boost B2P sales revenue.

The whole thing about Sony & Starfield is again just a rumor, but even if that rumor were true, Microsoft acquiring the entire publisher is not a justified response. I'm not saying there were NO justified reasons for acquiring Zenimax; just that one of those being chiefly driven by fears of a timed 3P exclusivity of Starfield with Sony does not make for a sound one. Again, nothing prevents Microsoft from trying these sort of deals; they did them with the 360 and even with the OG Xbox, so their position in the market isn't necessarily a barrier, even if Sony pays less for those deals due to PS install base and brand strength.

I also wouldn't say FF XIII or XV "sold well" on Xbox; they did okay, but nothing that couldn't be replaced with further expansion on PlayStation, PC and potentially the next Nintendo system if it's up to par tech-wise. Even if they sold extremely well on Xbox...ultimately who cares? Fallout 4 and Skyrim sold very well on PlayStation consoles, but now Starfield and TES VI are skipping Sony's platforms. 3P exclusivity (whether with fully independent 3P entities or acquired 3P who are limited-integrated into a platform holder's gaming division) is simply something that exists, and has existed well before MS or even Sony stepped into the industry. It's a way of differentiating your product, and customers of an IP on one platform are not necessarily entitled to future installments of that IP on that platform so should exclusivity change that, or an acquisition for that matter.

While I would like to believe you that MS would treat COD as they do Minecraft, the truth is we have proof now that MS didn't even want Minecraft to be multiplat, and were forced into that deal. We have proof that they are making all or at least majority of future Zenimax games console-exclusive to Xbox (as is their right, though there are obvious cases where games they otherwise said wouldn't be exclusive are now in fact becoming exclusive), we have proof they don't mind full foreclosure strategies even if it's revenue left on the table, since gaming revenue means so little to them as a company.

So MS "treating COD like they do Minecraft" has a 50:50 chance of even happening, and I personally would not count on it.

 

[Dane]

The whole thing about Sony & Starfield is again just a rumor, but even if that rumor were true, Microsoft acquiring the entire publisher is not a justified response. I'm not saying there were NO justified reasons for acquiring Zenimax; just that one of those being chiefly driven by fears of a timed 3P exclusivity of Starfield with Sony does not make for a sound one. Again, nothing prevents Microsoft from trying these sort of deals; they did them with the 360 and even with the OG Xbox, so their position in the market isn't necessarily a barrier, even if Sony pays less for those deals due to PS install base and brand strength.

Fun fact: Microsoft wanted to buy Zenimax for years, the roadblock was Robert Trump who was one of the biggest shareholders and refused it, the suspicion is that he architectured the exclusivity of Ghostwire and Deathloop to offset risks as Pete mentioned in the trial, but also to kill any attempts by Microsoft to acquire them despite all these years of close partnership. Redfall was always going to be a disaster in the making because people were leaving left and right after the comapany forced a GaaS policty because their singleplayer games didn't sell well, this included their effort with Save Player One at E3 2017. Starfield exclusivity was not a on the air rumor, but something that was in the talks and Imran Khan (the journo who made the claim) was informed of it.

I also wouldn't say FF XIII or XV "sold well" on Xbox; they did okay, but nothing that couldn't be replaced with further expansion on PlayStation, PC and potentially the next Nintendo system if it's up to par tech-wise. Even if they sold extremely well on Xbox...ultimately who cares? Fallout 4 and Skyrim sold very well on PlayStation consoles, but now Starfield and TES VI are skipping Sony's platforms. 3P exclusivity (whether with fully independent 3P entities or acquired 3P who are limited-integrated into a platform holder's gaming division) is simply something that exists, and has existed well before MS or even Sony stepped into the industry. It's a way of differentiating your product, and customers of an IP on one platform are not necessarily entitled to future installments of that IP on that platform so should exclusivity change that, or an acquisition for that matter.

While I would like to believe you that MS would treat COD as they do Minecraft, the truth is we have proof now that MS didn't even want Minecraft to be multiplat, and were forced into that deal. We have proof that they are making all or at least majority of future Zenimax games console-exclusive to Xbox (as is their right, though there are obvious cases where games they otherwise said wouldn't be exclusive are now in fact becoming exclusive), we have proof they don't mind full foreclosure strategies even if it's revenue left on the table, since gaming revenue means so little to them as a company.

So MS "treating COD like they do Minecraft" has a 50:50 chance of even happening, and I personally would not count on it.

That means is not a problem for Microsoft to foreclose COD because it is what it is, they can replace that with further expansion of Xbox and their ecosystem. Even in the disclosed emails it shows right on that they were still making COD multiplatform regardless of a contract or not because it worked with Minecraft even if they had early opposition with it back in 2014, and they are offering as contracts as a safeguard to be enforced if there's any doubt.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Fun fact: Microsoft wanted to buy Zenimax for years, the roadblock was Robert Trump who was one of the biggest shareholders and refused it, the suspicion is that he architectured the exclusivity of Ghostwire and Deathloop to offset risks as Pete mentioned in the trial, but also to kill any attempts by Microsoft to acquire them despite all these years of close partnership. Redfall was always going to be a disaster in the making because people were leaving left and right after the comapany forced a GaaS policty because their singleplayer games didn't sell well, this included their effort with Save Player One at E3 2017. Starfield exclusivity was not a on the air rumor, but something that was in the talks and Imran Khan (the journo who made the claim) was informed of it.

OK, supposing that's all true...what concerns did Robert Trump have, then, in MS acquiring Zenimax? Did he perhaps have an inclination that MS would foreclose future Zenimax content on profitable platforms like PlayStation? Did he not like Microsoft's gaming upper management and the troubles the division had been having for years, as possible other reasons of being against that acquisition? He had to have his reason just as Microsoft had theirs in wanting to acquire Zenimax.

Again, the Starfield rumor doesn't have much to substantiate it, and Imran has been wrong with a lot of things, like Sony supposed "approaching every 3P for exclusivity deals back in 2020", because from the results we see today, that wasn't true. Even if Sony wanted timed exclusivity on Starfield, again that doesn't inherently justify acquiring Zenimax in and of itself, though it could've been a motivating factor, especially if they were trying to acquire them years earlier.

That means is not a problem for Microsoft to foreclose COD because it is what it is, they can replace that with further expansion of Xbox and their ecosystem. Even in the disclosed emails it shows right on that they were still making COD multiplatform regardless of a contract or not because it worked with Minecraft even if they had early opposition with it back in 2014, and they are offering as contracts as a safeguard to be enforced if there's any doubt.

Access to the IP itself is probably only one component to this and I'd suspect the concern for platform holders like Sony, is that a direct competitor in the gaming space is assuming ownership of that content. So not only does that mean MS set the terms for COD on PlayStation, but also is present every step of the way WRT Sony. To Sony, it makes MS come off like an overbearing security guard who never leaves the room, because the security guard also happens to be the record label owner of that same artist (the 3P publisher).

That has many implications for a competitor like Sony in terms of being able to communicate with and work with 3P devs/pubs who come under ownership by their direct competitor in the same market; compared to that, having that content released on their platform is the lesser of things. At any time, the owner of that content can stipulate terms that squeeze the platform holder out of software profit margins, MTX/DLC profit margins, misc. profit margins etc. that basically make them bleed money to continue providing that same content to their customers (who are, by extension, customers within the wider market). And a smaller competitor can't sustain that type of squeeze long-term, when the company putting that squeeze on them is magnitudes larger and non-reliant on their gaming revenue.

This doesn't even begin to touch on how this would look to other 3P publishers, who might try forcing a platform holder like Sony into similar terms, and squeeze them similarly, taking from Microsoft's example. And we know such direction is what Microsoft want, because they want to completely sidestep Apple and Google's ecosystems on their own devices, and that's for a larger mobile market. There's little chance Microsoft would want to tolerate terms & conditions that give a smaller competitor like Sony comfortable breathing room in the long-term, and they can use content like ABK's to leverage situations to their utmost advantage.

Incidentally, a lot of these things serve as points of anticompetitive concerns that can affect both competitors and customers (customers of a competitor are still customers in the market itself, after all). But, I think we're maybe diverting the topic too much to Microsoft here; we're in territory now where there's not too much correlation to these Sega documents so maybe we could continue the topic in messages if you're interested in doing that, or if there's a more appropriate thread where the topic can be had.

The reason is because many of those 3P were on or were working on releases for the 3DO and/or the M2, and the natural progression in environment, flexibility, and least cost after that was the PS1. Why would these games choose the Saturn or N64 given how those consoles were run, their environments, how they worked with third parties, the costs involved, the availability and lack of hiding or lack of transparency on tools and other set backs? You even had the previous consoles to go buy, 3DO opened the dev friendly door and Sony filled up the house.

There were many devs who completely skipped the 3DO, though, or only gave it passing support. Konami, incidentally, was one of them. Capcom only gave them a SFII port and maybe some other game, nothing else beyond that. I don't remember Data East doing anything for the platform, or Acclaim, or even Ocean. Tecmo, Squaresoft, Enix, Jaleco, Namco...nothing for 3DO. I don't even think these companies (or most of them) had plans for the 3DO.

So effectively, a lot were still squarely focused on Nintendo/Sega, or PC microcomputer scene. The PS1 did expand on quite a few of the business model ideas the 3DO did (and did them better), but I'd say Sony's were just incidentally leaning into that direction, they didn't wholesale wait for 3DO or adapt its strategies while changing aspects about them. Sony's closest pools of inspiration were Nintendo and Sega when it came to understanding the console business model at that time; I think both them and Trip Hawkins/3DO felt that model had many weaknesses, and they simultaneously pursued changes to that model.

Sony's approach happened to be what was better for the market at the time, it didn't completely discard aspects of the traditional model which worked, that was 3DO's biggest mistake IMO.

Also PC-Engine didn't fail.

Not necessarily. It did decently in Japan, at least hardware-wise, but I don't think software sales were that much better for it there than the MegaDrive. It as a platform began to slow down a lot shortly after the Super Famicom came out, though, so it was never like, say, how it was between Saturn & PS1 in Japan where things were somewhat close the first year or two.

SFC just came out and immediately pulled ahead momentum-wise.

The fact Saturn has many of the same or similar flaws as the jaguar DESPITE having documentation transparency makes it pretty self-explanatory that yes, it was really hard to program for.

Can agree with this mostly. However, Jaguar had an actual critical hardware flaw with unfinished registries which among other things, limited RAM access. There were aspects of its design which Atari did not foresee or plan occurring whatsoever.

Saturn had its challenges for sure; however even with the redesign, SoJ at least knew what they were designing was going to work as intended, and it didn't have some critical design failure. It was just not a particularly efficiently-architected system, and had poor SDK support for a while.

I would use the term inefficient over "hard" however. Since it wasn't that devs couldn't figure it out, it was that they couldn't find a quick or efficient solution that wouldn't force them to climb a bunch of other hurdles to get the same results they could get elsewhere.

Yes, exactly.

People weren't sick of arcade ports to an extent, but it's also undeniable that they weren't reaching out as far as they used too and some early games did well only because of the novelty of 3D being new for home gaming consoles.

I guess I can see where you're coming from with this POV, and I think it's agreeable.

Ridge Racer one did well but it was a launch game, and it wasn't a game that would sell 1M in one region by itself and selling several million WW. Tekken didn't start out like that either but starting with Tekken 2 they improved the 3D rode the wave of texture models, effects, and FMV and there wasn't any competition worth their salt on the platform at the time of its release giving it all the glory and leading to the success of Tekken 3.

If not mistaken each Ridge Racer did worse each entry in chronological order except for Rage Racer which from what I recall did worse than 4. Need for Speed ended up being the dominant mutli-million selling racing game after it left the 3DO along with of course, Turismo.

True RR was a launch game but also true there weren't a lot of games in the industry at the time that could do 1 million in a single region, either. And that includes games that weren't arcade ports, too. Tekken is a good example of an arcade game giving home players more to do vs. the arcade version; that and being visually indistinguishable from the arcade port helped a lot. I'd agree that it benefited too from lack of competition, though I think games like Tobal and Tobal 2 especially were high-quality and at least offered competition in terms of quality and amount of content (Tobal 2 had way more content than Tekken 2, technically).

Other arcade ports were not doing so hot, some did well critically but they weren't selling like they were on the previous consoles.

Eh, I think that might still depend on specific games, and it's not like many arcade ports on SNES & Genesis did massive numbers themselves. Can arguably say the SF Alpha games did worst than SFII did on SNES, but SFII on SNES was itself an anomaly for its generation; the average 2D fighter sold significantly less (and earned less arcade revenue), and I'd say the SFA ports to PS1 & Saturn sold better than a good chunk of 2D fighters on 4th-gen systems.

 

[cartman414]

For all intents and purposes the Sega Saturn should have remained a Japanese exclusive like the Sharp X68000 before it... by the time it released all it was, was a suped up Neo Geo at an affordable price, when the market demanded more than just flashy 2d sprites...it's like the whole Saturn project was stuck to what it would have been like for a 1992 release as opposed to 1995...also as add-ons go I don't think the Sega CD was a complete disaster considering add-ons don't tend to sell that well anyway....but having video playback quality than what you would watch on your TV and VHS didn't help matters.....you want an FMV game? Don't do it on the Saturn, as even the CD-i has better playback for video for the time...

Only if they could have ported the Saturn titles would I approve.

 

[Silent Viper]

I want more game companies to sue each other. So we get more juicy info

 

[Hudo]

Oh bruh! This is LITERALLY THE SAME SONY OF TODAY. Can't you all see that Sony is using the same playbook 30 years later against Microsoft. It's amazing to see even. Reading some of these Sega docs.......just switch out the word "Sega" with "Microsoft" and it would read like something that was said at the FTC vs. Microsoft court case.

Bold of you to say it like this on a Sony board.

EDIT: Not a Sony board.

 

[cartman414]

Bold of you to say it like this on a Sony board.

Since when was this a Sony board?

 

[SkylineRKR]

The Sega fuckups have been well documented. This is good stuff, but most of it was already guessed right. Sega's hardware, past decisions, 3P relations all lead to its downfall. And they simply weren't big enough. Nintendo could barely hang on since N64 too, they peaced out of the spec wars soon after GC. Sega was smaller and had less revenues than Nintendo.

Sony wasn't a guarantee for success, but they clearly did their homework. Their system was easy to develop for, they actively went out to court third parties, the price was right, and yes they had some advantage because they already published a myriad of games and even tried to get into the market with Nintendo.

They saw what not to do, thanks to Philips, Panasonic etc. And another advantage was that they weren't in a bubble like Sega and Nintendo were. Their business were operated by ancient strategies, they designed their systems in a vacuum and their whole way of publishing, assisting third parties and target audiences was old fashioned too. You can clearly see the Saturn and N64 were conjured up in a bubble too as both did nothing to encourage third parties. It was easy for Sony to push these 2 aside by simply targeting a much bigger audience and being present anywhere Sega and Nintendo weren't.

 

[Ozzie666]

Nowhere in any of these documents do I see any urgency or priority from Sega for releasing a console with great development kit/libraries until it was too late. Sony changed the game and made it so almost any company would make PS1 games. Nintendo and Sega felt coders should prove themselves with assembly and know how, navigating multiple chips etc. N64 was notorious for micro-code, and they dream team. Sega with the multiple chips at work. It was a change in philosophy for sure. Yes, games in C weren't the best and you needed some assembly to get more out of any system. 28 years later, and we are still going. Sony treated third party developers like royalty compared to previous generations.

In 2006 Sony forgot everything it learned with the PS3, and it nearly killed them. They pulled their best Sega imitation and survived.

 

[Silent Viper]

In before the pro-ABK acquisition nuts flood in with the "SEE!!? It's OKAY if Microsoft are using all their Azure/Windows/Office money and assets to buy the single-largest 3P publisher in the market!"

Never mind there is a big difference between effectively utilizing resources from other established divisions for a brand new (at the time) division to find its feet and be successful (and that its success came from actually offering a better competitive product. Sony could've thrown all their electronics money at PlayStation the way Microsoft is trying to do with Xbox; it still wouldn't have meant anything without great decision makers at the top leading.

And Psygnosis was worth only 0.0001% of the gaming market's size in 1993 ($20 billion), purchased for $20 million. They were forecasted to have generated around $12 million in revenue for 1993, that's about 1/1666th of the total gaming market revenue in 1993. Conversely, ABK generated $7.53 billion in revenue last year, with market revenue at ~ $202 billion. That's about 1/27th of the total market revenue coming from just ABK alone.

All the more reason the comparisons of ABK deal to Psygonsis are idiotic, disingenuous and from those who should know better, done out of spite to make false narratives. The differences in intent between Sony buying Psygnosis and Microsoft attempting to buy ABK (right after they just purchased Zenimax, BTW) couldn't be more clear.



Well, Kutaragi wasn't lying. The PS1 WAS easier to develop for. Outside of that, it seems like Sony were more willing to open up to 3P devs & pubs than Sega were.

Technically through Psygonsis Sony also acquired the Psy Q dev kit makers, so they had something in-house of sorts before going to those 3P companies. Still, I think their level of openness was unheard of at the time in the industry, and that caught Sega (and especially Nintendo) off-guard.

Former employee confirming Sony did acquired a big publisher in early 90s to boost their position in console market with PS1 and he also confirmed acquisition scale can be compared to Bethesda acquisition of today. Many sony fans said - Oh Sony is all home grown organically and dont acquire publishers. Its all lie, they did all this way early in 90s lol. They also doing now but smaller scale as they cant afford big publishers.


That said ABK remains way bigger since ABK spread into mobile market as well.

MS doing what they have to do to compete with Sony and Sony doing what they had to compete that time.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Nowhere in any of these documents do I see any urgency or priority from Sega for releasing a console with great development kit/libraries until it was too late. Sony changed the game and made it so almost any company would make PS1 games. Nintendo and Sega felt coders should prove themselves with assembly and know how, navigating multiple chips etc. N64 was notorious for micro-code, and they dream team. Sega with the multiple chips at work. It was a change in philosophy for sure. Yes, games in C weren't the best and you needed some assembly to get more out of any system. 28 years later, and we are still going. Sony treated third party developers like royalty compared to previous generations.

In 2006 Sony forgot everything it learned with the PS3, and it nearly killed them. They pulled their best Sega imitation and survived.

This is why I say they operated from within a bubble. They just designed what they liked, and threw it towards publishers. This worked on the 8-bit and 16-bit space, since games were small time and often coded by a single person and teams consisting of less than 20 people was normal. But with the 32 bit generation everything changed, gaming started to chase movie like experiences with 3D, cutscenes, VA and all.

And if you see Kalinskes mail, he was the wrong guy for the new era. He's using anecdotal evidence and completely ignores key parts of success needed at the time. Sega obviously didn't know what they were up against. They thought they would sell on brand name alone.

You can't even completely fault Sega. Their success was in a completely different era, with gaming being relatively small time and mostly aimed at young teens. Consoles were toys and looked like them, they were hooked up in a bedroom, often out of sight and sold at much lower price points. But the software was crazy expensive because of the cartridge format. It was a difficult hobby to have, most kids did only have like one or 2 games for a full year and would borrow or trade.

 

[Hudo]

Since when was this a Sony board?

That I cannot say but it's hard to miss that it is. Just take a look at all the Microsoft FTC threads. In any case, I think I am just not in the age bracket anymore where I'd do company tribalism. I am a consumer but I hate all companies (because they hate me as well).

EDIT: Nope, I'm wrong.

 

[mckmas8808]

Bold of you to say it like this on a Sony board.

Sony board? GAF is anything but that.

 

[Hudo]

Since when was this a Sony board?

Sony board? GAF is anything but that.

Then you haven't read all the Microsoft FTC hearing or the "Phil Spencer said..." or the "Jim Ryan said..." threads of late

EDIT: Well, mods told me I'm wrong. So, you Sirs, are correct.

 

[Celine]

Yes true PS1 had a multi-billion dollar corporation backing it, but so did the PC-Engine, PC-FX, and 3DO. Companies just as big as Sony at that time (at least in Japan) tried and failed with their consoles, so it was never a guarantee the PS1 was going to succeed just because of Sony's backing. Honestly, I think Sony benefited a lot from having prior working experience with both Nintendo and Sega, and also through their Sony Imagesoft publishing label. They didn't jump into the market raw with a console like Matsushita/Panasonic did. Even if the 3DO Company was formed by Trip Hawkins, it wasn't EA.

It wasn't just the "muscles" it was how the "muscles was put to use".

Who collected the royalties from every game on hu-card sold on PC-Engine? Hudson Soft.
Who collected the royalties from every game on CD-rom sold on a 3DO console? 3DO Company.

Sony didn't make the same mistake and could leverage a third-party driven business model successfully because the hardware side and software side was thightly in Sony control.
The money Sony splashed to attract support from third-party publishers was unprecedented at the time.
Nintendo and Sega were used to a first-party driven model (Nintendo still is) because they were at the core (very successful) videogame publishers with a platform business born out ten years earlier when the market conditions were different.
In short Sony had a good hand and the market was ready to be disrupted, neither Nintendo nor Sega could see clearly Sony's punch because their vision was cluttered by the assumptions formed from their past successes that happened during a different time.

 

[Nubulax]

Former employee confirming Sony did acquired a big publisher in early 90s to boost their position in console market with PS1 and he also confirmed acquisition scale can be compared to Bethesda acquisition of today. Many sony fans said - Oh Sony is all home grown organically and dont acquire publishers. Its all lie, they did all this way early in 90s lol. They also doing now but smaller scale as they cant afford big publishers.


That said ABK remains way bigger since ABK spread into mobile market as well.

MS doing what they have to do to compete with Sony and Sony doing what they had to compete that time.

They werent even IN the console Market. It was more than 2 years after they acquired Psygnosis(May 21, 1993) that the Playstation came out in NA (September 95)

Why are xbox fans so disengenious and full of shit with this argument that Psygnosis is on the same level as ABK or possibly even Zenimax. One was literally before they even had a console out and the other was in the industry for 20+ years and THEN went on a spending spree because they purposely tanked their own division with their stupid mistakes and not even caring about Xbox giving them the excuse to consolidate that I feel like it isnt even crazy to think this was their plan all along. I didnt see Playstation go on a spending spree after Sony almost going bankrupt from the PS3 disaster. They doubled down on their own first party games, just like Sega did vs Nintendo back in the day, and won gamers over with their exclusive games while Xbox was focusing on Kinect and casuals and wanting to be the living room box for all entertainment

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

It wasn't just the "muscles" it was how the "muscles was put to use".

Who collected the royalties from every game on hu-card sold on PC-Engine? Hudson Soft.
Who collected the royalties from every game on CD-rom sold on a 3DO console? 3DO Company.

Sony didn't make the same mistake and could leverage a third-party driven business model successfully because the hardware side and software side was thightly in Sony control.
The money Sony splashed to attract support from third-party publishers was unprecedented at the time.
Nintendo and Sega were used to a first-party driven model (Nintendo still is) because they were at the core (very successful) videogame publishers with a platform business born out ten years earlier when the market conditions were different.
In short Sony had a good hand and the market was ready to be disrupted, neither Nintendo nor Sega could see clearly Sony's punch because their vision was cluttered by the assumptions formed from their past successes that happened during a different time.

Agreed. Sony had a "fresh pair of eyes", so to say, but also enough understanding for what the market was currently like having worked with both Nintendo and Sega to some capacity prior.

They werent even IN the console Market. It was more than 2 years after they acquired Psygnosis(May 21, 1993) that the Playstation came out in NA (September 95)

Why are xbox fans so disengenious and full of shit with this argument that Psygnosis is on the same level as ABK or possibly even Zenimax. One was literally before they even had a console out and the other was in the industry for 20+ years and THEN went on a spending spree because they purposely tanked their own division with their stupid mistakes and not even caring about Xbox giving them the excuse to consolidate that I feel like it isnt even crazy to think this was their plan all along. I didnt see Playstation go on a spending spree after Sony almost going bankrupt from the PS3 disaster. They doubled down on their own first party games, just like Sega did vs Nintendo back in the day, and won gamers over with their exclusive games while Xbox was focusing on Kinect and casuals and wanting to be the living room box for all entertainment

Not only that; Psygnosis was like 1/1666 of the market revenue in 1993. ABK is 1/26 of today's gaming market revenue. And Psygnosis had no IP that even for their day were comparable to what ABK has today in COD, or Diablo, or Candy Crush.

It's also worth noting had the PS1 failed, Sony would have just pulled out of gaming as a platform holder. I think that's actually part of the reason they kept Psygnosis acting as a multiplat publisher so long after acquiring them; if PS1 itself didn't work out then Sony could leverage Psygnosis as their multiplatform publishing arm for Nintendo, Sega and PC. Having Psygnosis continue with multiplat releases after that acquisition would let them (Sony) build up rapport with customers on those platforms, too.

Obviously we know the PS1 was a massive success so if there were backup plans for leveraging the Psygnosis publishing arm for multiplat, those were no longer needed. There were other reasons they kept Psygnosis as a multiplat dev/pub still after 1993; I'm just speculating this reason here could have been a factor among many.

This is why I say they operated from within a bubble. They just designed what they liked, and threw it towards publishers. This worked on the 8-bit and 16-bit space, since games were small time and often coded by a single person and teams consisting of less than 20 people was normal. But with the 32 bit generation everything changed, gaming started to chase movie like experiences with 3D, cutscenes, VA and all.

And if you see Kalinskes mail, he was the wrong guy for the new era. He's using anecdotal evidence and completely ignores key parts of success needed at the time. Sega obviously didn't know what they were up against. They thought they would sell on brand name alone.

You can't even completely fault Sega. Their success was in a completely different era, with gaming being relatively small time and mostly aimed at young teens. Consoles were toys and looked like them, they were hooked up in a bedroom, often out of sight and sold at much lower price points. But the software was crazy expensive because of the cartridge format. It was a difficult hobby to have, most kids did only have like one or 2 games for a full year and would borrow or trade.

Well given some (even more recent) info, it'd seem like SoA's business in the Genesis years wasn't as successful as first thought. Seems like they flooded retailers with hardware & software to report those numbers (being sold-in to retailers), but then the year after (I'm assuming after Christmas holiday season) those same retailers would send a lot of unsold inventory back to SoA.

Which I'm guessing would have been noted as a loss in some way, but I'm guessing SoA either still sold enough through to customers to offset the returned inventory, or accounted for the refunded stock in some way that didn't show up as a loss. Because Sega as a whole didn't report their first fiscal loss until 1997, but that was after they switched from doing unconsolidated accounting to consolidated accounting between their branches (SoJ, SoA, SoE).

It's possible the losses they finally reported accounted not just for Saturn underperformance, but the inventory buybacks SoA had to do with retailers regularly after shipping way more supply than demand.

 

[Silent Viper]

They werent even IN the console Market. It was more than 2 years after they acquired Psygnosis(May 21, 1993) that the Playstation came out in NA (September 95)

Why are xbox fans so disengenious and full of shit with this argument that Psygnosis is on the same level as ABK or possibly even Zenimax. One was literally before they even had a console out and the other was in the industry for 20+ years and THEN went on a spending spree because they purposely tanked their own division with their stupid mistakes and not even caring about Xbox giving them the excuse to consolidate that I feel like it isnt even crazy to think this was their plan all along. I didnt see Playstation go on a spending spree after Sony almost going bankrupt from the PS3 disaster. They doubled down on their own first party games, just like Sega did vs Nintendo back in the day, and won gamers over with their exclusive games while Xbox was focusing on Kinect and casuals and wanting to be the living room box for all entertainment

Dude, Mike Clarke was Psygnosis employee. He said that Psygnosis acquisition of that time can be compared to Bethesda acquisition of today. Read the tweet. Its not Xbox fanboys saying, its the guy who worked there and was present during acquisition. You know more about Psygnosis than the guy who worked and lived through that era? I bet you never even heard of the company till now lol.

Point im trying to make that Sony very early on acquired lot of studios and even a publisher to strengthen the position of PS1 before the launch.
Sony was heavyily relying on acquisitions and 3rd party deals back then. That time market situation was different and Sony as company was also financially stronger than competition. They made full use of their financial edge over Sega and Nintendo to sign deals and acquired studios. Around 18 studios are acquired by Sony and many got rebranded to fool some fanboys who believe they all are organic studios.

Sony after PS3 launch was not a financially strong company to go on massive acquisition spree like MS. If they could, i bet your ass they would have tried acquring massive publishers. Its not like they worried about consolidation, they just can't afford to buy Zenimax and Activision back then or even now. All Sony divisions were under loss after PS3 launch, i mean they had to sell their New York office ffs. How you expect them to make any kind of acquisition that time?. They survived coz early investment they did acquring studios paid off. All those studios they acquired carried them through PS3 generation and console became successful.


Sony very early on realised importance of internal studios and worked on it. MS was heavily relying on 3rd party deals during Xbox, 360 gen and even Xbox One generation. MS never focused on making internal studios strong or acquiring new studios. Its after launch of Gamepass MS realised, we need constant flow of content to feed this monster called Gamepass for people to care. So from 2018 onwards, Phill went on acquisition spree and it will not stop. You can cry about it but you can't do anything about it.

Peace

 

[SkylineRKR]

It wasn't just the "muscles" it was how the "muscles was put to use".

Who collected the royalties from every game on hu-card sold on PC-Engine? Hudson Soft.
Who collected the royalties from every game on CD-rom sold on a 3DO console? 3DO Company.

Sony didn't make the same mistake and could leverage a third-party driven business model successfully because the hardware side and software side was thightly in Sony control.
The money Sony splashed to attract support from third-party publishers was unprecedented at the time.
Nintendo and Sega were used to a first-party driven model (Nintendo still is) because they were at the core (very successful) videogame publishers with a platform business born out ten years earlier when the market conditions were different.
In short Sony had a good hand and the market was ready to be disrupted, neither Nintendo nor Sega could see clearly Sony's punch because their vision was cluttered by the assumptions formed from their past successes that happened during a different time.

Pretty much.

Nintendo used ancient rules like allowing only 5 games published per year on the NES for example. Which forced the likes of Konami to use different brands like Palcom and Ultra. This worked in a monopolist environment, since there was pretty much no alternative to sell your game. These rules ofcourse stem from the fact Nintendo developed and published many games for its own system, which don't allow for too fierce competition. Sega might've done similar things or might've held releases back not to disrupt their own important IP.

This is the problem with both Sega and Nintendo, they had to sell their own games first and foremost. Sony didn't have this problem. Sony even actively went against having a mascot, despite Crash being shoehorned first.

This is ofcourse what Kato says, he says Sony didn't have its own studios and IP, so they simply went to ask others. And ofcourse Namco was eager to put RR and Tekken on the rival system since they didn't have to share with Daytona and VF and got all desired promotion too. I can see lots of third parties making the move just because of Sega and Nintendo policies and their in-house studios. Sony not only changed the landscape when it comes to third party royalties and assistance, but they also targeted a wider audience. They sold the console everywhere, and promoted it everywhere too. You'd see them pop up at Champions League commercials, and demopods at raves and other venues for 18+. The Playstation was the first console I started seeing in living rooms, even being used by parents. The landscape changed.

 

[Ozzie666]

Maybe the guy should have said more like Zenimax as a publisher. Psygnosis had a really complete expansive operation going on, developers, distribution, connections, advertising. They were also pushing new systems just like Core Design. This was obviously a much bigger deal in Europe when it happened. Sony bought a very diverse company in 1993, when Sony Imagesoft was putting out some absolute turds. This is such an underrated move. Never mind the development tools Psygnosis were using, reducing development costs for Playstation. I will also add Psygnosis continued to release games on Amiga, SNES, Genesis, CD32, PC, Saturn and N64. If I recall people thought Sony overpaid, man how times have changed.

The games were important, but their distribution network across Europe was more so.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Psygnosis was absolutely important during the first years of Playstation on European soil.

Destruction Derby and Wipeout were important assets for Sony. DD2 was console exclusive IIRC, and Wipeout 2097 at least timed. Those games were technical showcases. But I think the biggest get back in the day was Formula 1. I remember the first F1 and esp. F1 '97 charting pretty much all year in Europe and these games didn't get released on Saturn. Too bad F1 '98 onward were trash (Bizzarre Creations left).

Psygnosis and Eidos were crucial in winning Europe for Sony, Eidos was independent but ofcourse Tomb Raider was a Playstation exclusive at the height of its popularity.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Some new findings from these docs

 

[SkylineRKR]

This is all interesting because its being said many times that Saturn 3D capabilities being an afterthought was a hoax. I remember, way back in 1998 or so, some fanatic told me that Sega pissed its pants when they saw the PSX doing 3D and thus changed things up which explains the unusual architecture. I always ran with this story.

And in some way SoA's decision makes sense. The Genesis was doing great in 1994, but it faltered in Japan. So japan needed something new while the west did not. I could see what they were thinking with boosting the current Genesis. But ofcourse, the absolute best solution would've been just to release the Saturn a year after Japan, and keep supporting the Genesis for their western markets as they did in 1993 and 1994. Perhaps they should've made the Saturn BC, even. But that would be highly revolutionary and not done before Sony in 2000, that might've made it easier for Genesis owners to jump in and ignore Sony though.

 

[Ceallach]

The accounting on the Genesis/MD in the US and Europe is one of the most shocking things to me here. Their accounting practices made them look more profitable than they ever were, especially in NA. I've always subscribed to the SOJ fucked SOA mindset and undermined them and really ruined things. But this looks like in fact it was once SOJ looked at the real numbers, the massive amount of money lost on unsold stock, and how SOA's success was ot nearly as high as it seemed, they tried to reign them in.

 

[Ceallach]

This is all interesting because its being said many times that Saturn 3D capabilities being an afterthought was a hoax. I remember, way back in 1998 or so, some fanatic told me that Sega pissed its pants when they saw the PSX doing 3D and thus changed things up which explains the unusual architecture. I always ran with this story.

And in some way SoA's decision makes sense. The Genesis was doing great in 1994, but it faltered in Japan. So japan needed something new while the west did not. I could see what they were thinking with boosting the current Genesis. But ofcourse, the absolute best solution would've been just to release the Saturn a year after Japan, and keep supporting the Genesis for their western markets as they did in 1993 and 1994. Perhaps they should've made the Saturn BC, even. But that would be highly revolutionary and not done before Sony in 2000, that might've made it easier for Genesis owners to jump in and ignore Sony though.

The 7800 was backwards compatible in 86.

 

[SkylineRKR]

The 7800 was backwards compatible in 86.

Not much of a jump but true. Amiga too i guess..

However, Saturn and N64 playing Genesis and Snes games would've been next level.

 

[cartman414]

The Sega fuckups have been well documented. This is good stuff, but most of it was already guessed right. Sega's hardware, past decisions, 3P relations all lead to its downfall. And they simply weren't big enough. Nintendo could barely hang on since N64 too, they peaced out of the spec wars soon after GC. Sega was smaller and had less revenues than Nintendo.

Sony wasn't a guarantee for success, but they clearly did their homework. Their system was easy to develop for, they actively went out to court third parties, the price was right, and yes they had some advantage because they already published a myriad of games and even tried to get into the market with Nintendo.

They saw what not to do, thanks to Philips, Panasonic etc. And another advantage was that they weren't in a bubble like Sega and Nintendo were. Their business were operated by ancient strategies, they designed their systems in a vacuum and their whole way of publishing, assisting third parties and target audiences was old fashioned too. You can clearly see the Saturn and N64 were conjured up in a bubble too as both did nothing to encourage third parties. It was easy for Sony to push these 2 aside by simply targeting a much bigger audience and being present anywhere Sega and Nintendo weren't.

Former employee confirming Sony did acquired a big publisher in early 90s to boost their position in console market with PS1 and he also confirmed acquisition scale can be compared to Bethesda acquisition of today. Many sony fans said - Oh Sony is all home grown organically and dont acquire publishers. Its all lie, they did all this way early in 90s lol. They also doing now but smaller scale as they cant afford big publishers.


That said ABK remains way bigger since ABK spread into mobile market as well.

MS doing what they have to do to compete with Sony and Sony doing what they had to compete that time.

Assimilation was very much a Sony thing when they could handle it, and they very much were at that time. They had acquired CBS Records and Columbia Pictures in the late '90s, and had the SNES CD-ROM add-on written with full royalties and software oversight in mind.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

But that's just it; when Sony entered the market, they didn't own any large portion of it. Nintendo and Sega did. So what happened to cause so much of the 3P for the other two, to choose PS1 instead? That doesn't just happen unless the ones who already have the market at the time mess up in monumental ways to make alternatives look suitable.

maybe--if sony never came along, nintendo and sega probably couldve kept doing what they were doing.

remember sony was seen as a big time premium electronics brand back then.
nintendo and sega were making "kids toys", and sony was even worried that entering the video game market would hurt their image.

so here comes sony, this rich ass big boy with a premium, trusted name, with big boy 3d performance, using cool black discs from the future, sporting a cool sleek form factor, and courting developers left and right... easy to see the ps1 as the premium option or console for older kids... and this at a time where kids who grew up on the nes/snes/genesis/etc. were growing up, wanted to be cool like the older kids, etc.

 

[cartman414]

maybe--if sony never came along, nintendo and sega probably couldve kept doing what they were doing.

remember sony was seen as a big time premium electronics brand back then.
nintendo and sega were making "kids toys", and sony was even worried that entering the video game market would hurt their image.

so here comes sony, this rich ass big boy with a premium, trusted name, with big boy 3d performance, using cool black discs from the future, sporting a cool sleek form factor, and courting developers left and right... easy to see the ps1 as the premium option or console for older kids... and this at a time where kids who grew up on the nes/snes/genesis/etc. were growing up, wanted to be cool like the older kids, etc.

And like I said earlier, entertainment wings - CBS Records and Columbia Pictures, which became Sony Music and Sony Pictures Entertainment after their purchase. Same thing could have happened with either Nintendo or Sega had either of those went through. Who knows?

Either way, it was damn good recognition of talent in Psygnosis, etc. that really allowed them an in with the game industry.

 

[Celine]

Psygnosis was absolutely important during the first years of Playstation on European soil.

Destruction Derby and Wipeout were important assets for Sony. DD2 was console exclusive IIRC, and Wipeout 2097 at least timed. Those games were technical showcases. But I think the biggest get back in the day was Formula 1. I remember the first F1 and esp. F1 '97 charting pretty much all year in Europe and these games didn't get released on Saturn. Too bad F1 '98 onward were trash (Bizzarre Creations left).

Psygnosis and Eidos were crucial in winning Europe for Sony, Eidos was independent but ofcourse Tomb Raider was a Playstation exclusive at the height of its popularity.

The deep reason why the Psygnosis acquisition was a genius move by Sony has less to do with games (Psygnosis had a breakout hit with Lemmings but was a much smaller publisher than EA or Acclaim) and more to do with Psygnosis partnership with SN Systems which were specialized in development tools for consoles.
Sony quickly pivoted from an expensive in-house solution to SN Systems' SDK for the PlayStation which proved to be hugely beneficial to attract third-party support.

Psygnosis' F1 game was indeed a hit and Wipeout was seen as an inconic game for PS1 (though it never sold remotely close to F-Zero) but it was the toolchain the real ace brought in by the Psygnosis purchase.

 

[cireza]

This is all interesting because its being said many times that Saturn 3D capabilities being an afterthought was a hoax. I remember, way back in 1998 or so, some fanatic told me that Sega pissed its pants when they saw the PSX doing 3D and thus changed things up which explains the unusual architecture. I always ran with this story.

This never made any sense.

 

[SkylineRKR]

The deep reason why the Psygnosis acquisition was a genius move by Sony has less to do with games (Psygnosis had a breakout hit with Lemmings but was a much smaller publisher than EA or Acclaim) and more to do with Psygnosis partnership with SN Systems which were specialized in development tools for consoles.
Sony quickly pivoted from an expensive in-house solution to SN Systems' SDK for the PlayStation which proved to be hugely beneficial to attract third-party support.

Psygnosis' F1 game was indeed a hit and Wipeout was seen as an inconic game for PS1 (though it never sold remotely close to F-Zero) but it was the toolchain the real ace brought in by the Psygnosis purchase.

True but I read in 1996, they were responsible for 40% of EURO software sales.

Another thing:

Despite being owned by Sony, Psygnosis retained a degree of independence from its parent company during this period and continued to develop and publish titles for other platforms,[30] including the Sega Saturn[31][32] and the Nintendo 64.[33] This caused friction between Psygnosis and Sony, and in 1996 Sony engaged SBC Warburg's services in finding a buyer for Psygnosis.[34][35] However, though bids reportedly went as high as $300 million (more than ten times what Sony paid for the company just three years before),[36] after six months Sony rescinded its decision to sell Psygnosis. Relations between the two companies had improved during this time, and Sony became reconciled to Psygnosis releasing games for competing platforms.[37] Shortly after, Psygnosis took over distribution of its own titles, a task that Sony had been handling following the buyout.[38]

This is interesting too. They were owned by Sony but did release software on Sega Saturn also. I never knew they pissed Sony off and they were trying to find a buyer even. To be honest, they could've taken the 300 million deal. Psygnosis lost relevance during the turn of the millenium, they were kind of stripped down in 1999. I believe Wipeout 3 already tanked (great game, esp. the SE), Fusion tanked harder and they essentially became an F1 studio.

 

[Celine]

True but I read in 1996, they were responsible for 40% of EURO software sales.

"[Psygnosis] responsible for 40% of EURO software sales"
Even without checking it's assuredly impossible.

 

[Nikodemos]

The accounting on the Genesis/MD in the US and Europe is one of the most shocking things to me here. Their accounting practices made them look more profitable than they ever were, especially in NA. I've always subscribed to the SOJ fucked SOA mindset and undermined them and really ruined things. But this looks like in fact it was once SOJ looked at the real numbers, the massive amount of money lost on unsold stock, and how SOA's success was ot nearly as high as it seemed, they tried to reign them in.

This was mostly a product of the times. Back when Nintendo was the only game (pun intended) in town, they kept retailers on a very tight leash. Their operating principle was "fuck you, we will tell you what and how much you can sell".
When Sega came out with the Genesis, they had to do things differently. Otherwise, the retailers would say "why would we carry your shit, if you have the same retail policy as the already-established brand?" So they had to settle on sale by consignation. Which removed most of the financial risk from retailers, but placed it on their own accounting team. Any instance of misjudging the market by retailers (ex. ordering more than what the public wanted to buy) meant that, while stores could simply send back unsold stock, it would fall on SoA to deal with it, and the ensuing revenue loss.

 

[zedinen]

Tom Kalinske (Time Extension)

"Sega and Sony discussed joining forces to create a 32-bit system that would take on Nintendo"

The software relationship started between myself and Olaf Olafsson who was head of Sony Entertainment, and the agreement was to help them do software and literally teach them how to do software. So we literally did.

My head of R&D Joe Miller literally taught Sony engineers how to think about developing video game software and they ended up with a studio down in Santa Monica, and we sent people down there to work with them and the idea was to develop software for the Mega Drive/Genesis CD-ROM."

It was quite a good relationship and it worked pretty well, so when we started talking about what the next system should be like Olaf and I thought, let’s do one hardware system together. We’ll bear the risk and the cost of doing the new hardware system."

Tom Kalinske

"Sega Enterprises Ltd. president Hayao Nakayama’s comments were, ‘Why should we help Sony in that way? We’ll do our own system and they can do whatever they want.’ And so, that was that."

Tom Kalinske

"One of the key reasons why I left Sega is when we had the opportunity to work with Sony... Sega said not a chance. Why would it want to share a platform with Sony?

I thought [this] was the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business. And from that moment on, I didn’t feel they were capable of making the correct decisions in Japan any longer."

Tom Kalinske

"The whole Saturn debacle was I think the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, and then just losing the ability to make decisions that I thought were proper for the western world"

Tom Kalinske

"The situation did change dramatically. It went from where I was able to do whatever basically I wanted to, to all of a sudden, I was being dictated to"

Tom Kalinske

"The reason was every Monday Nakayama-san would go into the so-called ‘Decision Room’ where he met with the key staff and he would beat the hell out of all of the managers and directors over and say things like, ‘Why can’t you guys get the revenue up like Tom has in the United States?’, ‘Why can’t we more successfully compete with Nintendo like Tom in the United States?’"

Tom Kalinske

"If you’re one of those managers sitting over in Tokyo and every Monday you’re getting the hell beaten out of you and yelled at by Nakayama – and he was very physical, I saw him in meetings literally slap subordinates – after a while, you start to hate this guy Tom over in the United States. And so, I stopped getting cooperation from other senior managers inside Sega Japan."

Tom Kalinske

"I was not a fan of the Sega Saturn. I tried and tried to get the launch pushed back so that we had some actual software to support it,” he says. “I was not successful. I had four glorious years where Sega Japan pretty much let me do whatever I felt was right, and then that stopped.

"This was the same board that felt Sony didn’t know what they were doing"

Tom Kalinske

“Sega of America was never meant to get involved with hardware, we focused on the games. But I was so concerned about the Saturn and tried to get the specs revised. I had this meeting with the head of a company called Silicon Graphics, and he showed me a new chipset that I thought was perfect. I called the hardware group in Japan, and they said it was too big and would cost too much. Silicon Graphics was worried and asked: 'What do we do?' and I said: 'Well, there is this other company in Seattle you might want to call.' And, of course, that chipset ended up in the N64.”

Tom Kalinske

"Sega Saturn could have been the Sega/Sony PlayStation. It could have had the chipset of the N64. But it wasn’t and it didn’t, and to make matters worse, Sega of America was losing staff. Sony had decided to go it alone, it built an entire business unit dedicated to launching the PlayStation, and it was poaching staff from its competitors." (This included Kalinske's right-hand man: Steve Race)

Tom Kalinske

"Steve knew all our secrets,. He knew what we were up to, and we didn’t know what he was planning. And we were in this uncomfortable position of trying to launch this new system that I didn’t believe in and didn’t like.”

Steve Race

“I had some insight, and Sony were able to capitalise on that. I knew the Sega Saturn was slapdash. I knew that the US team weren’t committed to it. Their heart and soul wasn’t in it. In many ways, Sega Japan was forcing products on them. People in the industry just felt the Saturn was a move of desperation. It was not something we thought was terribly compelling. We just needed to let the consumer know that the PlayStation was going to be substantially better. 3DO was in real trouble, Sega was making mistakes, and Nintendo was just asleep at the wheel. The stage was ours.”

Steve Race

"Sony's Japanese bosses weren't so sure. “For our Japanese counterparts, it was so important to come to the US and feel the vibe towards PlayStation. In 1995… outside of a very small thing on the back… our bosses didn’t let us put the Sony name on the box"

Steve Race

"They weren’t convinced this was something that was going to work and they didn't want to sully the brand. So we couldn’t really feature one of our biggest selling points, which was the Sony brand name"

PlayStation, aka Sony's Cinderella

Sony never gave a shit about PlayStation ... until Jan. 18, 2022

The main reason behind PS success? It has always been constantly underestimated by Nintendo, Sega and Microsoft

Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Doesn't See Sony As Competition Going Forward

 

[Nikodemos]

The problem with Kalinske's decisions is that, at some point, he should've stopped trying to push back against SoJ. It was pretty obvious they were going to do this their way, come hell or high water.
Instead of wasting the entirety of 1994 trying to change something that had already been decided since mid-1993 (admittedly, he wasn't aware of it at the time), he should've started gearing up SoA to support the Saturn. They needed to come loaded for bear specifically because the Saturn was a handicap. Dumping time and engineer hours on dead horse runs like the Nomad and 32X was something SoA definitely couldn't afford.

 

[Celine]

Nah, the core issue of Kalinske decision making is that he was hell bent to gain marketshare at expense of profitability and securing long term growth for Sega.
Beating Nintendo in the short term was more important to him than giving Sega a solid future.
Sega Enterprises (the japanese parent company) had to bail out Sega of America (and Sega Europe) multiple times.

 

[Nikodemos]

Nah, the core issue of Kalinske decision making is that he was hell bent to gain marketshare at expense of profitability and securing long term growth for Sega.
Beating Nintendo in the short term was more important to him than giving Sega a solid future.
Sega Enterprises (the japanese parent company) had to bail out Sega of America (and Sega Europe) multiple times.

While he can be rightly blamed for shovelware-ing his way into marketshare/mindspace, SoJ had repeatedly dealt him a bad hand, and made loads of idiotic decisions on their own.

Game Gear barely made a dent in the handheld market. It was a pointlessly overambitious device, with design sensibilities thoroughly steeped in the bubble era period of "awesome, but impractical" (to paraphrase TVTropes). It having a TV tuner add-on spoke volumes about the mindset of its creators. It was pretty much in the same vein as the double-cassette walkman, or those Citizen micro-TVs of the era: an exercise in "we thought we could, so we did". The one thing which made or broke a handheld device, battery life, was considered a tertiary aspect at best; this is genuinely baffling. Just as baffling, it wasn't directly compatible with Master System cartridges; they needed an adaptor to fit the GG.

Sega CD was another bad product. The Genesis was completely unsuitable as a base for add-on hardware (at least via the expansion port), yet they still went ahead, just so they could have a product to compete with NEC's CD-ROM^2 (and the rumored Nintendo PlayStation). It had several expensive chips, that ended up un(der)utilized due to the inability to make them work properly with the base console. It had an 8-channel audio chip that could, in theory, expand the Genesis's limited sound effects library (the oft-ridiculed beeps and boops). In practice, it ended up outputting CD audio tracks. It had a dedicated video chip for sprite rotation, scaling, and zoom (pseudo-3D graphics). In practice, it ended up decoding video streams. A $300 device, that contained roughly 60% of a second console inside it, was used in practice as a glorified video-audio player for Genesis-tier games.

 

[Fatal Chuck Yeager]

There were many devs who completely skipped the 3DO, though, or only gave it passing support. Konami, incidentally, was one of them. Capcom only gave them a SFII port and maybe some other game, nothing else beyond that. I don't remember Data East doing anything for the platform, or Acclaim, or even Ocean. Tecmo, Squaresoft, Enix, Jaleco, Namco...nothing for 3DO.

Half those studios weren't even relevant, and you're clearly confusing 3DO's short shelf life with skipping the console. A large amount of devs entered in 1995 with a decent amount the year prior but mostly western devs, than 3DO was actively trying to sell their hardware division the next year in 1996 while some of the devs you listed where interested in the M2 which was cancelled.

I don't think you understand the point either. You're question was based on why studios were not going to Saturn and the N64 and I gave you the answer, or at least a large part of it. That being several of the devs you are wondering about moved from 3DO to PS1 because the PS1 had the closest environment and development support and low fees that the 3DO had before which managed a large glut of 3P support even with its slow first year of sales at an absurd price. To say Sony conicendentally used almost all the exact same strategies is a take that doesn't make any sense logically unless you're one of those people who were mad about what ended up happening with the competition. Both consoles aimed for the same demographics and offered similar incentives nearly the exact same way for western and eastern developers and the transition between the tools of the too were also dipped in the same goals. That's not to say Sony didn't steam roll Trip Hawkins, but even Ken freaked out at a 3DO conference according to one of his key staff when he didn't want to admit they had a good presentation. Ken was clearly keep an ear out he didn't just fall into good luck in nearly every category he did research.

Not necessarily. It did decently in Japan, at least hardware-wise, but I don't think software sales were that much better for it there than the MegaDrive. It as a platform began to slow down a lot shortly after the Super Famicom came out, though, so it was never like, say, how it was between Saturn & PS1 in Japan where things were somewhat close the first year or two.

SFC just came out and immediately pulled ahead momentum-wise.

Turbo software was low compared to the SFC, but it ran circles around the mega drive, the problem is people are having problems finding archive of hucard sales charts so you only really have incomplete CD sales to look at, which puts the Mega Drive software in an even more dire position.

True RR was a launch game but also true there weren't a lot of games in the industry at the time that could do 1 million in a single region, either. And that includes games that weren't arcade ports, too. Tekken is a good example of an arcade game giving home players more to do vs. the arcade version; that and being visually indistinguishable from the arcade port helped a lot. I'd agree that it benefited too from lack of competition, though I think games like Tobal and Tobal 2 especially were high-quality and at least offered competition in terms of quality and amount of content (Tobal 2 had way more content than Tekken 2, technically).



Eh, I think that might still depend on specific games, and it's not like many arcade ports on SNES & Genesis did massive numbers themselves. Can arguably say the SF Alpha games did worst than SFII did on SNES, but SFII on SNES was itself an anomaly for its generation; the average 2D fighter sold significantly less (and earned less arcade revenue), and I'd say the SFA ports to PS1 & Saturn sold better than a good chunk of 2D fighters on 4th-gen systems.

This doesn't really make sense because some of the better selling PS1 games were early releases, the fact Ridge Racer in all it's releases couldn't come up with one million seller in a single region only shows that a large part of many arcade ports appeal at the time was because they were 3D and not because the game had underlying appeal to the consumer. this is a weakness the Saturn suffered from specifically.

Tekken grew over time after a hit first game and a not long after 2nd game that managed to grow the franchise, Ridge Racer didn't go anywhere. People are not entirely sick of arcade ports but it seems clear to me that was only because because 3D on consoles gave an extension to how interested consumers were.

Example you're comparing Alpha to SFII which is a pretty illogical comparison. Alpha wasn't even selling as well as Toshinden or Namco Museum. SFIII was DOA for a reason, even EX failed to ignite new interest into the franchise during the time that 3D anything would get you attention on consoles, PlayStation especially. These were not hot sellers they sold to a fanbase or within the targeted group. Even the original Marvel Vs. Capcom while a hit in the arcades was not receiving the same reception at home.

Arcade ports just did not have the pull they used to, polygons could help for a little while but then eventually that wears off and you get games like Time Crisis or MK4 where they have some level of success, but then you have to question how much of that is because both were polygonal games and if they would have even obtained the success they did receive if they weren't.

 

[havoc00]

the 32x and sega cd were so bad lol Saturn was unfortunately doomed because it was a solid system

 

[Nikodemos]

the 32x and sega cd were so bad lol Saturn was unfortunately doomed because it was a solid system

Paradoxically, the 32X was well-designed. It worked around several Genesis bottlenecks by using patch cords (since the cartridge slot didn't have direct pinouts to the sound/video chips), and having Genesis as the secondary system, instead of the other way around (like Sega CD did).
That's not to say it was a good system. It should've never seen the light of day.

 

[cireza]

Sega CD was another bad product.

Yeah no. Sega CD was awesome, well designed, and had a very solid library.

It had several expensive chips, that ended up un(der)utilized due to the inability to make them work properly with the base console.

Again this is wrong. There are a lot of games that make use of the additional chips.

The SEGA-CD offered a lot of features. Every single game certainly didn't have to use every single feature. They were there if the developer wanted. They could use Redbook Audio, or they could do what they did in Lunar 2 (PCM). Sonic CD used both Redbook Audio and the additional sound chip for the Past levels.

A lot of games made use of the ASIC chip for special effects. I am not going to start a list, there are simply a ton of them. You could do FMV with the well known encoder (that was grainy yes) but you also had the liberty to code your videos in software as space was not an issue anymore, thanks to the CD format, and many games did this which resulted in superb quality that doesn't age at all. Games had voice overs, and some had elaborated sound design such as Snatcher. The SEGA-CD introduced a lot of people to brand new features. The PC-Engine CD was much more niche in the US and didn't even make it in Europe.

 

[Fatal Chuck Yeager]

The Sega fuckups have been well documented. This is good stuff, but most of it was already guessed right. Sega's hardware, past decisions, 3P relations all lead to its downfall. And they simply weren't big enough. Nintendo could barely hang on since N64 too, they peaced out of the spec wars soon after GC. Sega was smaller and had less revenues than Nintendo.

Sony wasn't a guarantee for success, but they clearly did their homework. Their system was easy to develop for, they actively went out to court third parties, the price was right, and yes they had some advantage because they already published a myriad of games and even tried to get into the market with Nintendo.

They saw what not to do, thanks to Philips, Panasonic etc. And another advantage was that they weren't in a bubble like Sega and Nintendo were. Their business were operated by ancient strategies, they designed their systems in a vacuum and their whole way of publishing, assisting third parties and target audiences was old fashioned too. You can clearly see the Saturn and N64 were conjured up in a bubble too as both did nothing to encourage third parties. It was easy for Sony to push these 2 aside by simply targeting a much bigger audience and being present anywhere Sega and Nintendo weren't.

The problem with Sega is they never had a profit plan and it's a big issue everyone skipped over including Sega themselves. Even when they were desperate and drawing up all these new plans for new services like TV Internet and Edutainment they never had any indication they understood that one of these things has to actually MAKE money. Every arena they were active in for awhile were loss leading with money coming in from nowhere to support nothing.

If you think back what exactly was Sega hoping would generate enough cash to support their ambitions? It wasn't the Saturn, it wasn't the arcades, it wasn't toys, so what was it? The you realize they never had a clear plan for that.

 

[Celine]

While he can be rightly blamed for shovelware-ing his way into marketshare/mindspace, SoJ had repeatedly dealt him a bad hand, and made loads of idiotic decisions on their own.

Game Gear barely made a dent in the handheld market. It was a pointlessly overambitious device, with design sensibilities thoroughly steeped in the bubble era period of "awesome, but impractical" (to paraphrase TVTropes). It having a TV tuner add-on spoke volumes about the mindset of its creators. It was pretty much in the same vein as the double-cassette walkman, or those Citizen micro-TVs of the era: an exercise in "we thought we could, so we did". The one thing which made or broke a handheld device, battery life, was considered a tertiary aspect at best; this is genuinely baffling. Just as baffling, it wasn't directly compatible with Master System cartridges; they needed an adaptor to fit the GG.

Sega CD was another bad product. The Genesis was completely unsuitable as a base for add-on hardware (at least via the expansion port), yet they still went ahead, just so they could have a product to compete with NEC's CD-ROM^2 (and the rumored Nintendo PlayStation). It had several expensive chips, that ended up un(der)utilized due to the inability to make them work properly with the base console. It had an 8-channel audio chip that could, in theory, expand the Genesis's limited sound effects library (the oft-ridiculed beeps and boops). In practice, it ended up outputting CD audio tracks. It had a dedicated video chip for sprite rotation, scaling, and zoom (pseudo-3D graphics). In practice, it ended up decoding video streams. A $300 device, that contained roughly 60% of a second console inside it, was used in practice as a glorified video-audio player for Genesis-tier games.

I never said SoJ didn't make mistakes.
Many of the bad habits displayed by Sega in the console business were a consequence of how they operated in the arcade business: overrelliance on licenses, competition through frequent hardware releases instead of appealing software with enduring popularity, reactionary behaviour and "clone" attitude often displayed.

Many don't realize it but the Sega at the peak of success in the console sector was also a company already in a weakened state.
On the whole the 16-bit gen was a pyrrhic endevour for Sega.
Sega Enterprises had to bail out and restructure Sega of America and Sega Europe several time with big injection of cash due to their sorry state.
A few of Sega Enterprises special losses:
FY96 (ending March 1996): ¥26Bn ($340M)
FY97 (ending March 1997): ¥23Bn ($253M)
FY98 (ending March 1998): ¥42.8Bn ($323.8M)

The problem with Sega is they never had a profit plan and it's a big issue everyone skipped over including Sega themselves. Even when they were desperate and drawing up all these new plans for new services like TV Internet and Edutainment they never had any indication they understood that one of these things has to actually MAKE money. Every arena they were active in for awhile were loss leading with money coming in from nowhere to support nothing.

If you think back what exactly was Sega hoping would generate enough cash to support their ambitions? It wasn't the Saturn, it wasn't the arcades, it wasn't toys, so what was it? The you realize they never had a clear plan for that.

Exactly.
From the leaked confidential document we know that Sega of America were supporting 6 product lines at the same time (Genesis/Nomad, Game Gear, Sega CD, 32X, Pico, Saturn) and all of them were projected to lose money in the FY97!
The expected total loss for FY97 for SoA was projected at $122.6M.

 

[Ozzie666]

It's really amazing how small both Atari and Sega were in the home console space and how short lived their 'lucky' success was. Both failed far more than they actually succeeded. Both run badly, actually both run by morons with little cash. the 2600 and the Genesis were just lucky. Never duplicated.

As much as people hated the 32X, having MK2, NBA Jam, WWF Arcade and Primal Rage were the best home versions available not counting PC versions. No load times and on cartridge. I preferred these to any of the early PS1 or Saturn versions with terrible load times. They just needed UMK3, Hangtime and Open Ice.

 

[cireza]

Both run badly, actually both run by morons with little cash. the 2600 and the Genesis were just lucky.

You are aware that SEGA had huge success in arcades, Master System outsold NES in Europe, Game Gear had support until 1996 worldwide, same for the SEGA-CD, Saturn was very strong in Japan etc... ?

We can list SEGA errors and agree on them, but their success certainly wasn't due to luck. They were doing a lot of things right. The overall strategy in Europe was excellent, in the US they marketed the Genesis very well and deserved the success, same for the Saturn in Japan.