They kind of did, with the Mega-CD, and that's the issue: Sega had 6 distinct hardware platforms on the go at once, GameGear/Genesis/Mega-CD/32X/32XCD/Saturn. You just can't do that to the consumer. If Sega had ditched the Mega-CD, never released the 32X, and focussed on the Saturn, things would've been better. Sony probably still would've dominated anyway. I'm not sure that more SVP games would've helped, either. I seem to remember Virtua Racing retailing at £80 or so.
The 32X was a great little system and if it was marketed and supported correctly would have helped the Megadrive / Genesis live several more years. The main problem with the 32X was the fact that Sega of Japan never really supported it and wanted to to focus all their effort on the Saturn. The 32X suffered from a number of things that Sega really should have sorted out. 1 - Lack of any killer software. Star Wars surprisingly was one of the best selling games on the 32X but it wasn't a killer app, ditto with Virtua Racing, Doom, Space Harrier or Cosmic Carnage. Donkey Kong Country on the SNES take away the pretty graphics and it's a good platformer but the graphics made the SNES look a lot more powerful then it was and because a killer app for the machine in Christmas 94. 2 - America - Huge Market, release 32X in November, Japan - Tiny Megadrive market, release 32X in December a month and a bit after the Saturn, Europe - Huge Market, release 32X in Janurary. Can you see the fault here? They really should have said okay the machine is going to sell bugger all in Japan anyway, let have a limited launch at least in Europe get some of the Christmas sales... what do Sega of Japan do with the boards they don't sell? Well they make the Sega Digio digital camera which is coloured like a Saturn and make a useless picture editor and graphics tablet called the Picture Magic which has a bastardised Megadrive and basically the entire 32X... 3 - If your going to advertise the machine do not use a video you made for a theme park ride featuring sonic in 3D then release a 'Sonic' game in the form of Chaotix without your mascot. In fact given the 3D really sucked at putting lots of sprites on the screen, don't make the game feel like, yes soon there will be lots of enemies on screen, any minute now... any minute... oh completed a level, well maybe next one... yes any minute now, ah level complete... Repeat until game completed... 4 - Anounce the Neptune, get developers and the public excited, cancel machine and piss them all off. Sega missed a trick in cancelling the Genesis / Megadrive and releasing the Neptune in it's place. They probably could have released it at a price just slightly higher of that of the Genesis / Megadrive and would have had a machine that would been able to play 32X and Genesis / Megadrive games, in fact it would have given developers the possibility of doing duel Genesis / 32X Enhanced games. 5 - Don't cut off your nose to spite your face - The Genesis and Megadrive are still selling well in America and Europe, could have easily have had 2 more years of solid sales so in early 95 Sega of Japan decide to stop making 32X games and then later in the year they decide to kill off everything except the Saturn but nicely (oh so nicely...) let 3rd party devs still release Genesis / Megadrive games. Yes the Saturn is coming out but you have a user base that would keep you going, the Saturn and Playstation would still be expensive and it's better not to put all your eggs in one basket as if you drop it all your eggs break... 6 - Don't let 3rd parties make crap games or upgrade ones already out just to bolster the catalogue, there was far far too much crap for the 32X which didn't really help it and don't release unfinished software, Doom was buggy and 'fixed' and rushed out to make the christmas market, it could have been 10 times better, having the SNES version look better was unforgivable... Basically Sega didn't learn from their cock ups with the Sega / Mega CD, and by cocking up again probably alienated most of the Sega fanbase, which funnily would end up doing again with the Saturn... I liked the 32X so much, that I went out and bought another one.
It does look pretty impressive, and probably those 3d demos had little to no load time ala N64 (cartridge based). But dam the drawing distance on the demo video sucked, fog was always everywhere.
You missed out: 7/ Nobody wanted the damn thing in the first place. Ok, I'm being facetious, and all of your points are relevant. In seriousness though, what the 32X told the industry was that significant and expensive hardware upgrades to aging devices were not welcome - most people psychologically prefer to buy a new unit if they're going to spend real money, and they bought Playstation. It's the same reason people buy a whole new TV for £500 when they could repair their old one for £100.
Kolibri on the 32X was amazingly beautiful btw, too bad not many people know it. @jamtex, many of your points are entirely valid, nevertheless, hindsight is always 20/20 isnt it?
A guy named (nickname, demoscene) Hannibal said he was the programmer of the vorxel part of the demo... If somebody knows him, I would be happy to talk to him, just PM me Anyway, maybe they should have released the neptune in same time or even few months before the 32x and delay saturn... Peoples would have been VERY happy to upgrade their megadrive to an next-level-system (the neptune) level . Btw, the neptune design is really great, what a beautiful shape, it always impressed me. On another side, even if the 32x have almost the same main processing power than saturn, it really lack of drawing hardware... Having some drawing processors (like saturn) would have made the gap between saturn & 32x almost inexistant (why a saturn, then?)... Even the old segacd drawing processor is maybe faster than the actual 32x software processing power, what a f**** and crazy shame! Lol, quite exagerating... but yeah, idsoftware made the silliest port possible : the code is slow, it use only one CPU and run from ROM instead of RAM, what else? ^^
Nomad isn't distinct (it's Megadrive, there were multiple of variations of most of the hardware platforms I listed), but yeah, I forgot the Pico Maybe LaserActive too, but I really know nothing at all about that system.
Sega only dropped the Pico outside Japan, in Japan they didn't drop it as it was always made by Sega Toys (a seperate company). As of last year it was still possible to buy a new Sega Pico from Toys 'R Us in Japan.
Yeah the gameboy got a good cut out of the whole thing, but the main advantage is that at the time it was the only portable in the market (since the GG was MIA) so if a kid wanted to play something in the bus it was GB or nothing. And the N64 hype (from Mario64 and other games) already peaked by the time Pokemon came over, and the console was loosing ground against the PSX, so if it wasnt for the pokemania then the breach between those two console woulda been even bigger than it ended up being.
The pico has the 32x chips all on a single board. Although I am not sure if you can take it out and run a regular 32x game on that board.
Well back with the 32X, the problem was timing... If SEGA had released the 32X in mid 1994 and delayed the Saturn to the original launch date (or even more if possible) it would have had a userbase big enough to make a difference and enough time for developers to make something truly unique and not a bunch of lame ports. On the other hand, we got the SVP. Is known that SEGA wanted to do a SVP adapter so games wouldnt be as expensive as Snes FX-carts (and my theory is that thats what the LockOn cart was meant for in the first place). All rumors say that idea eventually became the 32X, but honestly if they had made that cart and sold it for $50 or less it would've made more of an impact that the 32X at $150. A 32X that was more of an upgrade to the existing Genesis capabilities (say, more colors, better sound and a SVP to punch the FX in the face) and therefore cheaper could've been a better idea that just trying to make a 3D powerhouse. But remember that everybody at the time was talking about the 3D, so releasing a 2D upgrade at the time would be a hype blower if you ask me... Anyway, good point on not releasing the 32X in japan, it was truly a big waste of money...
The Sega CD failed cause it was too expensive like the 32X as well. Honestly how hard would it have been to release just 1 add-on that gave the Genesis a boost to keep up with the SNES's graphics and sound capabilities. Just some sort of "lock-on" cartridge or even a bit bigger thing like the 32X to boost graphics and sound capabilities would have been perfect. Afterall the main issue you notice comparing SNES v Genesis is the Genesis's small color palette leaving you something blander looking ports, and definitely inferior music and sound effects. If the Genesis could have gotten a mini-32x like device that solely boosted colors (and sprites) on screen and music/sound capability I think it would have sold. But they would have needed to put that out in 1992 or 1993. But no one really could have known that the 32-bit CD based consoles would smash the gates as they supposively did. I say supposively because I played my SNES until I got an N64 like a year after it came out. I still think it would be neat to see what could be done now with the Sega Genesis + CD + 32X. I mean it's gotta be pretty powerful. If you could give the thing 32mbits of RAM to work with and a 2x or 4x cd-rom drive it'd probably kick ass.
The Pico was released in 1993, the 32X in 1994. I'm pretty sure it doesn't contain 32X hardware You're thinking of the PictureMagic.
Well, you gotta admit it was coming along from quite some time. I recall all the buzz during 93 and 94 about how awesome the 32bit were going to be. I think it was all a big speculation coming from console manufacturers to sell more expensive systems, but who knows... I dont think there was so much hype surrounding a generation like during those days. Even nowadays the hype is not around the consoles as it was back then but on the concept of mass market games, much like movies and music. 32bits were no doubt the most hyped generation ever, even when 2D havent peaked at the time and 3D were still poor and not ready for primetime in my opinion.
Yeh, you're right! I checked out ebay and they are not as easy to get a hold of. Typing in PictureMagic results in nothing so far. HEre's a link with some pictures of it: http://www.genny4ever.net/index.php?page=stuff
Yeah, Pico is just a stretched down megadrive... Picture magic is a 32x + stretched down megadrive. As for the picture magic, I got mine mint (almost factory sealed, seems) for 40usd ^^ the seller did not realize it was a mad hardware... I never saw one on Ebay before and after that The MD hardware can't have a color boost from cartridge without having external wiring, it can only have audio boost (but sega never released any game with audio chipset included into cartridge) ... However, the extention port have few very obscure pins linked to its video processor... They may be video-in pins, who knows (the megacd don't use them anyway)...
