Interesting thing about Nintendo - although many of their partnerships ended (in some cases, because the companies ceased to exist), they've managed to maintain their relationships with Panasonic and IBM since the Gamecube era until today.
A fascinating read, I knew about Nintendo/Sony but not about Sega's involvement early on.A lot of people criticise Sega for what was (probably) a stupid decision but, at the end of the day, nobody knew what was going to happen. Although it is bizarre reading about how Sony were pretty much forced to go it alone with the ps1... a risky situation, with no established devs or brands to play around with initially. They sure took a hell of a gamble, something the big N and Sega weren't willing to do, probably because they thought they had the market in their pockets. How wrong they were... :witless:
Hahaha God of Hardcore what kind a name is that ? well i learnt alot from this thread but Sega and Sony !?!? seriously ?! whoa i did not see that one coming.
Of course they refused. Do someone really expect that Sega Enterprise would have allied with another company in a business where they were one of the top company. Speaking of Sega failed deals, they were in negotiation with 3DO/Matsushita to use the M2 as their next system around 1996.
Sega was so serious about the deal with Matsushita they even (very briefly) offered to donate Virtua Fighter 3 as an exclusive launch title for the M2 - can you imagine how that would have turned out?
It would've been better if Sega, after rejecting the SGI chipset in 1993 then later rejecting the M2 in late 1995 or early 1996, tried to form an alliance between (perhaps) Matsushita, NEC, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Hitachi and possibly others, on a reasonably low-cost, high-performance, easy to develop for console. It wouldn't be anything like the 3DO biz model but more like the "Grand Alliance" that was formed for the American HDTV standard which drew together competitors. Eventually the HDTV Grand Alliance *was* a success. I'd imagine a "Console Grand Alliance" could've happened in the 1996-97 timeframe. Or even later, by say late 1999. In fact, Sega actually *did* try to do something this after the Dreamcast launched. Yes there was officially going to be some sort of Dreamcast successor as of 1998-2000, probably for release in the 2003-2005 timeframe, before Sega pulled the plug in 2001. http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/sega-seeks-hardware-partners http://www.gamespot.com/news/sega-seeks-partners-in-technology-venture-2587334 http://www.siliconinvestor.com/read...&msgnum=44238&batchsize=10&batchtype=Previous Here's part of a great write-up by Yakumo that actually mentions two different attempts at a next-gen console. (I only knew about the earlier one) Now, do I believe there will be a Sega console in the future? Nope. No way. The Sega of today exists in name only. They are barely even a shell of the former Sega. There will never be another Sega console, or home platform of any kind, period. My only hope for Sega now is, regroup and start seriously bringing over their immensly VAST library of 8-Bit, 16-Bit and 32-Bit 2D sprite-based arcade titles as well as everything from Model 2 and 3 to Lindbergh and Europa-R to current (360/PS3) and next-gen (XBone, PS4) consoles, as well as PCs. Though in reality I'm afraid even that is far beyond the scope, will, and ability of what is left of Sega.
Imagine a world where the big game companies didn't screw majorly in one way or another. We'd have some epic console wars going on then. Even more so than today.
I always thought microsoft should have had sega build thier systems, could have been a sega xbox powered by windows or whatever.
That was the Dreamcast, Microsoft learnt a lot from that and then went off and did it themselves. I blame Sega for letting Microsoft get into the industry, but then it made no sense at all for Microsoft to share with Sega as they had a better idea of building a PC than Sega did.
Dreamcast. It had a development system for Windows CE ya know. Some of the consoles (like mine) even say "Compatible with Windows CE" on the bottom right of the front.
When the Dreamcast tanked then Sega pulled out of hardware. Microsoft needed something cheap that had the equivalent power of a PC so they could run Windows, which isn't the type of hardware that Sega traditionally have made. Microsoft have a lot of experience with PC's, they don't need help. Building a console now is about making deals with intel/amd and NVidia/amd.
What it looks to me is that Sony was trying to trojan its way into the game industry, partnering with Nintendo first and then Sega. Kallinske's account sounds like Sony was still going to make a PSX but then Sega was going to have its own PSX, so its like the V-Saturn except with Sony behind it so it many places it would have been available in larger quantities and with better support than Sega's PSX. For me it sounds like Sony trying to get Sega to do its dirty work, and loaning Sega's valuable software in the meantime to ensure the PSX would sell, not unlike the original Snes PSX.
There is a reason why all the videogame company with hardware division except Nintendo exited the market in the nineties (3DO, Hudson Soft, SNK, Sega, Bandai, Atari, Commodore) . The entry price for the race became so high that the only company remained to play the game was two big conglomerate whose wealth depend on other business and the richest videogame company ever.
