Sony Now Publicly Taking Credit For SEGA's Hardware Exit.

Really? I always thought it was the other way around.

Anyway, Sony is just as arrogant as Nintendo and maybe even Sega were. I'm glad Sony is getting "slapped" as well, but don't forget Microsoft behaves the exact same way.

To be honest, the whole industry is a bit unpolite to it's competition. For example, Polyphony Digital made Gran Turismo and created this sub-genre of racing games on consoles. Sega, Square, Namco, Codemasters, Konami, EA... all of them released their games to compete / share gamers with Gran Turismo. Most of these were good entrys on the genre and should be praised.

But Turn10's Dan Greenwalt prefer to dismiss Gran Turismo or any other product (including more professional PC racing sims) instead of focusing on improving his own product. Forza is a great game, but Dan Greenwalt is a douche.

Just read this:

http://classygamer.blogspot.com/2009/09/dan-greenwalt-how-not-to-market-game.html

 

From what I remember, DreamCast was very popular atleast with everyone I talked to when it first came out. I had heard that in the US it did quite well, which is certainly what I saw. But then the pirates came, and the shadow of the ps2 looming over it.

 

Amongst my friend group back when the DC had been out (and I recall the day before the PS2 got released. A friend brought his copy of Tekken Tag Tournament to class with him to show it off) and the PS2 was about to most people were either apathetic and still playing their N64 or waiting on the PS2 because it could play DVDs. They were already diehard Sony fanboys at that point and the Dreamcast didn't mean jack squat to them. Especially because it didn't play DVDs.

Didn't stop me from playing the shit out of my precious Dreamcast as well as convincing a few friends it was worth buying.

Then for my Dad's birthday that year we got him a 5 disc DVD player and just made fun of the PS2 owners who didn't have component output on their PS2 at the time. Then later as their lasers started to fail.

 

So now we're hearing the segaconsolesrumorguy? wutevs...

To say SEGA didn't kill itself is stupid: that company always was, except for the Genesis/MD, the little engine that couldn't

But to say payed-by-sony PS2 hype didnt do shit to the DC is plain retarded: sony was a top5 media company then, if they wanted to make the consumer believe DCs would give you Ebola they could. The DC's NA launch ad campaign? a mere $3M! that was pocket change back in the late 90s! sony would spend that promoting one single game...

I think SEGA's biggest mistake, what put them in the possition they were in the late 90s, was killing the Genesis to favor the Saturn. Cheap consoles rule, theres no way around it. Look at the Wii: sure it had motion but a lot of people choose it because it was nearly half the price of the competition.

I remember in mid 2001 how friends that didnt give 2 damns about the DC in 99 would buy one. Why? because they were selling those for $50, the price of a game. People like cheap stuff, sell them a console as cheap as possible without it being a POS and you're done.

 

x

 

I really don't think that alone was the reason. The primary reason it died is obvious, Sega didn't have money. DreamCast wasn't producing enough profit to offset this.

 

Let's not forget how bad off Sega as a corporation was around 2000.
The late former President & Chairman Isao Okawa tried to bailout Sega and
CSK Electronics by pouring some of his own assets back into the company.

The rest of the article is here:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/sega-chairman-dies-of-heart-failure-10035541.htm

 

Yeah, on retrospective I think SEGA should've been sold to MS, that way there would had been a Dreamcast 2. Guess their japanese pride didnt let them do it, and MS didn't have a 'nice' image back then.

The first Xbox alone lost more money than what SEGA was worth at the time.

 

what!? the snes made the genesis seem dated. never mind every other retarded multimedia entertainment center effort coming out in the 90s.

sony and microsoft didn't create the empires they have now by selling old hardware for $50. the wii is basically an outlier.

also we have no confirmation that the first post was even true.

 

Sega died because they made Gamegear and dropped it halfway, then made mega cd and dropped halfway, then made 32x and dind't even start, then made saturn and killed it 2-3 years too soon... after all of this there was no need even for Sony to push them down.

People waited taking a dreamcast because trust in Sega was not as big as long time before. Nobody wants to get a machine that will make Saturn's end. People want their machines supported for the due time, no matter how successful they are (like ninty and microsoft did with the GC and Xbox).

And a waiting game didn't help them. My trust in Sega in the 93 and on was close to zero. sdly they pushed their best ever when there was no hope.

 

It was a flop in US and Europe.
In Japan it was the best selling Sega system.

Don't worry Sega, Nintendo is avenging you.

Agree with this with the exception of the bold paragraph.
Price is only one factor of Wii success but what really propelled the console popularity was the new experience offered with Wii Sports and such.
Also Sega had to cease support for its other systems at the time because it hadn't enough resources to battle Sony.

Sega was too much small to compete and was run pretty badly.
With the exception of Nintendo, console manufacturer of old like Nintendo,Sega,Atari, Snk etc. don't exist anymore.
Nowadays there are multibillion conglomerates that expanded their business in the videogames sector and Nintendo that is an insular gaming company and the most successfull one.

EDIT:
Also PS1 sold 103 million units not 130.

 

Yeah try launching it with PS3's MSRP, see if someone pays $600 bucks for a "new experience"..................unless it's sex:lol:

But seriously, what about the PStwo outselling both PS3 and X360 during the first years of this gen? the Snes was doing pretty well during late 95/mid 96 since both PSX and Saturn were still too expensive, and with the Genesis gone there was no competition.

As I said before the DC really started selling when it was on clearance, even though it was already a dead console.

People love cheap stuff, thats why netbooks sold like crazy, why the ipad outsold the first iphone, and its pretty much the reason why people buy consoles in the first place instead of getting a new more expensive PC every year when system requirements increase.

 

Didn't say price was a non factor just it wasn't the main selling point.
Gamecube was cheap for a long time ( bought mine at 99$ ) but the only ones really interested in it was Nintendo fans so price cuts didn't have a long lasting effect on it.
Then Nintendo used two gamecube ducttaped togheter to allow a new experience never tried before by the mass market and it was an hit.

 

It's not the same situation: both PS2 and Xbox were cheap back then, its not like when the Snes was alone right next to a $300 PSX and a $400 Saturn, or the $250 Wii against the $400 X360 and the $600 PS3

 

x

 

The Arcade has been deliberately priced below the Wii for most of its life.

Celine is right. The Gamecube was cheap compared to PS2 or Xbox, but it didn't make any difference. A competitive price doesn't guarantee competitive sales.

 

Price is more likely to be a barrier than a driver unless the price is REALLY low. For example the PS3 at $600, that's a barrier.

 

So true even thought it had many mainstream hits as well like Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, Dead or Alive 2, Soul Calibur e.t.c. Speaking for good brands, I remember back then that Konami and Electronic Arts didn't support Dreamcast because since Saturn didn't sold well they thought Dreamcast would have the same fate as well.

And speaking about Playstation 2 waiting I remember back then when a friend of mine said that his next console after PSX would be PS2 until Dreamcat came out so he "sold" his soul on Sega's 128-bit machine and he didn't regret it. And after PS2 came out he wasn't interested at all (his next console was X-Box).

 

Fo' real!

Yeah pre-rendered graphics really were a pain in the ass for the old Genesis, just look at X-perts and Lobo.

Not that the 32X couldnt do that and better, besides all those Snes games were using some fancy chips so it wasnt stock hw.

Considering what happened I think SEGA should've kept the 32X alive, integrate it with the Genesis (neptune) and sell it really cheap. Zyrinx was able to pull some astounding graphics on the thing, and at the end proper support is more important than top-of-the-line hw. That and a better Nomad, that would've been cool.

Agreed, make a console for $50, see units fly off the shelves.

 

The hell are you talking about? Very few SNES games used "fancy chips". None increased any ability for pre-rendered graphics. The only things "fancy chips" did were things like graphics decompression (SDD1 used in Star Ocean and Street Fighter Alpha 2), 3D graphics and other processing (Super FX), and the rest (Cx4, SA-1, OBC1, etc) just helped in various ways mainly related to processing. None of these somehow overcame the base limitations of the SNES's graphical limits of what could be displayed. Not like the Sega 32X which had the 32X VDP overlay.

The #1 reason the Genesis looked aged and inferior to the SNES (particularly in later years) was Sega's dumb decision to only have 4 subpalettes for both Background and Sprites to share. The SNES had 4 times as many sub palettes. The Genesis easily could have had 128 colors instead of 64 by giving sprites their own set of subpalettes. This would have made the Genesis look alot better. You could even have gone further with this by using different sets of subpalettes based on the BG Layer being drawn, or adding palette attribute bits to the Sprites to give them more palette options. But 128 colors probably would have been plenty to keep up with the SNES and PC-Engine.

The 2nd reason the Genesis seemed dated compared to the SNES later on was sound related. Some games use the hardware exceptionally well, but many make poor use of it. But limitations still had an effect on both. Give the Genesis a slightly more capable sound system along with that 128 colors and we might have seen a very different 16bit generation.