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The Rise and Fall of Sega
jayintune writes "2old2play has a look into Sega's past, examining where they went wrong in the console wars. What did they do to lose their competitive edge, and how did they fall victim to the PS2 and Xbox?" From the article: "Sega started as a small business from which spawned a gaming giant. As with all great Empires, they eventually rot, crumble, and fall from their own ever-grasping hand. After the Genesis they tried to go in too many directions at once and spread their resources too thin. They knew they would have major competition from other game developers, but I bet when they started, they never imagined they would be their own worst enemy."
It seems a little bit of an overstatement to call sega an empire when they never really dominated the market at any one time. Sure they were neck-and-neck with nintendo in the Genesis/SNES years, which was also one of the best console rivalrys of all time. But none of their other systems saw the same global appeal and they certaintly never did anything to monopolise the market as nintendo had with the NES in the 80s.
When your most loyal fanbase is confused regarding the products you sell, you have a very serious problem. Sega found this out the hard way.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Did anyone read that and think of the Xbox360 and PS3?
I think Nintendo is ready for a nice comeback with the Wii. The graphics looked amazing when I looked at Galaxy Mario and Zelda twilight princess. I encourage those to google for the video's? I dont care if the specs aren't as nice as the ps3 or xbox360. The games look good enough and the price and the way its developed for everyone is going to be a huge appeal.
The games will return again after the developers will see more Wii than either the ps3 or xbox360.
http://saveie6.com/
Sega's problem was Sony corrupted the market from being about fun to "looking cool" saddly.
The dreamcast in all honesty looks better than the PS2 (Soul calibur anyone?) and has some awesome games, but it was way too far ahead of it's time. It had online play and all the stuff today we consider vital, the problem was Sega brought it out before anyone else and never fully exploited it.
I like muppets.
The genesis also beat the SNES in Europe and is still massively popular in South America. The US games market is not the be-all and end-all - it's actually spent most of it's life out-of-step with what's been going on in the rest of the world.
The 32X was nowhere near as powerful as the Saturn.
The biggest problem wasn't the 32X itself, but rather the infighting between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. Sega of Japan, in my opinion, has always been completely inept at running the company, and yet they've always had the power of final say, despite being a company founded by an American.
Sega of America, smartly, IMO, wanted to use the 32X as a bit of a stop-gap between the generations, because they knew it would be a lot more affordable than a PSX or Saturn, and it had decent enough power. Sega of Japan, however, shoved the Saturn down Sega of America's throat. An early and forced launch, no software ready, etc. Not only was America not ready for the Saturn, but of course this alienated retailers like KayBee which didn't stock the Saturn at all as they didn't get stock at launch, and developers as well. All the while, SOJ but B and C-list developers on 32X titles, and didn't devote production facilities to it as they were busy making the Saturn.
Then you have issues like Naka threatening to quit because Bernie Stolar took the NiGHTS engine without his "permission" for SOA to make Sonic Xtreme. SOJ has always been run like shit, and the only reason they managed to stay afloat so long was Sega's American and European successes and Okawa bailing them out as he was a billionaire. In fact, had he not died, he probably still would've been funding them for new R&D.
I'm suprised nobody even mentioned that the Playstation, which was what killed SEGA, was originally a joint project with Nintendo to make a SNES/Super Famicon CD system to compete with SEGA CD. Nintendo saw how bad SEGA CD was doing and bailed on Sony, causing them to lose game developers who had already begun working on games for the new add-on(like Squaresoft's Final Fantasy 7). If SEGA never tried the CD bit then Sony would not be making systems today.
Actually, it took a couple of years after the GD-ROM was introduced that some clever guys figured out how to rip them. Sega more or less tossed the gauntlet into the ring when they made the claim that it was unhackable (which of course was a challenge).
The reason Sega failed was (1) Their VMUs were almost useless, due to short lived batteries, and (2) They pissed their pants when facing another Sega VS. Sony scenario, which wasn't helped by Microsoft entering the fray, and (3) They went with GD-ROM instead of DVD as a storage medium. Sony and Microsoft both capitalized on their abilities to act as "all in one" entertainment systems, complete with DVD playback.
The biggest problem, however, was that Sega didn't learn enough from the Master System's failings, they came close to success with the Megadrive, until Ninendo released their Super Famicom system. Then it went back to reinventing the wheel, waiting to see if market share was available (despite a reluctance to properly promote their consoles), then bailing on it when the bean counters couldn't see why the systems weren't selling. The 32X was an *okay* addon peripheral, but there was so much backing behind the Saturn, that pretty much everyone who bought it were left in the dark with a high tech paperweight. There was so much potential in the Saturn, but they failed to claim their niche, losing to Sony, which resulted in the same. There was even potential in the SegaCD, but again, they failed to market it sufficiently/properly. When you have that many gamers buying into that much hardware, eventually your gamers will give up on you when you fail to support it, if at all. Even Atari demonstrated this fact.
In the end, Sega's failing is simply explained: They lost their focus, and gave up far too easily at the slightest sign of adversity.
And before anyone mods me troll, I put in a few months at Sega of America as a QA tester, and watched as all of the above took place, back in the Genesis days. You wouldn't believe the time they wasted on the SegaCD as a "FMV Box", when it's overall graphical prowess was on a par with, if not obviously superior to the Super Famicom in the day. It was downright embarassing to see how they operated.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
You either forgot or didn't know that the head of SOA helped kill the Saturn too. By implementing a 5-star-games-only policy, many good but imperfect Japanese games were never ported to North America. So an already anemic library was reduced even further.
Furthermore, the 32X as a stop-gap was a horrible strategy. Yes a Genesis+32X would cost about $220, or less than a Playstation, but there's no CDROM drive! Worse, the 32X had dual Hitachi chips running at 23 MHz, while the Saturn had dual 28MHz chips. Meaning that the 32X wasn't nearly as good as the Playstation for doing 3D.
It's simple really, the Sega CD sold 6 million units world-wide. Compare that to Sega later stating it would continue to support the Dreamcast if 5 million units sold. Now consider how many more units would have sold in 1993 and 1994 if Sega hadn't distracted the public and itself with the 32X. There would have been more games produced for the system, and more machines sold. Developers wouldn't have been screwed from the debacle, and more likely to support the Saturn. Finally, developers who wanted to develop for the next-gen console would have had an extra year to ready their titles for the Saturn instead of the 32X.
Alternatively, Sega's biggest blunder was not having the Genesis display 128 or 256 colors instead of 64. NEC's PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 could do 512 at once, at it was released in Japan in 1987. With 128 or 256 colors, the SNES would not have had such a visual advantage, and the Sega CD video would have been much more enticing.
1. they're a mostly privately held company, making them nigh immune to hostile take-over.
2. They have billions in cash and liquid assets, and no debt, and turn a profit every quarter (how exactly do you go under like this?).
3. Despite the PSP (and all the dozen or so previous challengers), they still OWN the handheld market, and are selling DS Lites faster than they can make them, and despite being "obsolete" the GBA in its various forms ain't doing shabby either.
4. They seemed VERY well received at E3 this year, and have a number hotly awaited titles aimed at launch for the Revolution, a marked improvement over the Gamecube launch (which admittedly they botched, largely by launching the console and then not having must have titles come out for another 18 or so months.) Name them? Let's see: Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy, Red Steel, and a New Dragon Quest Game. Plus more titles that look really promising.
Of course, Sony hasn't really been doing much to ingratiate itself with the public lately, and there's always a possiblity for some backlash, especially if they don't get their backwards compatibility problems sorted out before launch. Of course, I really don't expect a backlash to happen unfortunately, but there's always hope. I suspect the cattle will line up and fork over their $600 like good little consumers. I'm also disappointed at Capcom buddying up with Microsoft on Live Arcade. I want "Legend of the Mystical Ninja" on virtual console dammit.
So you don't own either one? Well, I own both a Dreamcast and PS2 so I can tell you from first hand experience that to even pretend for a moment that the DC is graphically superior is simply absurd.