The Sad Story of Sega's Many Mistakes

Via Press the Buttons, an interesting interview at the Sega-16 site with former Sega president Tom Kalinske. The company's former head burns bridges by laying blame for failures in the company, discussing the ways in which the Japanese office tried to run things, and revealing some of the phenomenally bad ideas the company somehow managed to overcome. From the article: "He was selling the Genesis with Altered Beast as the pack-in [instead of Sonic], and he was selling it at $189.99. There was also very little software activity going on in the U.S., and he hadn't built the company up (gotten permission to hire or didn't have the budget to), so there was no progress being made. If you remember, Sega sold the 8-bit machine - the Master System - prior to that against Nintendo, and it managed to get a 2% share of the market."

Comments

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

[Square Snow Man]

You can make almost anything a succes by just marketing a product down peoples throat. This may sound weird but its true because most things are not even worth before you bought them. (just think of a game you recently bought, was it worth it?)

Re:Marketing, Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

[generic-man]

One quote stood out: "you've got to advertise against Nintendo, you know, make fun of them. Ridicule Nintendo and make kids think that the NES is absolutely the uncoolest machine to own."

Marketing is essential in getting a product out there, but counter-marketing never seems to work. "Genesis does what Nintendon't" was Sega's counter to the NES, but then the SNES came around with a lot of things that Genesis... didn't do. Likewise, I remember the Atari Jaguar's ads "Why spend $300 on a 32-bit PlayStation when you can get a 64-bit Jaguar for only $199?" Even Apple's "switch" ads didn't produce any perceptible benefit for the company.

It seems like the best marketing is positive, marketing features that others may have but touting yours above all else. The commercials for the Genesis could have been done even better without the anti-Nintendo slaps and with 30-60 solid seconds of gameplay with a Genesis logo in the corner.

Re:Marketing, Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

[jwilcox154]

SNES came around with a lot of things that Genesis

Actually, that bit of information is one of the biggest urban legends out there. The Sega Genesis was far superior to the SNES, the Mode 7 effects were nothing more than smoke and mirrors, as the processor could only perform those tasks on a sprite when the background is one solid colour, usually black. The Genesis had a superior processor. True the SNES had more colours than the Genesis, but the Genesis could keep up with the same number of colours while the SNES had trouble with flickering.

The Genesis could do Vector graphics without a hardware add-on, while the SNES relied on the expensive Super-FX chip. The 32X also allowed the Genesis to utilize effects like Mode 7 on the the SNES as well as using all 32K colours, the SNES never used more than 200. The SegaCD was capable of the Mode 7 like effects as well.

Comparing the Turtles games no both systems, the Genesis blew the SNES out of the water. The only advantage the SNES had was more colours, while the Genesis game has more characters, less flicker, more background layers and more animation.

In TMNT IV the Turtles are capable of a flipping slash attack, that will also carry you further, just after reaching the peak of a jump, and are also capable of throwing footsoldiers into the screen. Also contrary to popular belief, the screen throw animation is not using any kind of scaling technique, but is animated in three simple sprite changes. This same approach could have been used in the Genesis version, and both systems could have animated the throw with more frames. The reason why the SNES game does not scale the sprite for the screen throw is most likely due to the speed of the game, and the necessary 3-6 characters on screen at once. The SNES never did exceptionally well with action games, and throwing scaling sprites into the mix would very likely have caused slowdown, and possibly couldn't have been done well in such a quick animation.

The SNES was inferior hardware wise, but both had an equal number of memorable games, depending on who you ask.
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/TheSegaGenesis.htm

The Playstation exists because Sega doesn't?

[RyoShin]

I remember we had a document that Olaf and Mickey took to Sony that said they'd like to develop jointly the next hardware - the next game platform, with Sega, and here's what we think it ought to do. Sony apparently gave the green light to that. I took it to Sega of Japan and told them that this was what we thought an ideal platform would be - at least from an U.S. perspective - based on what we've learned from the Sega CD, and our involvement with Sony and our own people. Sega said not a chance. Why would it want to share a platform with Sony? Sega would be much better off just developing its own platform, and it's nice that we had some ideas on what that platform ought to be and they'd consider it, but the company would be developing its next platform itself.

Wow... So the entire reason that the Playstation is as big as it is now is because both Sega and Nintendo turned down agreements with them?!

I knew about Nintendo's part, but I had no idea that Sega was involved with Sony as well.

This is insane! Someone mod the interview +1 Insightful.

Many? Two.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Pulling support for consoles before they even have a chance to fight on the market (SegaCD, Saturn, Dreamcast)

2. An utter disregard for advertising. I've said it a thousand times; I'll say it again - you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a PS2 or X-Box commercial. Even Nintendo had their share of marketing blitz. The Dreamcast? Word of mouth does not work well in console sales.

Okay, maybe three.

3. 32X.

Seriously, the only DC commercials I remembered seeing were for a Sonic game, months after hardware production for the DC had been terminated. Erm, what - the - hell? I hope nobody at Sega is wondering why they were the first true casualty of the modern console industry.

Same as it ever was

[27,000]

Through the early and mid 90's Sega had two things: the Genesis and Sonic. Yeah, the Genesis died an early death, but hardware won't last forever. The marketing was great though those days, and some lessons should have been learned, but somehow everything Kalinske mentioned worked was forgotten on the Saturn and DC. Because, as he said, Japan hated the American division's success.

And what have they done with the Japanese/American Sonic property since the days it more or less saved the company? They made it Japanese. And killed it. Since Knuckles' Chaotix, when they started loading in additional characters, piling on fluff at the expense of gameplay, the franchise has been struggling. Sonic Adventure 1 and later continued that theme while adding DESU SUGOI KAWAII SUPER RADICAL AMERICAN ATTITUDE ^___________^ without realizing that in America, the fad had thankfully disappeared in the mid 90's. It's grown more popular in Japan, at the cost of losing North America and European audiences. Now, even as Sega's only household franchise, Sega's made no efforts to save it. A run of OMG ATTITUDE games with poor controls and poor quality, Battle, Heroes, Shadow, has pretty much eclipsed what fond memories American gamers had for the series. The game for the Wii might change public opinion and bring the franchise back, but it's too early to tell.

So Sega's bludgeoned the American influences from their company and development... and looking at the last five years, can anyone say that was a good move? Can anyone rationally guess why?