Is Sega the Next Atari?

donniebaseball23 writes As CEO of Sega of America in the early 1990s, Tom Kalinske oversaw the company during its glory days, when all eyes in the industry were glued to the titanic struggle for console superiority between the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Times have changed, to put it mildly, and Sega is now a shell of its former self. Where did things go wrong? According to Kalinske, Sega's downfall was failing to partner with Sony on a new platform, and the bad decisions kept piling on from there. Sega's exit from hardware "could have been avoided if they had made the right decisions going back literally 20 years ago. But they seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years."

Comments

Question In Headline

[sexconker]

Answer is "no".

SEGA is not "the next Atari". They've been a fucking dead husk for over a decade.

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Atari was a dead husk for two decades. Before the Atari name was used to rebrand some corporate consolidation.

I think only thing stopping the same thing happening to SEGA is a complete and utter change in the natural order of things.

Re:Question In Headline

[Bonzoli]

It was also used for the DnD IP in computer games.

Re:Question In Headline

[Dutch Gun]

I suspect we largely agree on the generalities, but I'd have said "yes". Sega is on life support, but not quite dead. Atari has died, was buried, resurrected like a zombie, and is in the process of dying a second time. Both companies made bad decision after bad decision, causing the collapse of their companies. Sega seems to be following in Atari's footsteps quite handily, the only difference being that Atari had a nice head start on them.

I always wonder what it is about businesses that seem unable to do just about anything to turn themselves around versus more successful ones. Simply the guy at the helm? The corporate culture? A too-entrenched bureaucracy? How does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

The article talks about how a brand like Atari can survive in a new home, but what's the point of that? It can be resurrected and slapped onto new products, but unless those new products actually reflect what made the brand successful in the first place, it will eventually wither and die again, just like before. It's a recipe for a short term fix and subsequent fall. If anything, a "new branding" simply indicates a company's lack of confidence in their ability to make their own name a recognized and successful brand.

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

TSR and WoC are dead. Now we all have to negotiate with Hasbro for the rights to D&D. I'm not sure it's even worthwhile anymore. Most of the D&D PC games in the last decade have been crap, and the tabletop stuff hasn't been so great either.

I think the OGL means that you could license PathFinder directly from Paizo and skip working with Hasbro. PathFinder is better represented among 18-24 tabletop gamers than D&D. Old guys like me know of D&D because we played it in high school, but our everday system is usually PathFinder.

Re:Question In Headline

[frank_adrian314159]

How does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

A conundrum for the ages to be sure, but my humble opinion?

Ahem... A company that makes bad decision after bad decision does not understand the difference between a good decision and a bad decision.

Do I win a prize?

Re:Question In Headline

[The Rizz]

TSR and WoC are dead. Now we all have to negotiate with Hasbro for the rights to D&D.

Not at all true. WotC is owned by Hasbro, but given a high level of autonomy. Hasbro has even moved other product lines they've acquired under WotC's management (Avalon Hill, for example).

Re:Question In Headline

[HBI]

Yeah, they've done such a great job there. Out of the entire AH pre-cataclysm line, only two games are produced by WotC - Acquire and Diplomacy. AWAW and Prados' Third Reich are the only other survivors I am aware of, and are not produced by Hasbro/WotC itself.

The rest of the vaunted AH line is completely defunct and you can pay hundreds of dollars to lay hands on a (not-so-gently) used copy of a particular favorite. It's a pretty crappy situation all around. There was some fun stuff in that library. You'd think WotC could make some money off selling even PDFed copies of the games - as certain people on Ebay do, though not legally.

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

4E just kept reminding me of MMOs with "noobified" rules that I wound up using PathFinder, although I might try 5e because it seems to flow a bit better. At least it went back to classic alignments rather than 4e's "double plus good, plus good, double minus good" crap. The two axis model of classic D&D can bring a lot of usability for a DM, especially if the PCs ever set foot on the planes. However, Hasbro reminds too much of GW... lots of money for not that much IP, while I can go to Paizo and get a lot more bang for my campaign buck.

Since I'm already separating the background from rulesets, as my campaign started back in the 1E days when you had the player's guide, Monster's Manual, DMG, Unearthed Arcana, Deities & Demigods, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual 2, and Oriental Adventures.

My concern about the modern day Hasbro is that I'm starting to feel that they are like Games Workshop where if you just want to dip your toe in the water, you better pony up $750 if you want a decent Warhammer army, and $1500 after that (2 bucks a point) if you don't care to sit there and spend a few weekends paint your wargoats before you can officially play. With Paizo, the players and I can buy the PDFs and be off and running, while 5E requires physical books (no PDFs available unless you pirate, and starting out a campaign with IP infringement isn't my idea of being a good DM.)

Re:Question In Headline

[sysrammer]

I always wonder what it is about businesses that seem unable to do just about anything to turn themselves around versus more successful ones. Simply the guy at the helm? The corporate culture? A too-entrenched bureaucracy? How does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

I think one reason is that when Company A has a product and strategy (and/or lockin) that works, Company B often has to try a different path to differentiate their product, or have to do things differently because of patents, whatever. Often that different path is not optimal, but the optimal path is not open.

sr

Re:Question In Headline

[werepants]

5th Edition is actually damn good. D&D is still much more of a household name than Pathfinder is (or probably ever will be).

Re:Question In Headline

[neoritter]

I only dabbled in 3E before 3.5 came out, but I have a few friends that swear by 5E right now. They say it's better, and definitely better than 4E.

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

"I always wonder what it is about businesses that seem unable to do just about anything to turn themselves around versus more successful ones. "

Inability to learn from others points of view, see the science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Re:Question In Headline

[OrangeTide]

I'd take any of the cheap OSR stuff over 5E. It has the same feel, but way more material for it. Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, Beyond the Wall (my favorite), and many others with varying degrees of compatibility. The quality of materials in the 5E starter kit was a big disappointment, the price was nice and low because there were sections of the manual they didn't bother printing out and offered for free on the website instead. "Free" meaning not really all that free in this case because the PDFs are useless without the beginner box and I had to pay money for the beginner box. Even though it was very inexpensive, I think I would have paid $10 more to have another $1 of materials added to the box.

My main group does Pathfinder, but they have dumped the battle maps and we use a quickly sketched notepad and jellybeans. (yes, you get to eat the jellybean if you kill something). Everything is solved by the DM ruling on issues that arise from our loose game style. I don't know if you can call that an OSR style or not, I seem to recall a lot of original D&D gamers doing graph paper maps back in the day.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good hex crawl. I just don't want to move my character around a chess board every time its my turn. I don't even want to have well defined turns, I want to take actions whenever it makes sense for me to take an action. (ie, when it is necessary or dramatic to do so)

Re:Question In Headline

[Dutch Gun]

You should totally write a book. You'll make millions!

It seems like a lot of people in upper management get so caught up in trying to figure out how to extract money for their customers rather than intently focusing on a product that people will willingly part with their money to obtain. Lenovo is a great recent example. Contrast that with Apple, who's customers often display an incredible amount of brand loyalty, despite the premium price of their products.

Not too surprisingly, the top leadership of Sega Japan was largely made up of old men who probably didn't actually play videogames themselves. I don't see how you can make good decisions for a game development company if you don't play videogames yourself, or at the very least, if you don't really listen to people within your company that do. It's pretty obvious that didn't happen enough.

Re:Question In Headline

[hairyfeet]

And moreover partnering with Sony WOULD NOT HAVE SAVED THEM as they had burned their customers over and over AND OVER for the better part of 5 years. Nobody was gonna buy Sega hardware even if they came out with the baddest console in the history of the universe!

The reason Sega died was threefold, 1.- They royally fucked their retail partners on the Saturn by doing a "sneak launch" that left several 800 pound gorillas like Walmart out in the cold. this pissed off those retailers so badly that many of them swore to never carry another piece of Sega hardware, this crippled their retail channel overnight and it never recovered.

2.-The thing that put the first nails in the coffin though was the fact that SOA and SOJ weren't even on speaking terms, with things getting so bad that SOJ would even make announcements that would hamstring SOA! From what I read SOJ was a bunch of elitist pricks with a serious case of NIH so they treated SOA like a red headed stepchild and kept them out of the loop on what they had in the pipe.Depending on how you view 3 this can be seen as justified, though it still crippled the company.

3.- But what ultimately destroyed their sales was the fact that SOA simply refused to let go off the Genesis and launched one failed add-on after another, all of which left the consumer feeling like they got scammed as they spent hundreds of dollars (nearly $700 if they bought a Genesis, Sega-CD, and 32x at launch) and all they got was piss poor support, lousy titles, and in the case of the 32x a device that was dying less than 90 days after launch!

Many blame the fact that the Saturn was really designed to be a 2D gaming monster that had badly supported 3D just bolted on at the last minute but I would argue that by that time they were already dying. I was a HARDCORE Sega fan at the time but after getting burnt on the Sega-CD (I picked up a 32x when they hit $25 with 3 games but we all knew it was a dead system by then) I was just fucking done with the company,after seeing the incredible promise of Sega-CD just thrown away (anybody who says it couldn't be a great system really should play Lunar) I honestly didn't trust the company not to abandon their hardware before enough decent games came out to justify the expense. I avoided the Saturn altogether for the PlayStation, grabbed a Dreamcast when it hit $75 (and the pirates had already cracked it, makes a great NES/Genesis emulator box) and then went PC and never looked back.

At the time I was big into IRC and all I heard from the Sega channels was the same story, guys that got burnt on Sega-CD/32X that refused to give the company another shot, a few picked up Saturn only to see SOA refuse to import the best titles thanks to their pissing contest with SOJ, instead sticking with frankly shitty western games (most guys forget that before the big 3D shooter and RPG craze on PC that western game developers were REALLY piss poor compared to their eastern counterparts. Bad controls, lousy levels, and lame graphics were standard for western made games by and large) and leaving the best titles for the system overseas. By the time the Dreamcast came around? Even the most hardcore fanboys just had had enough, they had a shitload of hardware with little to no decent games and felt ripped off. You have to remember they hyped the shit out of Sega-CD/32X so a LOT of guys (myself included) got taken and when you sank nearly $500 and could count the good games on 2 hands with fingers left over? That is NOT a good sign!

So no Sony could not have saved them, they were already dying by that point. They should have never released the CD/32X or at least committed to giving them 3 years of game support, even if it meant dropping the royalties to nothing just to get devs on board,if they would have done that along with a promise of 3 years on Saturn? Then they might have made it, at least built enough good will to get their fanbase to get on board with Dreamcast which really was a kick ass piece of hardware, but shitty management, too many pieces of worthless hardware, and too much infighting had them dead by 2K and nothing would have saved them at that point.

Re:Question In Headline

[cfalcon]

This is a solid comment. I agree with all of it, but I wish you had emphasized how very ludicrous their hardware marketing was. As a gamer at the time (Nintendo), I was extraordinarily puzzled at the amount of hoops it took to even understand what the various Sega hardware was. It was extremely silly to assume that everyone had infinite space under their TV and tolerance for hardware outlays, CD/32-X were confusing anyway. Expensive hardware addon is always a risky play, because it means that any game made for it is just for the subsection of players that bought your base hardware and then bought your hardware addon, and those hardware addons NEVER seemed to be inexpensive in the first place.

The other reason that it hurt them so bad was the social aspect. If you had decided you weren't going to buy the Genesis (and if you were a kid, that decision was mostly made by asking your parents for a DIFFERENT system to begin with), then you were already committed to not owning a Genesis. If you launch a fresh piece of hardware, you might grab the Nintendo guy for that generation, but if you keep building on the one he already chose, then he's already well into cognitive dissonance land- you would need to dominate the field so hard with technical expertise that no one could ignore you, and that just didn't happen.

Also... I always found their marketing ludicrous. Console wars were always clannish, but Sega couldn't seem to stop insulting Nintendo players with their attitude of "play us and be cool, play them and be drool". "Personally insulting your potential customers based on their current console" definitely looked like it was their strategy for awhile. I never see this come up in any discussion, but it really did feel real at the time.

Re:Question In Headline

[hairyfeet]

I don't even think TFA understands there is a difference between "surviving" and being "a zombie company strictly used to whore out old IP by milking nostalgia value" which Atari is strictly the latter. I suppose one could argue that Sega has been the same since Sammi bought them out but I wouldn't call milking old IP for nostalgia value to be "surviving" by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:Question In Headline

[Nelson]

I always wonder what it is about businesses that seem unable to do just about anything to turn themselves around versus more successful ones. Simply the guy at the helm? The corporate culture? A too-entrenched bureaucracy? How does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

This is a truly fascinating question. I have a theory that a company like Sega can't turn around because

1. a) they have drank too much of their own koolaid to maybe do something different and
2. b) they experienced enough success doing things the way that they did that anything less than the same success is considered a failure. Lastly
3. c) It takes time for success and failure, when your buisness isn't shooting in to space like a rocket, when do you decide that you're failing? Do you give your teams time? Or do you just look at the competition and shut it down?

For example with a, they seemed to be at a juncture where they had to partner on hardware, stop doing hardware, or like triple down on hardware and maybe get some outside investment to do that. They had made money with hardware in the past, simply cutting that off or partnering with a sony (that had a wonderful Nintendo partnership) had to be a very tough decision. Then the question is, if they only do software, is there any chance that they will have the successes that they had had before? I suspect by the time they could legitimately talk about that, the answer was decisively 'no' and Sony and MS had already begun to build some of their own franchises and were really starting to roll. They would have had to be willing to acknowledge that there was going to be a "new normal" and that it was normal for them to make a lot less money.

Some of those questions are hard, I was at IBM in the mid 90s and it was because the people running things weren't involved with the history of things that they were able to make some of those hard choices. It's easy to stand on the side and say what Sega should have done, it's different when you built the genesis and watched it make money.

Re:Question In Headline

[Dogtanian]

Atari was a dead husk for two decades. Before the Atari name was used to rebrand some corporate consolidation.

Actually, the Atari *name* has never really been out of circulation for long.

The original Atari Inc. was split and sold off in 1984 to become Atari Corp., (shut down circa 1996, following the Jaguar debacle), and Atari Games (defunct 2003, but renamed in the late 90s (*)).

While Atari Corp. and Atari Games were the only successors that (IMHO) could really claim to be continuations of the original company- and they're both now defunct themselves- nevertheless, Hasbro bought the home rights to the name and IP from the defunct Atari Corp. and used them in the late 90s. (*) Infogrames in turn bought them from Hasbro a few years after that, and has used it ever since.

So yeah, today's "Atari" is just Infogrames, and the real Atari is long dead. But the point is that the name never really went away- it was in almost constant use.

(*) Atari Games- who only owned the name for arcade use- was renamed to avoid confusion with Hasbro's new "Atari".

Re:Question In Headline

[The Rizz]

Large chunks of the AH catalog had been sold separately before Hasbro purchased the AH name/trademarks and remaining catalog, so many of these old favorites are not even in Hasbro's hands. Also, many of them were not made by AH, but simply published by them. Of the ones that are still theirs, they've republished several, and they release another one every year or so (albeit sometimes reworked/updated and renamed).

However, they're not going to release everything, as many of the games are simply not popular enough to actually make any money if they printed it - especially considering the dearth of new games on the market.

AH went bankrupt for a reason - publishing a lot of stuff that had too small of a market - why should Hasbro/WotC republish those mistakes?

Re:Question In Headline

[Dutch Gun]

"Drinking your own koolaid" definitely has to be on the list. People are, for whatever reason, often unable to see their own failings and mistakes, choosing instead to blame other factors or others around them. When presented with incontrovertible evidence, they'll start equivocating, blaming the messenger, or will simply refuse to accept the fact for any number of reasons.

I'd also say that "fear of risk" is on the list. Successful big gambles look incredibly obvious in hindsight, but failed gambles can also get you fired. As the old saying went in the 80's, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". In the 90's, it was "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". For entertainment in particular, though, being too cautious can end up resulting in lukewarm products, which is nearly as bad as horrible products. Lukewarm or boring is fine for most business products. It's a killer in the entertainment industry.

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too surprisingly, the top leadership of Sega Japan was largely made up of old men who probably didn't actually play videogames themselves.

By that reasoning they should shit money like EA does.

Re:Question In Headline

[chthon]

In that case they should at least make a good decision every now and then, due to randomness.

Re:Question In Headline

[AmiMoJo]

Europe had it even worse. You have no idea how bad European Dreamcast game boxes were... Anyway, it's interesting to look at the whole thing from the Japanese point of view. They got all the best games and Sega is still doing pretty well with its arcade business over there. They had even more hardware too, but seem more willing to spend money on it.

It made sense for Sega to become software only. Their strength was always their game development teams in Japan. It sucked for the west because a lot of the best games never came out here. By the time the Dreamcast rolled around hardware wasn't a big deal any more. By the next generation the consoles were pretty generic and the only real difference was a handful of exclusive games and who you wanted to screw you on subscriptions for online content.

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too surprisingly, the top leadership of Sega Japan was largely made up of old men who probably didn't actually play videogames themselves. I don't see how you can make good decisions for a game development company if you don't play videogames yourself, or at the very least, if you don't really listen to people within your company that do. It's pretty obvious that didn't happen enough.

On the other hand, there was a "big" story (think it was on Wired, can't find it at the moment), where someone who was a programmer and loved games thought they could build a game-making company, and failed so completely even with lots of resources that it was humiliating. Just because you like movies doesn't make you a movie star or a director, just means you like movies. It's a relatively small community of people that can do the high level work in any industry.

Re:Question In Headline

[HBI]

You are singularly ill-informed. AH didn't go bankrupt. AH's publisher decided to leave the business, but not because of the quality of the games or inability to make money on them. Bad business decisions - there are some good articles on what those were, particularly an ill-advised lawsuit against Microprose - did them in. Opportunity cost also worked against them, as their parent company, a publishing house, thought publishing magazines more profitable than wargames. The fact that the primary magazine they worked on was divested a few years later probably suggests that they were wrong. Either way, Monarch Publishing couldn't have mishandled things in a worse way, and the ownership in the 18 years since has been sitting on the IP and doing very little with it.

Re:Question In Headline

[Shirley Marquez]

1830 was also republished recently by Mayfair Games. That's one more.

Hasbro is actually pretty good about licensing games when there is continuing interest but not potential for mass market numbers. But they don't own the rights to all the old Avalon Hill games; some were sold off back when AH still existed or were under contracts where the rights reverted back to the designers.

Re:Question In Headline

[RyoShin]

ow does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

In the case of SEGA, I think another interview with Tom Kalinski spoke volumes about the problem: Sega of Japan. The interview touches on the fact that SEGA partnered with Sony to create a CD peripheral but cut their ties before it was complete. Nintendo also did this, to make a peripheral for the SNES, and cut ties with Sony to partner with Philips (Sony found out about the change when Nintendo announced their partnership with Phillips.) Sony then took the work they had done with the two video game giants of the time and created the Playstation. In particular, I think the following part of the interview highlights the whole problem with SEGA (emphasis mine):

I remember Joe Miller and I were talking about this, and we had been contacted by Jim Clark, the founder of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), who called us up one day and said that he had just bought a company called MIPS Inc. which had been working on some things with some great R&D people, and it just so happened that they came up with a chip that they thought would be great for a video game console. We told them that in the U.S., we don't really design consoles; we do the software, but it sounded interesting and we would come over and take a look at it. We were quite impressed, and we called up Japan and told them to send over the hardware team because these guys really had something cool. So the team arrived, and the senior VP of hardware design arrived, and when they reviewed what SGI had developed, they gave no reaction whatsoever. At the end of the meeting, they basically said that it was kind of interesting, but the chip was too big (in manufacturing terms), the throw-off rate would be too high, and they had lots of little technical things that they didn't like: the audio wasn't good enough; the frame rate wasn't quite good enough, as well as some other issues.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I'm not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn't good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren't the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

Re:Question In Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right?

1994 called. They want their... uh, time-travel phone back.

Re:Question In Headline

[arvindsg]

Depends on how rare good decisions are and how many you make at which point you know longer can make decisions.

Re:Question In Headline

[The Rizz]

Ah, OK - I just remember they sold it off in the midst of financial problems. I was probably confusing their story and that of TSR's (all-but) bankruptcy, since they happened at about the same time.

As for Hasbro/Wizards sitting on the IP, the simple fact is that the vast majority of the IP is unusable at this point. They might have names that are too generic, or too close to other games on the market. Or, if they have a unique enough name for that to be valuable, the game is unknown outside of very small and specialized gaming circles. A very large majority of their games are basically the same type of game with slightly different rules (i.e. Diplomacy/Machiavelli, all the various WWII combat games, etc.). A large number of their games would compete with WotC/Hasbro's other IP (other WWII games vs. Axis & Allies, fantasy games vs. the various D&D incarnations, etc.). And, in a large number of cases, the rules are woefully out of date with the modern game industry - most of them were developed in the 70s or 80s, and would need to have major updating done to make them viable alternatives to other currently-published games.

I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[damn_registrars]

Sega's downfall was failing to partner with Sony on a new platform

I thought the first playstation came about when Nintendo decided not to have Sony make a CD drive for their console. Did Sega really have a chance to make the same mistake?

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't a "mistake" on Nintendo's part so much is they didn't expect Sony to blantly steal the design/ideas. The real shocker to the industry was customers didn't care who Sony had to stab in the back so long as they produced something new and shiny.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sega's downfall was failing to partner with Sony on a new platform

I thought the first playstation came about when Nintendo decided not to have Sony make a CD drive for their console. Did Sega really have a chance to make the same mistake?

What would be the mistake? Sega had a CD drive, it spun around as good as Sony's unless your an audiophile.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Opportunist]

Well, corporations don't give a shit about their customers, why should their customers give a shit about them? Whoever delivers what I want is who I buy from.

Well, I might reconsider if it's Sony and wonder "ok, how're they gonna screw me over?", but in general...

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[tlhIngan]

I thought the first playstation came about when Nintendo decided not to have Sony make a CD drive for their console. Did Sega really have a chance to make the same mistake?

Correct. Nintendo partnered with Sony to come up with a CD-ROM based platform, which ultimately Nintendo abandoned, and Sony continued development on.

Sega, however, let Sony's marketing on the PS2 overwhelm them - the DreamCast came out about a year before the PS2 and was by all accounts a fairly capable at the time machine. Sony, whose dominance with the PlayStation was already prevalent saw the DreamCast as competition and basically hyped up the PS2's technical specs as being superior to the DreamCast. Sega didn't counter the move and people ended up waiting for the PS2 instead of getting a DreamCast, perceiving the PS2 as a better machine to get.

Though, one effect of going software only is availability - have to admit it's nice to be able to play all the games on multiple platforms.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

why should their customers give a shit about them? Whoever delivers what I want is who I buy from.

Because you might want to buy something else down the line. People talk of how companies look only at short term gains at cost of long term damage, but that applies to people in general. You might get a great deal on something you want today, but in the long run will that company increase or decrease the availability of things you want?

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

There were a couple DYKG videos on this, check out the one on the Dreamcast.

Sony partnered with Nintendo and that later became the Playstation... According to wikipedia, the Sega approached Silicon Graphics, but Sega Japan shot the idea down.. Silicon Graphics went on to collaborate with Nintendo for the N64. I vaguely remember something else about the Saturn being hard to develop for and more catered toward powerful 2D processing, while the PS1 was geared for 3D.

Then looking later at the Dreamcast, Sega had actually developed 2 platforms but decided on one late in the game (Remember 3dfx?). The funny part is even though the PS2 won that generation even though it was hard to program for. Then the PS3 lost to the 360 due to ease of development. Now PS4 and XB1 are pretty much the same, and the complaints go to the hardware speeds instead of architecture.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest reasons for PS2 success, IMO

1) Played all PSX games
2) Cheaper than DVD players

A lot of people thought the 3 would replicate 2 for BluRay, but BluRay is barely superior to DVD whereas DVD was a HUGE step up from VHS.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[unrtst]

they all knew sony's penchant for proprietary formats was a bad idea - they just didn't expect them to be so successful.

How are CDROM, DVD, and BD more proprietary than what Nintendo and Sega used at the time?!?!

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[MBGMorden]

Dreamcast had some issues that were hard to overcome that weren't just marketing related.

1. The proprietary "GD-ROM" disc format. 1GB of storage space which was a fraction of what PS2 had with DVD's. It also didn't let people play DVD movies at a time when DVD movie players were still expensive.

2. Incredibly easy piracy. Most of the games targeted for GD-ROM's were capable of fitting on a regular CD, and people figured out how to make easily burnable pirated games without even needing a modchip.

#2 was a fluke, but #1 was just a bad decision in general. I honestly think if Dreamcast had shipped with a DVD drive Sega would still be making hardware.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[tepples]

What would be the mistake? Sega had a CD drive, it spun around as good as Sony's unless your an audiophile.

The original PlayStation had a 2x CD-ROM drive. So Sony's drive spun twice as good as the 1x drive in the Sega CD.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[ModelX]

GD-ROM instead of DVD was not really the key problem, Dreamcast was buried by the developers before PS2 even launched!

The key problem was trivial piracy and the stupid feature that rebooted the machine when swapping disks (who wants to play a 1GB CG intensive game).

Also, many developers were porting to WinCE for Dreamcast, but that thing was buggy, like really buggy, like showstopping buggy. And then Microsoft withdrew support (or if they didn't officially in practice support was inadequate).

When it was obvious PS2 has got it Dreamcast was toast as far as developer/publisher support goes and that was about half a year before PS2 launch. Sega's financial problems due also to collapse of arcades market prevented another attempt at consoles.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't a "mistake" on Nintendo's part so much is they didn't expect Sony to blantly steal the design/ideas. The real shocker to the industry was customers didn't care who Sony had to stab in the back so long as they produced something new and shiny.

Nintendo was one of the most unethical, belligerent companies around. Even if most people had known the history between them and Sony at the time (it wasn't commonly known beyond the Playstation being born of an intended joint production between the two that didn't go ahead) why should anybody have given a shit about them "stabbing them in the back" if it lead to a ground breaking console being made?

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Guspaz]

Sega had problems getting developers for the Dreamcast long before there were any piracy problems. They alienated developers by spitting out new incompatible hardware in a rapidfire format. The 32X was released shortly before the Saturn, and then the Saturn was abandoned early into its lifespan in favour of the Dreamcast. Between 1991 and 1998, Sega had a total of five different and incompatible hardware platforms on the market, six if you include the GameGear.

By the time the Dreamcast rolled around, many developers had had enough of Sega's schizophrenic console strategy, and avoided them.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[mjwx]

Dreamcast had some issues that were hard to overcome that weren't just marketing related.

2. Incredibly easy piracy. Most of the games targeted for GD-ROM's were capable of fitting on a regular CD, and people figured out how to make easily burnable pirated games without even needing a modchip.

The thing is, easy piracy increases console sales.

Microsoft knew this with the original Xbox. It was so easily modded that everyone bought one. Same with the PS2. When the PS3 came along they lost momentum because everything was just a huge pain in the arse.

The Dreamcast was just a bad console with a serious dearth of good games. Even if it were just a bad console but had some good games it would have been enough to keep Sega going like Nintendo did with the Game Cube.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[sound vision]

I don't think piracy was that big of a factor. Sure, it required no modding... but it did require you to downloaded several hundred megabytes per game. The Dreamcast was released in 1999, so that means over dialup. I'm too lazy to do the math, but my guess-o-meter says you would have to tie up your phone line for the better part of a week to complete 1 game download. And hope you don't get disconnected, because then you have to start over...

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Uberbah]

Incredibly easy piracy.

At a time when people were still on modems and a cd burner cost more than a Playstation 2?

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[CronoCloud]

The thing is, easy piracy increases console sales.

Maybe in Europe and the 2nd and 3rd world, but not in the US, CA, NZ, AU, UK and Japan. Which...not-surprisingly, are the places with low piracy rates where people are actually willing to buy games.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, the PlayStation was an original design by Sony, they didn't steal anything. Nintendo wanted Sony to create a CD-ROM *add-on* for the Super Famicom, they didn't design a new system.

Basically Nintendo signed agreements and then welshed on the contract because they got greedy and wanted to cut Sony out entirely. After that, Sony said screw you to Nintendo and made their own console independently, which went on to blow away every subsequent Nintendo console in sales and is the second best selling console of all time (the PS2 holds the crown for best selling console of all time).

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1999 I had a cable modem connection that could pull down 500-600 kilobytes per second, so no. Dial-up internet was more like 1994.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[MBGMorden]

Not really. College students have always been a key demographic for gaming, and almost all of them had broadband in 1999. Heck I was able to get 1Mbps DSL in the middle of nowhere a by 2001.

Also - a CD burner back then cost about $75.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Uberbah]

CD burners that cheap didn't come out until years after the Dreamcast was already dead. Piracy was an excuse in any case, as some of the most copied games were also the biggest money makers for their time: just look at Warcraft and Starcraft.

Heck I was able to get 1Mbps DSL in the middle of nowhere a by 2001.

And someone won the Powerball last week. Extraordinarily rare anecdotes do not a median make.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[MBGMorden]

CD burners that cheap didn't come out until years after the Dreamcast was already dead.

Sorry, but you're wrong on that, or didn't know how to shop. By the time Dreamcast came out CD-R's had been available for 10 years and had dropped in price significantly. I already had a CD burner (actually my second one) in my computer when I went to college the same year Dreamcast was released. It was less than $100 - bought on a part time minimum wage teenager's earnings.

And someone won the Powerball last week. Extraordinarily rare anecdotes do not a median make.

The point was that it wasn't extraordinarily rare. Broadband was very much available at the time the Dreamcast came out. Certainly not at the speeds available today (my current connection is 50x faster than what I had back then), but it was still broadband and downloading a single ISO wasn't all that bad.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Gingernads]

The thing is, easy piracy increases console sales.

Maybe in Europe and the 2nd and 3rd world, but not in the US, CA, NZ, AU, UK and Japan. Which...not-surprisingly, are the places with low piracy rates where people are actually willing to buy games.

The thing is, easy piracy increases console sales.

Maybe in Europe and the 2nd and 3rd world, but not in the US, CA, NZ, AU, UK and Japan. Which...not-surprisingly, are the places with low piracy rates where people are actually willing to buy games.

Piracy was rampant on both PlayStation and PlayStation 2 in the UK. This was largely because these generations coincided with the mass commoditisation of CD and then DVD burners in PCs. People may have been willing to buy games. However, willingness and ability are not the same thing. Many gamers had huge collections that they couldn't possibly have acquired legitimately. I can't speak for orher regions but I suspect the same would have been true.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[sound vision]

Good for you... most people were running 56k tops.

Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure...

[Uberbah]

Sorry, but you're wrong on that, or didn't know how to shop. By the time Dreamcast came out CD-R's had been available for 10 years and had dropped in price significantly.

Only if you were living in Taiwan as the son of an electronics exec. And 4k screens have been out for 10 years and dropped in price significantly - but they're still rare and expensive. And yes, I do have fond memories of burning CD's in dorm rooms at the time - and it would cost me $3 bucks per disk plus pizza for the guy who had invested in a blazing fast 2x burner.

And it's still a red herring for other reasons: Napster was around at the time, but bittorent did not exist, and the only people with decent net connections for downloading ISO's were college students. And the most widely pirated games of all time were also best sellers, for their time, like Warcraft and Starcraft.

is Sega?... Was Sega?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Sega fail like Atari?

Will the Berlin wall come down?

I bought sega...

[Anonymous Coward]

So one of the most selling point of sega was the hardware advancement over Nintendo. I liked the fast paced graphic and the whole system came with a plug and play. While super nintendo was nice I had owned the original nintendo and and didn't think owning another nintendo wasn't a good decision. Not that I had anything against the original nintendo except occasionally the cartridge didn't load when you inserted it in....

Here's what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Sega blew it with the Saturn. That's where it all went wrong. People will say that it started to go wrong with the 32X, but the 32X was never taken seriously, and sold very few units. Yeah, it was stupid, but it wasn't really important, either.

The Saturn, though...basically Sega missed the boat on 3D, and the Playstation didn't. That was the beginning of the end. Then Sega had the Dreamcast, which was a great system hardware-wise, but they failed to get third-parties on board, and they didn't have enough games/momentum by the time the PS2 was announced. If the Dreamcast had come out a year earlier, it would've had a nice pile of games by the time the PS2 arrived, and they would've been in a better position.

Essentially Sega moved too slowly in the mid-to-late 90s. I don't know if you can actually say they did anything *wrong*...they just didn't do a good enough job.

Re:Here's what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Saturn beat Playstation to the market with 3D. Launch titles games like Virtua Cop and Virtua Figher.

Re:Here's what happened

[Opportunist]

And they SUCKED!

Sega learned the hard way one of the eternal laws of gaming: Gimmicks and buzzwords are a great starter, but they're a poor sticker. They may let you sell a few units, but once the new car smell is off, players will want to, ya know, be able to play their games.

For reference, see all the various recent "real life input" bullshit, from WiiMote to Kinect. MS caught on and realized that gimmicks ain't selling. Let's hope Nintendo will before it's too late.

Re:Here's what happened

[SeaFox]

Saturn beat Playstation to the market with 3D. Launch titles games like Virtua Cop and Virtua Figher.

But those were Sega-published titles. As the AC said, there wasn't enough 3rd party content to make the platform that enticing to buyers.

Re:Here's what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

I owned a saturn and a dreamcast, the dreamcast was WAY ahead of the times. I remember playing resident evil, with the incorporation of the led display on the controller made for a great gaming experience. It also had a 56k modem...

Sigh, unfortunately the online support (I don't think I used the damn modem once) never seemed to exist and the same with games that supported the led on the gamepad. After about a year the ps1 came out and that was the end of that. I ended up getting an xbox just to spite sony (I hated the gamepad anyway, too small for my hands). Can safely say I have never owned a sony console, I guess that makes me an xbox fanboy but by the time I got on live I never saw the point of jumping ship and both platforms shared most of the same games so I just stuck with xbox.

Re:Here's what happened

[jandrese]

By the time the Dreamcast came out, SEGA was already a dead man walking. The 32x and Saturn failures had taught developers that if they developed for SEGA hardware they wouldn't get sales and the platform would be abandoned quickly. The Dreamcast was a perfectly capable box but it was surrounded by the stench of death from SEGA HQ.

Meanwhile Sony was following up their tremendous success on the PS1 with what was hyped up to be a technological tour-de-force with the PS2. Third party developers couldn't wait to sign up and sell a million copies of whatever they put out.

The final nail in the coffin is that SEGA's first party development teams were just kind of bad at their jobs. A problem that exists even today. Sonic titles are just a solid stream of garbage since the end of the Genesis days. Nintendo has a similar problem with third party support on their consoles, but it doesn't matter too much because they put out a handful of really excellent first party titles each year to keep the platform alive. If SEGA had been putting out a killer Sonic game every year they probably could have kept the Dreamcast going and maybe made some headway against the PS2, although the PS2 was such a juggernaut that it would have still had an uphill battle.

Re:Here's what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

The led display was on the memory card which fit into the controller and EVERY game had it's own mini game for that. Some were better than others.

Re:Here's what happened

[twistedsymphony]

The final nail in the coffin is that SEGA's first party development teams were just kind of bad at their jobs.

I beg to differ, Segas 1st party titles during the Dreamcast era were at the top of their game and produced titles and franchises that are STILL making them money re-selling on different platforms as many of them have become cult-classics. Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 2, Jet Set Radio, Panzer Dragoon, Virtual On OT, Space Channel 5, Chu Chu Rocket, Shenmue, etc. Even their flagship driving game Metropolis Street Racer when on to spawn 4 sequels in the Form of Project Gotham Racing and was the Xbox's flagship driving game until Microsoft introduced Forza.

The Sonic games released on the Dreamcast were actually rated fairly well and fairly well received by fans. Most consider them to be the first 3D Sonic titles made by Sega that didn't suck.
Sonic Adventure on GameRankings scores an 86: http://www.gamerankings.com/dr...
Sonic Adventure 2 scores an 89 on MetaCritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game...

Re:Here's what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what timeline / alternate universe are you from? The Saturn wasn't released a year before the PS1, and that's certainly true of the Dreamcast as well. And my god, the Xbox didn't even arrive in the same decade. Really? REALLY?

Re:Here's what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

The Saturn had a number of issues going against it. The first was human, with Sega favoring the Japanese approach of exclusive arcade ports, the same thing that had them in the gaming doledrums in the 1980's. Sega only did well in the 16 bit wars by abandoning this approach. This especially didn't make sense because arcades were slowing down by the mid 1990's. The second was technical. The Saturn was a beast to program for. It had dual CPU's ages before this made sense and anybody knew how to use them. The complexity of programming for it also impacted their SDK, which was terrible. Many games only made use of a single processor, which was underpowered compared to the PS processor. This also made the thing unbelievably expensive to manufacture, with the Saturn being one of the only game consoles never seeing a cost reduced revision (think PS2 vs PS2 slim for cost reduced revisions). So developers had a choice between an easy to program system from a trusted brand or a nightmare from a company who had a habit of releasing systems and then having lousy support (Sega already had this reputation with the SG-1000, Master System, Game Gear, Sega CD, and the fresh 32X and Nomad portable.) The third was human. In an effort to get a jump on Sony, they made a surprise announcement that they were releasing the system months early. Third party developers were gobsmacked because they weren't ready with their games. There were very few launch titles because not many were ready. Many suppliers were furious because they didn't get any of the limited first batch of games and systems and boycotted selling the system once sufficient supply was available.

They did plenty wrong.

Re:Here's what happened

[_merlin]

And you know why there was no good third-party content? Because the console was hard to squeeze maximum performance out of, but Sega didn't give anyone development libraries for it - just gave you a book of specs and left you to work it out. They went in the complete opposite direction with the Dreamcast - they gave you great libraries and almost no specs, so it was more like, here's the API, ignore what's behind it. You can't really say they were incapable of learning.

Re:Here's what happened

[blackraven14250]

Yeah, the thing is, I only ever remember playing the one from Sonic Adventure. Looking it up, there's quite a few games that had either no minigame and/or no ingame functionality.

Re:Here's what happened

[Osgeld]

Sega couldnt get the trust of its reailers and its customers BEFORE saturn ever hit, 32x was a big reason behind that

they couldnt all get on the same page, japan vs USA and everyone got pissed off being jerked around, from the sega CD, CDX, nomad and 32x oh fuck 32X here's saturn!!!

too late

Re:Here's what happened

[blackraven14250]

They're also the only 3D Sonic titles that didn't suck. Panzer Dragoon didn't get a Dreamcast game either, IIRC.

As for the other games you mention, there's quite a few that weren't really "Dreamcast" games, but rather arcade ports - that's basically what kept the DC from having effectively zero third-party support, since they got amazing, accurate ports of what could be argued as the best arcade games out there at the time. Specifically, that relationship between NAOMI and Dreamcast also garnered them Capcom's support, and Capcom was churning out an incredible number of hits and absolutely in their prime years around that time. MvC2, SoulCalibur, Resident Evil, Power Stone, Street Fighter. Two of those were in the over-a-million group for DC (which is only 7 games), the third is one of the most popular fighting game series of all time, if not the most popular, and the fourth is one of the other contenders for that title.

Without Capcom, Dreamcast would have been truly dead to quality, exclusive third party mass-market development. There were other quality titles out there, like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Tony Hawk, but they weren't exclusive (both were ported from PSX) and as a result didn't bring enough to the Dreamcast to make it THE console to own.

The real issue was the Saturn

[blueshift_1]

Before there was sony entering there was the Saturn - which is really what caused the demise of Sega. The Saturn was basically the genesis - but a bit better. But not enough better to merit mass purchase. The last ditch attempt at the Dreamcast was really solid, but then they protection on the disks was too poor and piracy was just too easy. Though, I still occasionally dust off the game gear, genesis, or even the saturn if I want nostalgia kick, but it's easy to see why they went to the wayside.

Re:The real issue was the Saturn

[spire3661]

The biggest problem with the Saturn is that they surprise launched it, and pissed off the entire industry. No one wanted to deal with it, no one got exclusive deals.

Re:The real issue was the Saturn

[GuB-42]

According to this article http://www.gamasutra.com/view/... the demise of Sega was mainly caused by simply having not enough advertizing money to compete against bigger opponents, combined with a number of small mistakes in management.
The original XBox was a far bigger failure than the Dreamcast but it managed to survive because the giant Microsoft was behind.

Re:The real issue was the Saturn

[Guspaz]

Microsoft went in expecting the Xbox to fail. They knew perfectly well what they were doing, which was buying their way into a well established an entrenched market. The money they dumped into the original Xbox was the cost of entry, so obviously they knew what they were getting into.

The strategy worked, too. The Xbox 360 was a strong contender in the market, and captured nearly a third of a three-system market. Of course, they blew it this generation, but that doesn't say anything about their original strategy at the beginning.

Re:The real issue was the Saturn

[drinkypoo]

The Saturn was basically the genesis - but a bit better. But not enough better to merit mass purchase.

The Saturn was basically equivalent to the playstation, except without transparency. That was a big fail. Also, it cost another hundred bucks. $300 for the playstation was a hell of a lot already.

The Saturn was also a hot mess to code for, by all accounts. It has two CPUs and making use of them is your business. At least they're symmetric.

Re:The real issue was the Saturn

[Karlt1]

The strategy worked, too. The Xbox 360 was a strong contender in the market, and captured nearly a third of a three-system market.

The XBox + XBox 360 combined sales still didn't turn any real profit. Especially after the $1 billion+ charge because of the Red Ring Of Death.

Sega is not the only company making bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been a lot of companies that made really bad decisions

Why didn't RadioShack become TigerDirect/NewEgg
Why did IBM allow so many other companies take over the PC Market
Why is Apple basically a Phone Company?

So many companies have made really bad decisions and they didn't happen overnight.
They had the Upper Hand and were first in on the market
then they crapped it away because of pontificating CEOs and Incompetent Middle Management.

And now all of our hardware is made in Asia
along with all of our TVs Dishwashers..
GE Sold their MRI and XRay manufacturing to China
GM Sold their Electric Car Manufacturing to China

Its almost as rare to see a Made in USA sticker as it is to see a made in Antarctica one

60% of Americans are on Food Stamps
and Billionaires like Bill Gates who got all their money from selling to the USA
is spending his money making sure Boko Huron members have healthcare in Africa

This is Reality

It is really too sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the business end, from the perspective of a gamer, their downfall is primarily due to the Dreamcast. It is and was a beautiful system, but it pushed too far too fast. It is funny in a way, the failure of that one system showed what online connectivity was able to do to games. Phantasy Star Online and even Unreal Tournament were great, but the internet hadn't taken off well enough at that point. Everquest and Ascheron's Call was laughed at by those that didn't play it.

Sega failed at what Nintendo is struggling with right now. They were not able to demonstrate why a gamer would want their system. Thankfully Nintendo is making some headway with great games (this year will make or break the Wii U, not the company) and Nintendo Directs, but even great games alone couldn't sell the high priced (an issue Nintendo doesn't have thankfully) Dreamcast.

It is enjoyable to compare the dynamics. Sega runs ahead and tries to revolutionize the gaming experience, while Nintendo doesn't smaller but incremental experiments, such as putting new work into new modes of controlling, but doesn't touch online experiences (their biggest failing in this generation so far - Monster Hunter is awesome; Xenoblades will likely be as well). In the current conflict between the three for market share, I'd compare Microsoft to the ideals of Sega, but lacking in the engineering skill to pull off novel work. If the engineers of the Dreamcast days worked at Sega still, I'd want them to be bought by Nintendo. Sony tried to push the envelope with the Cell Processor, but that bit them hard, so they are too careful now.

I feel like there is material here for a fan fiction. Anyone got a link to one?

Not sure if partnering with Sony would have helped

[Anonymous Coward]

"they seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years." Sony's almost there in my opinion, and while the numbers don't exactly reflect it yet, the arrogance and shady way they abuse customers has them teetering on the brink of being one PR disaster away from everyone being sick of their shit.

Sega isn't Sega anymore, literally

[Kuukai]

In 2004, Sega was merged into Sammy, a gambling/arcade machine company, which then all but renamed itself to Sega. They have totally different business goals from the previous Sega. Any discussion about the direction Sega is going now should be framed in that context. Current Sega is working a different market. Nintendo is doing about as well at arcades as Sega is doing at console hardware. But it is interesting to consider what happened long before the merger with the Dreamcast and how it could have been prevented.

Re:Sega isn't Sega anymore, literally

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo will release the Pokemon fighting games at arcade, though.

Re:Sega isn't Sega anymore, literally

[squiggleslash]

So the company that trades as Sega really isn't Sega. I guess then the headline is right (isn't "Atari" actually Infogrames these days? Or has the trademark changed hands again?)

Nintendo is next....

[Anonymous Coward]

... the writing is on the wall for console monopolies when computers are becoming a commodity everyday device. Nintendo should be experimenting now with porting some of it's lesser known games. It always complains that JRPG's sell poorly, well those of us who grew up on Nintendo and are now adults are not going to buy a console just to play a couple of rehashed JRPG's. They have lost long term customers constantly and only the die hard blinded fanboys remain, game quality has been going down little bits here and there every generation and they only got the hyper retarded reactionaries and kids without a gaming history who have no gaming experience and can't see the decline.

I say this as someone who used to love Nintendo. But they keep making boneheaded decisions (aka game cube with the mini disc vs DVD, thereby making ports costly). The Wii was just a big WTF. Every generation Nintendo fucks up because it doesn't understand the videogame market from a customers perspective. They are trapped in their own little Japanese bubble.

If they don't try to diversify for the eventual end of console monopoly hardware business they are going to be in for a rude awakening. Their whole value as a company comes from software. They think they are running a kids toy monopoly and that everyone is braindead and they are amazing. The Wii U was overwhelming evidence they don't understand the video game market at all. If I was Nintendo I would be hunting down former customers and doing research because any business that's losing long term customers is doing something wrong. Many of us oldersters didn't "age out" we were actually neglected and stopped purchasing because it was obvious Nintendo had no clue what it was doing.

Now I know fanboys will downvote this, but I'm from the original NES/Atari/C64/Early PC generation, I watched video games grow up and it's obvious to us with intelligence, nintendo is without a clue about what it is like to be a videogamer in the west and have all these options including the PC. Thankfully a few companies in Japan has just discovered the PC in the last few years, but they had to be dragged kicking and screaming and "they hate the PC". It just goes to show you how braindead and old these managers are at these companies and they need to get fresh faces in there who understand the customers perspective. They really don't understand what business they are in.

Gamers want to buy games they care not what platform it is on but they are no longer going to buy 3 different consoles just to play a few games as adults, they can wait to borrow/get used because they are no longer the impulsive and easily manipulated children they used to be. Nintendo simply doesn't get what it means to be an aging gamer. Our love for these games never went away, but the game market has expanded and there's many more outlets for our entertainment dollar and those shiny games aren't as shiny when compared against what other options are out there.

Re:Nintendo is next....

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! No.

Re:Nintendo is next....

[Khyber]

"... the writing is on the wall for console monopolies when computers are becoming a commodity everyday device."

Your comment is as retarded today as it was when it was first parroted some 20-odd years ago.

Re:Nintendo is next....

[UnknownSoldier]

I wouldn't be so quick to write Nintendo off just yet.

If we look at the 1998 .. 2010 year data from this console profit table

While everyone else was losing money HARD (especially Microsoft), Nintendo was laughing all the way to the bank.

$24,072,504,822

Nintendo doesn't have to worry about the short term for quite a while.

Re:Nintendo is next....

[tepples]

the writing is on the wall for console monopolies when computers are becoming a commodity everyday device.

Are computers an "everyday device" in the living room yet? And how well do games that aren't point-and-click work on mobile phones? If not, please help explain how "the writing is on the wall for console monopolies".

Gamers want to buy games they care not what platform it is on but they are no longer going to buy 3 different consoles just to play a few games as adults

But are they going to buy three gaming PCs so that everybody in the same household can play?

Re:Nintendo is next....

[hairyfeet]

What is retarded about his statement? You DO know that 2 out of the 3 current consoles are nothing but VERY low end PCs, right? That you can get a PC in the $400-$500 range that will do higher resolution AND better graphics AND will cost less for games, yes?

Anybody that has read my previous posts knows I'm a hardcore AMD supporter but I will never understand WTF they were thinking by going with the Jaguar APU for their consoles over something like the A-Series. I mean for fucks sake the Bobcat (which is all the Jag is, a Bobcat with more cores and 7%-10% more IPC) was designed to be an ultra low cost answer to the Intel ATOM chip, it was cut down all to hell to get it into Atom price territory and as somebody that owns a Bobcat netbook I can tell ya they run about as well as an Atom+ION but that's it,a first gen C2D or Athlon X2 just curbstomps the chip when it comes to number crunching.

This is the first console generation in ages where the PC didn't have to play catch up at release, in fact PC games already looked better and did higher resolution OOTB than either console and it all comes down to having a netbook APU. Its a fricking STB, no reason why they couldn't have went with something with more processing power, and what is worse is this is probably as good as its gonna get as the X86 arch is just so well known there really isn't any hidden power to squeeze, not with a chip that is already as weak as the Jag. I have built some Jag based systems (the AM1 socket systems are all Jag chips) and while they make great ULV office boxes or media tanks, would I want to game on the things? Not a chance.

So if this is gonna be the path they take? I honestly do not see the appeal. You have a system with all the downsides of a PC, long patch times, HDD loads, phone home DRM and DLC tied to a user, but none of the upsides like free MP, multiple vendors, or the much lower prices. Even the exclusives are drying up because the cost of triple A titles has gotten so high third parties can't afford to be exclusive. So yeah...really not seeing a selling point this gen, lots of downsides, not really seeing the ups.

Re:Nintendo is next....

[mjwx]

I wouldn't be so quick to write Nintendo off just yet.

If we look at the 1998 .. 2010 year data from this console profit table

While everyone else was losing money HARD (especially Microsoft), Nintendo was laughing all the way to the bank.

$24,072,504,822

Nintendo doesn't have to worry about the short term for quite a while.

The thing is, even with the Game Cube being a bit of a flop compared to the PS2 and Xbox, Nintendo still made money. They made back all the R&D and some.

So Nintendo doesn't need to worry about the lukewarm reception the Wii U got... But Sony and Microsoft need to worry about the lukewarm reception the PS4 and XBone got as they require years of good sales to get into the black, the fact they had to drop their prices so quickly after release means that the sales figures do not bode well for them.

Microsoft has deep pockets and can keep funding the Xbox from their profitable divisions but Sony is haemorrhaging money across the board. I think a better question is, how long until Sony becomes the next Sega.

Re:Nintendo is next....

[CronoCloud]

That you can get a PC in the $400-$500 range that will do higher resolution AND better graphics

No you can't. You can't buy an octocore machine with 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, a Blu-ray drive, and the equivalent of a GT970 for 400 dollars.

AND will cost less for games, yes?

No, it won't, the game prices are the same.

as somebody that owns a Bobcat netbook I can tell ya they run about as well as an Atom+ION but that's it,a first gen C2D or Athlon X2 just curbstomps the chip when it comes to number crunching.

Stop right there, the Jaguar may be descended from the Bobcat, but it literally isn't a Bobcat so saying it's go the performance of an Atom is utterly wrong. Besides, PC gamers have been saying for years that more cores is better than raw clockspeed, they were using that comparison against the PS3!

Re:Nintendo is next....

[hairyfeet]

I hate to break the news to ya Sparky but yes you can and ALL of which will do 1080P across the board, which NEITHER console can do! Note that this is just showing the DIY route, I could also wallpaper this page with quad core PCs from places like Tiger in the $250-$300 range already built and ready to go, just slap an HD260X for $100 and YOU WILL CURBSTOMP both the XBone and PS4 when it comes to graphics AND frame per second.

And games cost the same? Okay now I KNOW you are nothing but a fanboy or you've been living under a rock as you've apparently never heard of these little things known as Steam sales not to mention that anybody not sticking their head in the sand while waving their little console flag was fast as their little arms will go KNOWS that PC prices drop MUCH faster than on the consoles, whose prices are practically glacial. Care for an example? Theif 4 is currently $20 on consoles, not bad eh? Well yeah if you don't want the entire series which I paid $6 less for WITH all the DLC. Oh and there is this little thing you may have heard of called Humble Bundles? If you were to buy all the games currently on the bundle? Well first of all you are gonna need TWO consoles as not all the games are on XBone and PS4 and of course the OEMs give you a big fat greasy finger when it comes to backwards compatibility, which just FYI but thanks to DOSBox we PC gamers can play games going back to the early 80s, can even buy them preset for DOSBox so no muss, but just to buy the games currently on the list? Over $120, cost to PC gamers? $20 if you wanna be nice and throw them a couple bucks over minimum.

So wave your little flag all you want, won't make black into white, and it won't make the BS you are trying sooo hard to convince yourself is real into reality. Reality is you can grab a quad core PC made within the past 5 years for $300, slap a $100 GPU in, and be kicking with some serious gaming with better FPS and higher res than the netbook based consoles can deliver. Don't mind a little DIY? Then you can spend $80 less than a PS4 and still get an impressive gameplay experience with again higher framerate. Don't mind spending a little more? Then grab yourself a fire breathing monster and pair it with a 250x or 260x and enjoy a PC that will run maybe $20 more than XBone with Kinect that will DEVASTATE both the PS4 and XBone on gaming! Those last 2? Yeah they both hit turbo speeds over 4GHz so it will be quite the long while before you see a game not be able to run on either system.

I should know as I play all the latest and greatest on a Phenom II X6, a chip that is now 6 years old, along with any game I want from the early 80s on up, every console from the Atari 2600- PS2,and I get to enjoy multiple vendors, insanely cheap prices and sales, free MP, streaming from any site in any format without needing a subscription, and oh yeah, literally thousands of 100% FTP games in every genre. Wanna play on a TV? Then DO IT as all the PCs come with HDMI now and you can choose from Steam or Kodi or Mediaportal for your 10 foot UI. Wanna play with a controller? Then DO IT as you can trivially hook up your choice of wireless controllers with nearly every game coming with X360 wireless support but if that don't float your boat and you don't mind wires? You can run anything from a 2600 or NES through PS3 and everything in between. Nothing like playing a classic fighter on

Re:Nintendo is next....

[CronoCloud]

Youtube links sparky? That's not entirely a trustworthy source considering that they say themselves they're biased! The first link points to their website...

http://www.pcper.com/news/Gene...

That build costs $790, that's almost TWO PS4's, and the RAM it has isn't as fast as the PS4's RAM.

And games cost the same?

New games do.

you've apparently never heard of these little things known as Steam sales not to mention that anybody not sticking their head in the sand while waving their little console flag was fast as their little arms will go KNOWS that PC prices drop MUCH faster than on the consoles

I know of Steam Sales, I also know of PSN sales. And while PC games do drop in price faster, that's not a good thing. That means that publishers think PC gamers are simply cheap and secondary priority. You know as well as I do that PC gamers are always saying "why does the PC version seem an afterthought and low priority" It's a low priority because PC gamers are cheap and in the 2nd/3rd world...pirates. Besides...I know a lot of Steamers are collectors. Even if you can buy a 100 games on Steam, you won't have the time to play them all, will you. Go ahead throw 5 bucks at 12 games you will never actually get around to playing, instead of paying $60 on ONE game you will play.

Theif 4 is currently $20 on consoles, not bad eh?

It's currently free for PS+, not bad, eh?

Oh and there is this little thing you may have heard of called Humble Bundles?

Oh yeah, the bundles that many PC Gamers pay 1 cent for? I'll say it again, PC gamers are cheap bastards who'd rather waste money on hardware than spend money on software.

Well first of all you are gonna need TWO consoles as not all the games are on XBone and PS4

I do have 2, or 7. The old ones didn't stop working when I got the PS4.

Reality is you can grab a quad core PC made within the past 5 years for $300, slap a $100 GPU in, and be kicking with some serious gaming with better FPS and higher res than the netbook based consoles can deliver.

I have a quad core Phenom II with a GT640 rev2 GDDR5. It's not the equal of the PS4.

Don't mind a little DIY? Then you can spend $80 less than a PS4

That doesn't include a Hard drive, or blu-ray drive, or an OS, has only a 450W power supply (which will need an immediate upgrade if you want to stick a PS4 beating card in), and only has 4GB of DDR3. Also it's a quad core, and #cores DOES matter.

Then grab yourself a fire breathing monster and pair it with a 250x or 260x and enjoy a PC that will run maybe $20 more than XBone with Kinect that will DEVASTATE both the PS4 and XBone on gaming!

No OS, no blu-ray drive. Adding that videocard and upgrading the power supply will add more to the cost. Not to mention those are barebones systems that require some DIY skills. You expect the masses to do DIY, routing cables, installing the various components INCLUDING the CPU and cooler, when they can just go to their local big box and buy a PS4 or Xbox one "that just works without the hassle" I run Linux, so I don't mind a bit of computing hassle, but with games I want zero hassle and I don't want Windows.

along with any game I want from the early 80s on up, every console from the Atari 2600- PS2

Do you own all the games those ROMs and ISO's belong to and did you rip all those ROM's and ISO's yourself...pirate?

insanely cheap prices and sales, free MP

Frequent sales, and free games every month with PS+.

streaming from any site in any format without needing a subscription

You seem to b

Re:Nintendo is next....

[UnknownSoldier]

> Nintendo still made money. They made back all the R&D and some.

Yup. I shipped 2 Wii games. The Wii was _literally_ a Gamecube twice as fast. They didn't even fix _any_ of the GPU bugs!

Going forward I don't know understand what Nintendo is going to do, but bumping old hardware and focusing on making fun games seemed to worked extremely well for them in the past.

Too many consoles in a short period of time

[ArcadeMan]

SEGA had the Sega Genesis, CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast in the same period of time that Nintendo had the SNES and the N64.

Fanboy all you like, people aren't made of money.

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[MBGMorden]

CD and 32x were addons, not separate systems in their own right.

Honestly given that the Sega CD and 32X could be used in conjunction with each other, they should have released the Saturn as a standalone Sega 32X CD system.

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_32X#Sega_Neptune

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter that they weren't separate systems. They were expensive and the parent's point still stands - people aren't made of money.

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[Guspaz]

The fact that they were addons actually made them even bigger disasters. Because they required custom software, they behaved like they were standalone systems (a Sega CD game was useless to a purely Sega Genesis owner). But at the same time, the maximum possible market for the SegaCD was existing Genesis owners.

The Saturn was the biggest component of why the industry was pissed at Sega, but their scattershot console strategy leading up to the Saturn was definitely a factor on peoples minds.

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[Anonymous Coward]

SEGA had the Sega Genesis, CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast in the same period of time that Nintendo had the SNES and the N64.

Fanboy all you like, people aren't made of money.

And Megadrive

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[ArcadeMan]

The MegaDrive is the same console as the Genesis.

Re:Too many consoles in a short period of time

[MBGMorden]

Interesting, but no CD drive and it was never actually released.

A 32X CD system for technical specifications wasn't quite in the same league as the Saturn - but it was close. Close enough that I'd wager they could still have done most of the same games on that setup and started with an installed userbase that could either upgrade their system, or buy a Saturn if needed.

I ended up with both a Sega CD and 32x eventually - after they hit clearance shelves. I think both of them were like $30 each brand new at the time.

Umm....

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a Sega?

Re:Umm....

[Khyber]

The Italian word for 'masturbate.'

Not the wrong decisions, the wrong direction.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware is tight profit margins. Software has huge profit margins. Let's face it: Sega could have come to PC gaming and beat Valve to "Steam".

Sad thing is, ever since I tried Unix with its software repositiories, and then seen Linux adopt the same, I've been wondering why Sega didn't create a game OS / platform for PCs... And then Valve came along and FINALLY did just that.

Re:Not the wrong decisions, the wrong direction.

[ganjadude]

they even had a head start, remember sega channel? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Stupid article

[bigsexyjoe]

Is Sega? Is Sega? Sega is just a software maker at this point. Did it fail is the question. Yes, it failed like Atari and countless other companies in other industries. These are two companies past their glory days in the same industry. The idea that they are the next Atari is frankly stupid. They are already out of the hardware biz. They WERE the Atari. Unless they dramatically have some kind of turn around their story is written and we know what it is. A more interesting question would be, "Is Sega the next Apple?" The answer is probably not, but at least that would be a question that would make sense to ask at this point.

Re:Stupid article

[ganjadude]

so who is making those new genisis consoles with like 50 built in games??? They are pretty awesome for 30 bucks BTW

Re:Stupid article

[Anonymous Coward]

AtGames licensed the hardware. I think Majesco did the "Genesis 3" hardware in the late 1990s... Sega isn't shy about licensing it out to other manufacturers, and there are numerous unlicensed adapters and consoles on the market for old Genesis games.

Real simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Lack of advertisement. In a world where you couldn't go a commercial break without being bombarded by Playstation and XBox ads, Sega was nowhere to be seen.

2. Playing to the xenophobic Japan stereotype. Ask any non-Japanese gamer who suffered through constant Sega abuse in PSO, PSU, or any of Sega's online properties, and they'll tell you that Sega of America is the most moronic, inept, incompetent, useless company on the face of the planet. Thing is, they're not. Those dirty foreigners over at SoA were merely too dishonorable to deal with. SoA is always left holding the bag, and has never and will never have the power to answer questions or resolve problems. Or have any say whatsoever.

SoJ screwed the pooch at every opportunity. Sega was in a position to crush their enemies, see them driven before them, and hear the lamentation of Sony's shareholders. Hubris is a bitch, though.

is Sega a failure now

[Anonymous Coward]

Why compare Sega to Atari? Atari itself doesnt exist, its just a name, its been bought and resold, reused by new companies so many times. No serious original Atari IP remains.

Sega on the other hand got out of the console biz due to lack of funding, and despite success with the Dreamcast it just didn't do quite well enough to overcome that.

Now the company makes games for PC and console, some of which are apparently very popular, at what time did Sega be at risk of entire death like Atari? Especially recently?

No Atari didn't have games like Sega, so they didn't go on to be a successful third party developer when the Jaguar died.

Re:is Sega a failure now

[__aaclcg7560]

Why compare Sega to Atari? Atari itself doesnt exist, its just a name, its been bought and resold, reused by new companies so many times. No serious original Atari IP remains.

The original Atari disappeared in the 1980's.

French-based Infogrames bought Hasbro Interactive that owned the Atari IP and renamed itself Atari in the 2000's. I worked at the "new" Atari for six years, splitting my time between being a tester and a lead tester. They tried to "converge" with licensed Hollywood properties (i.e., "Enter The Matrix"), gone broke during the dot com bust, and sold all the studios that they paid two to four times what they were really worth. Today they are recycling games from the old Atari IP as mobile games.

Meh...

Hindsight is 20/20

[fermion]

Also, past performance does not predict future results. If a company fails, it is reasonable to say that doing something differently might have helped the company not to fail. One cannot say that a specific action would have cause the company to succeed.

Sony could have taken all the ideas and shut down the company like MS did with Nokia. They could have gathered enough intelligence during due diligence and then just paid to end the process before the sale.

Death of the arcade game killed Sega

[NaCh0]

When the market moved from fun games like Soul Caliber and Hydro Thunder to seeing how many ways it could clone wolfenstein, Sega didn't follow and thus disappeared. Sadly to this day all we have left are FPS's and their rehashed story lines.

Re:Death of the arcade game killed Sega

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly to this day all we have left are FPS's and their rehashed story lines.

they have a storyline?

But don't take my word for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Sony/Sega of America were ready to do a deal.

Read Console Wars : Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation
Interesting Read about the 80s and 90s console wars up to PS1/Saturn/N64 Era.
Follows Nintendo and Sega in particular closely.

Re:Sega is not the only company making bad decisio

[Fwipp]

There have been a lot of companies that made really bad decisions

Why is Apple basically a Phone Company?

Yeah, that worked out really poorly for them.

Literally?

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally? Like, literally literally, or, like, figuratively literally? OMG I so can't even.

seeee ga

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, that jingle is priceless. As long as they can hang on to that, they should retain some value.

SEGA's gone to piss..

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally, have you seen the Toylet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQzo78zOPME

Whatever you think you know is probably wrong

[manicbutt]

It's funny that so many people are writing about the Sega CD, the Saturn, the 32X ... as if those products were yesterday, not 20 years ago. The modern Sega is a different beast. The real question is, why does anyone care what Tom Kalinske thinks? Isn't it enough that he starred in the biggest hero-worshipping book every written about any game executive, past, present, or future? I'm surprised "Console Wars" didn't have a centerfold pullout pictorial of him with six-pack abs and flowing locks of hair like Fabio.

What killed Sega ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sega was killed by EA. As if we would need another reason to hate them.
The Dreamcast had a ton of AAA games, so much so that they overshadowed the meager lineup of the PS2 in its early years. And lets not go into the technical domain, support for the internet, support across all games (almost all) 60 HZ (important in PAL land) and native VGA support. Progressive support something the PS2 never had. Playing Ikaruga or Shenmue, or Crazy Taxi etc... on a Sony winderscreen VGA screen was pure bliss. We had to wait for HD consoles to even come near to the video quality that the Dreamcast spewed out.
But in the US, Sega was killed by EA not comitting to the platform. You know all the yearly games we love to hate, the MADDENs of this world were simply absent. And that killed the console.

Re:What killed Sega ?

[CronoCloud]

.And lets not go into the technical domain, support for the internet, support across all games (almost all) 60 HZ (important in PAL land) and native VGA support. Progressive support something the PS2 never had.

The PS2 does support VGA and progressive scan, anybody with a Linux kit and/or the PS2 component cables can tell you that. The GSX can output a 1280x1024 75Hz 16-bit color signal over VGA, or up to 1080i over component. Which is far far better than the Dreamcast's maximum of 640x480 progressive. Tourist Trophy and Gran Turismo 4, both have 1080i support. Plenty of games have 480p progressive, depending on the game it can be 720x480p widescreen progressive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

The 3DO Deal that Never Happened

[ewhac]

It was never widely known that Sega of Japan was, for a time, negotiating to merge with/acquire The 3DO Company. Unfortunately, best available information suggests that Trip Hawkins, 3DO's chairman and CEO, wanted too much, and the deal fell through.

As it happens, about three years ago I started doing an irregular series of Let's Play/Drown Out videos on YouTube with my colleage, GammaDev. Both of us are former employees of 3DO, and we covered The Deal that Never Happened in a video about two years ago (seek to 25:12).

Valkyria!

[Anonymous Coward]

They have one gem that just hit steam for anyone who is into that style of game.

I highly recommend valkyria chronicles. Also available on PS3. Seems like they've done a reasonable port with the steam version.

Re:Sega is not the only company making bad decisio

[Anonymous Coward]

60% of Americans are on food stamps?

Not Reality.

A simple google search finds 15% are on food stamps.

Given the severity of this error, none of your post can be trusted.

ASL is still alive!

[wikthemighty]

At least Advanced Squad Leader is still alive, published by Multiman Publishing, thanks in part to Curt Schilling...

Re:ASL is still alive!

[HBI]

I was unaware of this, but glad to find out! So that's 4 out of hundreds... ;-)

Or Comodore, for that matter

[umafuckit]

Even as a young teenager I could see Commodore was screwing itself. It seemed like every other issue of Amiga format bright with it a new Commodore CEO. It's a pity the Amiga died, it was pretty wonderful in its time.

Sega died with its hardware

[thetoadwarrior]

Everyone looked forward to getting all of sega's great games on any system when they got out of the hardware business. But unfortunately they seemed to lose all their talent with the hardware and just resorted to knocking out Sonic games and the odd Crazy Taxi game. At his best Sonic was never that good. You can't maintain a company with Sonic games.

What kills them all are the dev kits

[msobkow]

What kills all console games eventually is the difficulty of working with their development kits, and the paucity of documentation about how to wring maximum performance out of those development kits.

Write a game using OpenGL or DirectX, and you have millions of potential buyers. Write a game using Android or iOS APIs, and you have millions of portable buyers.

Consoles? Not so much. Your only market with those devices are dedicated gamers willing to spend money just to play games. It's a smaller market share by a huge margin.

hum

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sega Genesis shitty color palette(Arcade hardware same as Genesis except higher clock rates and gpu 2k to 4k colors on screen) was the result of not willing to compete against their own Arcade products which brought in a lot of $$$. Why would they keep compatibility with the Master System when they pretty much abandoned it and sold the distribution rights to another company.

But their lack of patience is what led to their financial downfall they started to piss money away on too many add-on's starting with the Sega CD which wasn't necessary and finally 32X. The Saturn was rushed to the market with complicated hardware that had too many pieces(cpu's) trying to work together, no software api for 3rd party developers, and freaking expensive to manufacture.

And finally, but again, Sega wanted to keep their Arcade business alive so they released a cut down version of their Naomi Arcade system for the home which they named the dreamcast which could not compete against the ps2's hardware. Although, the dreamcast had vibrant colors while the ps2 had muddy graphics but more polygons, particles, and effects.

My dream for Dreamcast

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

My dream for Dreamcast was that one of those JRPG makers would have made a solid MMO, and that there would have been dual: That Lameo Modem along side a LAN connection. Everyone knew online multiplayer was the future. If Dreamcast would have been the hardware for it, things could have been different. The only hard part is that broadband was just beginning to take off in rural areas over the next 5 years. So a lan connection might have been too ahead of its time... Not sure.

If I was the head of Sega, I'd keep making software, but I'd aim for mobile targets. Make Sega games for Android Tablet/Phone with a gamepad option. Start by porting the classics, or even just licensing an emulator for like 5% of sales revenue. The cash would pour in and it wouldn't take any coding time at all, just licensing deals. You might pressure Apple into a joystick driver on ipad/iphone. You could port games to run off keyboard for ipad/iphone. And if Apple won't get off their butts to make a joystick driver, you could make a joystick that operates like a keyboard. Sega would be in the drivers seat, and set up a precedence for other companies to make their old video games run on mobile or lose revenue.

Well he couldn't mention one big problem

[NotSoHeavyD3]

The fact that the least successful division at Sega(SoJ) in the end was making all the business decisions. (You know, stuff like when to launch the Saturn in the US. They couldn't have did a worse job on that.)

Inevitable decline when...

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who founded a company are gone (along with their founding "vision" and their personal desire to succeed with that idea) and a board of directors, rather than the direct heirs of the founders, are in charge. Once you have a hired board, and the execs and managers are all "hired guns" with MBA degrees who only care about the short-term financials (to make thier stock options and golden parachutes...well... "golden") the cascade of stupidity begins and eventual failure becomes nearly inevitable. Occasionally a new set of management that wants to hang around a bit longer will take the reigns of a company and seem to turn it around, but that's not the norm. Look at IBM today... NOTHING like its former self. One of the genius elements of the free market is that there are options for new innovators to come along and start entirely new firms to arise and finish-off the old dead wood. Unfortunately, as we have heaped layers upon layers of taxes, regulations, IP laws etc onto business, it's becomming much harder to get a start-up going and the old rotten companies are hanging on longer, as evidenced by the trend last year of more businesses ending than beginning.

32X launches when Saturn already on the way?!

[Dogtanian]

Additional stupidity; I remembered that by the time the 32X was announced in the UK, the (entirely incompatible) Saturn was already due for launch in the near future. Worse, I recently found out that in Japan, they actually launched at almost the same time.

What was the point of that?! Who was going to buy the 32X knowing that it was a stop gap for something imminent/already here? Granted, the 32X was much cheaper at launch- which was apparently the justification- but anyone with half a brain would have known that it would die when (as all new consoles do) the Saturn came down in price enough that Joe Public would buy it instead of a half-baked piggy in the middle.

(And anyone who realised that should also have realised that the software companies would be thinking the same thing and not likely to waste their time supporting a dead-end console.)

The other problem with the 32X was that Sega had *already* released an "enhanced capabilities" add-on for the Mega Drive/Genesis, i.e. the Mega CD, which you already mentioned. So the 32X was, in effect, the third separate (incompatible) "format" built around the same console.

All that is stuff that should have been obviously stupid at the time; there were other factors that led to Sega's downfall (e.g. Sony playing the PlayStation launch very well) one could argue are easier to spot with hindsight, but those were on top of the obvious stupidity of having the half-baked 32X muddy the waters- and confuse the consumers and retailers- at the time of the Saturn launch.

Console Wars

[kcmastrpc]

It's a great book that gives good insight into the era that gave rise to Sega. It really doesn't give much background into their downfall, but it does touch on the fact that SOA thought SOJ was releasing way too much hardware, and generally screwing everything up.

What bad decisions?

[rsilvergun]

for all the complaining about how bad Sonic Boom is people forget that Sonic 2006 was wildly profitable. From a business standpoint it's hard to argue with that. Sonic Boom is awful, but not much worse/glitchy than 2006 was. Then there's Aliens:Colonial Marines. Gear Box ripped them off. Period. It's painfully obvious that they took Sega's money and spent it on Borderlands 2. It would cost more to litigate that than Sega would ever get back though, so they're screwed. You could argue Sega should have kept a closer eye on Gearbox, but games like Aliens:CM were Gearbox's bread and butter. It's ridiculous that they'd pull that on Sega, since it pretty much burns every bridge they'll ever have in the industry. But then again who would have thought something as mediocre as Borderlands (which I like, but let's face it, it's just really, really OK) would be one of the biggest games of last gen.

So what else has Sega done wrong since the Saturn? Yes, the Saturn/32x were epic, epic failures. I guess there was Shenmue, but honestly that could have been it's generation's Grand Theft Auto.

Now, what's _really_ killing Sega is the same thing that's killing _all_ Japanese game makers: US and European companies are eating them alive. Heck, bloody Farcry 4 is selling well in Japan. Meanwhile Final Fantasy games are doing so-so.

There's a video blog that did a good video on it, I think it's here but I might have the wrong video. Either way the kinds of games the Japanese did best have been taken over by the likes of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

Re:What bad decisions?

[VGPowerlord]

Then there's Aliens:Colonial Marines. Gear Box ripped them off. Period. It's painfully obvious that they took Sega's money and spent it on Borderlands 2. It would cost more to litigate that than Sega would ever get back though, so they're screwed. You could argue Sega should have kept a closer eye on Gearbox, but games like Aliens:CM were Gearbox's bread and butter. It's ridiculous that they'd pull that on Sega, since it pretty much burns every bridge they'll ever have in the industry.

It sounds like Sega kept a closer eye on Creative Assembly during the development of Alien: Isolation, likely because they had gotten burned by Gearbox.

Then again, Alien: Isolation is its own problem. While it sold over a million copies, Sega was hoping that it would sell much, much more than that.

Alien: Colonial Marines likely didn't help these sales numbers. I know I was initially hesitant on getting Alien: Isolation due to how poor Colonial Marines was..

Burned?

[rsilvergun]

where the heck have you been. Here's a list of just some of the excellent games Sega made since the Dreamcast:

Virtua Fighter 4
Outrun 2/2006
Virtua On Marz
Yakuza (multiple games)
Aliens vs Predator
Aliens: Isolation
The entire Total War Series
Sonic Colors
Sonic Generations
Hell Yeah: Wrath of the Undead Rabbit
Project Diva
Seventh Dragon.

I could go on. Yeah, Sega let some stinkers. But so did EA. See my post elsewhere in the thread for what really killed them.

Re:Burned?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh just FYI but NONE of those games were developed by "Sega", Sega as a company has been dead since 2004. The company that owns the Sega name (and farms out the IP to third parties) is SAMMY who took over Sega by buying up the outstanding stock when they went broke in 04. Sammy then merely changed their name to Sega (just like Telegames bought the Atari name and IP and changed their name to Atari) and started pimping out the IP, again just like Telegames.

So I'm sorry but the company currently known as Sega has absolutely nothing in common with the people who made the SMS-Dreamcast, anymore than the current Atari has anything to do with the company who made the 2600. Its just a name now dude, the people are looooong gone.

Re:Burned?

[Billly Gates]

I was thinking the same thing.

Sounds like they can make mobile games or something. Didn't they make sonic for the PS3 or WII or something

Re:Burned?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Hairy.

FYI since you are a proponent of Commodo I have to say it too uses sailfish SSL from Komodia

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

And privdog does MITM and sells it too advertising companies. Offtopic but thought you would get a kick.

Re:Burned?

[rsilvergun]

Um... All the "Virtua" games are developed in house. Freakin' Reiko Kodama (google her) made Seventh Dragon. They might not have made their last few racers but it's pretty clear from the graphics/style they had heavy input on all of them. Forza, made by the same studio as Outrun 2/2006 is a wildly different game. Yakuza's pure Sega too.

OTOH you can see what happened when they tried the "hands off" approach with Aliens: Colonial Marines. The got taken for a ride. Too bad. After Gearbox patched it the game was a solid 5. Ok, playable, and kinda fun if you're an Alien's fanboy. Of course, the patch was larger than the base game, so there is that.

Meh, it was mostly Sony

[rsilvergun]

and all those videos of the cut scenes from Armored Core getting passed off as gameplay. Hell, there were videos of George Lucas saying the PS2 could render Episode I. I knew tonnes and tonnes of people who bought Sony's hype and didn't get a Dreamcast.

And as someone who's burned discs in 2001 I wouldn't call piracy on the Dreamcast easy. You needed specific burning software, good quality discs and the know how to find isos. You've just taken out 95% of the market for piracy.

On the other hand Sega's Dreamcast marketing was terrible. They had the best looking games of all time and what did they do? Sonic rappin' with NBA Stars... Dear lord, what a mess.

Sega failed for the same reason the Amiga died.

[master_p]

Sega failed for the same reason the Amiga died: they both failed to catch the 3d boat at home.

Sega was the king of 3d in the arcades, with sprite-based and vector-based graphics.

However, on the home front, they totally missed the boat. The first console that could play a decent version of Outrun was the Sega Saturn, whereas the PCs of the time and the PS were used and promoted for playing 3d games.

Thank you

[Hognoxious]

Thank you. I now have the Megadrive/Genesis bootup tune in my head.

If you haven't, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Simple : Not good enough marketing

[Saffaya]

ATARI from the Jack Tramiel era, with the Jaguar console, showed that it wasn't enough to have the best hardware (it was the most powerful of its time).
You also need the games.

SEGA, with the DreamCast console, showed that it wasn't enough to have the best hardware (SONY was still at the PSX), it wasn't enough to have the best games (the lineup is legendary).
You also need the marketing.

SONY had the best marketing.

Lying after lies, each one bigger (*) than the last, in order to torpedo the growth of the DreamCast for more than a year, and then to make customers feel warm and fuzzy even though the PS2 had no game worthy of that name until two years after the launch.

(*) : "The PS2 will connect to high-speed networks"
DreamCast had integrated modem at launch, swappable ethernet adapter quickly after. Tons of online games available.
Quake III; Phatasy Star Online; Unreal Tournament was playable on VGA monitors, with mouse and keyboard, on LAN (ethernet) or internet with PC Players on common maps.

PS2 had NO NETWORK DEVICE built-in. You had to wait like two years to buy the Hard disk/ethernet port combo.Few games online.

(*): "It will do Toy Story graphics in real-time!"
Enough said.

Re:Simple : Not good enough marketing

[CronoCloud]

(*) : "The PS2 will connect to high-speed networks" PS2 had NO NETWORK DEVICE built-in. You had to wait like two years to buy the Hard disk/ethernet port combo.

The network adapter doesn't include the HDD, that came out later.

.Few games online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... More than the Dreamcast ever had and there's a few where the online functions are still operational. SOE only shut down EQOA in 2013!

(*): "It will do Toy Story graphics in real-time!"

Sony never actually said that themselves, it was Microsoft that made that claim in regards to the Xbox, not Sony with the PS2.