... more stuff I didn't get around to replying to...
dave_d said:
But part of the problem is that it isn't 3 years later. They didn't start releasing a decent volume of online games until late 2000/early 2001. The Xbox was ethernet only and that was late 2001.(Admittedly they didn't really got online for a while but you could use tunnelling software for playing halo.) Plus really they shouldn't have been supporting specific communications hardware at all. I mean you'd expect they'd do things like PC programmers had been doing for years where you write socket code and then it's the TCP/IP stack's job to figure out how to turn that into actual data going out. (And you'd develop that once and just use it in every game that needed that.) Actually most of the games that supported it pretty much came out after the DC was dead which says alot about how well they planned this out.(Although I think Quake 3 supported it and that came out in 2000. Why they didn't use whatever it used in everything I have no idea. You'd think they could grab that one library and use it over and over.)
Well, yeah, I agree that it took Sega a bit too long to get their online service working... it did take like a year after launch, nearly, before it was finally really ready to go, and by then it was too late.
Anyway though, while you're right that that's how PCs worked, PS2 did the same thing as Dreamcast, I think... I don't know of any dialup-only games there, but there are lots of broadband-only ones. On PC you can't really do that, for the most part. Also, even in 2000 lots of people still had dialup... I think that we didn't get cable at home until sometime in 2001, for instance. Many people stuck with it even longer, and a few even still use it. So supporting dialup as the primary service made a lot of sense in 2000 -- it's what most people had.
As for Xbox Live, if you remember, the fact that it didn't support dialup was seen as a major hurdle in late 2001, and definitely contributed a lot to the lack of support for it you saw for a long time that you mentioned. Microsoft didn't want to compromise and allow slow connections on, but it definitely somewhat backfired for a while in terms of getting people to actually use the service... Sega and Sony's designs were probably better overall.
Also, had the DC lasted longer we would surely have seen many more games support broadband, as it slowly became more widespread. It just died too fast for that to happen.
I don't know if they eventually shipped a browser with it but I bought the ethernet adapter as soon as it came out in the US(You could only get it from Sega directly btw) and it came with no software at all. (A bigger FU was announcing a few weeks before PSO and the adapter came out that BTW, no ethernet support. I actually bought it specifically to play PSO. I think they claimed they couldn't support it because they were worried about PPPoE support if they did release it with that functionality so they disabled the setup screen. Good work Sega)
That's annoying. They sold the modem, but with no software to use it? Seriously? That is stupid.
Oh, you didn't mention another about the SoJ/SoA fighting. They cancelled Eternal Champions for the Saturn because SoJ was worried about it stealing sales from Virtua Fighter 2.
Oh yeah, I must have momentarily forgotten about that one... another good point of complete stupidity on Sega of Japan's side, entirely because of their ridiculous jealousy that the American branch was actually doing well while they weren't. I'm not an Eternal Champions fan, but really, how stupid can you be to cancel a sequel to a successful series just because you wish that that region would like some other game more, even though that other game isn't as successful there as it was in Japan?
Canning Eternal Champions 3 didn't make people like Virtua Fighter more, you know. It just made less people buy Saturns.
(And I must admit, I'm not a Virtua Fighter fan either... I have VF1, VF Remix, and VF2 now for Saturn and VF4 Evolution on PS2, but don't really enjoy them. I didn't spend much on any of them, not above like $2, so it's not like they were a waste of money... but particularly on the older ones, they don't even have 3d movement? Lame! I'd rather play a normal 2d fighter like SNK or Capcom make (non-Marvel Vs. series, I don't like those either), they're more fun. VF seems decent...but yeah, I don't think I'm a fan. But anyway.)
Man God said:
It's frankly amazing that they were even successful during the early part of the Genesis era. I mean, they still had the crazy infighting with Japan, horrid localization standards, and a number of other issues that had little or next to nothing to do with SOA in general. I guess even a stopped watch is right twice a day though...
Stolar has always come off as quite the dick though.
Well, in that era they had the benefit of NEC being their only next-gen competition, and NEC America's console division was managed and planned even worse than Sega was... even there a lot of people did expect little Sega to be crushed, but they managed to win through better marketing and better distribution. The NES was still ahead, sure, but beating NEC in 1989 really was an accomplishment, and not one Sega often gets much credit for. It should.
Of course, when Kalinske came in in 1991 things got even better, with a price drop and the inclusion of Sonic with the system. By the time Nintendo finally came out with the SNES in 1991 Sonic was out (came out just a few months before the SNES), and that game launched the Genesis on the path to, by 1993 or so, Sega having 50% of the US market.
You're right that there was infighting in this period, Kalinske said in that interview how hard he had to fight for the pricedrop and Sonic pack-in... but the trouble hadn't yet hit the point of really hurting relations and Sega's chances of success, as it would a few years later.
