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[Alexios]

Sega Saturn actually did very well in Japan (as Sega's best seller there) and yes, fighting games like the tons it had from both Capcom (Darkstalkers, Alpha, the Vs games) and SNK (most of their best games, as opposed to buying a Neo Geo just for - granted, arcade perfect - SNK games and paying hundreds for the system and tons for each game on top) as well as their own like the Virtua Fighter series and quirkier fighting games like Virtual On (which is actually a great port, I don't know what you're on about with saying it was bad, do you not have eyes to see the very video you linked or something, no honest unbiased review back then bashed it for its visuals other than noting the lack of true transparencies as in almost every 3D Saturn game and that it's not arcade perfect - when arcade perfect wasn't even a thing back then outside the mentioned Neo Geo) are things people do play for hundreds of hours and a big part of the reason it did well there. But you cherry picked things (well, 1 thing, lol) anyway, yes they had arcade ports (even some pretty bad ones, unlike Virtual On) but arcades are their legacy, if they can't do good arcade games they do nothing!

Yet they also adopted and had plenty home style games like three (!) Shining Force III games, Shining the Holy Ark, two Sakura Wars games, Panzer Dragoon Saga, two Dragon Force games, Legend of Oasis, Magic Knight Rayearth and 3rd party games like two (ish) Grandia games, Albert Odyssey, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, three (!) Langrisser games and Lunar: Silver Star Story to name a few in the most longform of genres as an example of how the library wasn't actually skewed as you claim. Still, arcade games aren't fad games (long running series like Virtua Fighter and still played games like Daytona USA show they were the opposite) and most of those got ported due to their popularity (some times with less than ideal results like the original Daytona port and the unfairly bashed Virtua Fighter, but they quickly improved).

Given its relative success in the region which was a much bigger portion of gaming than it is now they mainly had trouble in converting domestic success to international success despite having the same great games (obviously eventually cutting down on the translations as the market shrunk further and further in the West). From all we have heard since from actual sources rather than just Sony bought media and fanboys of the time, Dreamcast was also doing rather well, objectively, just not well enough, subjectively, for SEGA's particular circumstances. Ie, it couldn't single handedly dig them out of their pre-existing hole in time and so they pulled the plug. Basically, you have no idea what you're talking about, 5 minute google searches + ignorance + confirmation bias = afro republican threads attempting to rewrite gaming history as we know it and saw it unfold.

People who want to get informed about the Sega Saturn and its games library which is far from just Virtual On and similar (if great) games can check out (and participate in) this existing thread instead: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/neogaf-official-sega-saturn-community.1507666/

Edit: nowhere did I claim Virtual On sold millions (but over 300k copies in Japan isn't a bad number, what are you even trying to show besides your ignorance?), only that it wasn't a bad game or port as you claimed and that games like it, arcade games, fighting games, competitive games, all the games you probably can't play for shit and call them fads, weren't actually bad and a minus but a plus for Saturn's library and sales (just as arcade series like Tekken and Ridge Racer were a plus for the PlayStation's library and sales with people still clamoring for a new Ridge Racer being made for every PlayStation console launch until very recently). It had more games than Virtual On, like the games in my very first sentence which you somehow were unable to comprehend as well as the games in the next paragraph alongside tons more in tons of different genres, how is your next post any kind of a reply to all or any of this? I also didn't say Saturn sold as good as the N64 or PS1 in Japan, yet you respond as if anyone said anything of the sort, that's just another straw man as is your usual ignorant tactic. I didn't even say it was some runaway success story, just that your arguments about the reasons it didn't do better are pure ignorant bullshit. The Sega Saturn had a diverse, quality library as proven already so no, your perception of a focus on Virtual On and other great games you may single out as examples of whatever isn't the reason it didn't do better.

 

[cireza]

Extremely disappointing OP overall. Shitting on some legendary games (because he does not like arcade games and multiplayer games are brainless lol) and trying to explain to us that overall, Sega's game were bad, while trying to hide it. Because that's how I read it, really.

Virtual-On on Saturn was perfectly fine, a great port. And this applies to a lot of ports, especially on Saturn. On Dreamcast, some ports where a bit more rushed, or not handled internally, which explained some of the issues. But they were still very impressive games back then, running in 640x480@60fps with a clean 3D.

But on Saturn ? These ports where fantastic, who would not want to play these ?
Sega Rally
Virtua Fighter 2
Virtual On
Virtua Cop 1 & 2
Die Hard Arcade
etc...
Not even talking about the exclusive games. The offering was definitely there.

Dreamcast wasn't really a different beast. It was still quality arcade ports and quality exclusives, as well as having a great price point and being top quality hardware.

What Sega failed at is marketing. Sony came in with pretty much an infinite marketing budget and attracted consumers with non-stop TV adds. This is how it was in France. Back then on PS1, they did not even develop their own games. Everything was exclusive games bought from third parties. They simply came with infinite budget, a easy console to develop for, and that was it. They eventually started developing their own games very late in the gen. And nowadays their first party offering is probably the least interesting in the market, and the direction they are driving video-games to the worst possible, in my opinion. But it appeals to the mass market, so great for them.

Another thing Sega failed at stupidly was throwing away all their money in a ton of various games on Dreamcast. No control over the overall games released, no logic between them, they clearly lacked direction. They could have done better investments.

 

[Shifty]

All six of us Virtual On fans are furious at this take.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Yet nearly no one chose the first option outside a small niche. I feel like there's something about Sega games that have this small window of excitement when they first come out and then they fizzle out.

It's not that they are bad games either, at least some of the games are good, although there are bad ones (hi fighting vipers) but they just never clicked with the average consumer for long-term play.

I feel like this contributed immensely to one of Segas major problems post Genesis, and that's finding more IP's that would really grab the consumers like Sonic did, which was already in decline on the Genesis by the time the Saturn came out. They had some hit titles but those were also short lived. If you can't get people to invest in your hardware long-term it will be hard for you to sell many units.

SEGA biggest downfall was allowing SEGA America too much freedom and allowing SOA to push on with the 32X (yes I know it was started off by SOJ) and also develope the 32Bit Sonic. When SEGA should have all be behind the Saturn with a focused and united PR and development budget. SOJ should have made Sonic Team make the planned Sonic Adv for the Saturn early in, or like with the Mega-CD have another CS Team build the game (say the Chaotix team), not allow STI to mess it all up.
Also, it's unfair to call Virtual On niche, the IP was big in Japan and the game sold well in the Arcades and did the business on the Saturn. So what if one needs to buy a new controller, that was was the case with quite a few games and it's not like the PS2 didn't have a number of Arcade games and it's not like SEGA Japan just focused on its Aracade games for the Saturn. SOJ published or developed a number of games for the system that had nothing to with the Arcades like with Shining Force III, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Virus, Sakura Wars, Deep Fear, Burning Rangers, NiGHTS to name but a few

The worst part was SEGA was trying to market, developer for two rival machines of its own making and with own fanbase. It was utter madness, never mind how inept SEGA America was in the 32Bit era with its pipelines not up to the task of 32bit production and some terrible calls for production like spending millions on Mr Bones and the called Scary Pools even though the FMV fad had long died, the miss handling of the Multi-Media studio, the terrible Sonic X production and then producing some of the worst games of that gen with the likes of Ghen War, Congo, Comic Carnage, Motocross, NFL 97 Ect.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Everyone here usage wrong. Juste thé same wiki talking points fromage years afp répétées over and over Again.

Atari 2600 Pac-Man anyone?

Which sold consoles and sold millions where are you guys getting your gaming history from? How is a gaming focused board this poorly educated?

Poor console arcade ports mostly were for kids and younger teens, just like the early 80s Atari2600 and computer ports.

The Arcade market in the 80's had all the demographics, it was Nintendo that changed the focus to kids.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Virtual On is a terrible example. If not for the fact that it's a 1 on 1 VS game where the Skill of playing rewards people rather than completing the story.

The game itself was ported to the Saturn because of how huge it was. It created a community of eSports Japanese players just like Puyo Puyo did.

SEGA failed purely from lack of Third Parties and terrible marketing. The Arcade Gameplay may have not lit the charts on fire but that was SEGA's bread and butter that made money so they naturally went with that approach.

Also, their titles have aged like fine wine for the most part. Anyone can play Puyo Puyo, Virtual On and Phantasy Star Online because the games let you develop your own skills/strategies and whatnot, thereby they could be sold infinitely if they so choose to port them.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

You never really got extra content for the home console versions of arcade games from Sega. Unlike say Namco that included all the extra stuff in Soul Blade or an entirely new scenario in Time Crisis on Playstation. While games designed for the home systems featured much more content for the same price.

The Saturn port of Manx TT Superbike includes two tracks. The second is an alternate route so it is more like 1.5, you also get reverse-mirrored but not reverse or mirrored options. I dont see how Sega could think releasing a game with such a limited amount of content when some demos offered even more was a good idea.

Colin Mcrae Rally on Ps1 had atleast two different demos that featured five different tracks for the cost of a magazine and even more if you include the PC demos. While Sega Rally had four total .

This is it, right here. You got "Saturn Mode" additions to some arcade ports but these changed around a few things or added some extra enemies, items, that kind of stuff, or altered scoring mechanics etc. You rarely got, say, whole new tracks or stages (though there are versions of some of their arcade ports that did, such as Daytona CCE).

Namco was actually guilty of this at the start, too. Tekken, Cyber Sled, Ridge Racer...they had very little in the way of extra content for the home release. But around Tekken 2's time (and later Soul Edge's), they started going out the wazoo with extra content, and that culminated with Tekken 3's release on PS1 (I still consider that the most "well-rounded" "full-package" "bang-for-your-buck" fighter released that generation, in terms of striking a balance between deep game mechanics and content to appease lesser-skilled casual players. And also the style).

I feel SEGA's solutions was more to focus on games designed exclusively with Saturn in mind (there's no excuse why the OP ignored all the home-exclusive Saturn and Dreamcast games like Panzer Dragoon, Zwei, Astal, Clockwork Knight, Dragon Force, Albert Odyssey, Deep Fear etc.; they're trying to paint the impression their 1st party was only arcade ports and that's very disingenuous), but that didn't necessarily solve the issue with Saturn (and to a lesser extent, Dreamcast) ports of arcade games not having a lot of extra home-exclusive content. You got it with later releases over time like, again, Daytona, but it wasn't consistent.

In truth, it speaks more to the different interpretation of "depth" between those who mainly played in arcades vs. those who mainly played on home consoles, because there was actually a decent gap in terms of design philosophy for those two types of games (and, I'd argue, skill gaps in favor of the former). Console gamers (even to this day) generally equate "depth" with girth of content. Even if that content boils down to mainly trinkets and collectathon stuff, the more content, generally the more "depth" the game will seem to have to them. That's why you see so many people complain when they hear a game's single player can be completed in less than 10 hours, for example.

OTOH, arcade gamers generally equated "depth" with the mechanical systems of the games themselves, and in proving mastery of the game's challenges and mechanics. This is why 1CC'ing ('ya know, the thing decades before speedrunning ) became so popular; to discover strategies and techniques in beating arcade games on a single credit. You can actually see this applied A LOT with shmups in particular, but it does apply to other genre games as well (and also disproves the notion that these games were meant to be "quarter-munchers"; by and large decently skilled players, even in learning a game and attempting to eventually master it on a single credit, would end up spending much less on it in an arcade vs. buying the equivalent home port on a console at full-price. They would also try renting home versions to practice on if the port was good, and some arcades would put their machines in Free Play mode).

So for a lot of players who grew up with arcade games, mastery of the game's mechanics and challenges is where the depth came from. Granted, games particularly designed for home consoles, such as JRPGs, can have their own somewhat equivalent depth, but it will only be of the more strategical/thinking type rather than dexterous; many arcade games (such as fighters) actually implement both types of challenge into their design, FWIW.

I think that's a very important distinction to indicate, because a person who mainly plays console-orientated platformers or JRPGs is going to have a different skill set (and, arguably, inferior one) when matched up against equivalent arcade (and PC) games designed with those platforms and their primary audiences in mind. Console gamers tended to begin putting more emphasize on girth of content as the years rolled on, especially once the PS1 came out; they wanted the most content you could stuff on those CDs, after all. This proved a challenge for arcade games that sacrificed girth of content for complexity of mechanics and challenge, and I think Namco were the only ones who routinely figured a way to solve that during the generation. Then again, it helped that they weren't stretching themselves thin with ports, original content AND managing their own gaming platform and proprietary arcade tech/division simultaneously

...And I think now's maybe a good time for me to do something I wanted to do for a while, but this thread's helped set in stone. It's not just the OP; I think there's several others who don't really understand the depth of some of the arcade games mentioned here, and that probably comes down to lack of play investment on their part and lack of skill in mastering their challenge or mechanics. And since that's where the vast majority of depth in arcade games come from, if you don't reach those heights, you won't "get" them. So I'm gonna do a little series going over some of the games in this thread and see what they're really about, and see what factors and conditions did (and continue to) benefit or harm their performance in their markets, reception with critics and gamers, and how they're viewed by gamers within the retro scene today.

Anybody who's interested, just keep an eye out for the thread sometime this week (hopefully); I'll be starting with Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, try and do it some Kazaa justice (not necessarily in method, but overall quality I suppose)

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Looking forward to it thicc_girls_are_teh_best

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Man this thread is a disaster, just everyone is wrong and it's all haters vs. fools that are drunk by nostalgia, and we are seeing the same old talking points over and over again.

As much as the OP doesn't want it to, this is just another thread indirectly asking why Sega failed and while OP offers a unique perspective, it's also wrong.

It's baffling to see Sega threads end up the same. There is an actual objective answer to why Sega failed and that's because Sega was never a competitor in the video game industry until Sega of America started gaining too much power and Sega of Japan followed. Being aggressively competitive basically shattered the original business model of the company. Long post ahead.

When you look at Segas business structure before 1990 they were a passive gaming company. They would have 3 tiers of arcade machines, an entry level machine, which offered fun cheap games, a standard tier, which is what most arcade games looked like graphically at the time, and a Pro tier which would produce their most graphically intensive software

Segas game consoles were sold as just a central hub to have access to many of their games and wouldn't sell much more than 10-20 million units a pop. That was the plan.

Their business model was based on SoA, SoJ, and SoE, having some power to adapt to market conditions. But that was the jest of it. They were balanced entities that drew off each other.

The business model split three ways, Arcade revenue, Console revenue, and popular hits would be ported on almost any machine that could play games for additional profit. That was Segas company structure and business model.

The only time Sega was really competitive was a few small jabs at Nintendo in japan, which they eventually scaled back. Notice that until they started dialing it back in 1990 Sega was frequently publishing games on several gaming systems other than Nintendo? Even the PC Engine?

That was all part of Segas business model and company structure. They were an arcade company that would have a console just as an option to have access to their games and games from partners. Big hits would be ported on nearly every system for additional funding. All 3 branches of Sega were balanced with equal power and a shared budget plan to lift the company as a whole.

What changed? In 1990 Sega of America increased the stakes and tried to make Sega much more competitive in the video game market, an area Sega was not heavily competing in because they were focused primarily on the arcade market, two different markets.

As Sega of America picked up the pace, Sega of America gained more power, and once they 1991 came they suddenly had a game to take advantage of their new ambitions, Sonic the Hedgehog. A game they used to launch the Genesis platform as a major competitor that would become the next big thing. Sonic became a huge household name, and it was also given away for free.

Sega of Europe would follow suit and you'd see similar influence in other areas. Sega of America was running on its own as a separate company. When you view it logically it makes sense why Sega of Japan was pissed. The problem was that Sega of Americas strategy worked, and Sega of Japan decided to be competitive as well BUT knock Sega of America down a peg as well.

This is where Segas death had its beginning. Sega as a whole, arguably made not a single dime from 1991 to the Dreamcast discontinuation because suddenly Sega was spending more than what they were bringing in across the entire company.

Due to the competitive nature, more money on ads were spend, more money on games were spend, more reactionary moves were made, more discontinuing unsuccessful products occurred without playing the long game.

When you look at the Sega CD for example, it was supposed to be an option that would attract software and make profit overtime. Instead the Sega CD became a product that was dropped once it stopped making the amount of money Sega wanted it to make. The 32X was the same, it was greenlit to make the Genesis more competitive against upcoming consoles and after the launch excitement dissipated and the money dried up the 32X was dropped and they decided to focus everything on the Saturn. The Game Gear was also an attempt to jump in and compete in a market.

The Saturn was supposed to be a 2D beast with some great 3D capabilities but nothing to crazy. They decided that they had to try and make the Saturn compete with Sony so slapped in hardware that made programming more complicated. Once it became clear Sega may have had a chance in Japan, Sega of Japan basically took complete control of the system ultimately failing to sell what Sega of Japan hoped for.

Sega of Japan also decided to change their old arcade strategy and decided to try competing to be the best their as well. More chaos.

The Dreamcast was launched when Sega had both their arms cut off. They created a system that NEEDED to sell a certain amount to make a profit, so they decided to gamble on an expensive idea, online. This was done to attract more players to buy Dreamcast consoles even if they never used the feature itself. The Idea was if Sega could sell a certain amount of Dreamcasts than the company could become competitive again. But Sega wasn't able to pull it off.

Here's what I think the timeline would have been if Sega of America didn't break the companies managing structure.

1990: Maybe a few jabs at Nintendo from SoA, but no power hungry elite trying to make the Genesis the next big thing.
1991: Sonic comes out helps with sales, several arcade ports do better with balanced advertising. The Arcades are still ranking in dough. Likely don't release the gamegear since they aren't as competitive. We would have still seen many Sega games on toher consoles.
1992: Sega CD comes out as an option, courts developers and places some cool ports on it. Likely would end up selling more than it had now since they would have it out on shelves longer playing the long game.
1993: More games than ever before due to balanced game marketing, Genesis would likely end up selling the same or near the same in the end without the unnecessary spending.
1994: Since Sega would be more passive they would not react tot he Jaguar with the 32x.
1995: Since Sega would be more passive, they would not react to the PS1, and the console would release cheaper as a result. No sudden launch. Balanced marketing over many original games and cool arcade ports. No focus on software titles trying to compete with PS1 directly. Likely would sell much more in the US and Japan than it did in the real world.
1996: Growing library, cheaper price, less competitive arcade division adding to profits, no failed attempts at more portable consoles would save on R&D.
1997: Continue from 1996.
1998: Since Sega wouldn't need to replace the Saturn to stop bleeding in this timeline the Dreamcast likely wouldn't come out until 1999 or 2000 and the online gimmick may bot have happened or had limited in functionality.
1999: Possible Dreamcast launch.
2000: Possible Dreamcast launch, due to technology advances it would still have a pretty powerful consoles for cheap. Arcades would be dying but profitable, and a switch to more original titles on the Dreamcast with balanced marketing. No abrupt discontinuation.
2005: Dreamcast 2

People don't understand that what arguably brought Sega to many homes aggressively, and made Sonic a household name, is what killed Sega.

Sega went from having a balanced model between branches and hardware making tons of profit, to one branch becoming too powerful and influencing the others to try really hard to be #1, even if their business structure didn't support it or the fact they did not have the money to trade hits with anyone.

I would not be surprised if the old sayings are true and Sega as a whole did not make a dime after 1991. When you look at the few financial reports we have access to they are combining sectors or omitting sectors, we never have an idea if the whole company is making or losing money, just that some areas would lose money and some would claim to make money. But anything that would tell us overall profit for the company entirely was always sidelined.

To be short, Sega didn't know how to run a competitive company and their business structure wasn't made to do so. They decided to trade hits with people that not only had more money, but had companies designed from the top down to compete in the market that Sega wasn't even primarily in. This competitive nature then spread across all branches in nearly all countries they operated in and later in the arcade industry, which was their focus.

When you suddenly start spending triple the amount on ads and software while making pointless R&D decisions, it makes perfect sense why Sega wasn't able to stick around. One of the reasons why Sega of America was able to gain that much power was because it wasn't expected. Sega of Japan had no regulations placed on anyone. No wonder they were pissed.

Sure their retaliation was very dumb and petty, but at least I can see why they were pissed.

 

[diffusionx]

SEGA didn't fail people, people failed SEGA.

Sega failed their fans like no other company in gaming. Telling them to buy a Sega CD, then a 32X, then a Saturn, then abandoning that early to focus on Dreamcast - how can any company expect to keep customers after that? Especially when those customers were mostly young people with limited amounts of cash.

Sega lost anybody who had to buy a PS1 in 1997 when it was clear they were done with the Saturn. They lost them forever.

 

[Afro Republican]

(there's no excuse why the OP ignored all the home-exclusive Saturn and Dreamcast games like Panzer Dragoon, Zwei, Astal, Clockwork Knight, Dragon Force, Albert Odyssey, Deep Fear etc.; they're trying to paint the impression their 1st party was only arcade ports and that's very disingenuous),

No, you've just decided to read what you want to. I didn't ignore anything.

...And I think now's maybe a good time for me to do something I wanted to do for a while, but this thread's helped set in stone. It's not just the OP; I think there's several others who don't really understand the depth of some of the arcade games mentioned here, and that probably comes down to lack of play investment on their part and lack of skill in mastering their challenge or mechanics. And since that's where the vast majority of depth in arcade games come from, if you don't reach those heights, you won't "get" them. So I'm gonna do a little series going over some of the games in this thread and see what they're really about, and see what factors and conditions did (and continue to) benefit or harm their performance in their markets, reception with critics and gamers, and how they're viewed by gamers within the retro scene today.

Anybody who's interested, just keep an eye out for the thread sometime this week (hopefully); I'll be starting with Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, try and do it some Kazaa justice (not necessarily in method, but overall quality I suppose)

This post is nuts. You're just a fanboy spinning the thread and simplifying the argument to blame everyone but Sega.

News flash, every other major arcade software maker was more successful than Sega during the Saturn/Dreamcast period. Including many games that had as much "depth" or more "depth" than Virtual-On. You again ignore the question, why people chose everyone else over Sega. Even die hard arcade game players that went to tourneys were more interested in other companies games than Segas during this time period, and as the years went on the gap became wider. Why? You ever answer the question, just deflect and place blame on everyone other than Sega like Dun did.

Making a thread about "the mechanics" to try and "prove" there was "depth" shows you're completely clueless. The games don't have appeal, they didn't have long shelf lives, it has nothing to do with console gamers vs. arcade games when the arcade gamers were not playing Fighting Vipers over Tekken 2 or even SF3. Yes SF3 the arcade flop, had a bigger presence in the hardcore community than most of Segas post-Genesis arcade hits at the time especially after 1996. Are you going to say those people don't understand "the mechanics" as well?

The fact you are gong to include retrospective views in your thread goes against the entire point of this one, which was to focus on when the games were relevant.

Ridiculous.

Also for those saying Virtual-on was big on the Saturn in Japan, that just isn't a fact, it didn't even sell 300k and launched during the Saturns peak years in japan. It may have done well in Japanese arcades but even then it wasn't as huge as people seem to be implying Just because you had a few "esports" events in japan for some games doesn't mean those games were huge by default. SF3 wasn't "huge" but had a sizable tournament scene back in the day. It was a niche Ip.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Freedom Gate Co. So basically, SEGA was doing something similar to what SNK'd eventually do (with the Neo-Geo)( and what MS seems wanting to do with Xbox now) and followed a modest-but-successful business model that balanced out their divisions (something Nintendo is known for and continues to do)

But at some point that business model was disrupted by an unforeseen breakout hit (Sonic) and the company threw away its balanced, modest market strategy to pursue competition (often blindly) with other companies directly? I have to say, that's a very interesting perspective on it and just thinking about some things quickly, puts a lot of their business decisions (as you mentioned for example, porting their arcade games to other platforms like PC-Engine, MSX etc. even when they had the Master System and SG-1000 on the market) into better context.

It almost makes me want to say a lot of people (OP included) have been using a wrong frame of reference in discussing many of these things. Hell, even I need to re-think a few things of SEGA's during that period in this context.

Alexios Thread looks neat, gonna give it a peep.

 

[Carna]

I heard at one point the money loss from Seganet was ultimately what made Sega leave the console market, can history-buffs clarify this?

 

[Starlight Lotice]

This is it, right here. You got "Saturn Mode" additions to some arcade ports but these changed around a few things or added some extra enemies, items, that kind of stuff, or altered scoring mechanics etc. You rarely got, say, whole new tracks or stages (though there are versions of some of their arcade ports that did, such as Daytona CCE).

Namco was actually guilty of this at the start, too. Tekken, Cyber Sled, Ridge Racer...they had very little in the way of extra content for the home release. But around Tekken 2's time (and later Soul Edge's), they started going out the wazoo with extra content, and that culminated with Tekken 3's release on PS1 (I still consider that the most "well-rounded" "full-package" "bang-for-your-buck" fighter released that generation, in terms of striking a balance between deep game mechanics and content to appease lesser-skilled casual players. And also the style).

I feel SEGA's solutions was more to focus on games designed exclusively with Saturn in mind (there's no excuse why the OP ignored all the home-exclusive Saturn and Dreamcast games like Panzer Dragoon, Zwei, Astal, Clockwork Knight, Dragon Force, Albert Odyssey, Deep Fear etc.; they're trying to paint the impression their 1st party was only arcade ports and that's very disingenuous), but that didn't necessarily solve the issue with Saturn (and to a lesser extent, Dreamcast) ports of arcade games not having a lot of extra home-exclusive content. You got it with later releases over time like, again, Daytona, but it wasn't consistent.

In truth, it speaks more to the different interpretation of "depth" between those who mainly played in arcades vs. those who mainly played on home consoles, because there was actually a decent gap in terms of design philosophy for those two types of games (and, I'd argue, skill gaps in favor of the former). Console gamers (even to this day) generally equate "depth" with girth of content. Even if that content boils down to mainly trinkets and collectathon stuff, the more content, generally the more "depth" the game will seem to have to them. That's why you see so many people complain when they hear a game's single player can be completed in less than 10 hours, for example.

OTOH, arcade gamers generally equated "depth" with the mechanical systems of the games themselves, and in proving mastery of the game's challenges and mechanics. This is why 1CC'ing ('ya know, the thing decades before speedrunning ) became so popular; to discover strategies and techniques in beating arcade games on a single credit. You can actually see this applied A LOT with shmups in particular, but it does apply to other genre games as well (and also disproves the notion that these games were meant to be "quarter-munchers"; by and large decently skilled players, even in learning a game and attempting to eventually master it on a single credit, would end up spending much less on it in an arcade vs. buying the equivalent home port on a console at full-price. They would also try renting home versions to practice on if the port was good, and some arcades would put their machines in Free Play mode).

So for a lot of players who grew up with arcade games, mastery of the game's mechanics and challenges is where the depth came from. Granted, games particularly designed for home consoles, such as JRPGs, can have their own somewhat equivalent depth, but it will only be of the more strategical/thinking type rather than dexterous; many arcade games (such as fighters) actually implement both types of challenge into their design, FWIW.

I think that's a very important distinction to indicate, because a person who mainly plays console-orientated platformers or JRPGs is going to have a different skill set (and, arguably, inferior one) when matched up against equivalent arcade (and PC) games designed with those platforms and their primary audiences in mind. Console gamers tended to begin putting more emphasize on girth of content as the years rolled on, especially once the PS1 came out; they wanted the most content you could stuff on those CDs, after all. This proved a challenge for arcade games that sacrificed girth of content for complexity of mechanics and challenge, and I think Namco were the only ones who routinely figured a way to solve that during the generation. Then again, it helped that they weren't stretching themselves thin with ports, original content AND managing their own gaming platform and proprietary arcade tech/division simultaneously

...And I think now's maybe a good time for me to do something I wanted to do for a while, but this thread's helped set in stone. It's not just the OP; I think there's several others who don't really understand the depth of some of the arcade games mentioned here, and that probably comes down to lack of play investment on their part and lack of skill in mastering their challenge or mechanics. And since that's where the vast majority of depth in arcade games come from, if you don't reach those heights, you won't "get" them. So I'm gonna do a little series going over some of the games in this thread and see what they're really about, and see what factors and conditions did (and continue to) benefit or harm their performance in their markets, reception with critics and gamers, and how they're viewed by gamers within the retro scene today.

Anybody who's interested, just keep an eye out for the thread sometime this week (hopefully); I'll be starting with Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, try and do it some Kazaa justice (not necessarily in method, but overall quality I suppose)

I will love you forever if you do a Virtual On one.

My main is Fei-Yen for having the most HP and doubling her attack when her HP goes to half. I know she is good at Mid Range and Close quarters but don't really have a decent strategy when I played online with her.

 

[Afro Republican]

Sega Saturn actually did very well in Japan and yes, fighting games like the tons it had from both Capcom and SNK as well as their own like Virtua Fighter and quirkier fighting games like Virtual On are things people do play for hundreds of hours and a big part of the reason it did well there.

Bullshit, we have Japanese media-create sales, we have all the data available, 5 million is not "very well" top 10 games in Japan:

System	Title	FW	LTD	Publisher	Release Date
SAT	Virtua Fighter 2	540.539	1.417.034	SEGA	01/12/1995
SAT	Virtua Fighter	64.718	630.000	SEGA	22/11/1994
SAT	Sega Rally Championship	250.966	598.368	SEGA	29/12/1995
SAT	Daytona USA	233.885	570.000	SEGA	01/04/1995
SAT	Fighters Megamix	263.353	528.698	SEGA	21/12/1996
SAT	Super Robot Wars F: Final		513.782	Banpresto	23/04/1998
SAT	Sakura Taisen 2	355.270	509.091	SEGA	04/04/1998
SAT	Virtua Cop	262.942	482.362	SEGA	24/11/1995
SAT	Super Robot Wars F	337.859	464.169	Banpresto	25/09/1997
SAT	Virtua Fighter Remix	160.213	437.036	SEGA	14/07/1995

The N64 sold around the same amount but has much higher software sales despite having less games and coming out 2 years late. A lot of the Saturns biggest games in Japan sold most of their sales in their first week. Banpresto was the second biggest publisher after Sega itself. Where is Virtual-on? Where are those Capcom and SNK games? Oh, Capcom shows up at number 13 with SFA all versions combined. SNk at #39.

It did "decent" at best, especially for a Sega console.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Freedom Gate Co. So basically, SEGA was doing something similar to what SNK'd eventually do (with the Neo-Geo)( and what MS seems wanting to do with Xbox now) and followed a modest-but-successful business model that balanced out their divisions (something Nintendo is known for and continues to do)

But at some point that business model was disrupted by an unforeseen breakout hit (Sonic) and the company threw away its balanced, modest market strategy to pursue competition (often blindly) with other companies directly? I have to say, that's a very interesting perspective on it and just thinking about some things quickly, puts a lot of their business decisions (as you mentioned for example, porting their arcade games to other platforms like PC-Engine, MSX etc. even when they had the Master System and SG-1000 on the market) into better context.

It almost makes me want to say a lot of people (OP included) have been using a wrong frame of reference in discussing many of these things. Hell, even I need to re-think a few things of SEGA's during that period in this context.

Alexios Thread looks neat, gonna give it a peep.

Sega of America was starting to go power hungry before Sonic but Sonic sealed the deal. Sega became an aggressive company trying to compete in an industry the company was not structured to handle. You then had Sega of Japan get real pissed at Sega of America, but ironically decided to follow their lead after crippling them.

Even the first years of the Genesis saw many ports on other machines. It only ended once Sega of America influences a massive change in company operations, operations that the company was not designed to handle. Sega of Japan let all their companies run as they pleased because such an event was not expected to happen and now Sega of Japan would gut everyone else for their own benefit to be number 1.

This used to be a passive company that would make it so that if the market changed in one region, the local managing branch could make adjustments. Segas whole business model originally required all segments to work together to produce results. This is why Sega had no hesitation porting some of their more successful titles on any system that could play games. Why else would even Sega of Japan help their competition by porting Sega games onto the PC Engine? That's because they arguably made more money doing that than competing directly with NEC.

You are correct that many people are approaching this the wrong way. Most people start with the Mega Drive, they don't go back further and look at how Sega operated before, so they never see that they were originally not a competitive company at all.

I heard at one point the money loss from Seganet was ultimately what made Sega leave the console market, can history-buffs clarify this?

It was one factor yes, not the main one.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Also for those saying Virtual-on was big on the Saturn in Japan, that just isn't a fact, it didn't even sell 300k and launched during the Saturns peak years in japan.

Wrong, the Saturn version of VON sold 323k so you're claim it sold less than 300k is wrong.

Try again.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I will love you forever if you do a Virtual On one.

My main is Fei-Yen for having the most HP and doubling her attack when her HP goes to half. I know she is good at Mid Range and Close quarters but don't really have a decent strategy when I played online with her.

Virtual-On is the first one I'm doing actually, already got maybe 1/3 of it written up. Basically it'll act as a way of combing through the games and how they're actually designed, their actual market performance and reception with fans/critics (both at the time and today), and what factors contributed to all of those. For the arcade ports, that'd also include looking at the arcade versions too. It's hard to get some of the data though.

I'll do my best to avoid pitfalls like ad populum fallacy (or its derivatives), communal reinforcement, bandwagon effect etc., all of which seem to be common problems in the OP's posts. It probably helps to refrain from inflecting personal bias into any of this until all objective and subjective (in relation to other offerings) is exhausted. But hopefully, that approach will get others to see a lot of the games in a different light.

Might also try it with other games too, like Garou, 3S, RE1, Toshinden etc. In any case, sales themselves only tend to account for a fraction of a game's good will with audiences or fanbase; dissecting the games from a neutral POV is where the real fun's at

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Virtual-On is the first one I'm doing actually, already got maybe 1/3 of it written up. Basically it'll act as a way of combing through the games and how they're actually designed, their actual market performance and reception with fans/critics (both at the time and today), and what factors contributed to all of those. For the arcade ports, that'd also include looking at the arcade versions too. It's hard to get some of the data though.

I'll do my best to avoid pitfalls like ad populum fallacy (or its derivatives), communal reinforcement, bandwagon effect etc., all of which seem to be common problems in the OP's posts. It probably helps to refrain from inflecting personal bias into any of this until all objective and subjective (in relation to other offerings) is exhausted. But hopefully, that approach will get others to see a lot of the games in a different light.

Might also try it with other games too, like Garou, 3S, RE1, Toshinden etc. In any case, sales themselves only tend to account for a fraction of a game's good will with audiences or fanbase; dissecting the games from a neutral POV is where the real fun's at

Looking forward to it!

I bought the recent Crossover on the Vita last week and...you csn beat the storh by spamming the Melee button.

The new one is a point based system too...which is weird.

 

[cireza]

It did "decent" at best, especially for a Sega console.

Because SNK and Capcom fighters sold like crazy on other consoles...

Japan buying a Sega console to play arcade ports during the years of glory of arcade, and while Sega was the number one publisher in arcade. Unbelievable.

Saturn did decent in Japan but it was the best selling Sega console there. You make no sense.

 

[Afro Republican]

Because SNK and Capcom fighters sold like crazy on other consoles...

Is this sarcasm? Because if so you're insane.

SNK is a niche company and always were with consoles releases, Capcom sold more on the PSX 3:1 so yes you could say Capcom games "sold like crazy" on other consoles. Capcom was in bed with Sony so much that they worked with them to release two arcade cabinets.

The best selling Saturn Capcom game in Japan individually was Darkstalkers revenge.

Japan buying a Sega console to play arcade ports during the years of glory of arcade, and while Sega was the number one publisher in arcade.

Sega wasn't the number one publisher in anything during the Saturns lifespan.

Saturn did decent in Japan but it was the best selling Sega console there. You make no sense.

What? Yeah it was the best selling Sega console sold in Japan, doesn't mean it was a major success or that it sold well. it sold 5 million consoles, but most of that was early in the Saturns life and it had poor software sales. The N64 sold around the same number with less software, releasing late, and in a shorter time frame. Selling less than 2 million ahead of the Genesis over there with much higher costs isn't what makes a successful console, that's called bleeding yourself dry.

 

[cireza]

What? Yeah it was the best selling Sega console sold in Japan, doesn't mean it was a major success or that it sold well.

It did "decent" at best, especially for a Sega console.

So are you talking "for a Sega console", or overall ? Make clearer sentences next time.

If SNK and Capcom are niche companies and sold few games, why is it becoming a relevant indicator of Sega's failure ? Who cares ? These games were great, the ports were amazing, nobody actually cares about the sales numbers. They were ports for a niche public, so obviously if they were not making their companies money, they would have stopped porting them. Which they did not. We had SNK and Capcom ports till the end of the Saturn's life. In the end, it is not relevant to what you seem to be only interested in : sales numbers.

The Saturn did not make great sales. Its games neither. Nothing new here. The reason is certainly not the "shit bad quality" of Sega games, like you are trying to make us believe. Games quality was up there on Saturn, and honestly, I have never seen anyone saying that the Saturn failed because it had shitty games. The problem here is because it did not have the games advertised everywhere. And I mean it. EVERYWHERE. The reasons are about marketing, that's all there is to it. Saturn actually managed pretty well in Japan during its lifespan, and strangely, it had the most successful marketing campaign from Sega ever with Segata Sanshiro.

 

[Enjay]

The only thing that stopped sega is the same thing that stops them now. Gross incompetence.

 

[Jubenhimer]

Sega was really good at short burst experiences. But less than stellar when it came to longer, console style games. Shenmue was one of the few times they branched out to more long form types of games, and they did a good job. But Sega's ultimate problem was that they couldn't pull itself away from arcade style game design enough to combat the other consoles, who kept offering bigger and better games.

 

[cireza]

that stops them now

Current Sega is doing perfectly fine and their recent games are awesome, what are you talking about ?

But less than stellar when it came to longer, console style games. Shenmue was one of the few times they branched out to more long form types of games, and they did a good job.

Sega has a strong legacy of fantastic RPGs and T-RPGs. And a lot of teams dedicated to consoles since the Master System days. Are you even serious ?

If you wanted adventure and role playing games, the MegaDrive was the place to be in Europe. There were many fantastic and long games on it, the proposal was seen as even stronger than on SNES by many, and Sega Europe knew it well and strongly built on this. Story driven games, great gameplay, exclusive to their consoles. And this remained true for both Saturn and Dremcast. And even today, Sega Japan makes a ton of great RPGs and story driven games, that are fantastic and true to their legacy. And they also have Atlus now.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

Actually a couple 3D modeled "fighting games" happened first but they aren't considered "fighting games" because they are under "Sports" which is why I said "technically" it wasn't.

Which games?

Die Hard Arcade

..speaking of, it always wondered me why there was no Streets of Rage or Golden Axe (I dont count the Fighters) on Saturn. I mean, they already got a great engine they couldve used.

Likely don't release the gamegear since they aren't as competitive. We would have still seen many Sega games on toher consoles.

I mean, Sega failed to see the potential in releasing a smaller model 2 gamegear with better battery life tbh. The Gamegear was very powerful back then and still kinda was late in its lifecycle. It couldve compete with the Gameboy Color imo

 

[cireza]

..speaking of, it always wondered me why there was no Streets of Rage nor Golden Axe (I dont count the Fighters) on Saturn. I mean, they already got a great engine they couldve used.

My point of view is that this genre was difficult to transition to 3D given the limited hardware back then. Just like Sonic was difficult to move to 3D, you don't have fast paced platformers on this gen. And as all focus was on 3D because Sony was advertising and communicating as much as possible about "2D sucks 2D is old", Sega's first party output was also almost exclusively focused on 3D games.

Treasure did not care though, and you had Guardian Heroes which is a great showcase for the console. But Die Hard Arcade is pretty awesome honestly, lots of depth.

 

[Jubenhimer]

Sega has a strong legacy of fantastic RPGs and T-RPGs. And a lot of teams dedicated to consoles since the Master System days. Are you even serious ?

Were any of these good enough to sell consoles though? That's the real crux of the issue. It's not that Sega didn't have these games, but very few, If any of them made good killer apps for their systems. Even Sonic the Hedgehog, which was created specifically for the Genesis, was still designed like an arcade game.

Meanwhile, Nintendo and Sony had Zelda, Metroid,. Final Fantasy, Spyro, Crash, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, and basically anything from Rare. All big, often system selling games that were longer and more in-depth than the arcade ports and arcade-in-spirit games Sega was still dishing out on the Saturn.

The Dreamcast was a bit better at this as it tried to offer a bigger Sonic and Phantasy Star, the cult classic Skies of Arcadia, and Shenmue which was the most expensive game ever made up to that point. It was too little, too late though, as Sega was hemoraging money by that point.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

My point of view is that this genre was difficult to transition to 3D given the limited hardware back then. Just like Sonic was difficult to move to 3D, you don't have fast paced platformers on this gen. And as all focus was on 3D because Sony was advertising and communicating as much as possible about "2D sucks 2D is old", Sega's first party output was also almost exclusively focused on 3D games.

Treasure did not care though, and you had Guardian Heroes which is a great showcase for the console. But Die Hard Arcade is pretty awesome honestly, lots of depth.

the genre of side scrolling beat em ups never quite made the jump to 3D. They definitely tried, but most games just weren't that great, except if you count hack n slays as the logical evolution of side scrolling beat em ups. however, there a few great 3D games in that genre, including Die Hard Arcade. i could definitely see a streets of rage or golden axe build with same engine as Die Hard Arcade. sure, they needed to do some adjustments, but still it couldve worked great imo.

 

[EverydayBeast]

You gotta admit SEGA did a really good job with side scrollers in the 90s

 

[NickFire]

Might have contributed, but I would disagree on the contribution being material. They just shit the bed by releasing system after system (including systems requiring a system) in a short time frame.

 

[petran79]

The Arcade market in the 80's had all the demographics, it was Nintendo that changed the focus to kids.

I was mostly referring to barcades or smaller ventures, varying by country that were not as accepting to kids and girls
If you watch(ed) the movie The Accused, you'll understand what I mean

 

[cireza]

Meanwhile, Nintendo and Sony had Zelda, Metroid,. Final Fantasy, Spyro, Crash, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, and basically anything from Rare. All big, often system selling games that were longer and more in-depth than the arcade ports and arcade-in-spirit games Sega was still dishing out on the Saturn.

Zelda okay, but that's only one or two games per console
Metroid was pretty niche, and N64 did not have a game
Final Fantasy is a Square game not Sony
Spyro was Insomniac edited by Sony, 1998 though, not first party, Sega had already moved development to the Dreamcast
Crash was Naughty Dog, not Sony
Tomb Raider was Core Design, not Sony
Metal Gear was Konami, not Sony

Sega made in-house or published :
MegaDrive :
Sword of Vermillion
Phantasy Star II, III, IV
Shining in the Darkness (with Camelot)
Shining Force I, II (with Camelot)
Landstalker
Soleil
Light Crusader (Treasure)
Beyond Oasis (Ancient)
Monster World III, IV
All these were major adventure games in the 16 bits era, which started in 1989 for the MegaDrive, not 1995 by the way as people often cites games like Seiken 3, Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI...

Saturn :
Mystaria
Dark Savior (Climax)
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Shining the Holy Ark
Shining Force III (Camelot)
Dragon Force I, II
Sakura Wars I, II (Red Entertainment)
Wachenroder
Terra Phantastica
Legend of Oasis
Grandia (Gamearts)
Probably missing a lot.

And that's only Adventure/RPG. There were many other console efforts that were great quality (Panzer Dragoon, Nights, Burning Rangers, Deep Fear, Enemy Zero, the Lobotomy ports...)

Sega was ensuring that quality and quantity was available for this genre on its consoles, and made many of these games themselves. All these games I cited have strictly nothing to envy to the games you cited. They simply were less successful, not because of their quality, not because they are shorter or whatever reason. The only reason is because they were not marketed, they had less visibility (especially on Saturn).

Overall, you seem to have limited knowledge concerning the games that Sega was releasing back then. And it is a bit tiresome to always hear "the longer the game the better". Game length and quality is totally unrelated. I finish 2D Metroid games in a single day.

And finally, when your console does not encounter enough success, you hurry to the next one and won't maintain long projects. This is exactly what happened with the Wii U, with the last games being smaller/rushed games (Splatoon, Mario Maker, Starfox). When Sega saw that the Saturn was not selling enough, they obviously shifted development towards the Dreamcast. This only makes sense. Still the big projects started earlier were released for the most part (Shining Force III, Panzer Dragoon Saga). Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia shifted to the Dreamcast. A console that also had a lot of great Sega first party games with a ton of content and hours of fun.

 

[RAIDEN1]

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Zelda okay, but that's only one or two games per console
Metroid was pretty niche, and N64 did not have a game
Final Fantasy is a Square game not Sony
Spyro was Insomniac edited by Sony, 1998 though, not first party, Sega had already moved development to the Dreamcast
Crash was Naughty Dog, not Sony
Tomb Raider was Core Design, not Sony
Metal Gear was Konami, not Sony

Sega made in-house or published :
MegaDrive :
Sword of Vermillion
Phantasy Star II, III, IV
Shining in the Darkness (with Camelot)
Shining Force I, II (with Camelot)
Landstalker
Soleil
Light Crusader (Treasure)
Beyond Oasis (Ancient)
Monster World III, IV
All these were major adventure games in the 16 bits era, which started in 1989 for the MegaDrive, not 1995 by the way as people often cites games like Seiken 3, Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI...

Saturn :
Mystaria
Dark Savior (Climax)
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Shining the Holy Ark
Shining Force III (Camelot)
Dragon Force I, II
Sakura Wars I, II (Red Entertainment)
Wachenroder
Terra Phantastica
Legend of Oasis
Grandia (Gamearts)
Probably missing a lot.

And that's only Adventure/RPG. There were many other console efforts that were great quality (Panzer Dragoon, Nights, Burning Rangers, Deep Fear, Enemy Zero, the Lobotomy ports...)

Sega was ensuring that quality and quantity was available for this genre on its consoles, and made many of these games themselves. All these games I cited have strictly nothing to envy to the games you cited. They simply were less successful, not because of their quality, not because they are shorter or whatever reason. The only reason is because they were not marketed, they had less visibility (especially on Saturn).

Overall, you seem to have limited knowledge concerning the games that Sega was releasing back then. And it is a bit tiresome to always hear "the longer the game the better". Game length and quality is totally unrelated. I finish 2D Metroid games in a single day.

And finally, when your console does not encounter enough success, you hurry to the next one and won't maintain long projects. This is exactly what happened with the Wii U, with the last games being smaller/rushed games (Splatoon, Mario Maker, Starfox). When Sega saw that the Saturn was not selling enough, they obviously shifted development towards the Dreamcast. This only makes sense. Still the big projects started earlier were released for the most part (Shining Force III, Panzer Dragoon Saga). Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia shifted to the Dreamcast. A console that also had a lot of great Sega first party games with a ton of content and hours of fun.

You can't use a subjective argument when talking about market performance. Most of your rpgs sold like cancer outside of Japan. In Japan Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and others were much bigger than Phantasy Star and Light Crusader.

I made a long post above about the main issue being Sega went from a passive company to a aggressive company. This definitely made it so that some of their titles would be pushed in the background, usually for arcade ports of good looking arcade titles, which is where their reputation of making short games came from. Games like Light Crusader might had gotten more attention if Sega had evened out their marketing.

Were any of these good enough to sell consoles though? That's the real crux of the issue. It's not that Sega didn't have these games, but very few, If any of them made good killer apps for their systems. Even Sonic the Hedgehog, which was created specifically for the Genesis, was still designed like an arcade game.

Meanwhile, Nintendo and Sony had Zelda, Metroid,. Final Fantasy, Spyro, Crash, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, and basically anything from Rare. All big, often system selling games that were longer and more in-depth than the arcade ports and arcade-in-spirit games Sega was still dishing out on the Saturn.

The Dreamcast was a bit better at this as it tried to offer a bigger Sonic and Phantasy Star, the cult classic Skies of Arcadia, and Shenmue which was the most expensive game ever made up to that point. It was too little, too late though, as Sega was hemoraging money by that point.

Also Sonic only became a killer app because of heavy SoA agression and being given away for free, and influenced other branches to do the same.

Sonic 1 sold 15 million, Sonic 2 which was an anticipated release sold 6 million. Sonic 3 sold 2 something and Sonic & Knuckles sold less than that. Sonic CD is an ongoing argument but best case it sold above 1 million but below 1.5 million.

These numbers don't really show a stable franchise, they show a franchise that saw consumers lose interest really fast. Sega of America changed everything for the worse by popularizing a business strategy that couldn't work. Sega of Japan would take the torch and keep running on the same broken business model.

 

[Enjay]

Current Sega is doing perfectly fine and their recent games are awesome, what are you talking about ?

They are? Only the yakuza team seems to be doing okay.

 

[v1oz]

Sega was really good at short burst experiences. But less than stellar when it came to longer, console style games. Shenmue was one of the few times they branched out to more long form types of games, and they did a good job. But Sega's ultimate problem was that they couldn't pull itself away from arcade style game design enough to combat the other consoles, who kept offering bigger and better games.

There was research (here and here) showing that most people don't play long console style games to the end. Honestly the market is so large now and there is room for short burst experiences too. Personally I don't always have the time for 100+ hour epic style games.

 

[v1oz]

Man this thread is a disaster, just everyone is wrong and it's all haters vs. fools that are drunk by nostalgia, and we are seeing the same old talking points over and over again.

As much as the OP doesn't want it to, this is just another thread indirectly asking why Sega failed and while OP offers a unique perspective, it's also wrong.

It's baffling to see Sega threads end up the same. There is an actual objective answer to why Sega failed and that's because Sega was never a competitor in the video game industry until Sega of America started gaining too much power and Sega of Japan followed. Being aggressively competitive basically shattered the original business model of the company. Long post ahead.

When you look at Segas business structure before 1990 they were a passive gaming company. They would have 3 tiers of arcade machines, an entry level machine, which offered fun cheap games, a standard tier, which is what most arcade games looked like graphically at the time, and a Pro tier which would produce their most graphically intensive software

Segas game consoles were sold as just a central hub to have access to many of their games and wouldn't sell much more than 10-20 million units a pop. That was the plan.

Their business model was based on SoA, SoJ, and SoE, having some power to adapt to market conditions. But that was the jest of it. They were balanced entities that drew off each other.

The business model split three ways, Arcade revenue, Console revenue, and popular hits would be ported on almost any machine that could play games for additional profit. That was Segas company structure and business model.

The only time Sega was really competitive was a few small jabs at Nintendo in japan, which they eventually scaled back. Notice that until they started dialing it back in 1990 Sega was frequently publishing games on several gaming systems other than Nintendo? Even the PC Engine?

That was all part of Segas business model and company structure. They were an arcade company that would have a console just as an option to have access to their games and games from partners. Big hits would be ported on nearly every system for additional funding. All 3 branches of Sega were balanced with equal power and a shared budget plan to lift the company as a whole.

What changed? In 1990 Sega of America increased the stakes and tried to make Sega much more competitive in the video game market, an area Sega was not heavily competing in because they were focused primarily on the arcade market, two different markets.

As Sega of America picked up the pace, Sega of America gained more power, and once they 1991 came they suddenly had a game to take advantage of their new ambitions, Sonic the Hedgehog. A game they used to launch the Genesis platform as a major competitor that would become the next big thing. Sonic became a huge household name, and it was also given away for free.

Sega of Europe would follow suit and you'd see similar influence in other areas. Sega of America was running on its own as a separate company. When you view it logically it makes sense why Sega of Japan was pissed. The problem was that Sega of Americas strategy worked, and Sega of Japan decided to be competitive as well BUT knock Sega of America down a peg as well.

This is where Segas death had its beginning. Sega as a whole, arguably made not a single dime from 1991 to the Dreamcast discontinuation because suddenly Sega was spending more than what they were bringing in across the entire company.

Due to the competitive nature, more money on ads were spend, more money on games were spend, more reactionary moves were made, more discontinuing unsuccessful products occurred without playing the long game.

When you look at the Sega CD for example, it was supposed to be an option that would attract software and make profit overtime. Instead the Sega CD became a product that was dropped once it stopped making the amount of money Sega wanted it to make. The 32X was the same, it was greenlit to make the Genesis more competitive against upcoming consoles and after the launch excitement dissipated and the money dried up the 32X was dropped and they decided to focus everything on the Saturn. The Game Gear was also an attempt to jump in and compete in a market.

The Saturn was supposed to be a 2D beast with some great 3D capabilities but nothing to crazy. They decided that they had to try and make the Saturn compete with Sony so slapped in hardware that made programming more complicated. Once it became clear Sega may have had a chance in Japan, Sega of Japan basically took complete control of the system ultimately failing to sell what Sega of Japan hoped for.

Sega of Japan also decided to change their old arcade strategy and decided to try competing to be the best their as well. More chaos.

The Dreamcast was launched when Sega had both their arms cut off. They created a system that NEEDED to sell a certain amount to make a profit, so they decided to gamble on an expensive idea, online. This was done to attract more players to buy Dreamcast consoles even if they never used the feature itself. The Idea was if Sega could sell a certain amount of Dreamcasts than the company could become competitive again. But Sega wasn't able to pull it off.

Here's what I think the timeline would have been if Sega of America didn't break the companies managing structure.

1990: Maybe a few jabs at Nintendo from SoA, but no power hungry elite trying to make the Genesis the next big thing.
1991: Sonic comes out helps with sales, several arcade ports do better with balanced advertising. The Arcades are still ranking in dough. Likely don't release the gamegear since they aren't as competitive. We would have still seen many Sega games on toher consoles.
1992: Sega CD comes out as an option, courts developers and places some cool ports on it. Likely would end up selling more than it had now since they would have it out on shelves longer playing the long game.
1993: More games than ever before due to balanced game marketing, Genesis would likely end up selling the same or near the same in the end without the unnecessary spending.
1994: Since Sega would be more passive they would not react tot he Jaguar with the 32x.
1995: Since Sega would be more passive, they would not react to the PS1, and the console would release cheaper as a result. No sudden launch. Balanced marketing over many original games and cool arcade ports. No focus on software titles trying to compete with PS1 directly. Likely would sell much more in the US and Japan than it did in the real world.
1996: Growing library, cheaper price, less competitive arcade division adding to profits, no failed attempts at more portable consoles would save on R&D.
1997: Continue from 1996.
1998: Since Sega wouldn't need to replace the Saturn to stop bleeding in this timeline the Dreamcast likely wouldn't come out until 1999 or 2000 and the online gimmick may bot have happened or had limited in functionality.
1999: Possible Dreamcast launch.
2000: Possible Dreamcast launch, due to technology advances it would still have a pretty powerful consoles for cheap. Arcades would be dying but profitable, and a switch to more original titles on the Dreamcast with balanced marketing. No abrupt discontinuation.
2005: Dreamcast 2

People don't understand that what arguably brought Sega to many homes aggressively, and made Sonic a household name, is what killed Sega.

Sega went from having a balanced model between branches and hardware making tons of profit, to one branch becoming too powerful and influencing the others to try really hard to be #1, even if their business structure didn't support it or the fact they did not have the money to trade hits with anyone.

I would not be surprised if the old sayings are true and Sega as a whole did not make a dime after 1991. When you look at the few financial reports we have access to they are combining sectors or omitting sectors, we never have an idea if the whole company is making or losing money, just that some areas would lose money and some would claim to make money. But anything that would tell us overall profit for the company entirely was always sidelined.

To be short, Sega didn't know how to run a competitive company and their business structure wasn't made to do so. They decided to trade hits with people that not only had more money, but had companies designed from the top down to compete in the market that Sega wasn't even primarily in. This competitive nature then spread across all branches in nearly all countries they operated in and later in the arcade industry, which was their focus.

When you suddenly start spending triple the amount on ads and software while making pointless R&D decisions, it makes perfect sense why Sega wasn't able to stick around. One of the reasons why Sega of America was able to gain that much power was because it wasn't expected. Sega of Japan had no regulations placed on anyone. No wonder they were pissed.

Sure their retaliation was very dumb and petty, but at least I can see why they were pissed.

Not sure about your definition of competitive, but in a capitalist market you have to be competitive or you go out of business. SOA could see the arcade market was shrinking, betting the company's future on the growing console market was a good gamble to make at the time. The Genesis made them a ton of money, there was no reason for them to believe that consoles would not be a driver of growth for the company. I believe Sega always supported the PC and never stopped. They were always a multiplatform developer. Most former Sega employees have publicly said the company was just badly managed and there were internal politics going behind the scenes with regards to their direction. Unlike Nintendo which has always had strong leadership, been united under a single vision and always kept costs under control so as not to bankrupt the business.

 

[LittleBusters]

I wouldn't call them fad games. They were arcade ports. And very good ones at that.

The thing that killed SEGA was a change of demographics with the Saturn and bad management with the Dreamcast.

Sony offered new and different experiences to a user base that was growing up. The selling point of the Saturn didn't catch on with people, and Japan was the only country that cared about "perfect" arcade ports. USA wanted sports, racing, action, etc.

The Saturn had NOTHING that could compare to the flagships from Nintendo and Sony. It was a complete bloodbath. As someone that was in middleschool at the time; there was zero talk about the Saturn. Literally no one had that thing.

The Dreamcast did much better, and was a huge win for them at first. The games were much more mainstream; and they had tons of superior ports compared to the N64, PS1. But the damage was done at that point.
SEGA never had the massive warchest of money that Nintendo and Sony count on during bad times. 1 bomb was enough for them, and the little bombs of the SEGACD, 32X, Nomad didn't help either.

Maybe I'm just an anecdote, but I was part of that Sega: Genesis 'generation', bought mine in 1989. One of the first 5 games I bought was Phantasy Star II, which I can tell you was a gigantic hit in the US at the time(1990). Then in 1991, Sword of Vermilion came and that was a big hit as well. I think a big problem for Sega was kids like me grew up into adults by the middle 1990s and didn't have time or the inclination to care about the next console generation. I simply kept playing my Genesis games and focused more on PC. Never cared about Playstation.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Were any of these good enough to sell consoles though? That's the real crux of the issue. It's not that Sega didn't have these games, but very few, If any of them made good killer apps for their systems.

Meanwhile, Nintendo and Sony had Zelda, Metroid,. Final Fantasy, Spyro, Crash, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, and basically anything from Rare.

They had their audience, that's for certain. And if you look at the impressions many of those games have with the retro community, they're generally regarded in a very favorable light.

Regarding the other part, that isn't necessarily true, either. Virtua Fighter was a big deal for Saturn in Japan, the original release sold at a near 1:1 ratio with the system at launch, a launch that was stronger than the PS1 in that region. By any definition that's at least some categorization of a "killer app", even if a region-specific one.

Additionally, Metroid was actually not a strong performer for Nintendo during the '90s in particular (even the Metroid Prime games later on only did "decently" relative Mario and Zelda releases). It has historically been a very niche franchise for Nintendo, maybe slightly more mainstream than F-Zero. Spyro and Crash were massively helped by smart advertising and marketing, and Tomb Raider is a Core Design IP, not Sony's. Same with MGS, which was Konami. I get those two are associated with PS1 but they aren't in-house Sony efforts like Gran Turismo or Jersey Devil.

Even Sonic the Hedgehog, which was created specifically for the Genesis, was still designed like an arcade game.

What is this actually supposed to be in terms of a critique? Almost every 16-bit side-scrolling platformer had strong arcade roots at their game design, that includes Nintendo's. This is where I think people are conflating girth of content (or lack thereof) with depth of gameplay or verisimilitude of a game's physics/game mechanics/graphics whatever.

The Sonic games may've focused a lot on speed and flash with the advertising, but the games themselves have tons of nuance to their design and physics. The levels have multiple routes with many secrets, so there is encouragement of exploration and experimentation to find the best routes for the fastest times. You may not have had warp pipes or secret exits taking you to hidden stages ala Mario World (unless you count the Special and bonus stages, which functionally were the same thing in most aspects), but then again, A LOT of platformers (including home-exclusive ones for MegaDrive, SNES and PC-Engine) didn't have this either...so why only hold this argument against Sonic?

All big, often system selling games that were longer and more in-depth than the arcade ports and arcade-in-spirit games Sega was still dishing out on the Saturn.

Again this comes back to misunderstanding of game design philosophies and the differences between them, and the conflation of game length = game depth. It's a fallacy at the end of the day; there are more than enough examples of games that reach their lengths simply through padding of content that bogs down the pace and makes playing more of a chore and time-waster. There are issues with other long games that take literal hours in order to get past tutorial phases and start getting interesting.

Also you will be surprised at how many of the upper-selling games across platforms going from 16-bit all the way up to PS2/Xbox/Gamecube were either arcade ports with added home-exclusive content (Tekken 3, Tekken 5), or very arcade-like in terms of their pick-up-and-play, looser/exaggerated physics models, bright colors, melody-centric music, stylistic visual/sound design etc. (Burnout 3, NFS: Hot Pursuit 2).

I'm definitely looking forward to starting up some threads focusing on this kind of stuff in particular, if for nothing else than to show what these kind of games are really about.

 

[cireza]

They are? Only the yakuza team seems to be doing okay.

You obviously have no clue.

You can't use a subjective argument when talking about market performance.

Where did I do this ? I did not. My argument here is to explain that Sega's offering was just as good as what you had on other consoles, and that the reason for the games and consoles to sell badly was definitely not the quantity nor the quality.

 

[Fat Frog]

A friend of mine about Sega consoles:

Yeah I had the Genesis, Fifa and Sonic were very cool.

Sega Saturn ? Sorry I don't remember that much, never played it and I had the Playstation.

Dreamcast ? Yeah it was awesome, i just played Soul Calibur with you but I was waiting for PS2.


Conclusion is the same for most players at the time (Fifa, Famous FPS owners), they don't care of sharp reviews of games or threads like yours. They saw Sonic/Genesis, Playstation with great FMV on TV, they checked the graphics on the stores and that's it.

Nobody (even tons of Gaf, Era gamers admit they never touched the Saturn.... imagine common people).


Your thread could have interesting parts but misses the most important. Nobody played Sega games...

 

[Fat Frog]

They are? Only the yakuza team seems to be doing okay.

"Seems" ?

Did you play them or just read reviews ?

If you didn't play. Test them and come back later.

If reviews are your only monitor then Metacritics says Sega is above the other publishers since 2015.



My advice ? Play Sega Games first.

 

[Enjay]

"Seems" ?

Did you play them or just read reviews ?

If you didn't play. Test them and come back later.

If reviews are your only monitor then Metacritics says Sega is above the other publishers since 2015.



My advice ? Play Sega Games first.

Yeah nah I got one free on ps plus and it was too much watching not enough playing for me. Also I'm not a play tester I'm a consumer. Only games I ever hear about from them that are anticipated are the Yakuza games.

My advice? Move on from this abusive relationship.

 

[Enjay]

You obviously have no clue.

You're obviously not old enough to remember when sega was actually doing good as opposed to just surviving.

 

[cai24]

I will give you a first-hand account on the very likely reason why Dreamcast actually died: it was deliberately killed by Microsoft and Xbox. And why is it first hand? Back in the day, I was part of the team which developed Supreme Snowboarding 2 for dreamcast. Then Microsoft came and wanted to give our publisher "a better offer"; ditch the dreamcast and come develop Transworld license for Xbox. And the publisher and my employer took it, much to my grimace. In one GDC party, just before the launch of Xbox, some drunk Microsoft employees actually bragged to me that yes, it was their deliberate tactic to attract away all the third-party developers away from the Dreamcast, as Microsoft knew that it was the games that sold the consoles. And the rest is history. It probably does not come as news to you that even to this day, I have very little love for Xbox.

Now do with this information what you will.

 

[Fat Frog]

Nice

Yeah nah I got one free on ps plus and it was too much watching not enough playing for me. Also I'm not a play tester I'm a consumer. Only games I ever hear about from them that are anticipated are the Yakuza games.

My advice? Move on from this abusive relationship.

Nice twirl.

 

[bobone]

Maybe I'm just an anecdote, but I was part of that Sega: Genesis 'generation', bought mine in 1989. One of the first 5 games I bought was Phantasy Star II, which I can tell you was a gigantic hit in the US at the time(1990). Then in 1991, Sword of Vermilion came and that was a big hit as well. I think a big problem for Sega was kids like me grew up into adults by the middle 1990s and didn't have time or the inclination to care about the next console generation. I simply kept playing my Genesis games and focused more on PC. Never cared about Playstation.

Thats very interesting.
PC wasn't a big thing in my schools or with any of my friends. Even when I got to college I was the weird one for having a "gaming" pc in my dorm.

And even now noone I ever talk to grew up playing PC strategy games; which was by far my favorite genre. I was quite happy playing Warcraft 2 and C&C while everyone else was busy with Mario and sports games.

I think that was a massive part of the downfall of SEGA. The lack of sports games, or at least the perceived lack, killed the Saturn out of the gate.
Yearly sports games make up so much more of the market than we realize.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Not sure about your definition of competitive, but in a capitalist market you have to be competitive or you go out of business. SOA could see the arcade market was shrinking, betting the company's future on the growing console market was a good gamble to make at the time. The Genesis made them a ton of money, there was no reason for them to believe that consoles would not be a driver of growth for the company. I believe Sega always supported the PC and never stopped. They were always a multiplatform developer. Most former Sega employees have publicly said the company was just badly managed and there were internal politics going behind the scenes with regards to their direction. Unlike Nintendo which has always had strong leadership, been united under a single vision and always kept costs under control so as not to bankrupt the business.

Their business model was based on having a console to give consumers access to their games in one place like a Hub, at least the games they could bring from the arcade and some original titles. The other part of the model was to give almost everyone else their games on their machines.

This is the part you are missing and why your post focuses only on the arcade. The whole company was structured on a balance between all it's branches and to be as passive as possible. Sega was not a company designed to trade blows with the big boys, react to the competition, and spend triple the amount on games, R&D, and hardware hoping for a miracle.

This has nothing to do with capitalism. If Sega stuck to their old model they would still be making hardware. The Genesis as history shows, was a massive mistake that caused the infighting in the first place, and ruined their profits and led to Sega desperately trying to expand in many different areas that they never succeeded in. Then, just like Commodore, they had one chance with one system IF they could sell and produce enough to make a profit and they didn't.

Where did I do this ? I did not. My argument here is to explain that Sega's offering was just as good as what you had on other consoles, and that the reason for the games and consoles to sell badly was definitely not the quantity nor the quality.

You do realize you just did it again right? You can't use a subjective argument when talking about market performance. The market clearly didn't agree with your opinion. That's not an attack on Sega, that's just what happened.

I will give you a first-hand account on the very likely reason why Dreamcast actually died: it was deliberately killed by Microsoft and Xbox. And why is it first hand? Back in the day, I was part of the team which developed Supreme Snowboarding 2 for dreamcast. Then Microsoft came and wanted to give our publisher "a better offer"; ditch the dreamcast and come develop Transworld license for Xbox. And the publisher and my employer took it, much to my grimace. In one GDC party, just before the launch of Xbox, some drunk Microsoft employees actually bragged to me that yes, it was their deliberate tactic to attract away all the third-party developers away from the Dreamcast, as Microsoft knew that it was the games that sold the consoles. And the rest is history. It probably does not come as news to you that even to this day, I have very little love for Xbox.

Now do with this information what you will.

Except most of the Xbox games launched in the first year were not in development for the Dreamcast and were either stolen from Sony, made for the Xbox, or brought in from PC.

Also true or not, no offense, but that's not a system selling game you're talking about.

One of the first 5 games I bought was Phantasy Star II, which I can tell you was a gigantic hit in the US at the time(1990).

Lol What? No Jrpg was a big hit in the US until FF7.

 

[synchronicity]

The thing I always admired about Sega is that they almost always had a very original flavor to their content. In today's gaming landscape, that is even more refreshing in retrospect.

And for me, that may have been part of their downfall. Their games, while often great, didn't necessarily always cater to the widest possible audience.