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Suppose that SEGA were to release a brand new console, how powerful could it be and what would be its killer app and features?
- Thread starter Grand Theft Scratchy
- Start date
Ian Henry
Member
Ik this is a Sega thread, but hearing topics about entering/returning to the console race makes me feel that there is a company that can definitely compete against Sony and Microsoft, which I feel is Samsung.
Now , they did it before with Nuon back in the 6th Gen era, but that ended up being a dud and lacked direction. With the way the gaming scene is now, imagine them still having their hardware prowess but this time mix with a better marketing team and in-house devs to build up. Might take awhile but it would definitely be worth it.
There needs to be some actual competition this time around and the heavy hitters didn't do a good job at showcasing next gen. I feel we need Samsung, Sega, or whoever it maybe(ex. Amazon, etc.) to give a competitive edge to the industry and I know COVID-19 is causing some setbacks but something's gotta give. Can't be the usual Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft BIG 3 combo that we been having for 3 straight generations. Time for some one to bring the heat.
Now , they did it before with Nuon back in the 6th Gen era, but that ended up being a dud and lacked direction. With the way the gaming scene is now, imagine them still having their hardware prowess but this time mix with a better marketing team and in-house devs to build up. Might take awhile but it would definitely be worth it.
There needs to be some actual competition this time around and the heavy hitters didn't do a good job at showcasing next gen. I feel we need Samsung, Sega, or whoever it maybe(ex. Amazon, etc.) to give a competitive edge to the industry and I know COVID-19 is causing some setbacks but something's gotta give. Can't be the usual Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft BIG 3 combo that we been having for 3 straight generations. Time for some one to bring the heat.
DaGwaphics
Member
I hear that Sega of America had a great idea for a beast console with best in class RT and ML capabilities. However, Sega of Japan went with a sprite based approach, they'll have a higher number of sprites per second than any other console. They've also promised a few add-ons that they will support well into the future.
Grand Theft Scratchy
Banned
Well, I wasn't implying it needed to be powerful to be successful but I assume if they were to release a traditional console like Sony and Microsoft instead of a Nintendo-style console then it would be powerful. I agree about the games being important, believe me. SEGA has a lot of interesting dormant IPs. Reviving them along with a new Virtua Fighter and essentially shifting their Atlus games away from Nintendo and PlayStation onto this new hypothetical SEGA console would contribute to its sales.
Last edited:
GeorgPrime
Banned
They just closed the Arcade. Let them survive first before thinking about a new console lol
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
Oooh, this is a juicy one! I would love if SEGA came back as a console maker, but directly competing against Sony and Microsoft isn't going to be possible. They simply do not have anywhere near the financial resources to fund R&D into a next-gen system at the level of those companies, and in some ways even Nintendo (tho Nintendo seems to invest less into R&D for system development as a whole, given their systems have not really been cutting-edge tech wise for nearly two decades and they tend to sell at a profit while still coming in lower than the competition).
However, I do think there's a niche to be served, and it plays to one of SEGA's greatest strengths, the arcades. I actually think a LOT of people overlook the arcade/FEC market unfairly, because yes there's a lot of token/redemption and mobile port filler in there but there are also genuine game and hardware releases, too. House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, SEGA World Driver's Championship and EXA-Arcadia (a sort of modern-day Neo Geo arcade platform initiative) being good examples. It's probably fair to say that right now that market is struggling because of theplannedemic pandemic, but let's look at it in terms of a normal, functioning society.
One thing I always felt SEGA should've tried pushing even further was more deeply integrating their arcade and home console efforts. During the days of MegaDrive and Saturn this wasn't necessarily possible because arcades were still at the forefront of graphical power-pushing and there were no technical nor economical ways for home consoles to really close that gap. This started changing somewhat by the time of Saturn but you can still look at stuff like Model 2 and especially Model 3 (1996) that were easily a generation ahead of all the home consoles of the era, not to mention radically different in terms of architectures. Remember, at this time both home consoles and arcades still had unique, often proprietary and custom architectural designs with lots of aspects that were incompatible with one another, and for the best performance you were generally expected to code in assembly right down to the metal (this made ports more like "genuine" ports because you'd have to rewrite the software for a new architecture).
I know some like to pretend the new consoles (particularly PS5) are in that same ballpark again and yes, in terms of unique solutions this upcoming generation looks a lot more interesting than the previous one....but both systems are rather plain and standard in their designs compared to consoles of the past, and that's probably for the best. The industry's at a point where ecosystems of development platforms are the driving force, not any one spec of hardware design. Games have been getting more complex and bigger to design; if devs still had to code almost everything in assembly to get the best results we'd probably get a game from even the biggest studios only once a decade. Either that or budgets would skyrocket astronomically.
It's important to keep this in mind because even though SEGA did streamline their arcade and home lines in core technologies greatly with Dreamcast & NAOMI, the industry in terms of technological standards, implementations, API toolsets etc. was still a lot more fragmented and heterogeneous than it is today. Not just in gaming, but in various technological fields in general. Even stuff like portable gaming was still in its relative infancy compared to the jump we'd get between, say, the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, and it's worth considering when you look at SEGA's timeline for transitioning into Dreamcast and NAOMI (development would've started in 1997 at latest but in given the earliest supposed Saturn timeline dev we can probably say Dreamcast and NAOMI planning started in 1996, maybe even late 1995).
Basically, I think Dreamcast & NAOMI were a good start in that streamlining, but the concept wasn't completely fleshed out, and SEGA didn't have the time or resources to do so. I think if they were able to more tightly integrate the home experience with the arcade one in terms of establishing an ecosystem benefiting not just gamers but also developers, publishers and even arcade chains directly, that would've established a very firm niche to both help arcades continue to remain healthy and more relevant into the 2000s', and helped foster an identity to keep things going forward even if Microsoft decided to enter the market (making it a Big 4 instead of a Big 3). However I think we need to dispel some myths first before going forward:
1: ARCADE GAMES WERE LOSING POPULARITY - This isn't necessarily true. For one thing, there is no genre called "arcade games". Arcade games are a format, just like how home console and PC games are formats. Virtually every genre is possible in a given format, although market realities might favor or discourage certain genre proliferation at a given time.
Arcade games tended to be twitch-style racers, fighting games, shmups, puzzlers, action-platformer 2D games, and (later) rhythm games. Notice anything? All of these genres prospered on home consoles during not only the 5th gen but ALSO the 6th gen. We can look at Namco as a good example of this: Tekken and Ridge Racer defined early PS1 gaming (and were arcade ports), and into the PS2 gen ports like Tekken Tag Tournament (and arcade racers like Ridge Racer V) were the showpieces for that system's launch, both earning a good deal of sales and revenue. Even in games some people probably wouldn't consider "arcade" like the Burnout series, prospered during 6th gen, not to mention games like Devil May Cry which had lineage not only in Resident Evil but also various Capcom action-platformer games like Strider (and its spiritual successor, Osman).
The truth is, "arcade"-style games never died off. This is one of the biggest myths of all time. However, barebones arcade ports to home console with little to no extra content, as a trend, DID die off, and that's a very important distinction to make note of. Because every single one of the games I just mentioned had a lot of extra content, regardless if they were console exclusive games or arcade ports in the first place.
2: SEGA ONLY DID ARCADE PORTS AND SONIC - This one is fake, too. For a lot of casual types, this is what their legacy boils down to for them, and I can't deny that Sonic is definitely one of their most recognizable (if not THE most recognizable) IPs of SEGA.
That said, they did a lot more than simply those kind of games. Castle of Illusion, World of Illusion, Wonder Boy, Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Dragon Force, Burning Rangers, Shenmue...that list could go on and on. The point being, even to this day SEGA probably has a wider net of unique IP to their name than any other company in the industry, and you don't get there by "simply" doing Sonic games and a few arcade IPs in similar genres.
So with that out of the way, what were the ways I think SEGA could've really fostered their niche back when they still made consoles? Well...
1: CROSS-PLATFORM SAVES. SEGA did this on a game-by-game basic but IIRC the NAOMI and Dreamcast didn't enforce this at a standardized level (if at all), and while some mid 2000s' games like F-Zero and Tekken 5 did feature this support, it was still more uncommon than common.
I can see some reasons as to why it didn't become a standard: letting players grind in a game in the comfort of their own home to then pick up the progress at an arcade would mean (potentially) less revenue for the arcades due to less play time. However I think this only works looking at it in isolation; it would only be an issue if other things weren't done to tie the ecosystem in strongly.
2: TIE IN ARCADE CHAINS FOR A CUT OF HOME SOFTWARE SALES. This is a big one. One thing we saw as a continued problem for arcade operators was in relying on devs to stagger the arcade and home version of games in order to drive maximum revenue for the arcade release. This wasn't such a big thing during the '80s and early '90s because generally speaking, the arcade version of games were so far ahead of the home equivalents that such a factor alone seemed to draw attention to the arcades for people to play the "authentic experience" of that game.
However, even as soon as PS1, this started to change somewhat, since outside of the top-of-the-line arcade hardware (such as Model 2 and Model 3), the gap between arcade hardware and home consoles was significantly reduced (that gap in power would be virtually eliminated by the time of the 6th gen systems, more or less). This is why we saw more initiatives for arcade versions of games to have at least some time exclusive in that environment to drive revenue. Of course, this is an artificial incentive, similar to the timed exclusivity deals we'll be seeing on the next-gen systems.
That wouldn't be nearly as much of a thing, though, if arcade chains were somehow involved in a revenue cut of home software sales of the game. I've actually thought A LOT about this and have written up a lot of private documents for a hypothetical modern-day arcade/home ecosystem exploring this idea, so I'd like to share some of that here in speculating how it would work.
Basically, the platform holder of the arcade and home hardware, sets things up to where the volume of hardware and software purchases an arcade chain makes influences the rate of revenue cut they would make. To keep it sensible, let's say the company (SEGA in this case) still takes their 30% cut, so this revenue for arcade chains would come out of SEGA's portion, not what goes to the publisher. So let's say SEGA gives up 10% of that 30% for such a thing. The arcade chain would have to buy in on a certain amount of software as a whole which we would say factors as 30% of their eventual cut of the 10%. From there, the remaining 70% is factored on the actual specific game software they purchase, and at a certain minimum quota or higher.
(lots of percentages incoming...)
So let's look at it like this: SEGA has four arcade chains in the North Americas that buy in essentially as partners through purchasing their arcade hardware and software. This means all four of those chains are able to earn (collectively) 8% revenue on home software sales of games within the regions those arcade chains operate in (to keep it simple we'll just stick to North Americas i.e the U.S, Canada, and some parts of the Caribbean). The rate in which they can earn out of that 10% cut among the four depends on the ratio of arcade hardware and software purchases they have made (which we'll weigh as a factor of 1), as well as a bi-annual payment into a hypothetical "Arcade chain partners program" (which we'll weigh as a factor of 2, a higher factor than 1). This could then influence what cut of the 10% the specific arcade chain would get; if they all are equal on the factors, they'd each get 2.5%, however if one leads in the cumulative weighed average then they could get 4% while the others get 2%, so on and so forth.
Out of whatever amount of the 10% a given chain would get, 30% of that would be automatically "baked in" as a guaranteed fixed revenue from home software sales of the game in that region (the only factor it'd depend on is the actual amount of sales of the game on the home platform in that region over the covered period, which we'll say is six months from the time of its pre-orders being made available). The other 70%, however, would depend on the number of copies of that game the arcade chain purchases for their arcade business in that given region up to the time of the home console release and during the 6-month period they earn revenue on the home console version's sales. This would be based on quotas but they'd be realistic quotas to take into consideration the typical volume sales rates of software (discs, ROM boards, cartridges etc.) and hardware in the arcade/FEC markets. So in actuality, it's possible an arcade chain could get a bit lower than their share of the 10% cut, at least at first, but with more purchases of the game in their locations they can easily hit that share off of home console sales of that game in their region (North Americas in this case).
(okay, maths is done!)
I thought something like this out for something completely separate from SEGA (that I'm still working on; maybe I'll share more on it in the future if people are interested in an "armchair developer" wanting to create a hypothetical next-gen arcade & home gaming system and ecosystem/service
...do be warned though it'd be a LOT of writing and also get very technical), but I adopted something of this core point (there's more to it actually in the way I have it written elsewhere, but that isn't important for this focus on SEGA) to describe a system SEGA could've looked at setting up sometime during the Dreamcast/NAOMI era to drive in arcade operators more tightly and depending less on staggering of arcade and home game releases. Of course, this would work even better if there were still factors to the arcade version that gave it natural appeal over the home version, such as method of play or providing a sort of atmospheric experience that simply cannot be replicated in the home (especially during the 2000s'), but that's something more on a game-by-game basis.
3: TIE IN AWARDS/ACHIEVEMENTS/TROPHIES WITH REWARD SYSTEMS AT ARCADE PARTNER CHAINS FOR PHYSICAL REDEMPTION PRIZES. I know this is probably making some think of "lol redemption games", but that's actually not the case. This is something else I've been thinking about in my own hypothetical system/ecosystem theories, but the gist of it is as follows: many arcade/FEC chains already have their own subscription plans that tie on-location perks, prizes etc. with the subscription tier. From the 360/PS3 and onward, most games offer achievements or trophies for player accomplishments.
So why not combine the two? This is where SEGA could've leveraged a strength unlike Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, had they gotten around to it with Dreamcast/NAOMI. It certainly would've been possible, perhaps more crudely but still. Allowing home console owners to tie in arcade subscriptions with their home system accounts, that way they can tie in trophies/achievements and redeem them towards points on their arcade subscriptions to get on-location perks, prizes, contest entries and more. Think of stuff like food & drink discounts, free meals, collectible prizes etc. In doing so, the players would have to wait some time in order to redeem those achievements/trophies towards those arcade perks/prizes/bonuses etc., with longer times depending on the tier of the perks...so you can think of this something like the time-bar stuff some mobile games do, only in real life xD. It's meant to make sure people can't scum out the system and deplete resources through constantly redeeming arcade points towards prizes, lest the chains run out of things to provide them.
I think this particular idea would work better if there was a way to have certain prizes and such shippable to home console players for sake of convenience. At the time of Dreamcast/NAOMI era this would've been limited to either big physical prizes/packages or making sure such prizes were also available at relatively nearby stores or shops that essentially could be partnered with the arcade chains in verification and providing of the products, meaning they would need to work something out with those chains (continuing such into the modern era though could leverage integrating fast food retail chain partners into the fold thanks to democratized delivery services like Grubhub). However, considering these would be many of the same locations with distribution partnerships with SEGA themselves, that would be theoretically easier to set up (deals would likely need to be set up with those retail chains, the arcade chains and SEGA that financially compensated the retail chains for allowing pick-up or local delivery of prizes to eligible people). Speaking of retailers, or more specifically should say 3rd-party product companies (toy manufacturers, clothing manufacturers, home appliance manufacturers etc.), I think finding a way of bringing those sort of partners in would be of benefit to SEGA as well.
How exactly to do so is more tricky; the idea of a company like Diebold providing premium 1:12 scale Ferrari F50 car models as potential free prizes tied to a game like F355 Challenge through arcade chains could bring in a good bit of attention, but how would these companies be incentivized? Through a recurring revenue cut program like described with arcade chain partners? Or flat-out contractual one-time agreements? Maybe a mix of both would be for the best, but it'd mean SEGA taking out more of a cut from their own end (20% now), maybe by 3% - 5%, so their share of software royalties would go down to 15% - 17%. The idea being that the creation of these services networks for gamers across the console and arcade ecosystems, manufacturing partners, and arcade chains would drive gamers to take up their overall ecosystem as a viable option.
..........
In some ways I guess this draws some parallels with what we're seeing Microsoft attempt to do now with the Xbox brand; however, this is stuff I think SEGA could've been setting up and pushed on with Dreamcast/NAOMI over two decades ago, build on it over time, and eventually find a groove where they wouldn't need to hinge so much on, say, Sony-level of console sales to be profitable. Something more in the range of 20 - 40 million LTD system averages would probably be enough considering the appeal of marketing in this approach, the benefits this stuff could bring to gamers and various corporate partners/affiliates, and the streamlined integration of design R&D in the arcade and home console sectors plus the general homogenization/convergence of various areas of technology as a whole.
However as hopefully also demonstrated, almost all of this is still perfectly possible today. In fact, it would be easier to do today versus the late 1990s for many of the things described in the previous paragraph. I also think that the idea of arcades would be "exotic" enough for a lot of today's gamers, who never grew up with arcades, to be intrigued in seriously giving it a shot. Never mind that due to certain things like COVID-19 (and the chances of that stuff continuing into the future for at least a decent while) we are seeing a lot of people who genuinely miss the normalcy of real social interaction in public venues. Now, I don't think what I described here are the ONLY things SEGA would need to do in order to establish a niche and be comfortable as a platform holder in the industry again, and I think in some ways they would still benefit from a larger company financially supporting them.
Believe it or not I think Nintendo would be the perfect company; they have had other companies like Raw Thrills doing arcade versions of their games/IP for a while and if you really think about it Nintendo's still had some presence in the arcade market through companies like Raw Thrills and SEGA (and Rare) ever since directly leaving the market in the late 1980s. In other words, Nintendo never 100% left the arcade market! Additionally, Nintendo want to make a push as a more general entertainment brand, diversifying their market reach while leveraging their IP strengths. Stuff like Nintendo World at Universal are just a start; for people who want experiences somewhat like that but can't afford to take a trip to a singular location once a year, why not proliferate that type of experience in arcade/FEC markets, and who better to help do that on a global scale than SEGA? It's not like SEGA and Nintendo are strangers; after all they have a very strong business partnership and have had such since the early 2000s. The only limiting factor here would potentially be the power of Nintendo's own systems if SEGA were to design arcade hardware around that. Technically they wouldn't need to, but depending on the deal of arrangement it could get..."complicated"....insofar as ports of SEGA's arcade titles outside of Nintendo systems like the Switch. Then you also have to consider that the aforementioned aspects of this concept (giving arcade chains a cut of home system sales on regional basis in particular), would fall down to Nintendo, not SEGA.
...and something tells me Nintendo would not be up for giving up any bit of their 30% revenue cut xD. Hence why for any such situation, it would likely be better if said larger financial partner to SEGA weren't another platform holder (and also, hopefully not Google or Tencent xD). Of the Big 3 that really would just leave Microsoft and Sony if SEGA were to partner up in such a way. While MS has technological and service strengths that would be beneficial for SEGA (including in a few other areas I didn't get a chance to go into here), Sony has a lot of those same technological strengths AND for yet OTHER aspects of this plan I have yet to get into, I think SEGA and Sony would overall make the stronger partnership. Mainly because I believe there are ways SEGA could leverage designs for the arcade/FEC market that also can infuse innovation in other public venue sectors like restaurants and film theaters, and the latter would be of a lot of benefit to Sony's movie and music divisions. The only area Sony lacks on are in terms of services (outside of finances), and again, I think they'd be hard-pressed to give up any bit of their 30% cut for arcade chains to earn revenue on home console software sales or 3rd-party product production companies to do similar (though given the revenue and profits Sony brings in from the PlayStation division, I think they could simply offer outright payments to both in return for getting similar support back from them WRT services and product tie-in promotions, perks etc.).
As you can see there's some aspects to the above that would have to be carefully balanced out if SEGA were to feel a need to partner with a larger company (especially one of the other Big 3), but the fundamental principles are what's important and I feel are things SEGA could definitely push on in order to establish an attractive niche that specializes to their strengths and is able to remain both healthy and profitable, even with some of the unorthodox aspects. Of course you still need a good hardware design and strong software; while SEGA arguably had issues on this front during a decent stretch of the '90s (particularly WRT sensible hardware and giving a good enough marketing focus on key software outside of a scant few like Sonic), they seemingly showed they were stabilizing and synergizing on both fronts with Dreamcast/NAOMI. Had they taken some of the approaches I mentioned above back then, I feel they'd of been able to make the transformation and would still likely be a platform holder today.
Thankfully, virtually all of these concepts are still doable today, and into the future, and are right there for a company with SEGA's pedigree and strengths to implement if they were serious about becoming a platform holder in the industry itself. There's absolutely room in the market for a "Big 4", although with the way I might've described some things there could be some slight crosstalk between SEGA and Microsoft (certainly not enough to force one or the other out of the market however; their paths would be divergent enough to easily coexist and perhaps help leverage through one-another i.e streamable SEGA arcade games through Xcloud and providing Xcloud compatibility on SEGA consoles. Perhaps even Microsoft and SEGA developing the console and arcade platforms to synergize with PC in terms of support standards, and providing services like Xcloud and Gamepass on SEGA consoles and providing funding for marketing (but let SEGA take the lead on marketing; peak SEGA destroys peak Microsoft in terms of marketing coolness), etc.). People need to remember the market has gotten bigger since the time when SEGA was a platform holder, not smaller.
In any case, I would definitely be up to sharing more on these hypothetical arcade/home console system & ecosystem designs in a SEGA-agnostic way in the near future, since there's almost a 0% chance I'll ever be able to bring any of this into reality on my own. No billions and billions in cash sitting around to do the investments on my end, but theorizing this stuff is still extremely fun and enlightening, and also helps in speculating on future paths the industry might take.
Virtua Fighter 1 and 2 alone cemented the Saturn ahead of PlayStation in Japan. The momentum between the two in that region didn't shift until Final Fantasy VII, a 3rd-party release, and that was 1997, over two years after both systems were available in Japan.
Also if anything I've been seeing MORE people watching VF tournaments through channels like NYCFurby on Twitch hosting them, and these are Western tournaments. Never mind the Japanese ones, which have had dedicated communities for well over a decade even with the absence of a VF6, and get pretty big numbers regularly in terms of viewership.
In other words, no the franchise doesn't have the commercial appeal of Tekken but it's still pretty well-known outside of that, even with younger FGC players and fans, and garners a lot of respect on the whole.
You don't need esoteric hardware to do this. In fact, it would be a hindrance more than a help if they made it exotic for the sake of making it exotic. Most of the standards we have now do the job pretty well...extremely well in some cases. It's the leveraging of those hardware features through APIs that really makes the hardware these days sing, since it's reached a point of relative ease-to-performance gains where, in case of the latter, we're now at a level of hardware abstraction & utilization almost of "to the metal" assembly provided back in the olden days (but with much better scalability, ease of use and just general QoL in the dev environment).
There's a reason the consoles went to x86-64 in 2013 and it wasn't just to "stick it" to custom exotic architectures. I absolutely LOVE reading up on the designs of older consoles and trying to understand them better, and there are aspects to those designs that can be utilized for new efforts being done today. But I also understand those designs had their time and place in the sun, and the market realities that necessitated them back then are not market realities requiring them today, by and large.
However, I do think there's a niche to be served, and it plays to one of SEGA's greatest strengths, the arcades. I actually think a LOT of people overlook the arcade/FEC market unfairly, because yes there's a lot of token/redemption and mobile port filler in there but there are also genuine game and hardware releases, too. House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, SEGA World Driver's Championship and EXA-Arcadia (a sort of modern-day Neo Geo arcade platform initiative) being good examples. It's probably fair to say that right now that market is struggling because of the
One thing I always felt SEGA should've tried pushing even further was more deeply integrating their arcade and home console efforts. During the days of MegaDrive and Saturn this wasn't necessarily possible because arcades were still at the forefront of graphical power-pushing and there were no technical nor economical ways for home consoles to really close that gap. This started changing somewhat by the time of Saturn but you can still look at stuff like Model 2 and especially Model 3 (1996) that were easily a generation ahead of all the home consoles of the era, not to mention radically different in terms of architectures. Remember, at this time both home consoles and arcades still had unique, often proprietary and custom architectural designs with lots of aspects that were incompatible with one another, and for the best performance you were generally expected to code in assembly right down to the metal (this made ports more like "genuine" ports because you'd have to rewrite the software for a new architecture).
I know some like to pretend the new consoles (particularly PS5) are in that same ballpark again and yes, in terms of unique solutions this upcoming generation looks a lot more interesting than the previous one....but both systems are rather plain and standard in their designs compared to consoles of the past, and that's probably for the best. The industry's at a point where ecosystems of development platforms are the driving force, not any one spec of hardware design. Games have been getting more complex and bigger to design; if devs still had to code almost everything in assembly to get the best results we'd probably get a game from even the biggest studios only once a decade. Either that or budgets would skyrocket astronomically.
It's important to keep this in mind because even though SEGA did streamline their arcade and home lines in core technologies greatly with Dreamcast & NAOMI, the industry in terms of technological standards, implementations, API toolsets etc. was still a lot more fragmented and heterogeneous than it is today. Not just in gaming, but in various technological fields in general. Even stuff like portable gaming was still in its relative infancy compared to the jump we'd get between, say, the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, and it's worth considering when you look at SEGA's timeline for transitioning into Dreamcast and NAOMI (development would've started in 1997 at latest but in given the earliest supposed Saturn timeline dev we can probably say Dreamcast and NAOMI planning started in 1996, maybe even late 1995).
Basically, I think Dreamcast & NAOMI were a good start in that streamlining, but the concept wasn't completely fleshed out, and SEGA didn't have the time or resources to do so. I think if they were able to more tightly integrate the home experience with the arcade one in terms of establishing an ecosystem benefiting not just gamers but also developers, publishers and even arcade chains directly, that would've established a very firm niche to both help arcades continue to remain healthy and more relevant into the 2000s', and helped foster an identity to keep things going forward even if Microsoft decided to enter the market (making it a Big 4 instead of a Big 3). However I think we need to dispel some myths first before going forward:
1: ARCADE GAMES WERE LOSING POPULARITY - This isn't necessarily true. For one thing, there is no genre called "arcade games". Arcade games are a format, just like how home console and PC games are formats. Virtually every genre is possible in a given format, although market realities might favor or discourage certain genre proliferation at a given time.
Arcade games tended to be twitch-style racers, fighting games, shmups, puzzlers, action-platformer 2D games, and (later) rhythm games. Notice anything? All of these genres prospered on home consoles during not only the 5th gen but ALSO the 6th gen. We can look at Namco as a good example of this: Tekken and Ridge Racer defined early PS1 gaming (and were arcade ports), and into the PS2 gen ports like Tekken Tag Tournament (and arcade racers like Ridge Racer V) were the showpieces for that system's launch, both earning a good deal of sales and revenue. Even in games some people probably wouldn't consider "arcade" like the Burnout series, prospered during 6th gen, not to mention games like Devil May Cry which had lineage not only in Resident Evil but also various Capcom action-platformer games like Strider (and its spiritual successor, Osman).
The truth is, "arcade"-style games never died off. This is one of the biggest myths of all time. However, barebones arcade ports to home console with little to no extra content, as a trend, DID die off, and that's a very important distinction to make note of. Because every single one of the games I just mentioned had a lot of extra content, regardless if they were console exclusive games or arcade ports in the first place.
2: SEGA ONLY DID ARCADE PORTS AND SONIC - This one is fake, too. For a lot of casual types, this is what their legacy boils down to for them, and I can't deny that Sonic is definitely one of their most recognizable (if not THE most recognizable) IPs of SEGA.
That said, they did a lot more than simply those kind of games. Castle of Illusion, World of Illusion, Wonder Boy, Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Dragon Force, Burning Rangers, Shenmue...that list could go on and on. The point being, even to this day SEGA probably has a wider net of unique IP to their name than any other company in the industry, and you don't get there by "simply" doing Sonic games and a few arcade IPs in similar genres.
So with that out of the way, what were the ways I think SEGA could've really fostered their niche back when they still made consoles? Well...
1: CROSS-PLATFORM SAVES. SEGA did this on a game-by-game basic but IIRC the NAOMI and Dreamcast didn't enforce this at a standardized level (if at all), and while some mid 2000s' games like F-Zero and Tekken 5 did feature this support, it was still more uncommon than common.
I can see some reasons as to why it didn't become a standard: letting players grind in a game in the comfort of their own home to then pick up the progress at an arcade would mean (potentially) less revenue for the arcades due to less play time. However I think this only works looking at it in isolation; it would only be an issue if other things weren't done to tie the ecosystem in strongly.
2: TIE IN ARCADE CHAINS FOR A CUT OF HOME SOFTWARE SALES. This is a big one. One thing we saw as a continued problem for arcade operators was in relying on devs to stagger the arcade and home version of games in order to drive maximum revenue for the arcade release. This wasn't such a big thing during the '80s and early '90s because generally speaking, the arcade version of games were so far ahead of the home equivalents that such a factor alone seemed to draw attention to the arcades for people to play the "authentic experience" of that game.
However, even as soon as PS1, this started to change somewhat, since outside of the top-of-the-line arcade hardware (such as Model 2 and Model 3), the gap between arcade hardware and home consoles was significantly reduced (that gap in power would be virtually eliminated by the time of the 6th gen systems, more or less). This is why we saw more initiatives for arcade versions of games to have at least some time exclusive in that environment to drive revenue. Of course, this is an artificial incentive, similar to the timed exclusivity deals we'll be seeing on the next-gen systems.
That wouldn't be nearly as much of a thing, though, if arcade chains were somehow involved in a revenue cut of home software sales of the game. I've actually thought A LOT about this and have written up a lot of private documents for a hypothetical modern-day arcade/home ecosystem exploring this idea, so I'd like to share some of that here in speculating how it would work.
Basically, the platform holder of the arcade and home hardware, sets things up to where the volume of hardware and software purchases an arcade chain makes influences the rate of revenue cut they would make. To keep it sensible, let's say the company (SEGA in this case) still takes their 30% cut, so this revenue for arcade chains would come out of SEGA's portion, not what goes to the publisher. So let's say SEGA gives up 10% of that 30% for such a thing. The arcade chain would have to buy in on a certain amount of software as a whole which we would say factors as 30% of their eventual cut of the 10%. From there, the remaining 70% is factored on the actual specific game software they purchase, and at a certain minimum quota or higher.
(lots of percentages incoming...)
So let's look at it like this: SEGA has four arcade chains in the North Americas that buy in essentially as partners through purchasing their arcade hardware and software. This means all four of those chains are able to earn (collectively) 8% revenue on home software sales of games within the regions those arcade chains operate in (to keep it simple we'll just stick to North Americas i.e the U.S, Canada, and some parts of the Caribbean). The rate in which they can earn out of that 10% cut among the four depends on the ratio of arcade hardware and software purchases they have made (which we'll weigh as a factor of 1), as well as a bi-annual payment into a hypothetical "Arcade chain partners program" (which we'll weigh as a factor of 2, a higher factor than 1). This could then influence what cut of the 10% the specific arcade chain would get; if they all are equal on the factors, they'd each get 2.5%, however if one leads in the cumulative weighed average then they could get 4% while the others get 2%, so on and so forth.
Out of whatever amount of the 10% a given chain would get, 30% of that would be automatically "baked in" as a guaranteed fixed revenue from home software sales of the game in that region (the only factor it'd depend on is the actual amount of sales of the game on the home platform in that region over the covered period, which we'll say is six months from the time of its pre-orders being made available). The other 70%, however, would depend on the number of copies of that game the arcade chain purchases for their arcade business in that given region up to the time of the home console release and during the 6-month period they earn revenue on the home console version's sales. This would be based on quotas but they'd be realistic quotas to take into consideration the typical volume sales rates of software (discs, ROM boards, cartridges etc.) and hardware in the arcade/FEC markets. So in actuality, it's possible an arcade chain could get a bit lower than their share of the 10% cut, at least at first, but with more purchases of the game in their locations they can easily hit that share off of home console sales of that game in their region (North Americas in this case).
(okay, maths is done!)
I thought something like this out for something completely separate from SEGA (that I'm still working on; maybe I'll share more on it in the future if people are interested in an "armchair developer" wanting to create a hypothetical next-gen arcade & home gaming system and ecosystem/service
...do be warned though it'd be a LOT of writing and also get very technical), but I adopted something of this core point (there's more to it actually in the way I have it written elsewhere, but that isn't important for this focus on SEGA) to describe a system SEGA could've looked at setting up sometime during the Dreamcast/NAOMI era to drive in arcade operators more tightly and depending less on staggering of arcade and home game releases. Of course, this would work even better if there were still factors to the arcade version that gave it natural appeal over the home version, such as method of play or providing a sort of atmospheric experience that simply cannot be replicated in the home (especially during the 2000s'), but that's something more on a game-by-game basis.3: TIE IN AWARDS/ACHIEVEMENTS/TROPHIES WITH REWARD SYSTEMS AT ARCADE PARTNER CHAINS FOR PHYSICAL REDEMPTION PRIZES. I know this is probably making some think of "lol redemption games", but that's actually not the case. This is something else I've been thinking about in my own hypothetical system/ecosystem theories, but the gist of it is as follows: many arcade/FEC chains already have their own subscription plans that tie on-location perks, prizes etc. with the subscription tier. From the 360/PS3 and onward, most games offer achievements or trophies for player accomplishments.
So why not combine the two? This is where SEGA could've leveraged a strength unlike Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, had they gotten around to it with Dreamcast/NAOMI. It certainly would've been possible, perhaps more crudely but still. Allowing home console owners to tie in arcade subscriptions with their home system accounts, that way they can tie in trophies/achievements and redeem them towards points on their arcade subscriptions to get on-location perks, prizes, contest entries and more. Think of stuff like food & drink discounts, free meals, collectible prizes etc. In doing so, the players would have to wait some time in order to redeem those achievements/trophies towards those arcade perks/prizes/bonuses etc., with longer times depending on the tier of the perks...so you can think of this something like the time-bar stuff some mobile games do, only in real life xD. It's meant to make sure people can't scum out the system and deplete resources through constantly redeeming arcade points towards prizes, lest the chains run out of things to provide them.
I think this particular idea would work better if there was a way to have certain prizes and such shippable to home console players for sake of convenience. At the time of Dreamcast/NAOMI era this would've been limited to either big physical prizes/packages or making sure such prizes were also available at relatively nearby stores or shops that essentially could be partnered with the arcade chains in verification and providing of the products, meaning they would need to work something out with those chains (continuing such into the modern era though could leverage integrating fast food retail chain partners into the fold thanks to democratized delivery services like Grubhub). However, considering these would be many of the same locations with distribution partnerships with SEGA themselves, that would be theoretically easier to set up (deals would likely need to be set up with those retail chains, the arcade chains and SEGA that financially compensated the retail chains for allowing pick-up or local delivery of prizes to eligible people). Speaking of retailers, or more specifically should say 3rd-party product companies (toy manufacturers, clothing manufacturers, home appliance manufacturers etc.), I think finding a way of bringing those sort of partners in would be of benefit to SEGA as well.
How exactly to do so is more tricky; the idea of a company like Diebold providing premium 1:12 scale Ferrari F50 car models as potential free prizes tied to a game like F355 Challenge through arcade chains could bring in a good bit of attention, but how would these companies be incentivized? Through a recurring revenue cut program like described with arcade chain partners? Or flat-out contractual one-time agreements? Maybe a mix of both would be for the best, but it'd mean SEGA taking out more of a cut from their own end (20% now), maybe by 3% - 5%, so their share of software royalties would go down to 15% - 17%. The idea being that the creation of these services networks for gamers across the console and arcade ecosystems, manufacturing partners, and arcade chains would drive gamers to take up their overall ecosystem as a viable option.
..........
In some ways I guess this draws some parallels with what we're seeing Microsoft attempt to do now with the Xbox brand; however, this is stuff I think SEGA could've been setting up and pushed on with Dreamcast/NAOMI over two decades ago, build on it over time, and eventually find a groove where they wouldn't need to hinge so much on, say, Sony-level of console sales to be profitable. Something more in the range of 20 - 40 million LTD system averages would probably be enough considering the appeal of marketing in this approach, the benefits this stuff could bring to gamers and various corporate partners/affiliates, and the streamlined integration of design R&D in the arcade and home console sectors plus the general homogenization/convergence of various areas of technology as a whole.
However as hopefully also demonstrated, almost all of this is still perfectly possible today. In fact, it would be easier to do today versus the late 1990s for many of the things described in the previous paragraph. I also think that the idea of arcades would be "exotic" enough for a lot of today's gamers, who never grew up with arcades, to be intrigued in seriously giving it a shot. Never mind that due to certain things like COVID-19 (and the chances of that stuff continuing into the future for at least a decent while) we are seeing a lot of people who genuinely miss the normalcy of real social interaction in public venues. Now, I don't think what I described here are the ONLY things SEGA would need to do in order to establish a niche and be comfortable as a platform holder in the industry again, and I think in some ways they would still benefit from a larger company financially supporting them.
Believe it or not I think Nintendo would be the perfect company; they have had other companies like Raw Thrills doing arcade versions of their games/IP for a while and if you really think about it Nintendo's still had some presence in the arcade market through companies like Raw Thrills and SEGA (and Rare) ever since directly leaving the market in the late 1980s. In other words, Nintendo never 100% left the arcade market! Additionally, Nintendo want to make a push as a more general entertainment brand, diversifying their market reach while leveraging their IP strengths. Stuff like Nintendo World at Universal are just a start; for people who want experiences somewhat like that but can't afford to take a trip to a singular location once a year, why not proliferate that type of experience in arcade/FEC markets, and who better to help do that on a global scale than SEGA? It's not like SEGA and Nintendo are strangers; after all they have a very strong business partnership and have had such since the early 2000s. The only limiting factor here would potentially be the power of Nintendo's own systems if SEGA were to design arcade hardware around that. Technically they wouldn't need to, but depending on the deal of arrangement it could get..."complicated"....insofar as ports of SEGA's arcade titles outside of Nintendo systems like the Switch. Then you also have to consider that the aforementioned aspects of this concept (giving arcade chains a cut of home system sales on regional basis in particular), would fall down to Nintendo, not SEGA.
...and something tells me Nintendo would not be up for giving up any bit of their 30% revenue cut xD. Hence why for any such situation, it would likely be better if said larger financial partner to SEGA weren't another platform holder (and also, hopefully not Google or Tencent xD). Of the Big 3 that really would just leave Microsoft and Sony if SEGA were to partner up in such a way. While MS has technological and service strengths that would be beneficial for SEGA (including in a few other areas I didn't get a chance to go into here), Sony has a lot of those same technological strengths AND for yet OTHER aspects of this plan I have yet to get into, I think SEGA and Sony would overall make the stronger partnership. Mainly because I believe there are ways SEGA could leverage designs for the arcade/FEC market that also can infuse innovation in other public venue sectors like restaurants and film theaters, and the latter would be of a lot of benefit to Sony's movie and music divisions. The only area Sony lacks on are in terms of services (outside of finances), and again, I think they'd be hard-pressed to give up any bit of their 30% cut for arcade chains to earn revenue on home console software sales or 3rd-party product production companies to do similar (though given the revenue and profits Sony brings in from the PlayStation division, I think they could simply offer outright payments to both in return for getting similar support back from them WRT services and product tie-in promotions, perks etc.).
As you can see there's some aspects to the above that would have to be carefully balanced out if SEGA were to feel a need to partner with a larger company (especially one of the other Big 3), but the fundamental principles are what's important and I feel are things SEGA could definitely push on in order to establish an attractive niche that specializes to their strengths and is able to remain both healthy and profitable, even with some of the unorthodox aspects. Of course you still need a good hardware design and strong software; while SEGA arguably had issues on this front during a decent stretch of the '90s (particularly WRT sensible hardware and giving a good enough marketing focus on key software outside of a scant few like Sonic), they seemingly showed they were stabilizing and synergizing on both fronts with Dreamcast/NAOMI. Had they taken some of the approaches I mentioned above back then, I feel they'd of been able to make the transformation and would still likely be a platform holder today.
Thankfully, virtually all of these concepts are still doable today, and into the future, and are right there for a company with SEGA's pedigree and strengths to implement if they were serious about becoming a platform holder in the industry itself. There's absolutely room in the market for a "Big 4", although with the way I might've described some things there could be some slight crosstalk between SEGA and Microsoft (certainly not enough to force one or the other out of the market however; their paths would be divergent enough to easily coexist and perhaps help leverage through one-another i.e streamable SEGA arcade games through Xcloud and providing Xcloud compatibility on SEGA consoles. Perhaps even Microsoft and SEGA developing the console and arcade platforms to synergize with PC in terms of support standards, and providing services like Xcloud and Gamepass on SEGA consoles and providing funding for marketing (but let SEGA take the lead on marketing; peak SEGA destroys peak Microsoft in terms of marketing coolness), etc.). People need to remember the market has gotten bigger since the time when SEGA was a platform holder, not smaller.
In any case, I would definitely be up to sharing more on these hypothetical arcade/home console system & ecosystem designs in a SEGA-agnostic way in the near future, since there's almost a 0% chance I'll ever be able to bring any of this into reality on my own. No billions and billions in cash sitting around to do the investments on my end, but theorizing this stuff is still extremely fun and enlightening, and also helps in speculating on future paths the industry might take.
Virtua Fighter 1 and 2 alone cemented the Saturn ahead of PlayStation in Japan. The momentum between the two in that region didn't shift until Final Fantasy VII, a 3rd-party release, and that was 1997, over two years after both systems were available in Japan.
Also if anything I've been seeing MORE people watching VF tournaments through channels like NYCFurby on Twitch hosting them, and these are Western tournaments. Never mind the Japanese ones, which have had dedicated communities for well over a decade even with the absence of a VF6, and get pretty big numbers regularly in terms of viewership.
In other words, no the franchise doesn't have the commercial appeal of Tekken but it's still pretty well-known outside of that, even with younger FGC players and fans, and garners a lot of respect on the whole.
You don't need esoteric hardware to do this. In fact, it would be a hindrance more than a help if they made it exotic for the sake of making it exotic. Most of the standards we have now do the job pretty well...extremely well in some cases. It's the leveraging of those hardware features through APIs that really makes the hardware these days sing, since it's reached a point of relative ease-to-performance gains where, in case of the latter, we're now at a level of hardware abstraction & utilization almost of "to the metal" assembly provided back in the olden days (but with much better scalability, ease of use and just general QoL in the dev environment).
There's a reason the consoles went to x86-64 in 2013 and it wasn't just to "stick it" to custom exotic architectures. I absolutely LOVE reading up on the designs of older consoles and trying to understand them better, and there are aspects to those designs that can be utilized for new efforts being done today. But I also understand those designs had their time and place in the sun, and the market realities that necessitated them back then are not market realities requiring them today, by and large.
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