Who or What Killed Sega Consoles?
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:22 pm
It has almost been a year since Tom Kalinske provided an interview badmouthing Sega that the board turned down a partnership with Sony that would have ultimately led to the Playstation being developed with Sega (very similar to the Nintendo partnership that never came to fruition).
I still get upset when reading this because in my opinion Tom Kalinske did more damage to Sega than the board's vote to not approve the joint console with Sony.
Don't get me wrong Tom Kalinske helped turn the Sega business around in America, but he boasts that all the success came from him, but the Mega Drive also took Europe by storm without Kalinske's help.
Ultimately the botched launch of the Saturn on America shores and its utter failure in the marketplace led to the early development of the Dreamcast even when the Saturn was doing fairly good numbers in Japan. Nintendo 64 never did catch up with the Saturn sales. Playstation only surpassed them with the help of Final Fantasy VII. Over 70% of the Saturn's library stayed in Japan because no third party wanted to release games for the Saturn overseas. Sega needed the revenue from America to succeed though. The company would struggle against Nintendo and Sony if they couldn't bring in the bigger market.
I realize failure is not 100% on anyone's shoulders. The console failed to catch on in Europe too.
Other than the terrible Saturn launch in America I believe Sega failed in the following ways:
1. No Sonic game for Western markets launched with Saturn (just like Sega of Japan to pick this fight with the west)
2. Hardware was too expensive to manufacture. Sony and Nintendo had way more wiggle room in their pricing structure.
3. They had too many consoles on the market at one time: Mega Drive II, Mega CD II, Master System II, Game Gear, 32X, Pico. Then Saturn launched. Sony had one unit with no baggage. You didn't have to worry if you were missing something by just buying the one Sony console on the market. Nintendo suffered from a similar buyer's fatigue of too many skus by the time N64 came out.
What do you guys think? What led to the demise of Sega's hardware business? Anyone who lived through it first hand would have told you the Saturn was about to deliver on what the Mega Drive had come so close to doing. Towards the late 90's the dream was starting to break and ultimately in 2001 it finally did.
I still get upset when reading this because in my opinion Tom Kalinske did more damage to Sega than the board's vote to not approve the joint console with Sony.
Don't get me wrong Tom Kalinske helped turn the Sega business around in America, but he boasts that all the success came from him, but the Mega Drive also took Europe by storm without Kalinske's help.
Ultimately the botched launch of the Saturn on America shores and its utter failure in the marketplace led to the early development of the Dreamcast even when the Saturn was doing fairly good numbers in Japan. Nintendo 64 never did catch up with the Saturn sales. Playstation only surpassed them with the help of Final Fantasy VII. Over 70% of the Saturn's library stayed in Japan because no third party wanted to release games for the Saturn overseas. Sega needed the revenue from America to succeed though. The company would struggle against Nintendo and Sony if they couldn't bring in the bigger market.
I realize failure is not 100% on anyone's shoulders. The console failed to catch on in Europe too.
Other than the terrible Saturn launch in America I believe Sega failed in the following ways:
1. No Sonic game for Western markets launched with Saturn (just like Sega of Japan to pick this fight with the west)
2. Hardware was too expensive to manufacture. Sony and Nintendo had way more wiggle room in their pricing structure.
3. They had too many consoles on the market at one time: Mega Drive II, Mega CD II, Master System II, Game Gear, 32X, Pico. Then Saturn launched. Sony had one unit with no baggage. You didn't have to worry if you were missing something by just buying the one Sony console on the market. Nintendo suffered from a similar buyer's fatigue of too many skus by the time N64 came out.
What do you guys think? What led to the demise of Sega's hardware business? Anyone who lived through it first hand would have told you the Saturn was about to deliver on what the Mega Drive had come so close to doing. Towards the late 90's the dream was starting to break and ultimately in 2001 it finally did.