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Sega likely couldn't have saved the Saturn even if they wanted to.


JaguarVision

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The original Tony Hawk came out in 1999. Way too late to be on the Saturn outside Japan. Sega did play ball with Activision. The series came to the Dreamcast.

Notjust Tony Hawk, I mean in general.

 

Activision had published 5 games on SAT. Only two were actually developed by them and 1 of those two was a collection of old games.

 

Not just them either. EA only gave Saturn 5 licensed sports games.

 

Accolate released zero games on the Saturn.

 

ThQ released 1 game on the Saturn

 

CD only released 8 games and 4 were 3DO portd.

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looking at activisions title list by year kind of reminds me that they really did not do all that much tween 85 and tony hawk

 

outside of reboots, and bad ports of other people's IP, there's probably 5 noteworthy games in 15 years, now thats subject to opinion but yea actiwho?

 

then you have the battle tech games, interstate76, tony hawk and omg its not a complete zombie brand again trying to sell me zork 34, return to who givesashit

looking at activisions title list by year kind of reminds me that they really did not do all that much tween 85 and tony hawk

 

outside of reboots, and bad ports of other people's IP, there's probably 5 noteworthy games in 15 years, now thats subject to opinion but yea actiwho?

 

then you have the battle tech games, interstate76, tony hawk and omg its not a complete zombie brand again trying to sell me zork 34, return to who givesashit

Well they had Paperboy and Rampage along with a few pitfall sequels. They also published the mechwarrior games and ported abunch of PC and Sega action games to consoles.

 

But yeah from 85 to 1993 they were a bit conservative. But they picked up in 93. They had a good selection of games that the Saturn could have used.

 

Though EA, Crystal Dym, THQ, and Accolade were bigger than Activision until around 1997. 1997 to 2003 Activision climbed to 2nd damn quick.

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looking at activisions title list by year kind of reminds me that they really did not do all that much tween 85 and tony hawk

 

 

ZOMG I looked up their port of Altered Beast to the Amiga and it's awful to look at. The audio was decent but the scrolling was all choppy and moving your dude wasn't even all that smooth. I'll pass.

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I don't really get the point of the thread, which seems to be "if these things changed, then these *other* things would need to change, which they couldn't!" That's nonsensical. If we're already talking about a purely hypothetical situation in which things were different, then you can't start with the premise that some things are within limits and others aren't. It's like saying if evolution had gone differently, sure there could have been dragons. But unicorns?! What are you, high?!

 

Things happened in the way they did. We can't go back and change them, and we can't know what would have happened if something had. We can debate what we think would have happened had things gone a slightly different way, but in that debate, you can't say some things changing are possible while others aren't just because the latter wouldn't support your argument.

 

I think you're also vastly underestimating the importance of the Japanese market at that time, and the long tail that it created for the PS1. FF7 may have only sold 3 million in the US, but the 10.9 million it sold worldwide sold a lot of systems, which in turn attracted a lot of developers in every territory. And those developers made other games in that same style, which is how the system became well known for RPG's. And while none of those may have broken 10 million on their own, collectively they probably sold 100 million copies and about half as many systems. And that's just one genre.

 

Also, I know where you're getting your sales figures from, and at least some of them are wrong. Maybe not all of them are, but I know firsthand that at least several of them are because I worked at one of the publishers on that list and we had surpassed the numbers there for a couple of those games within the first year of release. Those numbers are not ever made public, so wherever The Magic Box is getting them from has to be piecemeal info from whenever the publisher last released it, if ever. Or it's just estimates. But domestic US sales numbers are proprietary info, so at best a good portion of that list was either woefully out of date even when it was posted, or worse, it was just made up.

 

Japanese sales numbers are different; they're public. But US sales numbers, at least from that era (maybe it's changed *now*, I dunno) are proprietary. So take any list like that with a grain of salt.

Edited by spacecadet
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I don't really get the point of the thread, which seems to be "if these things changed, then these *other* things would need to change, which they couldn't!" That's nonsensical. If we're already talking about a purely hypothetical situation in which things were different, then you can't start with the premise that some things are within limits and others aren't. It's like saying if evolution had gone differently, sure there could have been dragons. But unicorns?! What are you, high?!

 

Things happened in the way they did. We can't go back and change them, and we can't know what would have happened if something had. We can debate what we think would have happened had things gone a slightly different way, but in that debate, you can't say some things changing are possible while others aren't just because the latter wouldn't support your argument.

 

I think you're also vastly underestimating the importance of the Japanese market at that time, and the long tail that it created for the PS1. FF7 may have only sold 3 million in the US, but the 10.9 million it sold worldwide sold a lot of systems, which in turn attracted a lot of developers in every territory. And those developers made other games in that same style, which is how the system became well known for RPG's. And while none of those may have broken 10 million on their own, collectively they probably sold 100 million copies and about half as many systems. And that's just one genre.

 

Also, I know where you're getting your sales figures from, and at least some of them are wrong. Maybe not all of them are, but I know firsthand that at least several of them are because I worked at one of the publishers on that list and we had surpassed the numbers there for a couple of those games within the first year of release. Those numbers are not ever made public, so wherever The Magic Box is getting them from has to be piecemeal info from whenever the publisher last released it, if ever. Or it's just estimates. But domestic US sales numbers are proprietary info, so at best a good portion of that list was either woefully out of date even when it was posted, or worse, it was just made up.

 

Japanese sales numbers are different; they're public. But US sales numbers, at least from that era (maybe it's changed *now*, I dunno) are proprietary. So take any list like that with a grain of salt.

NPD as of 2005 and it's highly accurate. No magic box at all. People forget before 2008 or so NPD published numbers for a time.

 

Also your FF7 point is missing something important. Let's remove Saturn winning, for Saturn to even sell the same amount as the Genesis at 29 million, Saturn would need US and Europe.

 

So the question is, if in the US FF7 didn't significantly move hardware (in relation to games like Crash) on the PSX than why would it on the Saturn? Even if Saturn got FF7 Sony would still be the marketing partner.

 

Sure it would help in Japan but what about everywhere else? They wanted Spyro, they want Tony, they wanted Crash,

 

 

I'm not saying that FF7 or MGS wouldn't help but I think you guys are forgetting the Saturn likely isn't going past 15 million units without Europe and the US. I think that's were the confusion is coming from.

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as far as I understand it, saturn didnt move anywhere in real numbers, so adding another 10 mil to jack fucking shit is still 10 mil + jack fucking shit

 

man seriously why do you keep posting these mental jerk off threads we all worked out like 25 years ago in our own heads

 

stuff happens, your team didnt win, move on

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These Alternate Reality: The Videogames threads could actually be fun, if only the OPs weren't usually so po-faced and uber-combative, as if it these were some life & death matters and their solution the only true one. And the "proofs" are as much valid as those from Ancient Astronauts on "History" Channel. Hey, Spyro The Dragon sold a lot of copies so of course "western games" (lol) would save Saturn! How can you not see that?

 

The other thing is the fixation on hardware specs. Oh, so X could render 7.3 more pixels per second than Y and also its sprites were less "fuzzy" (WTF), ergo X should've taken over the world if only the CEO was OP. But in reality, as any fule kno, hardware's power is only one of the factors behind a platform's success. If it wasn't, ZX Spectrum/PSX/Wii/Switch wouldn't shift a unit and we all would be playing on XNeoGeoStations in 2018.

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These Alternate Reality: The Videogames threads could actually be fun, if only ...

Agreed. Even though we've discussed what-if scenarios many times over the years, the subject might still be a fun revisit now and then. But these latest threads, which keep popping up from the same 2 newer members who are starting to sound like they were written by the same guy, are more like clutter for some reason, I can't tell the purpose behind these posts.

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  • 3 weeks later...

These Alternate Reality: The Videogames threads could actually be fun, if only the OPs weren't usually so po-faced and uber-combative, as if it these were some life & death matters and their solution the only true one. And the "proofs" are as much valid as those from Ancient Astronauts on "History" Channel. Hey, Spyro The Dragon sold a lot of copies so of course "western games" (lol) would save Saturn! How can you not see that?

 

The other thing is the fixation on hardware specs. Oh, so X could render 7.3 more pixels per second than Y and also its sprites were less "fuzzy" (WTF), ergo X should've taken over the world if only the CEO was OP. But in reality, as any fule kno, hardware's power is only one of the factors behind a platform's success. If it wasn't, ZX Spectrum/PSX/Wii/Switch wouldn't shift a unit and we all would be playing on XNeoGeoStations in 2018.

It reminds me that in a French forum, someone posted a "what if the Colecovision didn't failed" and I took different things that floated around (like the Atari/Nintendo contract) and made a whole different today's world of videogaming from there. It was amusing. But it's more fun to really go far and take the most odd things and turn them into reality :D

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vaAQ1r5.jpg?1

 

 

I thought the article in the green bubble in the lower right-hand corner was particularly interesting. They basically more or less say that 3 years is the lifespan of a video game system. I stopped following game systems after I graduated high school, though I bought a few systems here and there afterwards. So... I don't know if 3 years seems to line up with the age of all the other systems, but I thought that was interesting never the less...

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I want to start my mentioning the Saturn failure is commonly blamed on several factors:

 

1. Price

 

2. Past failures

 

3. Lack of Jrpgs

 

4. Lack of a "real Sonic game"

 

5. Lack of "third party support"

 

6. $299 PSX

 

A lot of gamers and journalists believe the Saturn could have been saved with some fixes. I'm going to deviate from that, I believe that even with fixing some of these problems the Saturn was always going to fail. Some of these also likely never could be avoided.

 

Breaking it down, the Sega Saturn was already gpoing to throw Europe under the bus. SOJ had no real interest in SOE, and SOJ fighting with SOA distracted SOA's attention from helping SOE.

 

 

I think I must have been living on another planet. SEGA loved Europe. The Master System and Mega Drive were huge in Europe, much much more popular than in the states. In fact, it was Nintendo who didn't give a crap about Europe. They didn't even have a Euro office. Sega Europe also released many Saturn games that Sega US didn't. Sega Europe also actually searched out British ane Euro developers for the Saturn which continued with the Dreamcast.

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This Saturn upgrade thing, that just would up being the 4MB RAM cart, right? Not surprising that US game magazines hyperbolized it.

 

No...

 

It was a 3D Accelerator type device, supposedly born from Sega's work with it's partners in the arcades.

 

It was going to plug into the Saturn's cartridge slot and really beef up it's 3D abilities.

 

Stacks of rumours surround it, including it being abandoned as they couldn't bring it in at a consumer level price, Core Design were supposed to of seen it and done evaluations on what it was capable of, though i've yet to hear anyone from there confirm this.

 

 

This is how EGM reported it:

 

In other Sega news, Yu Suzuki and the white shirts at AM2 are currently knee deep into the development of VF3 for the Saturn, which will be released in Japan around October. The game (a CD) is designed to run in conjection with a 3-D cartridge upgrade that plugs into the port on top of the Saturn...can you say 64X? The Lockheed Martin Corportation (the company that designed Sega's Model-3 arcade architecture) is currently working on the 64-bit cart, which is based on the Real 3D chipsetm LMC's upcoming 3-D accelerator for the PC. The entire package is targeted to retail for 9800 yen in Japan (about $90 U.S.) with 6000 yen of that for the CD and about 3500-4000 yen toward the cart. Our Q-spies report that VF3 will be but just a small taste of Sega's 64-Bit console technology. Sega has also commissioned LMC to design a killer 64-Bit game system code named Pluto. The new system, due out in early 1998, is said to offer 3-D performance that could rival (if not surpass) the Model-3 arcade board. Look for Sega to make an official announcement of the new console (along with the first look at VF3) at the upcoming Tokyo Toy Show in June.

Edited by Lost Dragon
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In other Sega news, Yu Suzuki and the white shirts at AM2 are currently knee deep into the development of VF3 for the Saturn, which will be released in Japan around October. The game (a CD) is designed to run in conjection with a 3-D cartridge upgrade that plugs into the port on top of the Saturn...can you say 64X? The Lockheed Martin Corportation (the company that designed Sega's Model-3 arcade architecture) is currently working on the 64-bit cart, which is based on the Real 3D chipsetm LMC's upcoming 3-D accelerator for the PC. The entire package is targeted to retail for 9800 yen in Japan (about $90 U.S.) with 6000 yen of that for the CD and about 3500-4000 yen toward the cart. Our Q-spies report that VF3 will be but just a small taste of Sega's 64-Bit console technology. Sega has also commissioned LMC to design a killer 64-Bit game system code named Pluto. The new system, due out in early 1998, is said to offer 3-D performance that could rival (if not surpass) the Model-3 arcade board. Look for Sega to make an official announcement of the new console (along with the first look at VF3) at the upcoming Tokyo Toy Show in June.

 

That's basically what was in all the scanned images, too, but VF3 never shipped on the Saturn, and the 4MB RAM cart came out in 1997. I'm asking how likely it is that someone got fed some sort of line in an effort to hype up the Saturn as it was dying in America. I can't imagine Yu Suzuki got very far into this development without throwing up his hands and saying "nevermind".

Edited by derFunkenstein
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Well, Suzuki and co. did get pretty deep into Shenmue on Saturn, enough to produce that demo, so I imagine development of a Saturn "Super SVP" (if it was just meant to be a cartridge) likely got somewhat decently into development, not that it matters; it never released so that's that.

 

Apparently VF3 was up and running with it at some point too but they got a version running on Saturn without the add-on cart, but with Dreamcast around the corner just decided to scrap it outright. Not sure how true the VF3 stuff is though; I've been trying to find footage of it online (half-assedly atm) and no dice.

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Agreed. Even though we've discussed what-if scenarios many times over the years, the subject might still be a fun revisit now and then. But these latest threads, which keep popping up from the same 2 newer members who are starting to sound like they were written by the same guy, are more like clutter for some reason, I can't tell the purpose behind these posts.

 

Well, the OP for this one seems more like they're just trying to stoke an imaginary console war or just use the scenario to bend things to tear at Sega. Which, sure, you can do, but you don't have to be such a biased nancy about it and do Matrix style logic-defying stunts just to make your points. Keeping your scenarios in some degree of reasonability and being fair/balanced with logic even if you have a certain preference, seems to be too hard for the people starting up these recent threads I've come across, from what I've seen.

 

And, I'm not attacking those people, just their actions and intent. You can change both of those things so it's fair game imho. I'd just like to think trying to be balanced and nuanced in providing my own two cents (which, even though I have a preference like any other, I do my damnedest to be fair to all parties in whatever I'm discussing) doesn't get me sacked around dismissively when there's clearly other people who have biases shine so brightly it cracks through their teeth like like holy daggers warping physics (logic) in unthinkable ways.

 

But yeah, when all heads are cool and making sense, these "what-if" discussions can be very fun and interesting. Really get you thinking about how the market worked/works and exploring possibilities.

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The rumours i saw in the UK press seemed to be saying that Core Design had flown over to look at the upgrade and were evaluating it's potential by stress testing it with the PC version of Tomb Raider II.

 

I've spoken to a few Tomb Raider team members, who all said this was news to them.

 

What became the DC SCUD Race demo was also allegedly used to test it as well,but again,nobody i know has ever admitted to working on that either.

 

Luca on Unseen64 did try to get others from the Saturn and PS1 era upwards at Core to chat about their roles and projects, but they point blank refused.

 

So a lot of time was wasted chasing Ghosts on this one.

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This Saturn upgrade thing, that just would up being the 4MB RAM cart, right? Not surprising that US game magazines hyperbolized it.

 

 

No...

 

It was a 3D Accelerator type device, supposedly born from Sega's work with it's partners in the arcades.

 

It was going to plug into the Saturn's cartridge slot and really beef up it's 3D abilities.

 

Stacks of rumours surround it, including it being abandoned as they couldn't bring it in at a consumer level price, Core Design were supposed to of seen it and done evaluations on what it was capable of, though i've yet to hear anyone from there confirm this.

 

 

This is how EGM reported it:

 

In other Sega news, Yu Suzuki and the white shirts at AM2 are currently knee deep into the development of VF3 for the Saturn, which will be released in Japan around October. The game (a CD) is designed to run in conjection with a 3-D cartridge upgrade that plugs into the port on top of the Saturn...can you say 64X? The Lockheed Martin Corportation (the company that designed Sega's Model-3 arcade architecture) is currently working on the 64-bit cart, which is based on the Real 3D chipsetm LMC's upcoming 3-D accelerator for the PC. The entire package is targeted to retail for 9800 yen in Japan (about $90 U.S.) with 6000 yen of that for the CD and about 3500-4000 yen toward the cart. Our Q-spies report that VF3 will be but just a small taste of Sega's 64-Bit console technology. Sega has also commissioned LMC to design a killer 64-Bit game system code named Pluto. The new system, due out in early 1998, is said to offer 3-D performance that could rival (if not surpass) the Model-3 arcade board. Look for Sega to make an official announcement of the new console (along with the first look at VF3) at the upcoming Tokyo Toy Show in June.

 

Here's where that text in EGM came from (February 1997)

ygyOVZP.jpg

 

Also, I have quite a few bits from Diehard GameFan that'll post soon.

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Okay, the Diehard GameFan stuff on a number of Sega's potential 64-bit plans, including

Lockheed Martin REAL3D-100

And 3DO / Matsushita M2. and related things.

 

Virtua Fighter 3 . Model 3 (2x REAL3D/Pro-1000s)

 

Also, interestingly, Namco's never-releases System 33 arcade hardware using multiple first-gen Vidologic/NEC PowerVR chips.

 

Most of this was printed in their Other Stuff column (GameFan's equivalent of EGM's Gaming Gossip / Quartermann)

and Q&A Letters / Postmeister and Random Access (press releases, news, etc) and Japan Now.

 

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More detail on the REAL3D-100 chipset from EDGE in July 1995.

 

UdnvESP.jpgw0UoAtf.jpg

 

Note: REAL3D-100 is more powerful than the following different pieces of hardware.

 

*The Sega / Martin Marietta designed MODEL 2 arcade board.

*The final 3DO / Matsushita M2 console (and arcade board used in Konami coin-op games).

*3DFX Voodoo Graphics

*PowerVR first gen PCX1 and PCX2 cards

*Intel/Real3D project 'Auburn' which became the i740 integrated graphics chip,

also used in the REAL3D Starfighter gaming cards released in early 1998.

 

REAL3D-100 is less powerful than:

 

*MODEL 3 board that used two REAL3D/Pro-1000 chips.

*Dreamcast / NAOMI hardware using the custom second gen PowerVR2DC

 

Now back to early/mid 1997 - Lockheed Martin is out, 3DFX is in the game with Sega, and quickly out of the game, as

NEC / Videologic wins the deal with Sega to produce what is eventually the Dreamcast.

 

 

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Edited by Parallax Scroll
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Some more thoughts - In my alternate timeline for consoles of the mid 1990s to 2000

 

The Sony PlayStation - Sony works with Evans & Sutherland and Namco on shrunk down version of the Namco System 22 board with the E&S TR³ chipset and a 66 MHz MIPS CPU. It's able to handle perfect ports of System 22 and System Super 22 games. Tekken is a System 22 game instead of a System 11 game, and Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer 2, Rave Racer, Alpine Racer, Air Combat 22, Tokyo Wars, etc are all on PlayStation and without downgrades.

 

Sega scraps the original Saturn design which started in 1992, released in 1994/1995. They commission LMC and Hitachi to design a REAL3D-100 and PowerPC 603 based console to crush Nintendo Ultra 64 (and 3DO's M2).

 

(pic of an unfinished Real3D-100 board)

3TNWlXP.jpg

 

4KLkZUx.png

 

Namco releases a System 33 arcade board in 1997 that easily beats MODEL 3. Not with PowerVR chips, but with one of Evans & Sutherland's REALimage chipsets, the direct rival of Lockheed Martin's REAL3D family of chips.

 

i.e. umVmaRx.jpg

 

tX68cXl.jpgb9y3qro.jpgCx12oPk.jpg

 

 

 

Sega/Lockheed Martin work on a next gen console that will push north of 30 million polygon/s using a next-gen

"REAL3D-500" GPU, in addition to a MODEL 4 arcade board.

 

We'll call it the Sega Raptor (after LM's F-22 Raptor!) to avoid confusion with Saturn / Saturn 2.

 

It looks a lot like this!

V1gbqyZ.jpg

 

 

Sony, Toshiba, Namco and Evans & Sutherland work out a PlayStation 2 spec. No Sony in-house Graphics Synthesizer, but instead a next-gen E&S REALimage graphics processor that's massively parallel and feature rich.

 

(Rival workstation chipsets, rival arcade boards, rival game consoles with state of the art mass produced GPUs, both from the military-industrial complex, just like the rival stealth fighter jets from Lockheed (YF-22) and Northrop (YF-23)

 

7hZU9X2.jpg

 

(We should have had both planes BTW)

 

Ahem..

 

Nintendo - ArtX never splits off from Silicon Graphics. The Nintendo 2000 hardware has the full development resources of SGI and MIPS. The console ends up being more powerful than Project Dolphin/GameCube.

 

Microsoft doesn't enter the console space with XBOX until 2003 or later.

Edited by Parallax Scroll
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The games press on both sides of the Atlantic used to love printing speculation in columns like Hot Gossip..Red Hot Rumours etc.

 

Stories of Data East entering the home console market, Atari considering putting an extra chip on the Jaguar CD to beef up it's texture mapping abilities, games like Elite and Microproses F1 coming to the Genesis using Sega's SVP chip, Sony working on a Playstation 1.5 to buy time whilst Playstation 2 finished, Tekken 3 to use an accelerator card on Playstation 1, undocumented DSP chips found on the Saturn...Nintendo were going to abandon the Ultra 64 as it was too expensive to manufacture...

 

Pick a platform and you didn't have to look far to find a rumour

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