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@“chazumaru”#p41166 1996: Cozy up with Docomo.
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http://web.archive.org/web/19961224090605/http://www.sega.co.jp:80/sega/check/tv_phone/tvphone.html
If Sega had the money to pay Konami and Square for those exclusive Final Fantasy and Winning Eleven deals, the tables would have easily turned.
Sony won because it's filthy rich and great at marketing products. (side note: N64 was mostly a non-factor in Japan and other parts of Asia.)
I'd like to go in deeper on the topics that have come up in the earlier Genesis/Mega Drive section but I need to chew on those thoughts before I spit them out a bit more. @“Video_Game_King”#p10058 - I like where you are going with this and I think it would be a VERY interesting case study of what an alternate future looked like if Sega was less divided.
What I do feel more confident in adding here is that I'd have really liked to see Sega take more of a hit on beefing up their home systems to better realize what their arcade branches were doing at the time. I know financially this is probably not viable but I think the Dreamcast/Naomi Board was a real step in the right direction of "Bringing the arcade action home" in as close to arcade quality as possible and while the arcades were already starting to struggle (At least here in the states anyways, as the internet and PC gaming were really taking off) I would have loved to live in a future where the Saturn was a copy of or at least more closely aligned to the Model 2 architecture and we didn't have so sacrifice so much for the home ports.
I know that in the end Sega was still pushing Model 3 well past the DC (As big a Virtual On nerd I was and how limited our access to Oratorio Tangram was in the states, I still wish that Ver 5.4 and it's better visuals was the future and not the scaled back for DC ver 5.66 it ended up being.)
I guess Virtua Fighter 3 is probably the easier way to contrast this? If we could have had better home ports of games like this, Super GT/Scud Race or Daytona 2, I think the Dreamcast could have stood more of a chance at the time. (Though again, financially this was probably just impossible. But it would have been nice!)
I always look at the Model 2 arcade board and think to myself, "Why couldn't Burning Rangers have been made on this instead?" (When I'm not thinking about how BR should have waited until the Dreamcast that is...)
I'm also not sure if this was the case but I want to say that the Naomi architecture was fairly easy to develop for (maybe that's just for the internal Sega devs though?) but if they could have carried that back with the Saturn era, I like to think that they could have possibly survived the PS2 and possibly been the system of choice instead of the xbox360 during the PS3 era where Sony development went sideways.
I also really like the idea of Sega finding a way to at least stay in the handheld market. Maybe a future where they survive and become the PSP / Vita and managed to score Monster Hunter (Or simply wouldn't need it and Phantasy Star just went that direction instead of on Sony's platform?) I think Sega would have that larger back catalog that Sony wasn't interested in curating at all at the time and that Treasure would have been more inclined to keep pushing boundaries there as opposed to the GBA?
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@“Unbeknownst2U”#p41233 What I do feel more confident in adding here is that I’d have really liked to see Sega take more of a hit on beefing up their home systems to better realize what their arcade branches were doing at the time. I know financially this is probably not viable but I think the Dreamcast/Naomi Board was a real step in the right direction of “Bringing the arcade action home” in as close to arcade quality
It hadn't even occurred to me until now that Sega's entire console strategy was to bring the arcade experience home in an affordable package, and thinking about it that way, I have to wonder how much a change in management could have ever helped Sega to begin with. Sure, you'd have avoided the mismanagement involved with the Saturn, and that also means no 32X in a poorly thought out effort to tide Genesis owners over until the Saturn came along, but a lot of the inter-office antagonism that led to that mismanagement came from the Genesis' differing outcomes inside and outside Japan, and if you're trying to fix that, you want to get the Mega Drive out before the PC Engine has a chance to swallow up its niche. To their credit, Sega did accomplish this in the North American market, but considering Sega didn't even think to begin work on the Mega Drive until well after the PC Engine had launched, it's hard to see how they could have avoided the chain of events that eventually led to their leaving the console market.
Maybe they could have toned down the American iconography of *Sonic the Hedgehog* so he's not so much a product of the American branch, but I'm not sure that would have gotten them anywhere.
The three obvious ones are “partner with Sony when they knock at your door” and/or “get FF7” and/or “don’t botch the merger with Bandai”. If you can secure at least two of the three, Sega would have been fine.
A less obvious strategy is to delay the Saturn by about two years. The PlayStation really took off in the second half of 1996 and exploded in 1998. And back then, everyone (Nintendo included) thought the N64 would release in 1995. But in retrospect, we know it won’t release before 1996 (and 1997 in Europe).
So let’s say Sega licenses the PowerVR1 from Videologic before (or together with?) NEC, merges with Bandai in 1996 and buys Core Design. Also, if the console is designed for 1996, it can probably include a x2 speed disc drive, which would dampen the issue of loading times.
The PowerVR-ified SegaBandai Saturn launches for Christmas 1996 worldwide with Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally, Virtua Goal, Puyo Puyo Sun, Tomb Raider, Super Robot Taisen F, Mortal Kombat 3, Duke Nukem 3D, Madden 97, an Evangelion game, a Dragon Ball Z game, a Slam Dunk game and a primitive Sonic Adventure. Not sure why they would have mastered PowerVR so quickly but let’s say all these dev teams were intimately involved in the technology’s development.
The obvious issues here:
why would Bandai even consider merging with Sega if Sega didn’t have the early success of the Saturn in Japan?
→Let’s say we use the popularity of Puyo Puyo and Virtua Fighter 1&2 and Sega’s rights to Evangelion to keep improving the market situation of the Mega Drive in Japan. We never release the 32X but instead keep improving the SVP (from Virtua Racing). The SVP does not come within Virtua Racing. It uses the same lock-on tech as Sonic & Knuckles and more games from first and third party teams can access it. _That’s_ the 32X.
How do you convince Squaresoft to develop on your console?
→Honestly, no idea. Somehow you need to convince them to stay with Nintendo just a bit longer _then_ betray them around 1997 and launch FF7 (which has probably turned into FF8 by then) in Christmas 1998 on the PowerVR Saturn. Very shaky strategy but not entirely implausible.
Doesn’t Sony grow faster if it does not compete with Sega in 1994-1996?
→ Probably... Maybe there is less incentive for Sony to be so aggressive with price cuts and so Sony gets slower dev support and consumer adoption? I think a lot of devs supported the Saturn and the PlayStation because they were supporting both [the Saturn and the PlayStation] as a single “Next Gen” market. If Sega does not release the Saturn, this market remains even smaller for a while.
@“Video_Game_King”#p41243 I think you‘ve got a point there as well, but I still would like to think about the idea of a unified market strategy could have solidified some of the misses into opportunities. I guess I’m trying to be the optimist in that unity would have opened some more door but based on the history, it very well could have closed just as many opportunities they went out and tried because they were blazing their own trails.
To me it just feels like they had finally gotten their heads on straight again by the Dreamcast but by that point everyone was also just "tired" (for lack of a better term?) of trying to play catchup with Sony at that point.
Maybe the angle of the whole home port to arcade thing wouldn't have meant much in the long run anyway simply because of the way arcades were still on such a high pedestal in Japan at the time when they were already on their way out at the turn of the century in the states.
Certainly a lot of baggage to unpack in a discussion like this!
i adore these kind of threads, and hung around sega-16 way too long for them
i like some of what i'm seeing, and god knows i'd treasure a timeline that kept sega in the hardware game...but i remain convinced that without pairing up with sony/etc - one of the paradigm shifting conglomerates who could afford to shed billions in the short term - i've a hard time picturing sega surviving the shift to HD development, much less beyond
the one thing i can say with some degree of certainty? adding DVD to the dreamcast only would've killed them quicker
@“IrishNinja”#p122666 how do you figure? That doesn't track with my brain!
@“exodus”#p122669 okok so - development was in like 1997-1998 yeah? the diodes would‘ve been pricey, nevermind licensing for the format i imagine (all this while the size increase would’ve seemed excessive for the time i think)
they were once again subsidizing the hardware and gambling on the software to turn their first profit since the us genesis sales. the gambit seemed to be capitalizing on the market before the juggernaut that was the ps2 ate theirs/everyone else's lunch.
i think moore was 100% right with the $199 price point over here. DVD capabilities would've either greatly raised their cost, or put the price point into far less competitive territory, while doing nothing to fix the 3rd party woes/etc
sony was perfectly poised to reap the benefits of this format in ways that sega wasn't - production, royalties and DVD market realities in 2000 that weren't quite there in the 2 years prior - nevermind what i thought at the time felt like historically unprecedented momentum
that said, i really value your input here man - am i getting certain bits wrong, or do you think theres an angle i'm missing here?
@“IrishNinja”#p122670 well it's hard to know the actual costs of all this but here are some factors:
1) Sega already spent a bunch of money doing r&d on a new format - gdrom - and spend the money putting all the chips and transistors to make that work. That r&d money could've been saved with a move to dvd.
2) if you know Sony is your competitor, rather than do it all yourself, go to another competitor and get a discount and give you both a head start in the market. It doesn't say "powered by windows ce" on the front of the dang dreamcast for fun, it says that because Microsoft gave them a deal on it, and that was the tradeoff. "powered by windows ce" on one side, "dvd by Panasonic" on the other would make sense, and maybe the price wouldn't have to raise.
3) being first to market, they'd have a head start on the home media center wars. With the dreamcast releasing in 1998, presuming they kept the same date, you'd have almost a full year of "this thing is gonna have a dvd player in it" conversation before it came out here. People literally didn't buy dedicated dvd players and waited because they knew the Ps2 was gonna have one.
4) rewritable DVDs took a year or so longer to be affordable and viable for piracy, which would've helped with that particular dreamcast problem.
Overall I think it would've helped!
@“exodus”#p122671 fair points! i‘m just having a hard time seeing where in that best case scenario - a DVD agreement that didn’t raise the cost much, even if it traded off with other features - where it led to the software sales they very much needed for a profit?
we always read about the DVD shops that showed up in akiba/etc, but again, sony was still eating off that format & its fortunes. what did a cash-starved sega stand to gain, beyond rolling out the same excellent hardware to said crowds and hoping they bit this time, rather than say, waiting on a ps2 with what ended up as one of the better DVD players of 2000?
i just can't see a formula where they survive another year after or so with FFX, MGS2, DMC, GTA3 etc on the system heavily favored by the market, even as you said, with a less easily cracked/bootlegged format
@“exodus”#p10053 I‘d never thought about it before but converting an old home console architecture into its own handheld could have worked for Sega if they’d remained confident about it. Making the Nomad just a portable Genesis, and in that ugly asymmetrical shell, wasn't doing the thing any favours. This would have been super hard to keep doing into the ARM era but the Nomad had time to distinguish itself before backlit LCDs became the defacto handheld screen tech.
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Dreamcast (1998): No change
I'd bring back those two face buttons we lost, maybe also a right stick or knob—something akin to the GCN's C stick.
Also if you can take any information back in time with you that means you can warn Sega about the exploit that allowed piracy on the DC in the first place. Gonna have to either cancel that karaoke add-on or reimplement it somehow! The result is the Dreamcast lives to see 911.
There is no way Sega could have financed a DVD player, especially when they did not control any aspect of the chain of production like @Irishninja said. Sony was part of the DVD Forum and one of the initial DVD players and disc manufacturers and yet they still wrote off two giant red ink fiscal years for the SCE division during the launch of the PS2.
The funding would have needed to come from Panasonic, JVC, Hitachi or Toshiba – all were part of the DVD Forum. I believe Panasonic and Toshiba were the two companies with the highest royalty share & number of patents held within the Forum.
Panasonic was probably a No Go during the gestation of Katana since they were busy with the M2 project until its last minute cancellation. I don’t think JVC had the financial capacity or desire to merge with Sega, so the only solution would have been for Hitachi or Toshiba to take the hit. But why take a risk and subsidize a risky console when you could reap full benefits from the PS2 anyway? I guess Hitachi at least had the incentive to make the SH4 more successful.
The Dreamcast itself isn't to blame. The Dreamcast was doing everything it possibly could do. It was the Video Game Console of All Time.
@“◉◉maru”#p122694 I read that Samsung announced they were starting to make DVD players in 1996? I feel like there were a few more players out thre.
Dreaming of an alternate timeline where the Dreamcast received a Hi-Dream and V-Dream model with DVD support from Hitachi and JVC, respectively.
another timeline has sega doing gangbusters of their divx/VCD player that wasn't the media player folks wanted, but it was the one they deserved
I‘m far from knowledgable in regard to Sega, having just been an early adopter of the Saturn and the Dreamcast, but I sure would appreciate it if the DC hadn’t been essentially the end for Sega! But I think dumping the Nomad before it got to production (or improving on the Nomad instead, in any way at all– it was a good idea in theory, but yikes in practice, with its countless problems, even at the time), and at the absolute least not jumping the gun on the North American launch of the Saturn might have led to Sega having a better console lifespan. But wow wouldn't it have been great to have a Sega handheld get made based on the Dreamcast? I would have never bought a game for another console again, probably!
Also kindof amused to think about the typical AU butterfly wing problem of fixing Sega but dooming everything else, lol.
I used think about this kind of scenario all the time. However… in recent years I‘ve been thinking if Sega were sensible and fiscally responsible would they still be Sega? Not really. They’d just be Nintendo.
The best we could hope for is they'd have limped to the PS3/Xbox360/Wii era and come a distant 4th by not doing anything prohibitively stupid. Sega heyday ultimately fueled by a Japanese bubble economy so let's also have them genetically engineer an army of promiscuous yakuza super soldiers to keep birth rates up and ensure tiny plots of land are always worth more than their American equivalent thereby averting a banking crisis.
The way they'd have accomplished this without being hopelessly dull and not overstretching their in house dev teams is perhaps launching a Gamegear that wasn't derived from Master System hardware that had better battery life and a less horrendous screen. Essentially a GBA color before the GBA color.
Launch the Mega CD ever so slightly later with a less compromised color palette so the FMV looked good. It'll still be sort of stupid and overpriced.
Axe the Nomad, 32X, Pico and Sega Saturn.
Use the N64 hardware they were offered before Nintendo and use a 4xCD drive instead of carts. Launch slightly after the PSOne. Maybe put a tiny bit more memory in as well. Get western company to develop libraries for western markets ahead of time so the devs know what they're doing.
Double down on Europe with timely launches and buy up Psygnosis. Get EA Sports on board. Do everything in your power to get Squaresoft on board. Buy up some studios to port every hit you have to PC. Get ready to launch a Steam equivalent in the year 2000.
Rather than go balls out in arcades with Model 2 and 3 hardware that's prohibitively expensive focus on revenue sharing with operators and giving them a generic JAMMA sitdown driving game cabinet, and Net City type driving/shooting/regular upright. Make it stupidly easy to upgrade and make the upgrades really affordable so operators want to upgrade instead of leaving their badly maintained Sega Rally and Daytona USA cabinets on site for the next 20 years.
Convince Yu Suzuki he should keep making arcade games and not an RPG. Clone Nagoshi and deploy teams of them tune all the other major releases. Pay them frequent bonuses denominated in whiskey and Prada menswear.
Let Yuji Naka get hired by Sony with a generous stock option package.
Launch something like the Dreamcast but a bit more powerful, with a good pipeline for porting all your hopefully more broadly successful arcade games of the last few years over to. Do it same day with the PS2 and it'd compare favourably with the jaggies. Leak stories to the press about how Saddam Hussain has nuclear capability he planned to launch using linked PS2's till he switched to using Dreamcasts cos they're more powerful.
Ultimately all this will be for naught because blue skies, smart concise arcade gameplay and core Sega design styles will go out of vogue in the 00's as desaturated budget cola bloat takes over on the Sony/360 side and Nintendo mops up all the more casual audience.