Would Sonic X-Treme have "saved" the Sega Saturn?

I doubt it. It probably would have sold some copies just because it was Sonic, but honestly every revision of the game I have seen looked awful. It could never have competed with Mario 64. It was more like Bubsy 3D.

For your second question, I don't know why you're asking this. It's guaranteed.

 

This topic has been done before.

I think AXSX could have saved it, but then again it wont be able to run there.

 

Plenty of times, I'm sure. :specialed:

There's really no telling how the market would have responded to the game, and there's no telling what exactly the final game would have been like either. (Games do change a lot from start to finish.) AXSX is the closest anyone has come to capturing how Xtreme may have played, in an alternate dimension where STI's pet project had the Japanese Sonic Team's tools and blessing, instead of their disdain.

The 90's were a very different time in the industry. All we can do is speculate, and that's neither relevant here in the present or much fun to do anymore.

 

No, because the Saturn has a metric brickton of problems on its own terms. Botched early surprise launch, which resulted in upset developers/retailers and a limited sub-par launch lineup. Bizarre and freaky promotional launch commercials. Hardware that was too complex for its own good and an enigma for most people to develop for; even today people are still wrapping their heads on making accurate emulations of the thing. A Sega of America CEO who stonewalled most games intended for the system (especially 2D games) in favor of sports titles. Sega of American and Sega of Japan still butting heads against each other rather than working together.

That and I don't really think most versions of X-treme would had turned out much good. The recently-uncovered PoV engine that scrapped the fish eye-lens and played more like a 2.5D multiplaned platformer, and (the game when it entirely was based off of) Coffin's boss engine were the only versions of X-treme I think had much potential to make for a decent Sonic game.

 

A Sonic 4 made prior to NiGHTS may have saved the Saturn, but X-Treme, I doubt it.

 

Nope. Anyone who would have bought a Saturn for the promise of new Sonic likely did at launch, because there was no reason for them to assume at the time that there wouldn't be a main-entry for series on the platform. Perhaps if the Saturn iteration of Sonic Adventure had been brought to fruition, we MIGHT have seen a spike in purchases, but I don't imagine anyone would have been interested in a console purchase for X-Treme if Sonic 3D Blast Saturn, Sonic R and Jam didn't. Even at its most polished, X-Treme was still a very rickety-looking experiment.

 

In hindsight, that would happen if there were no 32X. Sonic Team could have released Sonic Crackers/Chaotix on the Saturn, with better sprite effects, audio and 3D stuff.
More early adopters -> better install base and dampening Sony Playstation's launch. Even if they kept the same bad decisions after Saturn's launch, that would have delayed the moment they decided all focus should be on the Saturn and discontinue everything else. Remember, the Mega Drive and the rest were supposedly bringing them profit but they threw them out in order to 'bail out' the Saturn.
And since Sega would have been doing better at that point(95/96) they could have had more resources to throw at STI / Sonic X-Treme. At least the team wouldn't have struggled/wasted time developing Sonic Mars for the 32X.

Apart from not releasing the 32X, not adding a second CPU to the Saturn could have kept the costs down. Most games/programmers couldn't use it efficiently anyway.

 

I bet it would have helped the Saturn sell better, but not enough to be a PS1 Killer.

Now, if there were MULTIPLE sonic games for the Saturn, with whatever X-Treme would have looked like at release, and something more akin to a Mario 64 competitor, it might have worked.

 

Missed this bit:

Available this September! :v:

 

As others have said I doubt it. That generation (my generation) of gamers were beginning to grow up, Sony recognised this and capitalised on it massively, targeting the teen/adult market aggressively was a massive win for them.

Sega did it first time around against Nintendo in the very late 80's and early 90's and took a huge market share but then they failed to grow with their newly acquired audience. If you just think of the pure aesthetics of many of the games the difference is striking e.g. Virtua Fighter vs Tekken, Steep Slope Sliders vs Cool Boarders, Sega Rally vs Gran Turismo.

 

Nah. The game looked kinda like garbage and judging from all the revisions it had it lacked a solid foundation from the start. It was a throw everything against the wall experiment that seemed far too confusing to be any fun. Would 6 year old me have liked it? Sure. But 16 year old me kinda liked Sonic 06 and I know that's garbage.

Honestly Crash Bandicoot kinda filled that Saturn Sonic void for me. Not as fast sure, but with 3D just starting and the series take on platforming closer to 2D gameplay than Mario 64, it was a good Sonic substitute for me.

 

I Don't think any Sonic game could have saved the Saturn to be honest. During my school days, and when the topic of games and game systems came up, I was the only one in class that seemed to have or like the Sega Saturn, everyone else was a PlayStation or Nintendo 64 fan. ( FF7 or Mario 64 and system specs were hot topics, no one cared about Sonic or the so called underwhelming 3D Saturn gfx.
I remember sticking up for the Saturn by bringing in interesting imported games, some people seemed to be interested, but at the end of the day, they seemed to fall back to the other 2 systems.

 

I think Sonic Lost World proved that the X-Treme formula doesn't work very well, and wouldn't have worked back then either. It would have sold copies, but I can't imagine the reviews would have been kind. Certainly not enough for people to drop money on a Saturn to play, anyway.

 

It does mildly annoy me that a 2D Sonic game wasn't concurrently developed. As both a backup, and a money printer in it's own right.

The engine was ported to Saturn natively (and PC, for that matter), the skills and expertise were all there, and it's a demonstrably safe investment. Yes, it would have given the impression of missing the 3D train, but I can't not see it not printing money regardless. It was a safe investment.

Of course, with Bernie Stolar around. Well...

 

Now that's an interesting thought!

 

@Flygon - I can understand, that due to the hype on 3D everyone was trying to make "Insert_name 3D", however it's a bit surprising for me, that in some critical cases (Sonic could be a good example) didn't tried the method which was used, for example, in Pandemonium. 3D graphics, but mechanism generally similar to this from 2D platformers. I'm not a specialist, but for me, personally, it's a win-win solution - you've got opportunity to present "true" 3D graphics (and even add some cheap gimmicks, like two plains between which there are some "bridges" (like in Hunter Hunted)), and yet you're not dealing with many problems, which were a real pain for every producer of 3D platformer at this period (responsive and comfortable control, allocating of objects & enemies in game, clear but also making impression graphics etc.).

Getting back to the subject - Sonic X-Treme (released) most probably wouldn't save Saturn's unfortunate fate, but it would definitelly make history of this console even more interesting

( games made by console's producer are important, but in the end the most important are games from third-party developers, because those are deciding about variety and quality of console's library, maybe I don't know about something, but generally I see this pattern in consoles history).

 

This is amusing to me because this is literally how Crash Bandicoot is. You move on what is basically a glorified 2D plane in all the original games, with 3D graphics.

Given the Saturn's problems, I don't think even a good Sonic (let alone the scatterbrained, "hope and pray that ONE of the these projects would be merely playable" Sonic X-Treme) would've saved it. TWO "good" Sonic games couldn't save the Dreamcast, and the Dreamcast had fewer issues on the technical side than the Saturn did.

 

I doubt it would as well. Also one of the developers stated that it wasn't going to be very good anyway.