Little things you wish Sega had done differently

I had all 3 and if anything UEFA was a step backwards in gameplay but a step up In GFX. All pale to the brilliant World League Soccer 98 on the Saturn mind and it's a shame since all games were made by the same team.

Worst still was SEGA Japan not having the Worldwide Soccer team made a follow up for the DC and then compounded the cock up with Smilebit utter crap footy game 90 mins even Victory Goal on the Saturn was better than that

 

People talk about not localized RPGs on the Saturn and I'm not sure what people mean and if it would have moved the needle in the West. I mean its small and niche stuff like Wachenroder, Lunar, Grandaia etc. Working Designs stuff did not set the world on fire. FF7 steamrolled it all

It's about who was the most successful during that period, and I think the far bigger mistake was letting those dev teams run loose and let the creatives run the business side. Its why you got so much support for Xbox, because they were enticed by how powerful it was, rather than any business sense that games would sell there. Every Sega games should of been on PS2 (and some on GameCube), full stop. Naka had the right idea with Sonic on Nintendo, but even he says PSO should of been on PS2 rather than Xbox and Gamecube, because Monster Hunter stole its thunder.

 

Lunar was one of WD best ever selling games and that was on the SEGA CD and its a real shame that SEGA didn't look to capitalize on the FF7 hype with the Saturn's own FF7 type game Grandia but all those are 3rd party games. I was more pissed off with the SEGA published or developed titles that never made it over to the Saturn in west.... Dragon Force 2 - one of the best sequels ever and adds to a brilliant game, Shining Force scenarios II and III were utter gems, The Sakura Tasien games, Road to the World Cup, Stellar Assault SS - one of the best 3D space games ever made and so many more titles from SEGA Japan. I was even gutted Virus wasn't brought over given the hype Hudson and SEGA were putting on it title at the time. That's just a small part of the SEGA stuff left in Japan, never mind the 3rd party titles

SEGA did a deal with XBox and so money also played a part and it wasn't like every SEGA title on the PS2 sold well. I was very surprised at how lowish the sales of VF4 on the system more so given the userbase, people think that Yakuza was an instant hit when it just about sold over 200,000 copies on it 1st run, Blood Will Tell, REZ, F335 and many more were flops even on the PS2 . I would have much rathered saw SEGA lead on the XBox and then port the games to the games to the Cube and PS2; I still can't work out with Dark Soul type games doing so well why SEGA never took AM#2 Soul Reverse and and built into a big budget AAA 360/PS3 souls ripoff too

The mistake SEGA made with PSO was they tried to turn into a FF killer with PSU or a bloody card game on the Cube. Capcom's Monster Hunter took many sequels before it became massive, but to be fair to SEGA they got the series back on track with PSO 2. Also, it was a mistake to have Naka-san run the Sonic Team IMO it really should have been Yoji Ishii who should have been made boss of the Sonic Team IMO . If title

 

Yeah and that deal kinda sucked - its like how it happened with Rare. MS was all in at first - but then when stuff like PDO, JSRF etc. bombed and they pulled out with being chummy with Sega.

VF4 and Yakuza were huge hits on PS2...otherwise we would not have had games in those franchises even today. Simple proof is being mentioned in those annual business reports during the early 2000s which regularly featured PS2/Gamecube Sega but not Xbox exclusives at all

 

Cards were hot back then, and Phantasy Star Online: Episode III was a great game. I don't think it was a mistake at all.

If Yakuza was such a great hit at the time, they wouldn't have dialed the budget back for the sequel, which meant we had no English voice acting.

 

PDO didn't bomb it sold 300,000 which for a on-rails shooter wasn't too bad, JSRF and Sega GT 2001 sales were a bitter letdown . VF4 was hardly massive it barely sold a million units on its 1st run, even VF2 did better on the Saturn in Japan alone and we haven't have a sequel since VF5 and that was hardly a sales winner on either the PS3 or 360. Yakuza didn't sell great on its 1st run and even the sequel didn't really do big numbers until the price cut. Shenmue sold far better than Yakuza 1 to put into some sort of context and plenty of SEGA's PS2 titles didn't sell great on the PS2 be that Space Channel 5 Part 2, REZ, Blood Will Tell, Altered Beast, Seaman 2, F355, Sakura Wars 5, VF Quest, Shinobi

It was kind of sad that for a while SEGA's best selling game on the PS2 was let's make a Football Club or their best selling 3rd party title was the Sonic Adv2 port on the Cube for a while; I'm just glad the current SEGA got it right and put all its big AAA titles on the PC , XBox and Playstaion. which is what SEGA should have done from the start when it when 3rd party IMO. I'll also like to see SEGA port its Lightgun games to SONY VR2 It is a mistake by SEGA not to bring the likes of Let's Go Jungle, House of the Dead Scarlet, Virtual Cop 3 Ect to SONY's VR it is so perfect for lightgun games

 

Yakuza was 100% aimed at Japan. And for that, it exceeded expectation

Sales expectations are a weird thing and it seemed like 300K was too low, sadly. The director expressed disappointment.

Current Sega has it right, I agree. But that is also because PC/Xbox/PlayStation are pretty much the same these days. Wii/360/PS3 was the last era where each console had it's characteristics. And Sega (of Japan) was kinda cold on Xbox 360 exclusives, sadly. XBLA had much more potential for Sega in-house IMO.

 

That's a lame excuse you can leave your Xbox wind-ups for system 16. You talk of sales expectations.... reminds us again how well did SEGA Rally did on the PS2, much less did it come out to the West or how well did Tetsuya Mizuguchi's last SEGA game sell, was Astro Boy a massive sales monster in Japan? Plenty of SEGA games boomed on the PS2

 

Those games would have done even worse on Xbox or Gamecube relatively.

 

I was quite tribal when I was younger - when the Dreamcast died I didn't migrate over to another console straight away, because the competitors were all "wrong" (and still are). That and the instinct was to sit back and see which system came out on top, so as not to be burned again.

(and I don't think that was ever clear - yes the PlayStation 2 sold the most units by far, but third-parties are usually better on Xbox, and the GameCube had better exclusives)


The decision to split the library three ways was a poor one, although somewhat understandable from a 2001/2002 perspective, given the idea of multi-platform video games wasn't much of a thing. But say you really liked Crazy Taxi - that's not on Xbox, but it is on PS2 and GameCube, so the assumption is any sequels will follow on those platforms. Then Crazy Taxi 3 comes out as an Xbox eclusive.

And then you have situations like Space Channel 5, which I would never have bought into were it not for the Dream On demo discs showing me how amazing it was. If it's not going to get even a fraction of that attention in PS2 land, of course it's going to fail... although to be fair, many of the early titles were just Dreamcast re-releases, so we'd have no reason to buy them in the first place.

 

Samba de Amigo: Virtual Party being heavily promoted on the Meta Quest 3 reminded to back in those days. Hopping on the newest hardware launch was always 3rd party Sega thing IMO

 

None of the sixth generation releases should've been exclusive to Xbox. Not a slight against that system (I actually like both it and the 360), but pretty much every game made for it I feel would've been a much bigger success also coming out on GameCube, PS2, or ideally both. There's no good reason JSRF, Crazy Taxi 3, OutRun 2, Shenmue 2 or Panzer Dragoon Orta needed to be stuck on a system with an audience actively uninterested in them.

I also wish SC5, Rez or Virtua Fighter 4 made it to GameCube, but I'll concede that's really just for me lol. GameCube was my personal Dreamcast successor.

 

The idea of putting these games on the Xbox was to make an audience. Microsoft noted the lack of Japanese developers, so sought out to get some, so it's a sound strategy, just one that didn't pay off. It's Western consumers who weren't buying Sega games in enough volumes, but I couldn't tell you why.

Like, the impression I have is that initial Xbox adopters were PC fans who... didn't have good enough PCs, so I can only assume Sega games didn't cross their radar. But did the same thing happen to Tecmo? Loads of Xbox games are very un-PC like. Sense makes no.

 

Yeah, Tecmo had big tits and big blood LMAO

In all seriousness, Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden continued their MS relationship, while Sega franchises didn't. It's pretty appearent that Sega felt very burned by Xbox. Early 360 era had exclusives from everybody. Capcom, Namco Bandai, Square Enix, FromSoft (overseas different publishers handled different titles) and for 1st party Mistwalker came along. Sega of Japan was very apprehensive about Xbox at this point IMO.

 

Still did crap on the PS 2.

 

None should have been exclusive to any console. I remember reading all the stories on how even EA was fearful of SEGA going 3rd party and it turned out to be a damp squib because it was all so over the place and yet another mixed message from SEGA.
I would have liked to see SEGA lead on the XBox and just port the games to the other systems. Some of the titles SEGA put on each system made no sense. To put PSO on the GameCube made no sense given Nintendo's anti-online stace and the PS2 was an RPG monster so not to put Skies of Arcadia made no sense at all to me I was XBox myself because it felt to me so much like a Dreamcast 2

But then you have people saying if it only came out on this system it would have been so different. I remember XBox fans saying that with VF and it sells like crap on the 360 and remember some PS2 fans saying Outrun should have been on the PS2 and it sells like crap and there's part of me that It was also a shame that SEGA shutdown its PC Disvion in Japan and merged the team into Smilebit.

Speaking of XBox and doing things differently. I really felt that Shenmue 2 should have come out on the DC in the USA. I really think it would have done so much better than making people in the USA wait and then the XBox version looked hardly any better and was a disappointment for many based on looking like a DC game

 

I recall reading Microsoft bundled million Sega GT 2002/JSRF, but can't find a source. Guess the Sega games would have gotten some exposure if that was the case.

 

If I recall, Microsoft paid Sega to get Shenmue 2 on Xbox in the USA. They also paid for the voice work, which is why only that version has English voice acting.

 

i would of liked Microsoft pay Sega to be more of a deal on XBLA and port some of these arcade exclusives