Where do you think gaming would be today if Sega were still part of the "big three"?

WELL THAT'S EMBARRASSING TO MISS.

My bad! Not sure how I missed this initially.

 

Love these questions. On the high spec end, I think they'd absolutely be in the same position Sony is now. Sega's major selling point was the quality of their in-house productions, but their capacity for development would be stretched thin in an era where games cost way too much and take way too long to produce. So they'd rely on third party developers to keep the hype churn going, diluting the console's identity and lowering the baseline level of quality because these developers have to do multi-platform releases to profit. And so these consoles can only differentiate themselves through UX and gimmicks, diverting resources into anything and everything but actual games.

I've decided now that the only way Sega could've really thrived is if the Game Gear were a success. They had to beat the Game Boy to market, it had to fit in your pocket and it had to run on two AA batteries. It didn't even need to be a better experience, it just had to be first. Nintendo only gets to operate the way they do because they've monopolized all the spaces where low spec hardware is still viable. Consumer expectations are lowered accordingly, so they really can just keep churning out games that are purely fun to play and don't take several years and hundreds of people to make, just the way Sega likes it.

Their failure might've just been over-determined, seeing as the market has only ever been able to sustain one handheld at a time. Which is fair- you're only bringing one handheld with you. Now your whole library's on there. Now you're locked in. The PSP and Vita were both superior products and they never made a dent, just because Nintendo got there first.

So here's how Sega can still win: AR gaming is coming. The day where you put on a pair of glasses that don't cost $2,000 and won't get you laughed at or stabbed on the street, and then the whole world around you becomes the game- that's the only remaining frontier I can imagine in my lifetime. They team up with Magic Leap or any other company that's got a head start on the optics R&D and release a branded Sega AR headset. The novelty of the tech outweighs the resource constraints and they're free to make cheap, tiny little games that are all revolutionary by virtue of being first.

It was destiny. It's what they've always wanted

 

I imagine Sega would probably be in Sony's position about now, maybe slightly less reluctant to pull inactive IPs out of their pocket, but still in a similar slump that the rest of the AAA industry kind of fell into. Nintendo have somewhat escaped it but I honestly feel like that's just because they realized they shouldn't play the same game as everyone else back when the GameCube failed as it did, I struggle to imagine SEGA reaching the same conclusion had they survived the Dreamcast- They're a company that really struggled to avoid shooting themselves in the foot.

 

The contemporary gaming press generally weren't that interested in handhelds but from what I gather, the Game Gear was pretty well received as a product. As was the Atari Lynx (maybe even moreso in the early years).

Certainly the Game Gear was considered hands-down superior to the Game Boy in all aspects, save for retail price (for the hardware at least) and battery life. There weren't too many fans of the Game Boy's spinich graphics and lack of back-light, to the point where it was being written off by 1991/1992 in the face of colour competition. Side-by-side the Game Gear usually won (which is the kicker - focus testing was telling Sega they had the best product), but the media wasn't "imaginitive" enough - the Game Boy will keep you occupied throughout a transatlantic flight, while the Game Gear will be dead before you've got to the airport.

And I don't think that really sank in until Nintendo started releasing coloured shells and the Game Boy Pocket in 1995/1996, i.e. confirmation that Nintendo were playing a very different game in the handheld space to home console, and that yeah, Sega and Atari's offerings might not actually be practical. But by that point Atari had exploded and Sega had got bored, so idk.

I would guess the Game Gear made a return on its investment, but the R&D needed to extend its shelf life past 1996 wasn't financially viable. Really the only path to more success is dropping the backlight, but that was never going to happen. But either way it was never a 32X situation.


And I don't think anyone expected Pokémon.

 

Yeah. I honestly felt that's one of the reasons why all of Nintendo's competitors in the handheld market never reached the same height. IIRC, they were all notably more expensive than whatever Nintendo had.

 

The WonderSwan was cheap, I believe (probably thanks to Yokoi). Though it had the issue of being monochrome in the late 90s and pretty quickly being overshadowed first by it's own Color version, then outright replaced by the GBA. Mixed with never getting a stateside release.

 

You got me: The Vita flopping retroactively soured my memory of the PSP. That, and I'm shooting from the hip based on vibes since it felt like Lumines, LocoRoco and Patapon were the only games anyone thought were worth talking about. But then the fact that I owned one, spent hours on it, and it was the only handheld that I ever actually used outside the house instead of in my bed with an AC adapter- I guess it was a pretty big deal

 

Funny, I remember SEGA asking people to pay $70 for the privilege to play buggy unfished games like Motocross on the 32X. People always say were too forward-thinking and they set the standard for others to follow and there's the proof.

Let's not make out that there werent buggy games that cost a lot of money to buy, in the so called glory days of gaming or even SEGA :p


Even if the Saturn and DC had sold well I think SEGA would have had to look to partner with a bigger given the levels of investment needed in R&D , I read someone that Xbox paid AMD over a billion quid for the GPU of Xbox One and it wasn't even that great. That sort of level of investment was just too big for SEGA and give the money console gaming was brining in the big boys was always going to join in at some time.

 

It's tough to conclude, because we know that the PS2's launch was the final nail in the coffin for the Sega Dreamcast but there are a number of other factors that led there, primarily the failure of the Saturn and the weaker library of titles compared to the offerings from Sony. (Metal Gear Solid 2 being a huge one)

But, if you wanted to game it out - it's logical to conclude that for the Sega Dreamcast to succeed, you would need to beat the PS2 in value proposition and do it during their year of uncontested market advantage. I don't think there's any realistic pitch to get the library of titles from PS2's launch as Dreamcast exclusives, so the best way to do that is to include DVD support at launch. The PS2 having the DVD player was instrumental in its success, due to the high cost of standalone DVD players at the time. Of course, this was a reaction to the expensive components of the Saturn and a drive to reduce the cost for building individual units. Maybe in this scenario, Sega eats the cost for DVD player support but the Dreamcast subsequently fails anyway due to the costs. Not to mention, there were already issues with 3rd party support due to the decision to use the SH-4 processor architecture rather than the more powerful 3dfx, which was another one of many decisions where SOJ burned their American counterparts by choosing their own preferred solution.

That said, there was time to react to this, consider this rough timeline - note there are long periods where Dreamcast had a captive market but the decisions on hardware and architecture, along with the general soft sales and escalating losses from rebates and price cuts were too much.

~1997

• Sega begins work on the Dreamcast, opting for a weaker architecture (SH-4 and PowerVR) and GP-ROM instead of DVD-ROM to reduce production costs
• Rumors begin to emerge that the next Playstation will have DVD support

May 21 1998

• Dreamcast is announced with a Christmas launch window, drawing strong pre-orders, however manufacturing issues with the PowerVR chipset mean that there are less Dreamcasts available than anticipated, so Sega is forced to stop pre-orders.

November 27 1998

• The Dreamcast releases in Japan, selling out the entire stock available on day 1. It's estimated that the shipping issues cost 200K-300K of launch unit sales. Only 4 launch titles, the only big one being a Virtua Fighter 3 version. https://www.mobygames.com/group/12389/launch-title-dreamcast-japan/

December 23 1998

• Sonic Adventure is released in Japan (why didn't they just include it as a launch title?)

February 1999

• Dreamcast falls short of its 1M unit sales goal, selling <900K

March 2 1999

• Sony announces the PlayStation 2

September 9 1999

• Around the time of the US launch, the selling price is cut with the console now being a loss leader in the JP market\
• Dreamcast has a strong release in the US preceded by a successful advertising campaign, selling 500K units within 2 weeks of launch
• However, 3rd party support was lacking with EA choosing to not partner with Sega (https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-dreamcast)

September 20 1999

• Sony reveals the PS2 at the Tokyo Game Show, demoing Tekken Tag Tournament and Gran Turismo

November 9 1999

• Sonic Adventure is released in the US (why again not a launch title?)

March 4 2000

• PS2 launches in Japan

May 2000

• Sonic Adventure 2 revealed at E3

October 26 2000

• PS2 launches in US

End of 2000

• Dreamcast falls woefully short of the required 5M units to remain viable, at somewhere around 3M

March 31 2001

• Sega folds on the Dreamcast and ends its console business

April 2001

• Sega folds on the Dreamcast and ends its console business

June 2001

• Sonic Adventure 2 launches on the zombie Dreamcast

August 2001

• Sonic Adventure 2 Battle revealed at Nintendo Spaceworld for a Christmas release on Gamecube

 

The Dreamcast succeeding probably was impossible just going off the decisions made it it's lifespan- Fixing SEGA as it existed during that time would require changing things at least as far back as before the Saturn and 32X started development.

Killing the 32X would be a start, obviously- but it still doesn't change the symptoms that lead to it.

 

SEGA couldn't afford to include a DVD player in the DC it would have made its launch even more than the Saturn and unlike SONY who also had to pay for the DVD player rights, SEGA would also need to pay to have the rights for DVD playback for films something which SONY didn't need to do and also SONY would make money from DVD sales of its studio's films.

Not that I think for once second DVD playback is what killed the DC What killed the DC was silly mistakes by SEGA Japan, the piss poor SEGA Europe and the killer hype of the PS2 77 million polygons per second, powerful enough to start WW3 and the killer moment of MGS 2 trailer at E3 2000. In the end that's what killed the Dreamcast all the major big 3rd parties putting their AAA gaming bets on the PS2 and not the Dreamcast, that was the killer blow for the system.

 

I'm not sure if Sega doing another hyper-aggressive "SEE HOW GREAT WE ARE COMPARED TO THE COMPETITION" advertising campaign would go over that well in 2001 vs 1991, especially when the PS2 did have numerous technical advantages over the Dreamcast that were easy to see and point out. Storage!

 

In the 32-bit era I think SEGA could have done very well as a strong 2nd player and IMO if not for the 32X it would have been a strong 2nd place. In the PS2 with development and hardware costs going up SEGA really needed to be close to SONY and yes while Maken X and DOA 2 looked better on the DC it was the games that were coming on the PS2 that was getting the hype and the big push and one couldn't look over how utterly amazing Metal Gear Solid 2 looked and GT 3 which were just lightyears ahead of most DC titles.

SEGA didn't help itself either with the DC. The Japanese launch was a joke, Sega Rally 2 was rushed out and SEGA GT was an utter joke and Shenmue should never have been released in the state was but has Shenmue 1&2 and dropping World Wide Soccer made no sense whatsoever and then you also had the muppet show that was SEGA Europe

 

Having a demonstrably weaker product doesn't mean you can't have attack ads - just ask Sega of America with the Sega Saturn. The reason you don't have attack ads is because many territories ban the practice, and there's merit in not mentioning your competition in the first place. One of Sega's tactics in late 2000 was to make people forget the PS2 existed.


I'd be wary of giving points to either Metal Gear Solid 2 or Gran Turismo 3, because both games launched after the Dreamcast was discontinued (and MGS2 was November 2001 - Sega's own games were on the PS2 by then). It was expected a Gran Turismo game would arrive on PS2 from the moment the system was announced - if anything, Sega GT might have dissaded people from buying PS2s, just because they were sick of waiting.

Also IIRC there were questions about the state of "Gran Turismo 2000" but I'd have to look up the details and I can't be bothered. Either way, in the days before mainstream internet, there's a lot of relying on word of mouth, which would have only occured post launch.


Aside from some run-ins with the UK's Advertising Standards Authority, I have no issues with Sega Europe's Dreamcast campaign. There's a reason so many of us see the Dreamcast's dicontinuation as a tragedy than an inevitability, like say, the Jaguar or 3DO, or maybe even the Nintendo 64 depending on who you ask.

 

The internet was going places by the time of the PS2 launch in the west and then you also had a big gaming mainstream press with gaming mags and TV gaming shows covering the PS2 hype.
The E3 2000 Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty just blew away almost anything on the DC by a massive margin, to this day is one of the most impressive reveals for a game ever

People don't go on games when they are released a lot of people's minds are made up, when a game is 1st shown off more so back in those days when E3 was a thing

SEGA GT was poor looked poor on the DC and to make matters worse it had no-online play either, not even Dreamcast owners wanted the game never mind trying to get PlayStation fans to come over to SEGA more so with the game's terrible handling with massive amounts of understeer and the worst proposing, this side of a Mercedes F1 2022 car
and the final insult was 30FPS update, what on earth were SEGA Japan (the king of racers) thinking with that title, I do not know

And you have no issues with SEGA's Europe Dreamcast campaign? Let's show off the DC by not showing off the hardware or any games running and instead show people having their hair cut on TV. Let's also show no gameplay footage of Soul Calibur (at the time the best-looking game around) and instead let's advertise Soul Calibur on mainstream TV, by showing someone sending an E-mail. Let's also spend so much of the £100 million advertising budget on sponsoring every football team in Europe, whilst not having a top class football game to call your own, and then having no money left to promote the likes of Skies, Shenmue, Quake 3 on TV with the DC stellar 2000 line up

Add in not allowing Pal DC users to enter their ISP details which meant that far from up to 6 billion players, hardly anyone in Pal land could afford to play the DC online for any amount of time and killed one of the main selling points of the system.

SEGA Europe was a bunch of baboons run by a clown clearly out of his depth and had no understanding of the gaming market and where I wished he stayed at EMI

 

If we go the route of “Somehow Sega returned” I really cannot see a timeline where they didn’t mirror Microsoft in both the good and bad they experienced. Sega was trying to innovate online gaming, trying to mass appeal to western audiences, and were porting their old games to PC like crazy back then. Perhaps their partnership with the Dreamcast would’ve led to Microsoft and Sega codeveloping a console together, which to my knowledge is a practice that hasn’t occurred in mainstream gaming, usually it’s been addons that get the partnership and fail. If Sega didn’t screw themselves over and continued to try and capitalize on their success in NA with the Saturn it would have eventually led to many of the same trends we saw in the mid to late 2000s.
TLDR replace Microsoft name on Xbox with Sega and add in a bit more Japanese and there ya go.