Classified SEGA of America Docs From ~1996 Have Just Been Shared Online
- Thread starter Gamernyc78
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That didn't make sense of course but there's a reasoning behind: Back in the day it took years for consoles to get outside of Japan. Maybe the genesis was old news for the japanese in 1993/1994 but not in the rest of the world, much less the US.
Sega CD and 32x were the mistakes. Genesis could still survive through the mid 90s and transition to the 5th gen smoothly.
Sega CD and 32x were the mistakes. Genesis could still survive through the mid 90s and transition to the 5th gen smoothly.
Beat me to the punch
Yeah the recent revelations are making me re-evaluate how much of the blame Sega of Japan actually deserves for the company's downfall as a platform holder.
I would still say SoJ are culpable, but SoA seem to have made some disastrous decisions of their own that SoJ supported (because they assumed SoA knew what they were doing due to Genesis success). The whole time I thought SoJ purposefully withheld Saturn from SoA but that doesn't seem to be the case. SoA simply wanted to really push the 32X instead
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Well to be fair in the English media we had access to more interviews with the SoA staff. Now you put the email from Kalinsky + the text from the Japanese guy puts a perspective that makes more sense. And well, Sonic is from there, as well as all successful Sega franchises, SoA seemed to think that the Genesis would live along the 32-bit consoles (that attitude was apparent in "console wars" a book about that period of time in video games history). So that led to the 32-X as a bridge console, which threw off any kind of balance that the company may have had coming to the release of the Saturn.Beat me to the punch
Yeah the recent revelations are making me re-evaluate how much of the blame Sega of Japan actually deserves for the company's downfall as a platform holder.
I would still say SoJ are culpable, but SoA seem to have made some disastrous decisions of their own that SoJ supported (because they assumed SoA knew what they were doing due to Genesis success). The whole time I thought SoJ purposefully withheld Saturn from SoA but that doesn't seem to be the case. SoA simply wanted to really push the 32X instead
I could have seen a situation similar to what went on in Japan if SoA had done their job correctly. Sony ended up with a comfortable lead, Sega second beating the N64 in this market. Maybe if the Saturn had done better they would have been some Square games on it (pure speculation, I have never heard of them even considering anything on a Sega console).
Between Square really wanting to dive right into the 3D revolution, and the Saturn being a bit of a rough time to develop for in that regard, I don't think they'd have put many games on it. Maybe some ports of older games a la Final Fantasy Anthology, given it had their sprite-based titles, and the Saturn excelled at that, but I doubt they'd have tried to force any of their newer stuff onto it.