Sega: We Have No Plans To Sell The Company.

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

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24 Jun 2022
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Zzero said:
Dreamcast released in 98/99. How the fuuuuuck was it going to have DVD support?
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DVD was available by then. They could've dropped the network adapter and added the DVD in its place with those saved costs.

Maybe that would've required pricing Dreamcast a bit higher at launch, or taking a somewhat bigger lost. But given how much lack of DVD impacted perception of it (especially in Japan), it would have been worth the somewhat added cost. They also maybe could've released a DVD add-on for the Saturn in Japan in 1998 to get
some extra profits and see the feasibility of it as a technology (if they were curious or hesitant), and delayed Dreamcast in Japan until late Spring 1999.

They didn't NEED to release in late 1998 in Japan. They wanted to in order to try getting a jump on Sony and Nintendo's next consoles ASAP. But, Saturn was still doing decently in Japan in 1998; rushing Dreamcast hurt Saturn and also hurt Dreamcast.

ksdixon said:
Didn't somewhere in there SOJ foist off the last part of production and the burden of sales for the CD, 32X and the Pico onto SOA? Almost to keep them busy whilst they plotted their own Saturn specs.

Am I correct in thinking we never got a Saturn-MegaDive combo console? That cartridge slot didn't play MD games did it? That's where the money would have been. Saturn library lacking say, a Sonic and a Streets Of Rage? Fuck it, the most successful older console and the new hot shit together in one system, covering the library shortfall of the other (ahem: fuck cd/32x)
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I know that for the 32X, they absolutely put that on SoA. SoA were the ones who really wanted it (for a dumb reason; continuing with the SVP add-on chips for specialized game cartridges would've been the better idea), but SoJ had no issue keeping them busy with 32X while they themselves worked on the Saturn and withheld a lot of its specifications from SoA as long as possible.

The combo console was actually going to be MegaDrive/Genesis & 32X. There may have been plans for MegaDrive/Genesis BC on Saturn early on, but SoJ determined it would have been too costly. That said, the evolution of Sega's consoles up to that point showed a clear pattern of the successor system taking hardware components of the previous one and adding onto it with newer technologies. They did it going from the SG-1000 to the Master System, then from Master System to MegaDrive/Genesis. The Mega/Sega CD and 32X implemented that concept in practice by having hardware run in tandem with the MegaDrive/Genesis.

But I guess concern over being outdone completely by PS1's 3D, combined with rushing a redesign for Saturn to be more competitive, forced SoJ to drop any built-in BC plans.
 
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