Sega Saturn

'that were properly made' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. I've got a bunch of Sega Saturn and AKAI/Zero-G sample cds that are basically unreadable already due to disc rot. There was a lot of cheaply made optical media floating around in the late '90s.

I was a gamer from Atari 2600 to Saturn. My experience was exactly that once I was bored with Virtua Fighter it felt like nothing good was coming out for it. Even Virtua Fighter while fun didn't stay that fun for very long. I know I had just got it at New Years 1995/96. It was $399, $790 adjusted for inflation. It is really one of the worst purchases of my life in terms of the excitement of coming home with it to not playing it a few months after. I had no other games but Virtua Fighter for it and it pretty much ruined my interest in gaming.

That’s all partly true too but the architecture was definitely impactful because it didn’t render triangles. It was a sprite machine that faked 3D by using a second processor to skew spites into triangles (which also broke alpha blending in the process). I also don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that SDKs were unknown to Sega at the time. They were being occasionally used on earlier consoles too (even if it wasn’t the norm). The real reason Sony had an SDK on launch and Sega didn’t was simply because Sega had a massive development resource whereas Sony had to rely entirely solely on 3rd party developers. So releasing an SDK was always on the roadmap for Sega but a lesser priority than it wouldn’t have been for Sony. An SDK would certainly have made it easier to program for the Saturn but ultimately it would still have been significantly harder than the PlayStation. Your overall point that there were lots of contributing factors is correct though. I wasn’t intending to suggest that the Saturns failure was down to one specific thing. Edit: just to add, I agree there are some awesome 3D games on the Saturn. I own one and have a few. But the existence of good 3D games doesn’t negate the point that it was architecturally a challenging platform to do 3D on. I’d describe it really more of a 2D console that can do 3D via an official hack.

In the end, PR and Sony's pockets beat SEGA. That's really it. SEGA had many self-inflicted wounds for sure. Games: what games set the world on fire on PSX, really? Resident Evil in '96 and FFVII in' 97? And the Saturn had killer games esp in '96. So it's def not the library IMO. Hard to code for: devs had no problem dealing with the Playstation 2 a gen later, and the DC was easy to utilize but everyone dropped it when SEGA discontinued it, even tho the user base was good (in the USA at least, not sure about EUR). Consumer good will toward SEGA: yeah, but look at reliability issues with Sony and MS systems. They were pretty bad, esp with the 360, but these didn't hurt their console long-term health at all. The SEGA CD was not a flop in the States at least. It was always a high-end, kind-of-unnecessary cool product with some great games, but no killer app. It was successful for SEGA. (The 32x WAS a huge eff up tho for everyone involved. But I don't think on a mass-consumer level it's brief existence single-handedly crippled the Saturn). People will buy anything that's marketed well in the States (can't speak for EUR). The Saturn was marketed like CRAP in the US. SEGA had its head up its ass and threw out all that made the Gen more successful than the SNES. We can talk tech and minor details about what worked and didn't work for the consoles, but it's really just marketing and no good Sonic at launch (or ever) that doomed it.

It's also the price. Saturn was $399 on release, Playstation was $299. Without Sony's big name and 3D graphics, $299 would have spelled doom ($199 was the standard price before).

I can believe Sony did it. The PlayStation hit a lot of the right buttons at the right time. Sega was dead by the time the Saturn landed. Sega burnt too many fans when they launched the Sega CD and 32X just to abandon them nearly immediately. Parents didn't want to hear that Sega was launching yet another system. Sega launched 3 consoles in 2.5 years in North America. Sega burnt all their goodwill. Video games can be an industry of momentum and trust. If you keep launching and abandoning products, you lost the trust and momentum. Developers don't want to commit to a system you'll abandon. Gamers don't want to buy a system you're going to abandon. Sega had shown that it would abandon systems at the first hiccup - and try to get you to buy junk. Sega's Saturn was also a weird system. It decided to use quadrilaterals instead of triangles and was complex which makes it harder to use effectively. Nintendo's N64 would be launching a year after the PlayStation. While the N64 might have had more 3D capabilities, many of the games on the system didn't look as good and the 3D gameplay wasn't as compelling as the PlayStation's. Not only that, PlayStation games were so much cheaper! At $50/game, it was just a ton more affordable than the $70 that N64 games were going for. By the time that the N64 came out, the PlayStation had a huge library of excellent games that were cheap. You even started to see older games for $25. Sony's brand at the time was like gold. Everyone wanted anything wit…

The Wii did well as a fad but most of its buyers just toss it in the closet after the novelty wore off. The PlayStation 3 was a screw up. It was too expensive and came out late after the 360. It damaged Sony’s reputation somewhat but did alright despite Sony’s misstep IMHO due to the PS2’s clout. The Saturn … so many mistakes by Sega. Got trounced on price by the PlayStation. Was rushed to market at the last minute to try to beat the PlayStation to the market, resulting in shortages and uneven distribution that piss off retailers and limited launch titles. The earlier launch date also pissed retailers off because they have to adjust floor space and piss launch title developers off because their titles can no longer make the new date and they were banking on the visibility of being a launch title. There was mixed messaging with the launch of the X32, which flopped, relatively close to the Saturn’s launch too which hurt consumer trust. Sega burned a lot of bridges. All things being equal this generation, the PS4’s tremendous popularity IMHO helped the PS5 pull ahead of the Series X - don’t get me started on the confusingly named cousin system the Series S.