SEGA: Could it be seen as its own worst enemy at times?

[Rogue Trooper]

Thinking back to various posts i've made on here relating to the 32X, MCD and Saturn (owner of which i've been of all 3) and also something i read today, regarding Sega and it's approach to UK press during the DC era.But just to get ball rolling, a few reminders of where SEGA went badly wrong and possible damage as a result:


The MCD:Brave attempt by SEGA to bring the MD more upto level of SNES performance (and beyond in cases of Sprite scaling), so extra CPU and custom chips which allowed for sprite+background scaling, texture mapping etc, newer sound chip and of course increased storage space of CD format, but rather than really tap into the potential the new hardware offered, SEGA plumped for FMV on a console with limited resolution and colour palette, when they could have delivered so many home conversions of their coin-op's on it.

32X:Much disscussed on other threads.


Saturn:SEGA turns down offer by Silicon Graphics of a single, simple design chipset which would bring Saturn upto PS1 levels of performance, instead Sega go twin SH2 route, leaving so many developers unwilling or unable to get best performance running both CPU's in parallel, 3rd party support flounders.

DReamcast:annoucement of which leaves Capcom thinking consumer will view Saturn as a 'dead format' and thus will stop buying games for, so Saturn Res.evil 2 canned.

But it's HERE i want to look at, SEGA's realationship with UK stores i will get to later, but it's how they 'treated' UK press around Dreamcast era:


EDGE described Dreamcast as: The Format That Would Be King (If it were allowed) and went on to describe how SEGA failed to supply screenshots for games, despite being asked numerous times, along with product info, press discs were'nt sent out, modem-ready DC's arrived in magazine offices 3 weeks after they hit the high street and Edge recived mere 2 phone calls from SEGA Europe in 8 month period and even when the specilist or gaming press did recieve goods, the 'lifestyle' magazines were left waiting, thus making it nigh on impossible for them to do DC reviews.

Not the best way to promote your new hardware, espically when you so badly need the early head start before your competition unviels the full force of it's hype monster P.R machine......

[zapiy]

I have to agree, from what i have read over the years more or less cements your comments fella.. Sadly whoever pulled the strings those days lead Sega down the proverbial garden path with some of the gaming industries worst decisions..

[AmigaJay]

Hmm
The Mega CD wasnt really in competition with the snes, at that 91-93 when it launched consumer wanted CD, in the back of their minds they knew fmv games were shite but it's was a new experience at home, along with having a CD player as part of the bundle, cartoon intros and cd music were all the rage.

I don't think that was a bad move by Sega at all, it was the 32x and £400 saturn that ruined confidence.
The Saturn was and still is a fine machine, they just underestimated Sony at the time...

Sega were in trouble as soon as the Saturn launched so they knew a few years later they would have to beat Sony to market, they did with a great machine at a great price, of course by then the damage was already done.

I heard Sega were good with the press, prob more with dedicated Sega mags, but who cares about the toilet paper that is Edge?!

[Rogue Trooper]

Hmm
The Mega CD wasnt really in competition with the snes, at that 91-93 when it launched consumer wanted CD, in the back of their minds they knew fmv games were shite but it's was a new experience at home, along with having a CD player as part of the bundle, cartoon intros and cd music were all the rage.

I don't think that was a bad move by Sega at all, it was the 32x and £400 saturn that ruined confidence.
The Saturn was and still is a fine machine, they just underestimated Sony at the time...

Sega were in trouble as soon as the Saturn launched so they knew a few years later they would have to beat Sony to market, they did with a great machine at a great price, of course by then the damage was already done.

I heard Sega were good with the press, prob more with dedicated Sega mags, but who cares about the toilet paper that is Edge?!

Whilst i'm sure all the fuss over Night trap was great P.R for SEGA's MCD at the time, do wonder if the $2 Million SEGA spent on developing Ground Zero Texas was money well spent.

No idea how much cash was poured into SEGA's canned V.R system for the MD, nor the NOMAD, but often wonder what could have happened had the resources on those 2 projects alone been spent on R+D for Saturn?.

Who cares about EDGE? well, going from interviews/articles in there, few random examples:

I.D, Activision, CBM, Atari, Sega, Nintendo, MS, E.A, Treasure, Capcom, Bungie, Bizzare Creations, Sensible Software, Psygnosis, Ocean, Ubisoft, Gremlin, Konami, Treasure...basically the industry over the years.Personal opinions of the rag aside, it was not good P.R from SEGA's point of view to be seen as frustrating to deal with by any of the UK press.

[AmigaJay]

Every company makes as many mistakes as they do success' alot of the time it's wasted millions on R&D on unreleased hardware.
Nintendo is another example with hundreds of millions wasted òn the a Virtual Boy and N64DD and smaller addons like the Gameboy camera and printer that sold by the handful undoubtedly cost more than they got back on.

Quite a few company's lost alot of money during those early VR PR battles, Sega and Atari included, regarding the Nomad I don't think much ŵas lost on that in comparison.

Plus I don't think ône slow dealing with Edge made sod all difference in the long run Anyhoo!

[Rogue Trooper]

Every company makes as many mistakes as they do success' alot of the time it's wasted millions on R&D on unreleased hardware.
Nintendo is another example with hundreds of millions wasted òn the a Virtual Boy and N64DD and smaller addons like the Gameboy camera and printer that sold by the handful undoubtedly cost more than they got back on.

Quite a few company's lost alot of money during those early VR PR battles, Sega and Atari included, regarding the Nomad I don't think much ŵas lost on that in comparison.

Plus I don't think ône slow dealing with Edge made sod all difference in the long run Anyhoo!

Seem to recal HASBRO investing millions in a home VR system, before scrapping entire project.

Edge's readership far too small to turn the tide, just using it as an example of how Sega treated the press in general, ie it did'nt seem a high priority of theirs to get games and systems to the press or even keep them abreast of what was going on-Hard to see how they thought to generate hype etc if they kept press too much in the dark, just who did they think were going to be promoting Dreamcast at various levels?.

[Rogue Trooper]

Going back to the saturn though, whilst sega themselves were clearly making great strides in tapping into the hardware, witness leaps from say VF-VF:Remix and Daytona to Sega Rally, they seemed to want to keep the best in terms of coding routines etc to themselves.

I know they offered tech support to 3rd parties, but when i read in interview with Capcom that they were struggling to get the same level of performance from the 2X SH2's as Sega's coders were, along with various 3d parties admitting they gave up and just used the 1 SH2, i wonder if it was pride on Sega's part or something else, but it does question the realationship between sega and it's 3rd party developers.

At a time Sony was wooing 3rd parties left, right and centre with PS1 and mags always seeming to be saying how poor a Saturn version looked compared to PS1 version, would it not have made lot more sense for Sega to assist 'trusted' 3rd parties as much as possible, so Saturn had the best quality 1st and 3rd party support?.

Might have put an end to all the 'saturn rubbish at 3D myths' if nothing else.

[AmigaJay]

It's all ifs and buts though....same could be said for any company to not let shit games be released for their format, or help them make them better! I suppose it comes down to resources, plus why should one company be helped and not another?
I think a few other devs got the most out the Saturn, but again who's to know who helps who, plus the same could be said about nVidia who won't let alot of devs basic info to 'write to the metal' as it were.

Plus again I think the market was stagnating, everyone was sitting on their laurels and along comes Sony chucking billions at the market...it did change everyone's way of thinking...like it or not.

[Rogue Trooper]

It's all ifs and buts though....same could be said for any company to not let shit games be released for their format, or help them make them better! I suppose it comes down to resources, plus why should one company be helped and not another?
I think a few other devs got the most out the Saturn, but again who's to know who helps who, plus the same could be said about nVidia who won't let alot of devs basic info to 'write to the metal' as it were.

Plus again I think the market was stagnating, everyone was sitting on their laurels and along comes Sony chucking billions at the market...it did change everyone's way of thinking...like it or not.

Indeed, i guess what i'm trying to do here is look at the 'factors' (if that's the right word) that could have been different had Sega themselves played a different hand.Not suggesting 1 or more would have turned the tide in either PS1 or PS2 era, as Sony had the upper hand in terms of money to throw at the promotion of the hardware alone.

Just looking at what Sega did and why and how they handled things when things heated up.Will post few more musings in a momement.

[Rogue Trooper]

Reading through back issue of EDGE:Making Of...Sonic X-Treme (Typical EDGE, stop doing the very features you are bloody good at doing), what a cluster-f*ck SEGA were.

They could'nt decide what platform to develop game for (MD? Mars 32X? Saturn? PC?), teams founded had little/no experience in anything but PC, so PC decided to be lead platform and have game ported to Saturn, porting of code went very slowly, then yes, you can use Nights game engine, 2 weeks in, stop all work using Nights engine, Yuji Naka is threatening to quit if Nights engine is allowed to be used for this game.....

[TL]

Latest RG has an interview with Tom Kalinske in it, that makes for some interesting reading!

[Rogue Trooper]

Latest RG has an interview with Tom Kalinske in it, that makes for some interesting reading!

Should make for good reading.Tom's never been backwards in coming forwards in interviews i've read with him, not afraid to face upto critics, admit mistakes and say it how he sees it.

[DreamcastRIP]

Latest RG has an interview with Tom Kalinske in it, that makes for some interesting reading!

Should make for good reading...

It should... provided it's a genuine new interview with him by someone representing the magazine rather than another RG article cobbled together from quotes copy/pasted off the internet like that woeful piece on Miyamoto was.

[Rogue Trooper]

Latest RG has an interview with Tom Kalinske in it, that makes for some interesting reading!

Should make for good reading...

It should... provided it's a genuine new interview with him by someone representing the magazine rather than another RG article cobbled together from quotes copy/pasted off the internet like that woeful piece on Miyamoto was.

Yep mentioned it in the Issue 116 thread, but these days, too much of what i read in RG has been done in other magazines (with more detail) months before.In terms of copy+paste stuff, the Rev's Kick-Off feature months ago was the worst, all the bile he'd been building up in various magazine articles and on his site put in 1 feature.

[TL]

It's legit, Paul Drury did it.