The article describe it as if the design was surprising with how many chips there were etc, but it's important to understand the context : complete lack of synergy and "fight for dominance" between the Japan and USA team, SEGA JP was making a 2D console, SEGA US was making a 3D console, the JP team was about to win that fight and then the PSX appeared so they, essentially, merged the two together.
You end up with a 2D console with parts and bits of an unfinished 3D console inside it. It makes no sense.
For a tech enthousiast and someone who loves reading dev postmortem, it's glorious. For someone who likes a clean design, it's irksome to no ends. For mass gamers of that era, where the big thing was "arcade in your living room" it's a disapointement, and SEGA not knowing which side to focus on didn't help at all.
This is largely incorrect. The Saturn was entirely a Sega of Japan design. There's an interview (https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-se...) with the Saturn hardware designer that gives some perspective into why he chose to make the hardware the way he did. Basically, he knew that 3D was the future from the response the PSX was getting, but besides AM2 (the team at Sega that did 3D arcade games like Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, etc), all of Sega's internal expertise was on traditional 2D sprite-based games. Because of this, he felt the best compromise was to make a console that excelled at 2D games and was workable at 3D games. I think his biggest mistake was that he underestimated how quickly the industry would switch to mainly focusing on 3D.
The actual result of Sega's infighting was far more stupid IMO. Sega of America wanted a more conservative design than the Saturn using a Motorola 68020 (successor to the 68000 in the Genesis) which would have lower performance, but developers would be more familiar with the hardware. After they lost this fight, they deemed the Saturn impossible to sell in the US due to its high price. SOA then designed the 32X, a $200 add-on to the Genesis that used the same SH2 processors as the Saturn but drew graphics entirely in software and overlayed them on top of the Genesis graphics. The initial plan was that the Saturn would remain exclusively in Japan for 2-3 years while the 32X would sell overseas. Sega of America spent a ton of money trying to build interest for the 32X and focused their internal development exclusively on the 32X. However, both developers and the media were completely uninterested in it compared to the Saturn. After it became evident that the 32X wouldn't hold the market, Sega of America rushed the Saturn to market to draw attention away from the 32X, but had to rely exclusively on Japanese titles (many of which didn't fit the American market) because they'd spent the past year developing 32X titles (the 32X had more cancelled games than released ones). All of this ended up confusing and pissing off developers and consumers.
> I think his biggest mistake was that he underestimated how quickly the industry would switch to mainly focusing on 3D.
I think his mistake was a bit more subtle than that. Because he didn't have any experience in 3D or anyone to ask for help, he didn't know which features were important and which features could be ignored. And he ended up missing roughly two important features that would have bought the Saturn upto the standard of "workable 3D".
The quads weren't even that big of a problem. Even if the industry did standardise on triangles for 3D hardware, a lot of the artist pipelines sick with quads as much as possible.
The first missing feature is texture mapping. Basically the ability to pass in uv coordinates for each vertex (or even just a single uv offset and some slopes for the whole quad). The lack of texture mapping made it very hard to export or convert 3D models from other consoles. Instead, artists had to create new models where each quad always maps to an 8x8 texel quad of pixels.
The second missing feature is alpha blending, or semitransparent quads. The Saturn did support half-transparency, but it only worked for non-distorted sprites, and you really want more options than just 50% or 100%.
With those two features, I think the Saturn would have been a workable 3D console. Still not as good as the playstation, but probably good enough for Sega to stand its ground until the Dreamcast launched.
I think it is funny that both were wrong. 2D games are still very much being developed and released today, and many outsell 3D games, even AAA 3D games.
People beat Sega up back then, and also now, but I do not think their hardware was that bad. The pricing was a huge issue.
If I were them, I would have NOT released the 32X as a standalone, NOT released the Saturn, and instead focus on a fusion of the two into a standalone cartridge based system. For everything people criticized the Saturn for, the cartridges made it work. The N64 showed off the advantage of using a cartridge over a CD based system.
If I were going to release a non-portable gaming system today, I'd build one around cartridges that are PCIE 5.0 x4 based and design it so that a) you can quickly shut off the system and replace the game rather than digging through ads/clunky ui/launcher. b) access and latency times are fast c) the hardware is potentially extendable in many different ways.
However, I actually liked the 32x and it's games. Maybe that is because I got the 32x on clearance at walmart for $10 and the games for $1-$2 each, or maybe it was because many of the games were fun and were a genuine upgrade over my 16 bit systems.
I don't think the Saturn was bad, but it was overpriced for the time and definitely rushed.
I DO think this rush to make consoles require an internet connection has left a sizable hole in the market, a hole that nintendo is only half filling. Offline gaming is a thing, and just because a console CAN be connected to the internet, doesn't mean it should be. I've been fantasizing about making one in the future. Something that is kind of like the old Steam Machine, but with the aspects I have mentioned. Maybe one day I will. For me it won't be about success, but rather about building something cool.
I was on team N and I was always confused by the weird accessories of the Genesis, and the 32X’s timing always was one of the most confusing bits, but I’d never actually looked into it.
While this is an entirely "in retrospect this would have been the best plan!". The youtube channel Video games esoterica had an interesting idea on an alternatives path Sega could have taken.
Namely, lean in hard on 32X for about a year or two to try and slow demand for Ps1 with cheaper hardware. Release the Neptune (Genesis with inbuilt 32x). They then take up Panasonics deal and use the M2 platform to be the Saturn. Release that in 1997 with specs far beyond Ps1/N64.
Neat idea but this is all just fantasy stuff at this point.
The 32X initially sold well, and media coverage was much stronger than the 3DO/Jag/CDi. But SEGA abandoned support for it REALLY quickly. I had a 32X at launch and was excited, but almost all the games sucked. Shadow Squadron is like the only legitimate non-port, original game that's pretty good lol and it came out when the system was about dead.
I think consumers were def skeptical of the 32X despite the marketing, and that was the main thing, in addition to an unimpressive library. Magazine coverage was decent but Gamepro in particular was very negative toward it. Like, Chaotix sucks but the music is amazing, and Gamepro not only trashed the game but gave even the music low marks because "no 32X audio is apparent" lol.
This is why I love HN. Busting esoteric misconceptions with detailed knowledge of industry and history. It makes sense why developers hated the Saturn and PSX came out on top. Developer experience is king!
I bought the Saturn on the US launch day and never clearly understood why, for the first maybe 6 months, there were only a handful of titles available. Interesting back story!
It also didn’t help that Sony poached a lot of studios with exclusivity deals.
The fact that the Saturn was harder to develop for, had a smaller market share and Sony were paying studios to release on the PlayStation, it’s no wonder Sony won the console wars that generation.
I've looked into it, and from what I can tell, the "3D was added late to the Saturn design" narrative is flawed.
It's commonly cited that VDP2 was added later to give it 3D support. But VDP2 doesn't do 3D at all, it's responsible for the SNES "mode 7" style background layers. If you remove VDP2 (and ignore the fact that VDP is responsible for video scanout) then the resulting console can still do both 3D just fine (Many 3D games leave VDP2 almost completely unused). 2D game would take a bit of a quality hit as they would have to render the background with hundreds of sprites.
If you instead removed VDP1, then all you have left are VDP2's 2D background layers. You don't have 3D and you can't put any sprites on the screen so it's basically useless at 2D games too.
As far as I can tell, the Saturn was always meant to have both VDP1 and VDP2. They were designed together to work in tandem. And I think the intention (from SEGA JP) was always for the design be a 2D powerhouse with some limited 3D capabilities, as we saw on the final design.
I'm not saying there wasn't arguments between SEGA JP and SEGA US. There seems to be plenty of evidence of that. But I don't think they munged the JP and US designs together at the last moment. And the PSX can't have had any influence on the argument, as the Saturn beat the PSX to market in Japan by 12 days.
This is typical of Sega arcade hardware of the era (Model 1 and Model 2); these systems have separate "geometry processor" and "rasterizer" boards, with onboard DSPs. If you squint, the Saturn is what someone might come up with as a cost-optimized version of that architecture.
If you check the other articles about the PlayStation [1] and the Nintendo 64 [2], you'll see that the design of a 3D-capable console in the 90s was a significant challenge for every company. Thus, each one proposed a different solution (with different pros and cons), yet all very interesting to analyse and compare. That's the reason this article was written.
> you'll see that the design of a 3D-capable console in the 90s was a significant challenge for every company.
While this is true, I still think that the PlayStation had the most interesting and forwarding looking design of its generation, especially considering the constraints. The design is significantly cheaper than both Saturn and Nintendo 64, it was fully 3D (compared to Saturn for example), using CD as media was spot-on and also having the MJPEG decoder (that allowed PlayStation to have not only significantly higher video quality than its rivals, but also allowed video to be used for backgrounds for much better quality graphics, see for example Resident Evil or Final Fantasy series).
I really wanted to see a design inspired in the first PlayStation with more memory (since the low memory compared to its rivals was an issue it seemed, especially in e.g.: 2D fighting games where the amount of animations had to be cut a lot compared to Saturn) and maybe some more hardware accelators to help fix some of the issues that plagued the platform.
This should have been no struggle for Sega. They basically invented the modern 3D game and dominated in the arcade with very advanced 3D games at the time. Did they not leverage Yu Suzuki and the AM division when creating the Saturn?
Then again rumor has it they were still stuck on 2D for the home market and then saw the PlayStation specs and freaked and ordered 2 of everything in the Saturn.
Oh I was not criticizing the article per se, my apologies if it came out as such, I just thought this piece of information was important to understand why they ended up with such a random mash of chips.
The latest episode of the excellent video game history podcast They Create Worlds (https://www.theycreateworlds.com/listen) does a good job debunking some of these myths.
Is this the PSX[0] you're referring to? I had no idea this existed, or what impact it had on gaming consoles.
Edit (answered): "Why is PlayStation called PSX? Wishing to distance the project from the failed enterprise with Nintendo, Sony initially branded the PlayStation the "PlayStation X" (PSX)."
The Sega Saturn had a pretty complicated hardware architecture. I can understand that scaling out the game "work" into multiple CPUs and dedicated processors makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective, but I'm sure this contributed to the Saturn's relatively poor sales.
Many people said that ultimately it was hard for companies to justify the investment in learning it all to make games that fully utilize the hardware. Somehow this reminds me of Sid Meier's saying that the player must have fun, not the game developer - and in this case, perhaps the hardware designers were having too much fun!
Growing up in the 90s, it was bizarre to witness the downfall of Sega. Here the Mega Drive (Genesis) was almost as successful as the SNES. Everyone either had a Mega Drive or played it regularly with friends. It was a very popular piece of hardware.
Then the generation after everyone had a Playstation, and I knew of only one kid who ended up with the Saturn. It's so strange considering that the Saturn was released several months ahead of the Playstation here.
I dont't know if it was due to the Saturn being seen as the inferior option at the time, pricing, availability or some other factor, but the Playstation absolutely killed it. After that Sega was gone.
In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. Genesis was huge in NA/Europe, but it was considered somewhat of a failure in Japan.
Sega has always floundered with its home consoles — they released 3 competitors to the NES after all. Genesis ended up being more of a one-trick pony than any indication of longterm success.
Sony rushing to release the Saturn before the PSX was a mistake IMHO. Not only did it beat Sony to market, it beat its own games to market. But mostly it just cost too much, especially compared to the PSX.
I was fanatic about Genesis because of the big title games like Mortal Kombat, Sonic, etc.
I VORACIOUSLY read gaming mags and the hype around the PSX was massive. It utterly dwarfed Sega. And seeing the first image of Cloud starting up at the Shinra tower captivated me. The games they were touting were just incredible looking.
It wasn't just the Saturn (though issues surrounding its release definitely didn't help) - Sega already looked kind of like bunglers after neither the Sega CD nor 32X really caught on.
> I can understand that scaling out the game "work" into multiple CPUs and dedicated processors makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective
IIRC it was not that, the Saturn was the most expensive to manufacture of the big three, and the need to price match the PS made it a financial disaster for Sega.
> Consequently, the VDP1 is designed to use quadrilaterals as primitives, which means that it can only compose models using 4-vertex polygons (sprites).
This gave the 3D Sega Saturn games a more boxy look than PS1 counterparts. Comparing Resident Evil on Saturn and PS1 is a good side by side to see the difference. The overall result is that Sega Saturn games have a unique aesthetic in 90s 3D gaming.
It's also worth highlighting that the Sega Saturn's emulation is far behind other platforms. Perhaps it's the lack of success in the west, paired with the complex architecture.
Saturn Emulation is definitely possible but the amount of complexity in the hardware means that it's much more resource intensive than its 32-bit contemporaries:
>Mednafen's Sega Saturn emulation is extremely CPU intensive. The minimum recommended CPU is a quad-core Intel Haswell-microarchitecture CPU with a base frequency of >= 3.3GHz and a turbo frequency of >= 3.7GHz(e.g. Xeon E3-1226 v3), but note that this recommendation does not apply to any unofficial ports or forks, which may have higher CPU requirements.
Those minimum specs are about the same as what's required to emulate a Wii via Dolphin, two generations ahead of the Saturn!
Yes, it's really quite good right now, and very accessible under programs like OpenEmu. I have a Saturn hooked up to a CRT still, but the emu doesn't feel very different these days.
Best alternative to emulation, im not sure where FGPA is but it gives me a peace of mind to just mod the console to support SD cards filled with every single game released for that console, picking up the original game from ebay if I really like the title and show support
Its such a hassle to take out the CD from its plastic casing with rubber gloves to preserve value and put it back in each time but you don't want to trade original game experience with emulation
You are talking about an Optical Disk Emulator, and a few have created for the Saturn. It takes files from an SD card and supplies the data to the console as if an optical drive was reading the data. I personally own one. Just dropping the correct keyword in case anyone else is curious.
The Sega Saturn had quite a few gems (e.g. Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force III, Burning Rangers, Dragon Force I & II, …) that were never ported or re-made afaiu.
The Dreamcast was great, but while the Saturn had some great game the console itself was really not "quite good" beside as a tech curiosity. It suffered greatly from being two consoles smashed in one.
I assume the complexity of the platform contributed to games being rarely ported off of it. In fact, the only games I know to exist on it and other platforms, are ports to the Saturn, never the other way around, although maybe someone can correct me.
From what I understand, emulating the platform is still tricky to this day, although there have been some significant advances in the last 10 years.
NiGHTS into Dreams was ported to PlayStation 2, and thence onto PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
Technically Tomb Raider was out on Saturn in Europe a few weeks before PlayStation and PC, but that's really being silly.
Edit: Forgot I'd already mentioned Panzer Dragoon for PC elsewhere, but there was Sonic R for PC as well, as with Panzer Dragoon, later ports of Sonic R are based on the PC version AFAIK.
Also, if I remember correctly the source code for Panzer Dragoon Saga apparently got lost.
Re ports from Saturn to other systems: I think Grandia and Lunar Silver Star Story were initially developed for the Saturn and later ported to the Playstation.
There was a port of Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night made just for the Saturn that never left Japan that included new areas, new items, and a Maria mode. So far as I know nobody's been able to merge the PlayStation or PS Classics version with the content unique to the Saturn version because they're too disparate. There's a few SNK games with content unique to the Saturn like that as well, like Ragnagard and World Heroes Perfect that people want ports of. Or at least the unique content merged into re-releases.
I love Copetti's work (and have previously used it with citation), but it always feels too high-level. But since I know how much work it is to write those, it always feels unfair to ask for more. Anyway, thank you Rodrigo if you're reading this !
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 fair to say that the consensus is that the PSX had a superior library to the Sega Saturn, particularly in the US. 1997 was a banger of a year - FF7, FF Tactics, Tekken 3, Symphony of the Night, etc.
Readit News
You end up with a 2D console with parts and bits of an unfinished 3D console inside it. It makes no sense.
For a tech enthousiast and someone who loves reading dev postmortem, it's glorious. For someone who likes a clean design, it's irksome to no ends. For mass gamers of that era, where the big thing was "arcade in your living room" it's a disapointement, and SEGA not knowing which side to focus on didn't help at all.
The wikipedia article has a lot more details [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn
The actual result of Sega's infighting was far more stupid IMO. Sega of America wanted a more conservative design than the Saturn using a Motorola 68020 (successor to the 68000 in the Genesis) which would have lower performance, but developers would be more familiar with the hardware. After they lost this fight, they deemed the Saturn impossible to sell in the US due to its high price. SOA then designed the 32X, a $200 add-on to the Genesis that used the same SH2 processors as the Saturn but drew graphics entirely in software and overlayed them on top of the Genesis graphics. The initial plan was that the Saturn would remain exclusively in Japan for 2-3 years while the 32X would sell overseas. Sega of America spent a ton of money trying to build interest for the 32X and focused their internal development exclusively on the 32X. However, both developers and the media were completely uninterested in it compared to the Saturn. After it became evident that the 32X wouldn't hold the market, Sega of America rushed the Saturn to market to draw attention away from the 32X, but had to rely exclusively on Japanese titles (many of which didn't fit the American market) because they'd spent the past year developing 32X titles (the 32X had more cancelled games than released ones). All of this ended up confusing and pissing off developers and consumers.
> I think his biggest mistake was that he underestimated how quickly the industry would switch to mainly focusing on 3D.
I think his mistake was a bit more subtle than that. Because he didn't have any experience in 3D or anyone to ask for help, he didn't know which features were important and which features could be ignored. And he ended up missing roughly two important features that would have bought the Saturn upto the standard of "workable 3D".
The quads weren't even that big of a problem. Even if the industry did standardise on triangles for 3D hardware, a lot of the artist pipelines sick with quads as much as possible.
The first missing feature is texture mapping. Basically the ability to pass in uv coordinates for each vertex (or even just a single uv offset and some slopes for the whole quad). The lack of texture mapping made it very hard to export or convert 3D models from other consoles. Instead, artists had to create new models where each quad always maps to an 8x8 texel quad of pixels.
The second missing feature is alpha blending, or semitransparent quads. The Saturn did support half-transparency, but it only worked for non-distorted sprites, and you really want more options than just 50% or 100%.
With those two features, I think the Saturn would have been a workable 3D console. Still not as good as the playstation, but probably good enough for Sega to stand its ground until the Dreamcast launched.
People beat Sega up back then, and also now, but I do not think their hardware was that bad. The pricing was a huge issue.
If I were them, I would have NOT released the 32X as a standalone, NOT released the Saturn, and instead focus on a fusion of the two into a standalone cartridge based system. For everything people criticized the Saturn for, the cartridges made it work. The N64 showed off the advantage of using a cartridge over a CD based system.
If I were going to release a non-portable gaming system today, I'd build one around cartridges that are PCIE 5.0 x4 based and design it so that a) you can quickly shut off the system and replace the game rather than digging through ads/clunky ui/launcher. b) access and latency times are fast c) the hardware is potentially extendable in many different ways.
However, I actually liked the 32x and it's games. Maybe that is because I got the 32x on clearance at walmart for $10 and the games for $1-$2 each, or maybe it was because many of the games were fun and were a genuine upgrade over my 16 bit systems.
I don't think the Saturn was bad, but it was overpriced for the time and definitely rushed.
I DO think this rush to make consoles require an internet connection has left a sizable hole in the market, a hole that nintendo is only half filling. Offline gaming is a thing, and just because a console CAN be connected to the internet, doesn't mean it should be. I've been fantasizing about making one in the future. Something that is kind of like the old Steam Machine, but with the aspects I have mentioned. Maybe one day I will. For me it won't be about success, but rather about building something cool.
Anyways, I'm rambling. Have a great night.
I was on team N and I was always confused by the weird accessories of the Genesis, and the 32X’s timing always was one of the most confusing bits, but I’d never actually looked into it.
Namely, lean in hard on 32X for about a year or two to try and slow demand for Ps1 with cheaper hardware. Release the Neptune (Genesis with inbuilt 32x). They then take up Panasonics deal and use the M2 platform to be the Saturn. Release that in 1997 with specs far beyond Ps1/N64.
Neat idea but this is all just fantasy stuff at this point.
I think consumers were def skeptical of the 32X despite the marketing, and that was the main thing, in addition to an unimpressive library. Magazine coverage was decent but Gamepro in particular was very negative toward it. Like, Chaotix sucks but the music is amazing, and Gamepro not only trashed the game but gave even the music low marks because "no 32X audio is apparent" lol.
The fact that the Saturn was harder to develop for, had a smaller market share and Sony were paying studios to release on the PlayStation, it’s no wonder Sony won the console wars that generation.
interesting. i always thought this was an order from SOJ.
It's commonly cited that VDP2 was added later to give it 3D support. But VDP2 doesn't do 3D at all, it's responsible for the SNES "mode 7" style background layers. If you remove VDP2 (and ignore the fact that VDP is responsible for video scanout) then the resulting console can still do both 3D just fine (Many 3D games leave VDP2 almost completely unused). 2D game would take a bit of a quality hit as they would have to render the background with hundreds of sprites.
If you instead removed VDP1, then all you have left are VDP2's 2D background layers. You don't have 3D and you can't put any sprites on the screen so it's basically useless at 2D games too.
As far as I can tell, the Saturn was always meant to have both VDP1 and VDP2. They were designed together to work in tandem. And I think the intention (from SEGA JP) was always for the design be a 2D powerhouse with some limited 3D capabilities, as we saw on the final design.
I'm not saying there wasn't arguments between SEGA JP and SEGA US. There seems to be plenty of evidence of that. But I don't think they munged the JP and US designs together at the last moment. And the PSX can't have had any influence on the argument, as the Saturn beat the PSX to market in Japan by 12 days.
[1] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation/
[2] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/
While this is true, I still think that the PlayStation had the most interesting and forwarding looking design of its generation, especially considering the constraints. The design is significantly cheaper than both Saturn and Nintendo 64, it was fully 3D (compared to Saturn for example), using CD as media was spot-on and also having the MJPEG decoder (that allowed PlayStation to have not only significantly higher video quality than its rivals, but also allowed video to be used for backgrounds for much better quality graphics, see for example Resident Evil or Final Fantasy series).
I really wanted to see a design inspired in the first PlayStation with more memory (since the low memory compared to its rivals was an issue it seemed, especially in e.g.: 2D fighting games where the amount of animations had to be cut a lot compared to Saturn) and maybe some more hardware accelators to help fix some of the issues that plagued the platform.
One exception to this is the shmup genre. The Saturn was inundated with Japanese Shmups and many are perfect (or near perfect) arcade ports.
Edit (answered): "Why is PlayStation called PSX? Wishing to distance the project from the failed enterprise with Nintendo, Sony initially branded the PlayStation the "PlayStation X" (PSX)."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX_(digital_video_recorder)
Many people said that ultimately it was hard for companies to justify the investment in learning it all to make games that fully utilize the hardware. Somehow this reminds me of Sid Meier's saying that the player must have fun, not the game developer - and in this case, perhaps the hardware designers were having too much fun!
Then the generation after everyone had a Playstation, and I knew of only one kid who ended up with the Saturn. It's so strange considering that the Saturn was released several months ahead of the Playstation here.
I dont't know if it was due to the Saturn being seen as the inferior option at the time, pricing, availability or some other factor, but the Playstation absolutely killed it. After that Sega was gone.
Sega has always floundered with its home consoles — they released 3 competitors to the NES after all. Genesis ended up being more of a one-trick pony than any indication of longterm success.
A lot of diehards (like me) felt really burned by those failures.
NES, Genesis, PSX/N64, PS2/XBOX, PS3/XBOX360, XboxOne.
I was fanatic about Genesis because of the big title games like Mortal Kombat, Sonic, etc.
I VORACIOUSLY read gaming mags and the hype around the PSX was massive. It utterly dwarfed Sega. And seeing the first image of Cloud starting up at the Shinra tower captivated me. The games they were touting were just incredible looking.
I was just a kid and marketing won me over.
IIRC it was not that, the Saturn was the most expensive to manufacture of the big three, and the need to price match the PS made it a financial disaster for Sega.
This gave the 3D Sega Saturn games a more boxy look than PS1 counterparts. Comparing Resident Evil on Saturn and PS1 is a good side by side to see the difference. The overall result is that Sega Saturn games have a unique aesthetic in 90s 3D gaming.
It's also worth highlighting that the Sega Saturn's emulation is far behind other platforms. Perhaps it's the lack of success in the west, paired with the complex architecture.
https://mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html#Section_int...
>Mednafen's Sega Saturn emulation is extremely CPU intensive. The minimum recommended CPU is a quad-core Intel Haswell-microarchitecture CPU with a base frequency of >= 3.3GHz and a turbo frequency of >= 3.7GHz(e.g. Xeon E3-1226 v3), but note that this recommendation does not apply to any unofficial ports or forks, which may have higher CPU requirements.
Those minimum specs are about the same as what's required to emulate a Wii via Dolphin, two generations ahead of the Saturn!
Its such a hassle to take out the CD from its plastic casing with rubber gloves to preserve value and put it back in each time but you don't want to trade original game experience with emulation
edit: oh, and of course Saturn Bomberman
Saturn and following on, the Dreamcast were quite good and deserved more success.
From what I understand, emulating the platform is still tricky to this day, although there have been some significant advances in the last 10 years.
Technically Tomb Raider was out on Saturn in Europe a few weeks before PlayStation and PC, but that's really being silly.
Edit: Forgot I'd already mentioned Panzer Dragoon for PC elsewhere, but there was Sonic R for PC as well, as with Panzer Dragoon, later ports of Sonic R are based on the PC version AFAIK.
Re ports from Saturn to other systems: I think Grandia and Lunar Silver Star Story were initially developed for the Saturn and later ported to the Playstation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandia_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar:_Silver_Star_Story_Compl...
Plus, the Saturn just wasn't that successful. Games like Panzer Dragoon Saga are legendary but only within niche circles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E
Some of the same OEMs and publishers made it through until today.
I’d like to see an infographic and may be so motivated that I make one.
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.