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SEGA: A LESSON FROM HISTORY

12/9/2016

19 Comments

 
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Could the gaming tides be turning against Sony and the PlayStation 4? For the past two months, the Xbox One has outsold the PS4 in North America - the first time it had sold more than its rival in almost a year. Admittedly, price reductions - due to retailers clearing stock to make way for the Xbox One S - most likely contributed, but it does indicate a general upward trend in the Xbox One's fortunes.

Sony's bad news continues, however, in the wake of its "PlayStation" meeting last week, where it unveiled its own slimmed-down console, and announced the PlayStation 4 Pro - a machine that, if you read the news sites and social media - nobody really wants or understands.

A further test of Sony's hardware will arrive next month in the form of the PlayStation VR, which, by all accounts, is having something of a "soft" launch. For "soft" read "snuck out".

Is it game over for Sony? Not yet. But you only need to look at the history of gaming to know how relatively quickly the fortunes of a market-leading console giant can turn. And perhaps the greatest series of bad-wrongs ever perpetrated by a games company was the litany of errors which led to the decline of Sega. Here are their five biggest mess-ups.
MEGA-CD
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There had been nothing like the Mega-CD before the Mega-CD: a hardware add-on for a phenomenally successful console, which brought CD-ROM, a whole new format of gaming, to the masses. However, it's fair to argue that people were curious about it, rather than excited. Even Sega seemed to release the thing with a sort of muted fanfare - like blowing into a bugle that had been bunged up with a pair of lederhosen.

Also, for all its vaunted power, it was a dodgy and underpowered bit of kit. The grainy full motion video it offered was soon superseded by the 3DO and other systems, and the general sense was that developers weren't really sure how to be utilise the storage and capabilities... beyond offering better sound, and video clips. 

While Sonic CD is, arguably, one of the best Sonic the Hedgehog games ever, Mega-CD games were generally pretty ropey, as developers struggled to find a way to best utilise the hardware. It was poorly supported, and what support it had was, generally, poor. 


Barely a year after its launch - just as it was being released in Europe - Sega all but cancelled development for the device. It had sold just over two million units before Sega discontinued the hardware to focus on the Saturn. Oh! But then it got distracted by something called "Project Mars" - the equivalent of driving to Disneyland, but taking a six-month detour through a Harvester car park.
32X
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In the history of gaming disasters, the 32X was arguably the biggest. It's appropriate that the thing was vaguely mushroom cloud-shaped, as it was nothing less than an apocalyptic disaster for Sega. 

Codenamed Project Mars, it was billed as an affordable way for Mega Drive owners to play 32-bit games. Certainly, the initial titles offered a better reason to buy it than the Mega CD ever did - although Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and a stripped-back Doom weren't really doing anything that the Super NES wasn't already doing with its Super FX chip. As the months wore on, Sega offered fewer and fewer reasons to own one. 

Ultimately, what the 32X managed to do was muddy Sega's message: do you stick with it and the Mega Drive, or upgrade to the imminent Saturn? It fractured Sega's focus, and when the Saturn was released six months later, development for the 32X all but dried up. It damaged the faith of Sega's rabid fanbase - and the company would never quite recover.
SATURN
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With Sega's focus and message being decidedly wonky by the time the Saturn was released, the machine never got off to a great start. It managed to beat the rival PlayStation to market with a surprise North American and European release, that upset unprepared retailers - some dropped Sega products from their shelves altogether - and allowed Sony to undercut the Saturn by $100 dollars. 

Despite a near decent launch title in the shape of Virtua Fighter, Sony's price, more aggressive marketing, and incentives for third-parties to support their new machine, meant that it went on to dramatically outperform the Saturn.

Within days, the PlayStation had sold more than the Saturn had managed in the previous five months. Further indignity came following unfavourable comparisons between the PlayStation's Ridge Racer and Sega's Daytona USA - which led most to conclude that Sony had the more powerful hardware. 

The price of the Saturn was cut to match the PlayStation in early 1996, but Sega's hardware was more costly to manufacture, and damaged the company's bottom line. Further unforeseen badness came in the way Sega dramatically underestimated continued interest in the Mega Drive/Genesis, turning its back on its most successful system far too early. The release of the Nintendo 64, and Super Mario 64 in particular, simply rammed home the message that the Saturn was the gaming equivalent of a bum-scented candle.

Hope came in the form of Sonic X-Treme - the 3D debut for Sega's mascot - but despite extensive development, the project was cancelled, leaving the Saturn without a flagship game for the company's most famous brand.

Following the botched launch, the Saturn struggled for the remainder of its life, crawling around an Accident & Emergency room begging for coins.
SONIC ADVENTURE
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The Dreamcast, Sega's follow-up to the Saturn, was a fine piece of kit. Sega did a lot right with the Dreamcast - decent price, decent hardware, decent games - but it was too little too late. With the GameCube and heavily-hyped PlayStation 2 just over the horizon, most people were content to adopt a wait-and-see approach to the Dreamcast, having been burned by the Saturn, and what was fast becoming Sega's tendency to ditch hardware too soon.

Though initial sales were strong in the US and Europe, it struggled in Japan, and with weak third party support - it failed to have the backing of Electronic Arts - sales ultimately fell two million short of what Sega needed for the system to be viable.

It might be controversial - given that the Dreamcast had many games now considered classics (Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shenmue) - but I'd argue that Sonic Adventure also served to damage the company's long-term fortunes. Though it went on to become the best-selling game on the Dreamcast, Sonic Adventure was a weird and glitchy mix of on-rails platforming, dull fishing games, excruciating voice acting, and an achingly tedious open world, where the player just wandered around having conversations. It wasn't a terrible game, but it didn't feel like a Sonic The Hedgehog game, in the way that Super Mario 64 felt faithful to its origins.

​Sega's mishandling of its Sonic brand continues to this day.
EVERYTHING SINCE
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Sega finally got out of the hardware game in 2001 - the last good decision it made. Most of us were hopeful that the new software-only Sega would have the space and resources available to create the sorts of games it was once famed for.

Unfortunately, years of bad decisions had taken their toll, and Sega were haemorrhaging money. Its first third-party release was a port of Chu Chu Rocket for the Game Boy Advance, followed by Sonic Advance - neither of which made much of an impact. Its first major multi-format release was Sonic Heroes in 2003, for the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox, but it was a long way from being the sort of Sonic game people expected or wanted. 

Continued financial woes led to the company merging with slot machine manufacturer Sammy in 2004, but since then Sega has struggled with its identity. It purchased Creative Assembly, best known for the Total War series, Football Manager creator Sports Interactive, and more recently Relic Entertainment, the team responsible for Company of Heroes. The games were a far cry from the sort of arcade-focused titles Sega was famed for. It's as if Sega no longer knows who it is, or what it's for.

Indeed, a look at Sega's corporate website is an exercise in self-administered depression, underlining its continued dedication to brands which seem an ill-fit for a company with such a history. It continues to roll out Sonic games to an increasingly disinterested marketplace.

Sega is these days focusing on mobile development and digital platforms - though even there it's hard to identify its achievements - but it's a minor player in an industry it was stood astride like a colossus. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo... be warned.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
SEGA: LIFE BEFORE THE MASTER SYSTEM - A HISTORY
​
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: SEGA MASTER SYSTEM - PART ONE BY MR BIFFO
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: SEGA MASTER SYSTEM - PART TWO BY MR BIFFO
​

​
19 Comments
gaaaysiiir
12/9/2016 11:48:03 am

Sonic has been damaging Sega's reputation for years and should have been consigned to history a long time ago. They could have made some easy money by selling off the rights to another company and moving on, but instead have persisted with this outdated character and made mostly very bad games that do nothing but service a dwindling number of insane fans.

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Carl Harrison
12/9/2016 12:59:32 pm

I would have agreed with you a couple of months ago about Sonic, he's a product of the time. It was my favourite franchise as a kid growing up in the 90's. BUT. Sonic Mania has got me very interested again and I'm certainly glad it's happening and seems to be in capable hands.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
12/9/2016 01:11:39 pm

I'm remaining cautiously optimistic. The level design does look at a bit more in the Sonic CD/Sonic Advance 2 vein, but it will no doubt beat Sonic 4.

John Veness
12/9/2016 02:35:15 pm

The section on the Mega CD in particular makes me think about the PSVR. An add-on for a very successful console, but people being curious rather than excited, the device being underpowered and low-res (compared to a PC and Vive for example), it being released with not much of a fanfare, developers not sure how to use it, etc.

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FatDave
12/9/2016 04:59:10 pm

I'm thinking the PS4 slim will still sell well and the pro is a waste of time unless you own an 4K TV.

The biggest thing for me about the new pair of PlayStations is nothing made me feel like I'm missing out on anything or have wasted money having only bought my PS4 about three months ago.

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Fizzymilk
13/9/2016 12:58:13 pm

It's already obvious 4k won't take off until the next gen and even then, titles will still mostly be upscaled. HD telly didn't get popular until loads of channels were available for free, and even now a minority of ratings come from the HD variants. People are gonna stick with 1080p sets until they die of old age.

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sunteam link
12/9/2016 06:03:02 pm

"There had been nothing like the Mega-CD before the Mega-CD" is not strictly true. NEC released the first ever console CD add-on for the PC Engine years before and it was hugely popular, pretty much becoming the standard format for the games by the end of its life.

I guess the difference being is that Sega was just clueless how to support theirs.

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Mr Biffo
12/9/2016 06:24:28 pm

Importantly, this is the full sentence what I wrote: "A hardware add-on for a phenomenally successful console, which brought CD-ROM, a whole new format of gaming, to the masses." - the key bit there being "phenomenally successful". CD-ROM existed just as VR exists now. What makes PSVR new is that it's the first time VR has been tried on a market leading console...

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Spiney O'Sullivan
12/9/2016 09:07:59 pm

Johnny Turbo, is that you?

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CdrJameson
12/9/2016 08:25:25 pm

Valkyria Chronicles! And on the PC!
It's like Advance Wars would be if they hadn't kept churning out the same old thing for years!
More things like this please Sega, and less of the Sonic anything really.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
12/9/2016 09:41:18 pm

I dispute the comments about the Sega CD. It wasn’t a new idea - there had been expansion modules for consoles before, and not just confined to Japan like the Famicom Disk System…

The software support was only ‘poor’ from the perspective people who expected it to fulfill the impossible promise of interactive movies. Yes, most of the FMV quality was terrible, though even this got a lot better as developers learned to reduce the colour depth and so get rid of all the pixellation that marred the early games. Some of the later titles even managed full-screen video which looked pretty decent for the time. For every FMV title, there was one that used the storage available to enhance a non-FMV title.

Wing Commander was cut down on the SNES, but the Sega CD version was much more intact and boasted an orchestral soundtrack and full voices throughout.
The Terminator took the very ropey Genesis game and cranked it up, with ten huge, all-new levels; beautifully animated sprites, and a storming Tommy Tallarico soundtrack.
AH-3 Thunderstrike took the Mode-7 effects the Sega CD could now do with easy and gave you a colossal collection of helicopter missions all around the world.
Snatcher is the stuff of legend (I own it).
Cryo’s Dune got a soundtrack still sought after today, beautiful flying animations and full voice support.
Silpheed was a worth successor to the old classic most of us probably experienced thanks to Sierra, with astonishing anime-style battle scenes.
Etc etc etc. I love my Sega CD possibly more than any other console before or since.

Which leads to the heartbreak of the 32X. I paid full whack for it, $199.99 in mid-90s Canadian dollary-doos. Let’s recap the games I have for it:
Virtua Racing Deluxe was great fun, though some of the ‘new’ content looked very ropey.
Zaxxon’s Motherbase is also great fun.
Corpse Killer is just the Sega CD game, but with higher quality video.
Afterburner is arcade perfect.

That’s it. Consider the other 32X games I tried:
Metalhead was a stupendous mech game where you stomped around a city blowing up soldiers and tanks and other mechs. I finished it in an afternoon, though.
Doom was a completely inferior port with screen borders, for some reason. Screen borders on a system that powerful, to push around ID’s famously fast engine!
Knuckles Chaotix was complete shit. I wasn’t sure what I was meant to be enjoying here, and the whole ‘you’re tied to the other character with that stupid magical tether’ mechanic just ruined it.
The Motocross game was fun, but repetitive and easy.

Huge buyer’s remorse. Now, if we look at the N64 and Perfect Dark and needing the expansion pack… it’s debatable how much that hurt it. I recall getting an N64 from Beattie’s of all places, who were selling off their stock of new systems at 45 quid to be rid of them. A year later Perfect Dark finally came out and I’m sure that the price shot right back up.

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Beeth_54
13/9/2016 01:35:50 am

"Sega's mishandling of its Sonic brand continues to this day."

A defence.

Unleashed? Colours? Generations? Rush & Rush Adventure? Lost World? All ranging from decent to pretty good, there. Not to mention the brilliant Christian Whitehead revisions of 1, 2 and CD, and the imminent Mania also being rather well received in previews.

With the best will in the world, there seems to be quite a few sources lately determined to keep the series sunk. Honestly, having been an outside observer of the series for the past few years, it's not sitting right with me. Some missteps in the first half of the 2000s, leading to a mess of a game in 2006, yes, absolutely. But that was a decade ago, now.

As for the assertion from an above commenter about fans being "insane"... there are some, yes. As there are in any large enough fanbase. The sensible ones, including a fair few I know, are some of the most down to earth folk you could meet.

One of them made a massively in-depth three part series on the franchise for Youtube examining just why some things never worked out, and why perceptions tend to be the way they are. (Sonic Spitball, highly recommended to anyone interested, well worth it). It is by far the most intelligent and thoughtful piece I've seen on the matter. Insane is the last thing I'd call the guy, at least in the negative connotation of the word.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
13/9/2016 11:55:14 am

You missed out the minor recent point where Sega followed on from the iterative success of Colours and Generations (the latter of which was probably as good as a 3D Sonic game could possibly be) by completely "rebooting" the franchise with an extremely poor and broken game featuring horrible character redesigns that was sold exclusively on a dying console.

I say this not as someone who wants to see Sega fail, but as someone who grew up loving the Sonic games and franchise but has just given up hope due to two decades of inconsistent handling.

Also Unleashed was a third of a decent game sandwiched between two thirds of awful filler like a burger filled mostly with glass, Rush was okay but far too big on the "just hold right" DIMPS school of gameplay, and Lost World -on the 3DS, anyway- was a patchy mess of enjoyable segments sandwiched in between absolute torture. And let's not forget the disappointing Sonic 4.

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Beeth_54
13/9/2016 02:57:07 pm

Rise of Lyric was a spin-off not developed by Sega. It was sadly mishandled by those who did have it, though. Like other cartoon series before it, it's really it's own thing rather than a reboot. I don't think Sega can take too much of the blame for this one.

I'm not denying there's been other hiccups along the way, rather that it's not the complete disaster some make it out to be. The games I mentioned we're all well received for the most part; many of the people I know enjoyed Unleashed, though it was divisive among some. Sonic 4's main problem was being called Sonic 4, an okay instalment that had far too big a name to live up to.

I don't claim to have played Lost World or anything beyond to date. Consensus about Lost World tends to be that the console version is the superior title,much like the console versions of Generations / Colours were to their handheld equivalents, which I would agree with.

In short, it's hardly a perfect series, but it's better than some have given it credit for. I do genuinely recommend the series I mentioned in my last post, it lays out a lot of it's successes, faults and why it's appeal continues.

Spiney O'Sullivan
14/9/2016 09:13:58 pm

Companies are sort of on the hook when they outsource major franchises, especially to relatively untested developers.

I did like what I've seen of Sonic Spitball, I've played most of the games discussed here, except Boom (only the demo), and just haven't been wowed by most of them, except for Generations, which was a glorious return to form that they're hopefully going back to with the next one.

I don't think the franchise is unsalvagable, but Sega have a near-impossible task of pleasing multiple groups of fans with divergent views on what Sonic is (i.e. 90s fans vs 00s fans, 3D vs 2D, classic 2D vs Rush 2D, those of us who don't accept the existence of Shadow the Hedgehog vs those who are criminally insane).

Beeth_54
14/9/2016 10:34:30 pm

That is very true. The sheer number of continuities/universes is confounding at this stage, I can only really take it on a game-by-game basis now. If someone is well into a particular fragment, it can be awkward to come round to a given instalment.

Shadow the character or the game? I can take or leave the character really, a lot of that era's fans seem to like him. As someone chronically faulted to find the good in games, I mostly found Shadow the game cringeworthy and massively convoluted, but something about the level design intrigued me, relatively linear / room based platforming sequences with the occasional hidden route off to the side. I'm partial to that style of level layout in general, and much as I hesitate to admit it, Shadow perhaps came the closest to getting it in full 3D. The game really didn't do it justice, though.

Spiney O'Sullivan
15/9/2016 10:53:40 am

Mainly the character. Like Rouge the bat and Cream the rabbit, he came from the era where Sega just kept adding new characters instead of really fixing the issues with how the series played in 3D. But Shadow in particular felt like he came from the Deviantart account of an angsty 14-year-old boy on a Linkin Park binge.

As for Shadow the game, I actually did end up buying it cheap out of morbid curiosity, and I'd admit that there are actually some interesting ideas in there. The mission-based structure and branching paths were interesting, and him having guns bypassed the issue of the homing jump occasionally sending you to your death randomly (Sonic Heroes...). It's not the worst Sonic game by a long shot.

Gamerscribe link
16/9/2016 06:38:54 pm

I remember fondly the lead up to the release of the mega cd, 32x, Saturn and Dreamcast. When my gran died I wanted to use the money she left me to buy a Mega CD, thank god I didn't. I almost bought a Saturn over the PlayStation, but in the end opted for the latter. Interestingly the popular narrative for that time was that Sony just rocked up no questions asked and with its yoof marketing stole the show. This is to a degree true, but I certainly remember after buying a PS1 at least for the first year jealousy covering the Saturn's arcade conversion library. Virtua Fighter 1 and 2, Sega Rally, Virtua Cop etc etc were the defining titles of the day (at least for me and my arcade loitering mates). I can recall that Ridge Racer was slightly underwhelming (only one track), and Tekken 1 always felt to me like a poorer relative of the Virtua Fighter series. That said if Sony hadn't brokered that exclusivity deal with Namco, I almost certainly would have bought a Saturn at the time. To me the PS1 really caught its stride with Tekken 2, Demolition Derby 2, Doom, Time Crisis, Soul Blade and of course the generation clinching Final Fantasy 7. Coming back to the present day, I think the major flaw with the PS4 Pro is the tiny hard drive - the key reason I cancelled my pre order. My prediction is that whilst it may be a confusing value proposition, the PS4 pro and Xbox One S are necessary 4K television adoption temptors, because by God we will all need the for the PS5 and Xbox Magpie (the next next Xbox after the Scorpio).

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ivgnc
18/9/2016 03:22:20 pm

lol how is Sonic mishandled to this day? Heard of Sonic Mania? Clearly not.

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