Nintendo Fusion vs Sega Saturn

[cspacefan]

All these rumors about Nintendo dropping the WiiU and working on Fusion is reminding me very much of Sega's missteps with the 32X, CD, the Saturn, and the Dreamcast.

But then again, Nintendo is not Sega. Can Nintendo "do" what Sega "didn't" (to reverse the old ad campaign)?

I'm not big on the details of the last days of Sega's console manufacturing. It seems to me they threw too many add-ons and new consoles into the market too rapidly and they lost consumer confidence.

So it would seem to me that Nintendo are following in Sega's footsteps if they drop WiiU (and apparently 3DS) and make this new Fusion thing.

Granted Nintendo have giant piles of gold to keep them afloat for a long time, something Sega didn't have (I think?) back in the 90's. So this is not an easy comparison to make.

Is anyone here an expert of that period of console history? Can someone tell me how Nintendo Fusion is different from Sega Saturn?

I'm not flaming any fanboy wars here, I'm seeking historical knowledge from those who lived it.

 

[Mattroid]

I barely kept up with it back in the day, partly because I didn't want to believe it was happening...I loved the DC so much...

Anyway, I read a pretty good article on SEGA's history a few years ago, but I have no idea what site it was on. It very well could have been the one linked below, but I haven't read enough of this one to be sure.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-history-of-sega?page=1

 

[ccosby]

Is anyone here an expert of that period of console history? Can someone tell me

The sega saturn was one giant screwup after another. Sega was sitting pretty good before it came out. Some of its problems:

They pulled the release date out of their ass. They had saturnday that was going to be in September and they ended up releasing it in like May with very little stock and most stores not having it.

The launch screw up ended up meaning that many stores wouldn't carry it.

It was 100 bucks more than the playstation was and didn't have anything extra to really show for it(vs the integration features of like the xbox one now).

Sega gave up on it early.

Its design sucked. Sega designed the saturn to be an amazing 2d system. Sony then showed off the playstation and sega had to shove on 3d as a second thought. It was very hard to program for as well due to its hardware design. With its processors and coprocessors it was in theory powerful, some say more powerful than the n64. To take advantage of that power would be very hard.

You had some issues where people thought it was a sega genesis, 32x, and cd in one.

The wii uses an upgraded system based on the gamecube hardware(power pc, ati graphics). The wii u the same thing. The power platform is pretty well known(sega used it back with the model 3, apple used it, ibm servers use it, the ps3 used it, the xbox 360 used it, etc). This means developers haven't needed to really learn but so much each upgrade.

As far as segas last days.

The throwing add-ons thing really was with the genesis days. If they hadn't fucked up the saturn as much as they had chances are they might still be in the hardware business. With the pull out of the saturn they brought the dreamcast out early.

The dreamcast was a kinda sad fate. Sega did many things right and did some work to make it very modern(had a modem, the vmu memory card with second screen, etc). They did a lot to make it easy to program(had two modes a sega one and one based off windows ce). Sega mended some fences and got developers onboard. They also showed off some very good first part work. On the arcade side(since this is an arcade board) they licenses the naomi to others and this allowed very good home ports of many arcade games.

The problem with the dreamcast were really two fold. It was too early meaning the coming systems from sony and nintendo would be a lot more powerful. The second was that the saturn's failure was so great that it really allowed sony to shine. The dreamcast got crushed by sony's marketing, brand, and power of the ps2. It was sad as for a while the dreamcast was the better system.

The final part of the failure was with MS. Sega wanted the xbox to be backwards compatible with the dreamcast.

 

[Mindl3ss]

For one, Nintendo Fusion is pretty much entirely a rumor. Nintendo never comments on rumors, so you can't really get anyone to say it's not true. Kotaku tried to trace the rumor back to the source and every website that had published the article said they don't know the person who submitted the tip. It was anonymous.

Unless something has changed in the last few days. I read up on it Friday.

 

[twistedsymphony]

Sega's downfall was just bad decisions after bad decisions. mostly with the Saturn, it hurt the company so bad that they never recovered despite the fact that the Dreamcast way outsold their estimates.

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Basically with the Saturn Sega did a lot of things that turned away 3rd party developers. They had companies that wanted to work with Sega instead of Sony but Sega wasn't willing to cut them any breaks or help them out in anyway so they were left with almost no 3rd party support

This wasn't helped by the fact that the architecture on the Saturn was incredibly difficult to develop on, meaning that even if 3rd parties did want to work with Sega it was going to be more expensive to do so.

Then of course they decided to launch way early and because of the complex hardware the price was way above their competitors.

IIRC for the first few months the only game you could play on Saturn was Virtua Fighter.... that was it.

Of course Nintendo has had the same problem with 3rd party developers and Sony basically destroyed everyone because they offered the best incentives for 3rd party developers, the easiest platform to develop on, and they did a fantastic job marketing to buyers too. Sony had an "grown-up" image that made gaming seem like something cool people did, not nerds in their parents basement.

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Sega basically fell into a distant third in the console race because of cost, lack of game, and a inferior public image.


With the Dreamcast Sega basically decided to build one last console for the fans. they based it on the NAOMI arcade hardware and launched it with a bunch of their great Arcade games... and the console was fairly cheap too. The Platform was also super easy to develop for.

In the eyes of Sega fans the Dreamcast was a complete recovery but not so much to everyone else. 3rd party support was still fairly limited since they viewed it as a gamble after the Saturn flop... as for non-Sega Fans once the PS2 was released it was all over for the Dreamcast. Sony brought their cool image to a whole new level, the ability to use the console for things other than games (DVDs) made the perceived value of the PS2 huge and of course they had the lions share of 3rd party support.

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Unlike Sega, Nintendo has a much stronger 1st party game line up, they can still make money without 3rd party support.

Nintendo's Wii did really well because it captured the interest of non-gamers but Nintendo made a huge mistake in that they gave a lot of their die-hard fans the cold shoulder concentrating more on casual games. That's not to say that we didn't get some Great Mario and Zelda titles but some of their other core franchises were a bit lacking and they didn't deliver any real new franchises; just fluff like Wii Sports and Wii Play.

Nintendo hasn't screwed up nearly as bad as Sega... their biggest problem is that they threw too many resources toward the fickle non-gamers who bought up the Wii U and now that they no longer have those game buyers Nintendo is having to Win back their long-time fans.

 

[Tighe]

OK there are so many things worng in this thread!

The Saturn was awesome, the 32x was the idea if Sega of America who screwed everything up.

That said the 32x had some good haves, but nothing like the Saturn.

As for the Dreamcast it was no less powerful than the GameCube or ps2 in fact the same games looked better on the Dreamcast than on the ps2.

Dreamcast forever!

 

[twistedsymphony]

The Dreamcast is and will always be the best console ever made. /discussion

I stand by that because (with the Exception of the GameCube) it was the last console that was designed around a pure gaming experience, not trying to be a MediaCenter, or a social networking hub, or a PC in a plastic case. Gaming was actually fun, not trying to garner mass-market appeal or cater to dew chugging frat boys.

The Gamecube might have been a contender if it wasn't bogged down in Nintendo weirdness... (eg: mini-dvds, weird asymmetrical controllers, Mario as a custodian etc.)

 

[OIB1981]

What killed the Dreamcast was being able to burn games people downloaded on the internet. No mod chip nothing. Free games equals no money for Sega. This was while Dreamcast was still alive.

 

[AAirhart]

Agree with the post above. The Dreamcast was released right as broadband internet became widely available and cheap. Cd burners just became reasonably priced and you could buy a spool of discs for a few dollars. Combine that with a poor design that did nothing to lock out a copy (after the disc structure was discovered) and you had college networks filled with Dreamcast images, dorms with spools of games. Their target audience with unlimited access to free/pirated product.

 

[Tighe]

The Dreamcast didn't die because of that, while you could burn discs, it was homebrew first, the rips weren't readily available until it was dead in the USA.

Funny because the ability to play burned discs kept it alive even now, there are still games being released for it.

 

[twistedsymphony]

very true... I was big into the "scene" around that time and they didn't really figure out how to "backup" Dreamcast games until after Sega had announced that the console was no longer supported.