Sega Saturn
The Sega Saturn, successor to the immensely popular Genesis, was released in North America on May 11, 1995. This was somewhat of a surprise launch as it was four months ahead of schedule. This was done in hopes of getting a head start on the upcoming PlayStation. However, despite being technically impressive and having a head start, the Sega Saturn was a commercial failure and only sold about half of what the PlayStation sold during the Saturn's short three year life. Ultimately, while the Saturn only sold a little over 9 million units worldwide, the PlayStation sold more than 102 million and the Nintendo 64 sold nearly 33 million.
There were a number of reasons why the Saturn failed. First, despite impressive specs, it had a complicated architecture that was difficult to program for consisting of eight processors. This was a complicated system to program and to make matters worse, available libraries were limited early in the life of the Saturn and most coding had to be done in assembly to avoid the severe performance penalty of programming in C. This situation improved somewhat later on with improved libraries but not enough.
Another reason for the Saturn's failure was the initial slow trickle of quality, high-profile first party games. In fact, Sega would fail to release an exclusive Sonic title on the Sega Saturn. Sonic X-treme was the planned exclusive for the Saturn and it would have been the first 3D Sonic game. It was scheduled to be released in December 1996 but due to a number of development problems and delays, the game was ultimately cancelled.
In addition, the surprise early launch meant that there were only six titles available at launch. The surprise launch also worked against Sega in other ways as well. It alienated a number of retailers, some of which were not included and did not receive units for the launch. Also, the early release of the Saturn was muted by the fact that the price was initially $399 while the PlayStation launch price was $299.
This dovetails into what is always the Achille's heal of systems that fail. Third party support. While there were ultimately a number of quality first party titles (though mostly arcade conversions), third party support was hampered by the complexity of the Saturn and poor development support from Sega. Sony offered excellent development tools and favorable licensing terms and this made all the difference.
Still, the Saturn is a nice system to own, particularly if you are a fan of Sega arcade games from that era. Despite the commercial failure of the Saturn, there are still a number of unique and high-quality titles available for it. The successor to the Saturn, the Dreamcast, was a much better and more well though out system in my opinion but it was not able to erase the failures of the previous generation and gain back lost support.
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I believe Sega shot themselves in the foot with the Saturn. Imagine had Sega released a "Genesis" adapter like they did the Master System Converter. They needn't worry about supporting Sega CD with this thing, just the carts from the previous generation. That could have made all the difference with fans, I know it would have with me (though I loved my Saturn).
Sega had no clue how to market in the United States either. Virtua Fighter, while good, was quite sluggish in comparison to what Sony was bringing to the table thanks to third parties like Takara and their Battle Arena Toshinden. The Saturn should have shipped with Astal or something, in the box.
Daytona, while a great arcade game, was paling in comparison to Namco's Ridge Racer.
Sega should have launched the Saturn with a 2.5D Sonic, even if it meant not releasing something like Astal. Plain and simple. They literally left the ONE game franchise that brought them to the dance in the previous generation OFF the Saturn.
Then we had the actual advertisements Sega ran. They were more focused on people in the ads with minuscule photos of the games. Who remembers the naked woman laying on a satin/silk sheet (it was blue, I think)? Even Takara (or was it Sony?) tried this with early ads but they quickly dropped that crap.
Sega should have released arcade collections, say three games per release. Altered Beast, After Burner, Shinobi, etc should have all seen arcade in the home releases on Saturn. It is a crime that Sega never bothered doing this with the Saturn or the Dreamcast. Just shocking.
Sega had so much potential with the Saturn. They could have done wonders. Instead of being a fireworks show the Saturn was a sparkler at Sony's Fourth of July celebration.
I think they knew how to market because they proved it with the Genesis. Remember "Sega does what Nintendon't"? The problem with the Saturn was that it started out as a 2D system and then they rushed a bunch of changes into the hardware to react to what Sony was bringing to the table. It made for a powerful but complicated system that was hard to develop for. This led to weaker third party support and weak third party support is always the killer of consoles.
I agree about not bringing a new sonic game to the table. It's not so much that they abandoned it as the team creating the game failed to come up with something that would do it justice and it was cancelled. My guess is that in large part this comes down to how difficult the system was to develop for. The Saturn didn't survive long enough for a second attempt. Eventually, better libraries were developed and people got better at developing for the Saturn but by then it was too late. They should have put their best team on a new Sonic game and had it ready at launch but for whatever reason they didn't do that.
This comment would make a good blog post
May give it a go. Go a bit more in depth on it. I was there at Electronics Boutique when they unveiled it that night. I ALMOST bought one at launch but by the time I made up my mind about it, they only had one game left and it wasn't one I was interested in (Bug! or something, I would have to go back and double check what hit that day).
Nice to see someone with the same interests. The Sega Saturn was a beast of a machine and had one of the best six button controllers ever! Unfortunately it didn't get the love it deserved but that was Sega's own fault (and also the release of the playstation did not help things) followed and upvoted
I loved my Saturn . Virtual On is still my favorite mech game
I didn't have a Saturn until much later (I had a PlayStation first). I had the Dreamcast early on though and that's till one of my favorite systems.
The Dreamcast is the only console I'd ever bought on launch day. Pity it was the last Sega console.
Yeah, with Sega and Atari out of the hardware business, Nintendo is really the only old school company still left making hardware. I guess there is always the hope that they will reenter the hardware market one day...