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Onto the Next Generation!Is it time for a new console war already? That's the question running through the minds of videogamers everywhere as they realize that another new era in gaming is about to emerge very soon. With the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast down to mere days, many U.S. gamers are already preparing for the headaches that accompany any major entry into the console gaming market. Will SEGA actually make good on their promises this time or do we have another inevitable failure on our hands. While it is a well known fact that I am a steadfast supporter of SEGA and that I feel that they have always done their best to try and keep U.S. gamers happy, it is also a well known fact that the U.S. gaming climate has not been kind to SEGA since its Genesis heydays in the early/mid 90's. People tout the Sega CD and the 32X as huge failures and the Saturn as an undersupported and willfully abandoned platform. Well if you want to talk about lackluster performance (monetarily) and premature abandonment of a platform, look no further than the almighty Nintendo. Now I happen to like Nintendo quite a bit, in fact I hope to land a job there some day, but the fact remains that the Virtual Boy was just as big a failure (if not more so) as the 32X. As far as the N64 goes, it's performing quite well in the states, but it is not faring nearly as well in Nintendo's prime market (Japan) or in Europe. This really burns for Nintendo because their prime market is what they care about most. In fact they are already looking to the next wave. Here in the states advertising rules consumers appetites. Why do you think the Genesis became so popular? It languished until the release of Sonic. It needed a marketable angle (for lack of a better term) and Sonic was it. If you think Altered Beast was moving the Genesis like hot cakes you need a head doctor, not a guy with a PHD in Porcine Physics. Sonic gave Sega a face for the U.S. consumer to identify with it's corporation. He still remains the most recognizable and liked character in their stable today. With Sega CD we were promised revolutionary Full Motion Video (FMV) and spectacular digital sound. People expected to much of this peripheral and it had a hefty price tag, entering the market somewhere between 300 and 400 dollars. It was supported and fairly well if memory serves. Still people site this as a failure and a screw job on the consumer. I see differently. Technology has always been a game of get there first and push, push, push. 2 and 1/2 years is a fairly good amount of time for any electronic technology to remain viable. I think that people got their money's worth out of the Sega CD and I refuse to see it as a failure. The 32X on the other hand is an entirely different matter altogether. The 32X WAS a complete screwup by Sega. Good intentions do not a good system make. The original idea behind the 32X was to make a more affordable (140 dollars compared to nextgen systems commanding 300 dollars or more at launch) nextgen system. A way to make a technological leap without nearly as much capital investment on the consumers behalf. If anybody besides Sega themselves is responsible for the bitterness felt toward the 32X it's the video game magazine publishers. When the 32X launched it was launched with 4 or 5 games. The trade magazines went on to tell us how there were a number of QUALITY fighting, roleplaying, and action games in the works for this great new affordable system. Now remember, at this point about half of the 16-bit consoles in U.S. homes were Genesis units. So upon hearing this news from RELIABLE sources a lot of people went out and snatched up a 32X thinking they were going to get a bargain priced nextgen system and that it would be properly supported. Nothing could have happened worse had Sega tried it. Sony started shopping it's PSX tech to all the software houses it could think of. The PSX tech made the 32X look like...look like....well, let me put it this way. PSX is to 32X what The Philharmonic Orchestra is to a 50 dollar Casio Keyboard. It doesn't take a brainiac to figure out what happened next. All the developers of software for the 32X not run by Sega pulled their projects and started development for the PSX. I don't blame them for doing so because, while we as consumers may play video games for fun, developers are in it for the money. Problem is that Sega got left holding the bag and looking like the bad guys for something over which they had no real control, and the rest of the industry didn't mind that a bit. Sega, realizing that the 32X was hopeless, basically cut as much of the loss as they possibly could. A sound corporate strategy, unfortunately a horrifyingly retarded public relations disaster. Some people have never trusted Sega since. Let me state that anyone who views the Saturn as a total flop is obviously biased against Sega. You can dislike the Saturn all you want and that's okay with me, I just don't agree that's all. The Saturn was the first of the True NextGen platforms. I love the 3DO to death but it was definitely an electronics item that never really found its way into the main stream. The PSX was made to be a 3D powerhouse and that is exactly what it is. The Saturn is a completely different animal. It was designed with traditional 2D gameplay granduer in mind. In fact it does it so well that there are many games that are Saturn only titles such as Fatal Fury Real Bout Special, Samurai Shodown 4, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Night Warriors. Also coming soon to a Saturn near you (via Import of course) Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Capcom. Now let me tell you where Sega screwed themselves here in the States. First of all they hardly advertised any place except for video game publications, sure I saw a couple of TV ads right at launch time but not even near the number of commercials that they put forth for the Game Gear. Secondly, they didn't forsee the role that polygons would play in the NextGen wars, all they cared about was pushing enough polys to run Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing. Thirdly and most crippling (here in the States at least) was the fact that they announced the system would ship late August of 95 and then proceeded to ship the console to specialty stores such as Software Etc., Babbages, Electronics Boutique, and Egghead Software around 2 months prior to nation release. Do you know why this was their worst offense? I'll tell ya. Go to Kansas and try to find a Software Etc., how about in Arkansas, or Indiana, why don't you try finding one in Arizona. There will be a few but not many. They gave these little stores MONTHS of advanced sales while they left the bread and butter of U.S. video game sales (dept. stores such as Sears, Wal-mart, Target, Toys R Us, and K-mart) with their asses in the air and no product. These stores showed their displeasure (also read blackballing) with this strategy by giving the Sega machine less floor space, under ordering stock, and (in some cases) referring to it as inferior even compared to the Super Ninendo. All this garbage compounded with no real recognizable or truly impressive software at launch, along with a hefty price tag, pretty much threw Sega out of the race before the starters gun had went off. Meanwhile in Japan (where 2D gameplay is worth more than a little 3D flash and advertising doesn't carry nearly as much weight as it does in the U.S.) the Saturn and the PSX were neck and neck competitors until the big upset. No not the arrival of the N64, rather the announcement by Squaresoft Japan that Final Fantasy 7 was to be released on the Playstation platform exclusively, much to the chagrin of Nintendo. From that day on the PSX pulled ahead from all competition in the land of the rising sun. Much to the credit of Sega they tried valiantly to save their sinking ship called Saturn here in the States as long as they could. VF2, Nights, The Panzer series, the Shining series, Fighters Megamix, superior versions of the Street Fighter Alpha series, and even some crappy Sonic games. To no avail, the Saturn had been branded dead before it actually was and the industry magazines were all too happy to help dig the grave with both hands on the shovel. In Japan where people let the games do the talking the Saturn is still a viable platform even with the DC looming just next month.
Laugh all you want people. The DreamCast is the future of gaming. There is no denying it. Sony is willing to sit on the goldmine that is the PSX until it finally starts to die off. Not such a hot idea. I seem to remember a certain company (Nintendo) that had a lion's share of the market back in '92 and decided that they didn't need to hurry, that they could play by their rules and come out far in the lead. Now Nintendo is scrabbling to try and make up market share to this very day. Nintendo lost 50% of the home video game market in the States thanks to the very ideology that Sony is embracing at this very moment. Speaking of Nintendo, if Zelda doesn't hit as hard as they want, they are already set to jump ship on the N64. Problem is, they have no finalized new hardware. This all makes things very interesting indeed. I just put a 3Dfx VooDoo2 in my friends PC yesterday and played some Descent: Freespace. The DreamCast can top that. For real. This is not some "BlastProcessing", this is real hard specs. I can't wait. What if Sega hasn't learned it's lessons, you ask?
They've got their bases covered.
$$$$...250.00...$$$$I'd say that makes up for that darned 32X, wouldn't you?
Until the next time I have something stuck in my craw.
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