sabre2922
09-11-2006, 06:53 AM
from Segabase: Kamikaze Console
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Sega was too busy basking in its culture of corporate arrogance, which kept its top management personnel from realizing they had a problem on their hands until it had grown beyond their ability to control. The following is a comprehensive summary of all of the mistakes that Sega committed for the sake of the Saturn. It is a list of which all prospective console vendors should take heed.
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#1.Pricing the system too high for its intended market - You would think that Sega would have learned from Trip Hawkins and the blunders that were made with the 3DO, but instead it almost immediately committed the very same mistake that had doomed the 3DO to failure. Sega priced the Saturn too high for its intended market. Pricing trends that had been developing in the videogame market over the past two decades indicated that the average price for a brand-new, nextgen console should be within the US$200-$350 range. 3DO had been immediately doomed to extinction with its hefty US$800 price tag - a loftily absurd figure that seems ridiculous even now. For Sega to price the Saturn at US$399 was an open invitation to disaster in the minds of many industry analysts both then and now. Of course, there was a very good reason why Sega set the price of the Saturn so high: it was operating under a steadily growing mountain of debt. Even so, Sega should have been more willing to take a hit on the price of the console and instead look for needed funds in software sales, whence the real profits lay. Steven Kent sums up this particular issue as well as anybody in his seminal work The First Quarter when he observes, "[Saturn] was too expensive for the consumer elextronics category. The $399 price point was known to be more of a high-end electronics ticket - something that people might pay for a stereo component, but not for a videogame console. Sega was making the same mistake Trip Hawkins had made with the 3D0."
#2.Alienation of potential system supporters - Sega's once-strong relationship with third-party developers was fraying fast due to the managerial meddling from Sega of Japan. Like Nintendo before it, Sega had began to throw its weight around, dictating to its licensees what they could and could not do, how much and when, and so on. The third parties no more liked this in 1995 than they did in 1985 when Nintendo was pulling the exact same crap. Sega had by now also gained the unenviable reputation of "putting out one hardware unit after another." While Sega of Japan made it perfectly clear that Saturn was and always would be the company's future, many developers remained skeptical - especially after news of the rumored Eclipse 64-bit Saturn upgrade and the all-new Katana and Black Belt console designs leaked out in 1997. With all this confusion going on, it was no wonder that the third party community began to look elsewhere to push its products. They found it in Sony, who was very generous in its licensing terms and offered a console with simple-to-program architecture that yielded incredible results. In contrast, Sega spent a lot of its time pissing off third parties big time, so it was inevitable that they woud turn to Sony instead. It was the exact same thing that Sega had done to Nintendo and Nintendo had done to Atari years before. You would have thought that somebody at Sega saw it coming.
#3.Lack of a system library containing good, diverse software - If there is one lesson that you, the average gamer, should have learned by now, and it is one that I cannot emphasize enough, it is that software sales are the true money train of any given vendor's system. You have can have all the fancy hardware in the world, but if you don't have enough software that properly shows it off to your intended audience, then your system is going to suffer and you right along with it. Sega should have known better than to launch the Saturn the way it did in the U.S. - advance the release date so that there was almost no software for it, let along any good software. The scant handful of titles that were available were obviously and admittedly rushed. Not a good way to get your foot in the door of consumer's homes. Furthermore, the rushed launch meant that the console sat on store shelves for months without any significant software support. By the time it arrived, the opportunity that Sega had hoped to seize with an early launch had already passed and people were now looking at PlayStation instead. Sony may not have had Sega's experience in making videogames, but it had money and lots of it, and as Game Players put it, "Baby, that can buy you all the experience you need." Add to that the simplicity of the PlayStation architecture in comparison to the mess that comprised the Saturn's internals and it was no wonder that the third party community jumped ship as fast as it did. This trend would continue throughout the lifetime of both systems, with Sony's deep pockets enabling it to afford the third-party support and system exclusives that Sega simply could no longer afford as it lost precious market share and profits right along with it. The fact that Sony was able to do such things as launch the system with the backing of the likes of Namco and Konami, wrestle Square away from Nintendo (and the Final Fantasy RPG franchise along with it), get Capcom in its corner with its best programming teams and first go-round on hot titles (do the Street Fighter 2 and Resident Evil franchises ring a bell?), and welcome a disgruntled Working Designs from the Sega fold speaks volumes. Sony had the better and more diverse software library, with few exceptions, because they could afford to pay others to develop it for them. It's that simple.
#4.Shinobu ToyodaTom Kalinske-Refusing the good advice of your peers - The executives at Sega of Japan were hell-bent on making the Saturn work in a market that they knew full well was Sony's for the taking. Since their side of the company was the older and more experienced, or so the common wisdom went, then they supposedly knew what was best for Sega. Nakayama and his allies repeately ignored and overruled the advice of Sega of America president Tom Kalinske and his staff, as well as that of Shinobu Toyoda, their own U.S. market liason, on just about every critical aspect of the rapidly burgeoning 32-bit videogame market. They were going to make the American videogame market fall in love with the Saturn just as it had with the Genesis years earlier. What they forgot was that it was the American side of the business that had endeared Sega to its American fans, not its Japanese senior management. The same was true over in Europe, but Saturn had already flopped there and Sega of Japan was not about to waste any time and effort there. The U.S. was the big money market - the place where the stakes were the highest - and it was there that the Saturn should have succeeded. It did not because Nakayama and his staff were too busy refusing to listen to the good advice of Kalinske, Toyoda, and their fellows. "You're launching the system way too early," Nakayama and his staff were repeatedly warned. "It doesn't have the software base. You're wasting your efforts." Sega of Japan simply would not listen to those who best knew the intended market. It should have surprised no one what happened next.
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and many more reasons why it wont be HERE: http://www.eidolons-inn.net/segabase/SegaBase-Saturn(Part1).html
[/b][/url]
-
Sega was too busy basking in its culture of corporate arrogance, which kept its top management personnel from realizing they had a problem on their hands until it had grown beyond their ability to control. The following is a comprehensive summary of all of the mistakes that Sega committed for the sake of the Saturn. It is a list of which all prospective console vendors should take heed.
=====================================
#1.Pricing the system too high for its intended market - You would think that Sega would have learned from Trip Hawkins and the blunders that were made with the 3DO, but instead it almost immediately committed the very same mistake that had doomed the 3DO to failure. Sega priced the Saturn too high for its intended market. Pricing trends that had been developing in the videogame market over the past two decades indicated that the average price for a brand-new, nextgen console should be within the US$200-$350 range. 3DO had been immediately doomed to extinction with its hefty US$800 price tag - a loftily absurd figure that seems ridiculous even now. For Sega to price the Saturn at US$399 was an open invitation to disaster in the minds of many industry analysts both then and now. Of course, there was a very good reason why Sega set the price of the Saturn so high: it was operating under a steadily growing mountain of debt. Even so, Sega should have been more willing to take a hit on the price of the console and instead look for needed funds in software sales, whence the real profits lay. Steven Kent sums up this particular issue as well as anybody in his seminal work The First Quarter when he observes, "[Saturn] was too expensive for the consumer elextronics category. The $399 price point was known to be more of a high-end electronics ticket - something that people might pay for a stereo component, but not for a videogame console. Sega was making the same mistake Trip Hawkins had made with the 3D0."
#2.Alienation of potential system supporters - Sega's once-strong relationship with third-party developers was fraying fast due to the managerial meddling from Sega of Japan. Like Nintendo before it, Sega had began to throw its weight around, dictating to its licensees what they could and could not do, how much and when, and so on. The third parties no more liked this in 1995 than they did in 1985 when Nintendo was pulling the exact same crap. Sega had by now also gained the unenviable reputation of "putting out one hardware unit after another." While Sega of Japan made it perfectly clear that Saturn was and always would be the company's future, many developers remained skeptical - especially after news of the rumored Eclipse 64-bit Saturn upgrade and the all-new Katana and Black Belt console designs leaked out in 1997. With all this confusion going on, it was no wonder that the third party community began to look elsewhere to push its products. They found it in Sony, who was very generous in its licensing terms and offered a console with simple-to-program architecture that yielded incredible results. In contrast, Sega spent a lot of its time pissing off third parties big time, so it was inevitable that they woud turn to Sony instead. It was the exact same thing that Sega had done to Nintendo and Nintendo had done to Atari years before. You would have thought that somebody at Sega saw it coming.
#3.Lack of a system library containing good, diverse software - If there is one lesson that you, the average gamer, should have learned by now, and it is one that I cannot emphasize enough, it is that software sales are the true money train of any given vendor's system. You have can have all the fancy hardware in the world, but if you don't have enough software that properly shows it off to your intended audience, then your system is going to suffer and you right along with it. Sega should have known better than to launch the Saturn the way it did in the U.S. - advance the release date so that there was almost no software for it, let along any good software. The scant handful of titles that were available were obviously and admittedly rushed. Not a good way to get your foot in the door of consumer's homes. Furthermore, the rushed launch meant that the console sat on store shelves for months without any significant software support. By the time it arrived, the opportunity that Sega had hoped to seize with an early launch had already passed and people were now looking at PlayStation instead. Sony may not have had Sega's experience in making videogames, but it had money and lots of it, and as Game Players put it, "Baby, that can buy you all the experience you need." Add to that the simplicity of the PlayStation architecture in comparison to the mess that comprised the Saturn's internals and it was no wonder that the third party community jumped ship as fast as it did. This trend would continue throughout the lifetime of both systems, with Sony's deep pockets enabling it to afford the third-party support and system exclusives that Sega simply could no longer afford as it lost precious market share and profits right along with it. The fact that Sony was able to do such things as launch the system with the backing of the likes of Namco and Konami, wrestle Square away from Nintendo (and the Final Fantasy RPG franchise along with it), get Capcom in its corner with its best programming teams and first go-round on hot titles (do the Street Fighter 2 and Resident Evil franchises ring a bell?), and welcome a disgruntled Working Designs from the Sega fold speaks volumes. Sony had the better and more diverse software library, with few exceptions, because they could afford to pay others to develop it for them. It's that simple.
#4.Shinobu ToyodaTom Kalinske-Refusing the good advice of your peers - The executives at Sega of Japan were hell-bent on making the Saturn work in a market that they knew full well was Sony's for the taking. Since their side of the company was the older and more experienced, or so the common wisdom went, then they supposedly knew what was best for Sega. Nakayama and his allies repeately ignored and overruled the advice of Sega of America president Tom Kalinske and his staff, as well as that of Shinobu Toyoda, their own U.S. market liason, on just about every critical aspect of the rapidly burgeoning 32-bit videogame market. They were going to make the American videogame market fall in love with the Saturn just as it had with the Genesis years earlier. What they forgot was that it was the American side of the business that had endeared Sega to its American fans, not its Japanese senior management. The same was true over in Europe, but Saturn had already flopped there and Sega of Japan was not about to waste any time and effort there. The U.S. was the big money market - the place where the stakes were the highest - and it was there that the Saturn should have succeeded. It did not because Nakayama and his staff were too busy refusing to listen to the good advice of Kalinske, Toyoda, and their fellows. "You're launching the system way too early," Nakayama and his staff were repeatedly warned. "It doesn't have the software base. You're wasting your efforts." Sega of Japan simply would not listen to those who best knew the intended market. It should have surprised no one what happened next.
=====================================
and many more reasons why it wont be HERE: http://www.eidolons-inn.net/segabase/SegaBase-Saturn(Part1).html
[/b][/url]