On the “playing field” of life, the toughest opponent is often ourselves… A simple mistake can have punishing results, but it’s only in learning from our most painful mistakes that we grow and learn to avoid such missteps down the field…
Never is this more true than when looking back on SEGA’s many fumbles of the mid-to-late 90’s, and many industry players have watched from the sidelines and learned a thing or two from their example. This is perhaps where we find the “silver lining”…
But what if we could rewind? What if we could go back in time to change SEGA’s playbook?
Of course, it’s pretty much agreed that no ONE THING would ever be enough to compensate for the numerous mistakes made leading up to and during the 5th console generation.., but we decided to pose the question to you (our readers and social media followers) anyway, just to see what YOU feel would have had the greatest impact.
…aaand here are the results:
It seems pretty clear that NOBODY was thrilled about the early surprise launch, and the majority of answers favored changing this ONE thing about Saturn’s past…
After that, the most resounding call was one for MORE GAMES, with many folks just wanting more of the great Japanese exclusive titles to have been localized and released in the west, most of all… JRPGs.
We had a great deal of 32X hate, with many calling for it’s removal from the history books, and almost as many folks were not big fans of Bernie, feeling that his time at SEGA had a mostly negative impact.
There were, of course, a large number of people who simply felt a lower price, matching the PlayStation, would have been enough to make Saturn competitive, and many agreed that a 3D Sonic pack-in title would have made waves throughout the western consumer market.
There were also those folks who concentrated on the hardware itself, calling for better development tools and graphics libraries and even an architecture that went “ALL-IN” on 3D, similar to PlayStation…
Finally there are those that feel the management could have made the difference, calling for Kalinske to be given the freedom to execute his original market strategies, while others would have opted to partner with SONY, rather than having them as a competitor to begin with…
There were, of course, many more answers and view points regarding the Saturn’s time on the market, and here are some of the most repeated…
Those few that answered NOTHING (while not really playing along with our little game) expressed the sentiment that Saturn is what it is due to SEGA’s failings, and that they love it “warts and all…”.
It is true that without all of these mistakes, you wouldn’t be reading this article, and this very website might not even exist, considering the path that led us all to create it in the first place…
Here is just a small sample of the interesting and thoughtful responses we received on social media:
A massive Saturn fan since Christmas ’96, Dave is enthusiastic about growing the community and spreading Saturn love and knowledge to fans old and new. Co-founding the SEGA SATURN, SHIRO! podcast back in 2017 and creating the SHIRO! SHOW in 2020, he seeks to create interesting and engaging Saturn-related content for the community. Dave’s interests circle around game preservation, and he is a huge fan of game magazines and developer interviews.
Thanks for indulging us with this little ‘what if’ exercise!
As interesting as having us Sega customers suggest what could have been done better or differently I’d love to see more professional perspectives on Sega’s console history, whether that be Sega execs, programmers or the third parties involved (the upset retailers from the suprise launch would be very interesting to hear from). I’d love to know What moves Sega thought were sure to workout, what things were unexpectedly successful and so on.