Early on the morning of July 3, 2023 an Internet Archive contributor by the name GoldenDreamcast posted an enormous information dump consisting of 272 pages of previously classified internal documents from SEGA of America titled “Sega Fiscal Year 1997 Brand Review”.
The shear number of revelations in this dump is staggering, and the SEGA and Saturn community will likely be combing through them for years to come… Many of these documents reveal the dire straights that SoA (and SEGA as a whole) were in, and it is apparent the lack of control they had to right the ship near the end.
Here are just a few samples of the fascinating and illuminating information contained in this document:
1996 E3 Floor Plan
Email from Tom Kalinske
TV Commercial Story Boards
Saturn vs. PlayStation – 1995 Sales & 1996 Projections
Concern over Lack of Football Title
1996 Saturn Brand Review: Key Issues
Acknowledgement of Communication Issues
Consumer Research & Acknowledgment of Sony’s Postition
Numerous Brand Promotion Partnerships (General Mills, Post, Oscar Meyer, etc…)
Saturn Merchandise Inventory Report
Saturn Critical Software Issues & Required Actions
Saturn’s Key Issues for Fiscal Year ’97
Virtua Fighter 2… REMIX?!?
The shear VOLUME of this information is so massive that it’s impossible for us to parse and digest all of this data at once, but here are a few of the insights that our own Danthrax has noted:
- Only 97,000 32X add-ons were sold through 1995, and SoA was considering the “scrap value” of their remaining stock, with loads of 32X hardware just sitting in warehouses.
- Sega sold 78,780 Saturns through September ’95, then SONY overtook with 130,728
- SoA considered NiGHTS to be a title targeted at a “very young audience”.
No stock of Saturn consoles at WalMart as of March 1996 - SoA knew they had a massive problem with their sports lineup, and they even considered acquiring Accolade just to gain a football title.
- If SoA had waited a year, SoJ could have developed NetLink to utilize the serial port, rather than the cartridge port.
- SoA considered NetLink support for GunGriffon, Baku Baku Animal, Decent (never released on Saturn), Command & Conquer & Duke “Newcomb” 3D (the only title that actually got it).
- SoA wanted to sell the Sega Pluto for a whopping $550 during Fiscal 1997.
- Riglord Saga 2 was on the calendar for November 1996 and later March 1997
- Terra Phantastica “reserve title” for Fiscal 1997
…and the list goes on and on and on, as we pour over more and more of this document. This article to be updated as we digest more of this information dump.
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.
Truly is some excellent insight into the matters of the time. It’s great having such fix it lists, but I wonder what actions were put into place. Considering it’s a multi-million operation, it shows the weak communication and support between those 2 sides of SEGA SOJ and SOA. SOE likewise, began to follow a little closer to SOJ. Translating games themselves as opposed to via SOA.
Only saw two Saturn tv commercials air, one was Nights during Music, Games and Videos on a sat morning and Panzer Dragoon zwei but don’t recall any game footage.
SEGA had such mixed messages to the consumer, I remember the Argos catalogue in 1998 going back to restocking the Mega Drive over the Saturn.
They loved Psygnosis enough to say, hey become a 1.5 developer who became Bizarre Creations.
Now what was Terra Phantastia? Wonder if become something else?