Peep Show: Sega's Hidden Agenda

Here's the latest installment of VideoGameSpot contributor Jer Horwitz's serial on Sega's fourth-generation system. Friday, Horwitz explored how the new machine might stack up against Nintendo 64, and the Microsoft connection. Today's report follows.

The Timeframe. According to an informed source, Sega is not going to show its cards prematurely on this new system, despite recent claims that Sega was ready to just lay the system out on a table and show it to interested journalists at the beginning of April. There would barely be anything to show in terms of software, save demo applications hastily mocked up and running under emulation on a hidden Silicon Graphics machine, or perhaps something running on a early prototype console or 3DFX-equipped PC with lower resolution. There's a new unsubstantiated rumor today that Sega is pushing to get software finished quickly for the new system, but without the backing of some substantial third-party developers, Sega knows that yet another of its consoles will face large-scale market problems. Some speculate that the Black Belt will come out soon to capitalize on gamers' vociferous cries for a Virtua Fighter 3 port; a year from now, the demand for VF3 could be considerably less and Sega will have lost a golden opportunity to launch the new system with a highly-anticipated title.

The Software. Namely VF3: Right now, it seems that Virtua Fighter 3 would be an obvious choice to demonstrate the machine's power, but as there is little to no chance that the Black Belt will ship this Christmas, Sega has a major VF3 problem: By the time VF3 came out for the Black Belt, there would probably be something much newer and more exciting that people would want to play at home. Sega has already announced VF3 for the Saturn, but an anonymous high-ranking Sega executive in the United States has indicated that the game will probably not come out for the Saturn at all. This would obviously be a good thing for people who want a near-perfect arcade VF3 port to appear on a newer Sega machine, but a very bad thing for Japanese Saturn sales, which all but depend on a port of VF3 (the number one most wanted Saturn game, without dispute). Yu Suzuki of AM2 is known to dislike the Saturn already, and a feeble port of VF3 wouldn't make things any better.

Sega's Plan B. The final point worth discussing is the question of whether or not the SegaSoft-developed Black Belt will ever come out, and if not, why. Here's where things become a little surprising. Since the days of the Genesis, Sega historically avoids putting all its eggs in one basket: It constantly develops new types of hardware and then chooses the best for release. There was not one 'Saturn;' there were several concepts in the running, and Sega chose its favorite (none of the choices came from America). Quite frankly, Sega in Japan has little love for its bumbling American subsidiary, which burned millions of dollars on tons of bad multimedia CD-ROMs and lame cartridges, leaving the company with a huge hole in its corporate pocket and vast inventories of bad games to dispose of. At this point, Sega has gotten rid of all but a skeleton crew of American developers, and retained those only to handle Sega Sports titles and translations of Sega Enterprises' Japanese-developed titles such as Panzer Dragoon and Nights. In summary, based on past experience, Sega does not entirely trust Americans to come up with something that the company will be banking on.

Our series conclude tomorrow.