What went wrong with the Saturn?

Was it not powerful enough?

Didn't have enough support?

What?

I don't think you will get an answer that will please you but...

:P

lack of/crappy marketing, convoluted hardware as far as the average developer goes.

I think it was mainly a series of bad marketing decisions made by Sega while trying to market it in the west. This ended up alienating retailers and developers, which resulted in a small launch library and limited, if any shelf space for saturn stuff in game stores. It was also more difficult to write games for than the Playstation, so devs naturally favoured the PS.Nismology

I concur that the Saturn was basically non-existent by 1998 or so while the PS1 and N64 were just starting to sell well.

I think I've seen, like, three Saturn commercials in total (not very good ones to begin with) while PS1 (aka PSX as they used to call it back then) add were literally everywhere.

Playstation happened. Also bad marketing, people fed up after the whole 32x/sega cd thing. I also heard it had way too much shovelware.Sali217

[QUOTE="Sali217"]Playstation happened. Also bad marketing, people fed up after the whole 32x/sega cd thing. I also heard it had way too much shovelware.Darkman2007

Hes not saying that the Saturn was a bad system but he was saying that Sega betrayed their fan base with crappy add ons. He was also refering to the boatloads of great titles that are on the playstation versus the few that were on the Saturn

[QUOTE="Darkman2007"][QUOTE="Sali217"]Playstation happened. Also bad marketing, people fed up after the whole 32x/sega cd thing. I also heard it had way too much shovelware.JamesHarden98

Hes not saying that the Saturn was a bad system but he was saying that Sega betrayed their fan base with crappy add ons. He was also refering to the boatloads of great titles that are on the playstation versus the few that were on the Saturn

lack of/crappy marketing, convoluted hardware as far as the average developer goes.

Darkman2007

This pretty much sums it up.

The Saturn was great, but as he stated when you dont advertise and others do you will get eaten alive!

[QUOTE="JamesHarden98"]

[QUOTE="Darkman2007"] the shovelware is not really true. there were piles of crap games on almost every system , from personal experience I would say the Saturn is no worse than what one would expect.Darkman2007

Hes not saying that the Saturn was a bad system but he was saying that Sega betrayed their fan base with crappy add ons. He was also refering to the boatloads of great titles that are on the playstation versus the few that were on the Saturn

[QUOTE="Darkman2007"][QUOTE="JamesHarden98"]

Hes not saying that the Saturn was a bad system but he was saying that Sega betrayed their fan base with crappy add ons. He was also refering to the boatloads of great titles that are on the playstation versus the few that were on the Saturn

Sali217

[QUOTE="Sali217"][QUOTE="Darkman2007"] first of all , complaining about shovelware on the Saturn vs the PS1 is hilarious, as there was plenty of it on PS1 , far more in fact (simply because there were more games) and there were more than a "few" great games on Saturn btw , I never knew the Mega CD was that bad, it wasn't great, but it has its fair share of decent games.Darkman2007

Mega CD and 32X could be seperate systems.

They didn't need the Genesis to operate and the whole potential (i.e. Gen + SCD + 32X) went largly untapped.

Anyway, the most common answers for the failure of Saturn are poor advertising and hard development but Sega did a lot of other mistakes too during that era.

For example they launched the Saturn too soon in the US with a poor launch line up and a hefty price (399$ was a lot back then), they didn't bring some of the important Saturn games from Japan to the US (and Europe), they were promoting a "next-gen" system when their console was still supposed to compete with PS1 and N64, they cancelled some big projects like Sonic X-treme (Saturn only got a Sonic racing game and a compilation), they were flooding the market prior the Saturn with too much hardware resulting in people loosing trust in Sega, ect.

I'm speaking about what I've heard/read about it, I wasn't actually there when it came out neither owned one.

I remember it as "the expensive Sega" which played some cool-looking arcade style games like Virtua Fighter and Sega Rally, but not much beyond that.

Here's what I think really hurt it:

1. Lack of support in the U.S. - Too many Saturn games were Japanese-only releases even when the Saturn was still being supported fully in the U.S.
   
   
2. Bad Marketing - From what I've read, specifically the debut of the Saturn. Most companies give third-party companies forewarning and dev-kits well before the console hits store shelves so games are ready to go at and shortly after launching a console. Saturn sprung it on everyone in May 1995, when they had been telling everyone specifically that it was releasing in September 1995. This move upset many third-party companies as well as some chain-stores and hurt Sega's image in the industry. There's also the weird-as-hell Saturn commercials that aired in the U.S. What the hell were those about?
   
   
3. Hard to Program For - Now I'm not a techie by any means. So I'm not gonna try to explain this. But I've heard many times that the Saturn was a system that was hard to program for due to the way the dual-CPUs were set-up. This meant that many developers had a hard time programming for the Saturn, which often led to poor ports or game developers just deciding to skip a Saturn version altogether.
   
   
4. No Great Sonic Games That Weren't Already On Genesis - I know many Sega fans hate to hear this, but it's the truth, Sonic sold A LOT of Sega hardware. Many people automatically associate Sega with Sonic and many people played and enjoyed Sonic games on the Genesis. But on Saturn all we saw were mediocre Sonic games, or ports of Sonic games already on the Genesis. If you really loved Sonic and that's why you bought a Genesis, then you had no real reason to go buy a Saturn.

All that said, I do enjoy the Saturn. I own one. My collection is pretty sparse, but I enjoy the games I do have and I have enjoyed a lot of other games on the Saturn that aren't in my collection as well. It has a fine library of games and is a great system.

The suprise May 20th 1995 U.S.A Launch which was designed to get a jump on the Playstation Sept 1995 U.S launch. Sega pissed off some major retail chains. Which later refused to support Sega when Sony launched later in the year. Sony also priced the Playstation $100.00 less then the Sega Saturn.

Finally the Sega Saturn was difficult to program for Sony Playstation was easy for third party developers to work with. And Sonic the Hedgehog did not appear on the Saturn.

I'm one of those gamers who stood there at the store witha credit card burning in my back pocket and the decision to be made between the Playstation and the Saturn. At launch the Saturn was actually $100 more than the original PS One. By the time I scrounged up enough, Sega had dropped the Saturn's cost (no games included, one controller and the AV cable) to match the Playstation at $299.

Hindsight is always 20/20 but at the time the Saturn seemed like the safer bet. Electronics makers were having a terrible time cracking into the video game sector (Phillips CD-i, Panasonic 3DO anyone?) and Sega, despite some BS with the CD/ 32X detours, still had a MASSIVE following for the Genesis. Nintendo was showing absolutely no signs of releasing new hardware and even then rumors (that would eventually be proven correct) abounded that when they did, it would be cartridge based.

Long story short, it was a $400+ day after picking up a single game and another controller but I sipped the Saturn Kool-Aid. I was actually very happy with the console initially. Games like Bug!, Panzer Dragoon, Clockwork Knight, all great stuff. I think if 2D were going to previal, the Saturn would have mopped up the market. Of course what was really happening behind the scenes was that the move to 3D was in full swing (Nintendo would cememnt this once the N64/ Mario 64 would come out a couple years later) and the Saturn's hardware architecture proved difficult to develop for.

By the time 1997 rolled around, I parted ways with the Saturn to switch to the Playstation camp. The momentum had simply run out for the Saturn but not before many good titles were released. If you actually research the history of Sega, the major reason game companies dumped the Saturn was that behind the scene Bernie Stolar, then-CEO, had basically announced that Sega themselves was pulling the plug on the Saturn to put all their effort into their next console (whcih of course would be the ill-fated Dreamcast). A long line of bad decisions are what ultimately relegated Sega to a software-only developer.

I'm one of those gamers who stood there at the store witha credit card burning in my back pocket and the decision to be made between the Playstation and the Saturn. At launch the Saturn was actually $100 more than the original PS One. By the time I scrounged up enough, Sega had dropped the Saturn's cost (no games included, one controller and the AV cable) to match the Playstation at $299.

Hindsight is always 20/20 but at the time the Saturn seemed like the safer bet. Electronics makers were having a terrible time cracking into the video game sector (Phillips CD-i, Panasonic 3DO anyone?) and Sega, despite some BS with the CD/ 32X detours, still had a MASSIVE following for the Genesis. Nintendo was showing absolutely no signs of releasing new hardware and even then rumors (that would eventually be proven correct) abounded that when they did, it would be cartridge based.

Long story short, it was a $400+ day after picking up a single game and another controller but I sipped the Saturn Kool-Aid. I was actually very happy with the console initially. Games like Bug!, Panzer Dragoon, Clockwork Knight, all great stuff. I think if 2D were going to previal, the Saturn would have mopped up the market. Of course what was really happening behind the scenes was that the move to 3D was in full swing (Nintendo would cememnt this once the N64/ Mario 64 would come out a couple years later) and the Saturn's hardware architecture proved difficult to develop for.

By the time 1997 rolled around, I parted ways with the Saturn to switch to the Playstation camp. The momentum had simply run out for the Saturn but not before many good titles were released. If you actually research the history of Sega, the major reason game companies dumped the Saturn was that behind the scene Bernie Stolar, then-CEO, had basically announced that Sega themselves was pulling the plug on the Saturn to put all their effort into their next console (whcih of course would be the ill-fated Dreamcast). A long line of bad decisions are what ultimately relegated Sega to a software-only developer.

BlendThree

lack of/crappy marketing, convoluted hardware as far as the average developer goes.

Darkman2007

the lack of third party support-way worst then n64 or gc

the lack of high profile titles -goldeneye , turok top gear , etc

the lack of advertising

the expensive asking price of 400 ,

the failed genesis add-ons and a subsequent rare cdx release also had its part in it ,

sega unable to get stores to actually carry the units ,

and i hate to bust peoples bubble ---no sonic that was worth mentioning , also racing games seam to be next to extinct on it , owning only 6 games and struggling to find some that are actually worth a dime , i can honestly say i wasted my money on it , and the fact it does not have 4 controller ports out of the box is another problem dont say oh but ps1 didnt have them - the thing with ps1 was rpgs , and singleplayer expierences and nfs games, driver games not possible on saturn

n64 was the party system of that gen im surprised it didnt sell 60 million honestly ,

I think, to put things in perspective, while the Saturn is known as a failure it's also relatively similar to the Dreamcast. Except the market it succeeded in and the 3rd party support was switched. Dreamcast sold more than the Saturn, but not by a large margin.

the lack of third party support-way worst then n64 or gc

mariokart64fan

This is actually not quite true, at least in terms of Japanese 3rd party support. The Saturn seems to have had better Japanese support than the N64. Moreover, as far as racing games go, weren't Daytona USA and Sega Rally two of the highest profile games for the system? And if Grandia was possible on the Saturn, plenty of the PS1's JRPGs would have been possible on the Saturn. In fact, the Saturn had the 2nd best JRPG selection out of the three consoles that generation (because the N64 had lost that much support).

Just as many other people have already said it was a combination of things. For one thing the Saturn didnt get a build up to release like most consoles do, as I recall all sega did was just suddenly say "oh its out in a month or two" or something to that affect and retailers were just expected to deal with it. Thus a suprising amount of retailers refused to sell it when it came out.

There was also the fact that not enough developers wanted to support it because as a system it was powerful, but as a platform for developing games it was nothing short of a pain in the backside thanks to what sounds like a hideous multi processor architecture, which made programming much more diffifult and expensive than was needed. That resulted in not enough games to back up the system.

It also didnt help that Sega had kind of alienated its fan base a fair bit with the likes of the 32x.

Oh and obviously the playstation really, seriously, didnt help.

I dont own one at the moment, but I will be doing because despite its flop it looks like it has some awesome games :D

Was it not powerful enough?

Didn't have enough support?

What?

GreekGameManiac

the answer is simple: sega of japan screwed up big time. they totally misjudged the us market and thought it was the same as japan. in japan saturn was a succes. in europe and usa it was a disaster sales wise.

also the surprise launch was a disaster because half the retailers weren't in on it. they were so mad they wouldn't carry saturn anymore. also in europe retailing was horrendous. I knew only 1 shop in 30 km radius in netherlands who sold saturns and games.

Playstation happened. Also bad marketing, people fed up after the whole 32x/sega cd thing. I also heard it had way too much shovelware.Sali217

that is absolutely not true. It had far less than playsation for instance. most exlusive saturn games were actually very good, while most shovelware is either multiplatform or for system easiest and cheapest to develop on, which was psx

[QUOTE="Darkman2007"][QUOTE="JamesHarden98"]

Hes not saying that the Saturn was a bad system but he was saying that Sega betrayed their fan base with crappy add ons. He was also refering to the boatloads of great titles that are on the playstation versus the few that were on the Saturn

Sali217

the expensive add ons being bad for sega are such a myth. the sega cd actually sold very wlel until the congress hearings in 1993. the 32x nobody knew and cared about. the real problem was sega abonding the genesis worldwide in 1995. while in europe and usa the 16 bit market was still way bigger than the 32 bit market. this cost sega tons of money and customers

The Playstation just had that WOW factor. Ridge Racer and Toshinden were great looking games at the time. Not to mention an amazing port of Tekken. Heirren

saturn had panzer dragoon.

I think, to put things in perspective, while the Saturn is known as a failure it's also relatively similar to the Dreamcast. Except the market it succeeded in and the 3rd party support was switched. Dreamcast sold more than the Saturn, but not by a large margin.

[QUOTE="mariokart64fan"]

the lack of third party support-way worst then n64 or gc

CLOUDsea

This is actually not quite true, at least in terms of Japanese 3rd party support. The Saturn seems to have had better Japanese support than the N64. Moreover, as far as racing games go, weren't Daytona USA and Sega Rally two of the highest profile games for the system? And if Grandia was possible on the Saturn, plenty of the PS1's JRPGs would have been possible on the Saturn. In fact, the Saturn had the 2nd best JRPG selection out of the three consoles that generation (because the N64 had lost that much support).

we are talking here about failure in the west. dreamcast far outsold saturn in the west in less than 2 years while saturn was on the market in the west for over 3 years.

Just as many other people have already said it was a combination of things. For one thing the Saturn didnt get a build up to release like most consoles do, as I recall all sega did was just suddenly say "oh its out in a month or two" or something to that affect and retailers were just expected to deal with it. Thus a suprising amount of retailers refused to sell it when it came out.

There was also the fact that not enough developers wanted to support it because as a system it was powerful, but as a platform for developing games it was nothing short of a pain in the backside thanks to what sounds like a hideous multi processor architecture, which made programming much more diffifult and expensive than was needed. That resulted in not enough games to back up the system.

It also didnt help that Sega had kind of alienated its fan base a fair bit with the likes of the 32x.

Oh and obviously the playstation really, seriously, didnt help.

I dont own one at the moment, but I will be doing because despite its flop it looks like it has some awesome games :D

penpusher

the third party thing is really bs. initially third party support was huge for the saturn. because it was sega and a pretty save bet it would be succesful. however when sales were bad third parties pulled out. the ps3 and ps2 were/are hard to program for. did it stop companies to develop?? of course not. because it sells well.

Originally the saturn was to be a 2d powerhouse machine however once sega heard about the PS and its 3d capabilities they hurriedly threw together a 3d chip and added it tot he saturn making it a very difficult machine to program for thanks to the convoluted architecture, this and the lack of any real marketing from sega were the main reasons the machine failed.

Personally speaking i never liked the saturn anyways so no real loss to me, the DC on the other hand....:(

Originally the saturn was to be a 2d powerhouse machine however once sega heard about the PS and its 3d capabilities they hurriedly threw together a 3d chip and added it tot he saturn making it a very difficult machine to program for thanks to the convoluted architecture, this and the lack of any real marketing from sega were the main reasons the machine failed.

Personally speaking i never liked the saturn anyways so no real loss to me, the DC on the other hand....:(

l34052

the unfotunately poor legacy of the Sega-DC/32X/Neptune dissasters played a role I believe; people just didn't have much faith in Sega after its hardcore fans had been duped and generally dissapointed prior to the Saturn.

myabe I'm overstating or over-estimating this as a factor, but its the reason I personally stayed away initially.

the unfotunately poor legacy of the Sega-DC/32X/Neptune dissasters played a role I believe; people just didn't have much faith in Sega after its hardcore fans had been duped and generally dissapointed prior to the Saturn.

myabe I'm overstating or over-estimating this as a factor, but its the reason I personally stayed away initially.

TheKungFool

There's no complex reason at all or combinations of reasons. The Saturn was stupidly designed. it was made to be a CD/32X into one and released as such and slapped some 3D power in it. Both of those just caused it to be a mess to make games for and no one gave a hoot to even try. The second thing is that Sega once again forgot people buy game systems to play games, and just like the Master system did virtually no advertising or promotions for certain games to get people into the system, so it was not only a risk to buy, it was a risk for sales success for developers. That's literally it. Remove the design, more devs support and the Saturn would have gained more games and promotion from companies and word of mouth from players because it had more supported games. Remove lack of focusing on promoting games means people know it has games and all those dumb rumors about the Saturn that were around would not exist. More consumers, more profit, and more.Eliminatorcanon

saying the Saturn is a CD/32X is hilarious, quite dumb to say the least.

Im not quite sure how 3D was "slapped on" either.