What if.......Sega returned to the hardware business?

I guess that most of the members here are US based then. I'm from England. I'm pretty sure that Sega has the upperhand very slightly in Europe during the Master System and Mega Drive v NES and SNES days.
Mega Drive games were even made until 1998 in Europe which was a massive shock. Didn't Saturn come out in 1996?

The Mega CD was a good idea to have along with the Mega Drive but the 32X was a poor waste. I can see the similarities between the 32X and that Super-FX chip that the SNES used but Sega messed up with the 32X and should have moved onto Saturn then.
You gotta admit that Mega Drive had many adventages that the SNES didn't have - quite a few games made it to Mega Drive but not SNES - EA Sports games were very common on Mega Drive, 4 James Pond Games - SNES missed out on the glorious JP3 Operation Starfish that was very Mario World like, Streets of Rage and Golden Axe trilogies and arguably easier to use dpad control on the Mega Drive controllers.

I'm not doubting that the SNES had a lot going for it. Donkey Kong Country was the 1st game to ever blow me away. It looked so beautiful and played like a dream, Star Wing had beautiful graphics too and looked perfect on a 16-bit console and of course, Mario World was the big cheese.

 

>>You gotta admit that Mega Drive had many adventages that the SNES didn't have - quite a few games made it to Mega Drive but not SNES<<

Well, that's a given for any platform. Sega definitely had the edge when it came to sports titles, EA in particular. But things like having only 3 buttons and limited audio and graphical capabilities severely hindered it in other genres like fighters.


Agreed. Me and my Nintendo console owning friend were playing Street Fighter II on Mega Drive today and you have to press start to swap from punching to kicking. That was a pain. Thankfully Mortal Kombat got around this but 3 buttons compared to SNES' 6 button controller definitely helped there.
Another thing that SNES had that Mega Drive could NOT pull off was the mascot racing game. All racing Sonic games have been very bad. Sonic R on Saturn was truly terrible while Super Mario Kart on SNES is possibly the best racer ever.

Anyway we should avoid getting into this talk. We don't wanna turn this thread into a Sega v Nintendo topic. I'm sure there have been plenty of those in the past. I accept both consoles but when younger and the Mega Drive was out (I'd have been between about 7 and 12) I was a bit prejudiced towards Nintendo but what did I know back then. I was young, impressionably and got my mind warped

 

Agree'd.

I know that there was a lot of rpgs that were on Sega and I could(at the time) only afford the Snes and I seen all these rpgs that I wanted to play on the Sega. I know that there were so many great RPGs back in 1990s. I am not going to post the links to the websites that pertain to the fall on the gamecube loss and etc. It is getting off topic. Apologize to you Lando for getting off topic. And you too 2ndquest for getting off topic.

I know that I was addicted to Sonic during one point and I was even thinking about buying...what was that Sega...oh shoot what was that system that had the knights game that invovled sonic, does anyone know the answer to that?

 

I can't remember for the life of me, I don't think it was the Sega Saturn...i think it was something else. I believe it might have been the 32x.

 

Yeah Nights was a Sega Saturn game. I never played it but I've heard runours about a sequel being made for the Wii.
On Sega RPGs, did anyone ever play Shining Force 1 and/or 2?
Those were fantastic RPGs. You can even buy the game on GBA as it was remade and altered slightly, much like Final Fantasy 1 and 2, and 4 on GBA.

 

Master System failed everywhere except Brazil (for some reason). It was never a real competitor for the NES.

 

Well, with the Wii virtual console having Genesis games, and Sega in a contract with Nintendo that every Sonic game made is developed first for the Nintendo console (except for the new Sonic 2007 for the PS3 and 360, though Wii gets Sonic Wild Fire), Sega is almost a 2nd party developer for Nintendo. They also made F-Zero GX and the Super Monkey Ball Series, among others.

I think Sega won't ever go back to console making but continue to support as a 3rd party developer, with Nintendo their primary client.

As for the comment above regarding the Wii not selling as much as the PS2, of course it won't. the Wii won't die as much due to Disc Read Errors or everything else the PS2 did to kill itself so you were forced to buy another one and inflate Sony's numbers and ego.

 

Well Skye, Would you? if you could go between consoles and then you could play all markets on the field. I believe that they are doing the best thing. I am sure tha there is a lot of things that they would love to do but I would love to see them go forward and make a system but I don't think that you will ever see it. I am sure that you can see where Sega is coming from, this is amazing market that they are working.

 

About Sega, Wii and the Virtual Console.
Have they confirmed yet what games are gonna be made available, and if Master System and 32X games are gonna be available? I know that so far there is only gonna be some Mega Drive games but this is not all of them. Ones like Streets of Rage 1-3, Golden Axe 1-2 (3 if you count the Japanese version), all Sonic titles, James Pond 1-3 and Aquatic Games (hopefully) and then more like the FIFAs, Road Rash, etc will hopefully be made available. SoR3 is so damn expensive to get on ebay so I'm relishing the chance to download that but are there a confirmed list of games, consoles, etc for download on the Wii?

 

I think that Sega would be opposed to it seeing how well there appear to be doing as a 3rd party developer.

However, considering the current generation of consoles, they could potentially make a market sweep if they waited until Christmas 2007. The 360 would be 2 years old, and in all likelihood the PS3 won't be selling anywhere near as well as Sony hopes. Nintendo, Sony and MS will probably all be neck and neck by mid-2007. Now if Sega dropped a bomb that they were releasing a new console, more powerful than the 360 and PS3, included the controller advances of the Wii while maintaining a traditional controller too, and they made it easy to develop for, and they include the HD format that "wins" (Blue Ray or HD - it will probably be evident by late 2007), and it it still cheaper than a PS3, they would be able to claim to have the superior console and Sony and MS would be stuck until the next generation, which would probably be at least 3 or more years out. It's actually possible, and only because of Sony's price scheme.

 

I say it once, Sega will never ever return to hardware. I mean they are a smart company and they are going to release phantasy star online for the Wii which is really awesome in the fact that you can play online with your friends and that there won't be all of three people on like the DC's version. I might just buy it for that simple fact alone.

Sega's golden Axe Series was awesome, I remember playing that at the arcade and I couldn't get enough of it, then evenutally playing it at my cousin's was awesome.

 

On the sidenote, I love both Sega and Nintendo. Sega has provided me with years of entertainment, back in the days of Genesis. Nintendo...well I never owned a SNES, but I liked it when I played it at my neighbour's house. Let's just say Street Fighter 2 was really awesome back then

 

you're right - and at this point, it would be too costly to try to break into that market share. atari tried with their most recent system, and.. well.. you have a hard time finding it anywhere.

sega is smart and they'll stick to their cashcows

 

glad someone else see's a smart business decision.

 

Sega are like Nintendo. True innovators of gaming. I imagine that if they returned to hardware market they could pull off a true masterpiece. Something like the innovation of the Wii with the graphical power of PS3 and 360 for a fair price. Still I'm happy for them to stick to game development.
They know what they are doing and can produce some fantastic titles. It will be so nice to see Sega's innovation used in games soon. They have released some brilliant games and the only way is up. If Sega ever returned to the hardware market I imagine it would be a few years off, probably only if Sony and Microsoft drop out of the hardware market leaving only Nintendo.

While you have Nintendo and the other 2, there's no need for Sega.
Sega are likely associated as being in the same position as Nintendo and many gamers might not be keen on having 'another' Nintendo out there while Microsoft and Sony are around.

 

People keep saying that Sega would be dumb to jump in with three consoles on the market in this "generation"? Was MS dumb to jump in in the last generation since there already was DC and PS2 and upcoming GC?

It's always about timing, and the DC had bad timing and the looming PS2.

Sega probably won't take another chance on hardware for quite a while, but with Sony in a potentially weakened position, it may not be such a bad time to do so.

Every so often people start saying that the market cannot sustain more than # dominating consoles. In the late 80s # = 1 (NES killed the Sega Master System), in the early 90s # = 2 (SNES and Genesis did well enough and wiped the floor with TurboGraphix 16), in the mid-90s # = 2 (Sony PS and N64 did okay, but the Saturn and the Jaguar were destroyed), in the late 90s / early 00s # = 3 (MS XBox, PS2 and GC all had a reasonable share of the market but killed off the DC in short order). Now in the modern times, who is to say that the market cannot sustain 4 systems?

 

What actually happened to the Saturn and Dreamcast? How long did they last year wise, what years did they run for, how well or badly did they sell and what were the biggest problems with the consoles that caused Sega so much trouble?

 

Sega just had bad luck. I've never owned a Sega system other than game gear...but I hear from many people the dreamcast was a pretty soild buy at the time...I totally skipped it and went PSX to PS2.

 

Yeah, Sega also didn't have a bunch of developers that they owned the rights to, like the N64 and the PS2. I know that if they had of had some of the game developers titles then they definately would have beeen able to compete.

You have to remember that N64 had rareware and Sony had the final fantasy series behind them...which no one will ever top in my opinion(my personal preferrence) and I think that you're going to have a tough time to beat a company who has "exclusively for the n64" etc. you have to remember that you didn't have a bunch of game developers who were just going to release something for the dreamcast.