
The reasons for Saturn's failure in the face of the PS1 and N64 have been covered multiple times over the years, but now Sega's Yosuke Okunari has added his insight into the matter.
Speaking in his new book, Sega Hard Senki, Okunari – who has been instrumental in the company's recent efforts to celebrate its history – places a large amount of the blame at the feet of the highly divisive Mega Drive / Genesis add-on, the 32X.
Envisaged as a means of keeping its massive North American Genesis market alive, the bolt-on device boosted the power of the console but flopped commercially, with Sega ceasing support fairly quickly.
"When it became clear that the 32X was a failure, Sega of America quickly terminated it and prepared to move up the North American launch of the Sega Saturn," says Okunari (thanks, John Harrison).
The 32X proved to be a costly distraction, not just in terms of development capacity but in terms of hardware, as Okunari explains. "Sega had devoted much of its game development capabilities to the 32X (and much of its hardware stock, since the 32X used the same chip as the Saturn) during the 1994 year-end sales season."
This meant that Sega couldn't focus all of its energies on making its 32-bit console a success, Okunari argues. "The company was unable to focus enough on its main hope, the Saturn, and it was also unable to protect the Genesis in North America. Although the success of Virtua Fighter could have given the Saturn a big lead in Japan, the console was often out of stock during its first year because of the parts shortage. In addition, the lack of other strong titles prevented the Saturn from gaining a big lead on the PlayStation. Furthermore, the Genesis was unable to compete on even ground with the SNES as it had done in the past. The cost of these failures was too great, and Sega was never able to defeat its rivals in America and Europe again."
Saturn sold just 9.26 million units during its lifespan – PS1 managed to shift 102.49 million. However, as we've said many times on this very site, that doesn't mean Saturn was a failure – in fact, it is home to some of the best games of its generation.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 21
I read the best Saturn games article. I hope a Saturn mini gets released with some of those Japan exclusives translated. I imagine it would help with the number of games of a high quality.
With the success of the Mega Drive and the IP (home console and arcade), the fall of Sega’s hardware feels more of a missed opportunity. I’d have liked to see the Saturn succeed with better fortunes for the company.
It’s great that Sega has survived with its IP as a software company.
Yeah, the 32x… i’m going to type about my aggressively limited knowledge and experience of and with the Saturn.
The Saturn is a console that not only have i never played, but i never even saw it on store shelves. So small was its presence in my backwater U.S. town that there are people who i gamed with growing up, who are still gamers, are still most likely unaware of this console’s existence.
There were a few Saturn games on shelves here back then, and i asked a store owner once about the console, and he said he probably couldn’t get one. After trying to sell me Saturn games. So i was late to that party apparently.
When i finally decided to hop online in the late 90s to chat with fellow gamers, the Saturn was already revered, and there was a lot of anger towards a certain US exec.
I did consider the Saturn a failure, but when i said that, i meant to say in the way it was marketed, distributed and how many were made and sold.
I would freaking LOVE to play one, and i’ve heard nothing but great things about its library over the years. Heck, i always wanted one.
As a game console that sold very little in comparison to its monstrously popular competitors and ultimately died too soon, the Saturn is still beloved by those who played it and the only negative things i’ve heard about the console, have nothing to do with its library of games.
And it’s common to say now, but software is what really matters, so no, i guess the Saturn wasn’t a failure. At least not where it counts to me.
Mini it please.
Thanks for the article, Damien!✌️
I am sure if you ask someone from Sega of America at the time they would blame someone in Japan neither side could agree on anything then and I imagine many that were involved won't take responsibility either and much rather blame the other side. it was the lack of a single person in charge for better or worse. it then essential became two separate entities within Sega that wanted completely different things for their markets and not one shared global vision.
@Diogmites it's interesting you mention you never seen a Saturn on sale at the time it was out where you lived. It was the same for me where I lived here in England both in the town I lived in and in the city near by. I actually see more these days sitting in the windows of retro game stores than I ever expected.
@Zenszulu Equally interesting to hear you couldn’t find one in England either! Unlike you though, i never see them around today. We have a local game shop that sells New and Used and i used to know all the dudes there and i would have them reserve stuff for me. They never acquired one in the many years i patronised their establishment. They have a website where you can check their inventory and inventory history and i checked before i typed this, and they still have never had one in stock(that they documented anyways). That’s kinda blowing my mind a little, as my town has grown considerably in the last couple decades or so.
Thanks for the reply!
Obviously the 32x was a mistake, and everyone agrees. I think Saturn was a case of perception becoming reality. I recall at the time having the perception that Saturn had no games. I remember teasing the one classmate we knew that had a Saturn that he had the bad console (Obviously considering it's now second behind Dreamcast as my favorite console of all time, I was a very misguided child, and I admit this). I was legitimately shocked years later when I decided to revisit the Saturn after falling in love with the Dreamcast just how many games it had. In fact, its North American library is within striking distance of the number of releases on N64 (Saturn's Japanese library of course putting it WAY ahead of N64, though both obviously massively below PS1). This perception issue comes down to bad marketing. I was a kid in middle school at the time, so I was basically their prime demographic, yet I didn't know.
The 32x was definitely a misstep. But all of the corporate in fighting, and sega of Japan being unable to get their heads out of their butts. Meant that they kept failing to recognize that the majority of their market was in the US and Europe, and that maybe they should focus on those markets. The Saturn was a great success in Japan, but only in Japan. It would have been nice if they could have put their pride aside and at least occasionally listened to Sega of America and Sega Europe. Instead they caused the whole hardware ship to sink, but hey at least they finally won for a time in Japan.
@Diogmites I do think things were more regional back then in the ways you describe. I remember hearing similar things when the TurboGrafx 16 was trying to get a foothold in 1989 and 1990. Some people never heard of it or saw it anywhere. Sega had way better distribution than NEC then. I don't think things had changed much by the mid 1990s. I had and loved the Saturn and I knew 3-5 other people that also had it which I realize must be unusual. That's not counting knowing people online. I think supply issues factored into all this, especially in 1995. And if certain regions had certain stores like KB and not others like Toys R Us, then that further exacerbates that. If distribution was a difficulty, then Sony had a massive advantage that way.
While the 32X wasn't the only problem Sega had with the Saturn, it is a big part of the system's overall failure and is just a great symbol of what was wrong at Sega overall. And the 32X cost Sega money they could have used for marketing. Saving that money could have allowed them to absorb a bit more losses per unit to drop the launch price to 350-375. That along with marketing could have mitigated the PS1 "$299" moment because the PS1 wasn't really $300. Players still needed a game and a memory card which would bring the system up to $370 or so before tax. I do think Sony's approach was better, but Sega wasn't really that far off on price.
32X always felt like a waste of R&D and development resources for games. I was a huge Sega kid in the 90's loving my Game Gear and model 2 Genesis.
When Sega CD was announced with Sonic CD, it looked like the future and I wanted one. When the 32X was announced I truly didn't care. It looked stupid and the price didn't feel justified for a fat cartridge that boosted the power so marginally that aside from Doom, I didn't see a difference.
It definitely was a major factor in the failure of the Saturn... but as others have stated, the lack of marketing and the gunshot start of the race immediately after being shown coupled with being $100 more expensive... yeah... there were many factors. Sega was failing on all cylinders.
It wasn't long before PS1 had 3 great games for every 1 of Saturn's. The developers quickly jumped the Sega ship and Sega never recovered which reflected with Dreamcast.
To this date I think the 32X has to be the worst gaming hardware I have ever bought.
Its hard to gain consumer trust, it takes years of effort, and countless great games running on solid hardware.
However, its extremely easy to burn consumer trust, and get them to turn away from you and into the arms of someone else. That is what caused Sega's downfall, burning their fanbase and sending them to Nintendo and Sony who were all too eager to accept them.
Sega CD was an overpriced commercial flop (yeah, it has some great games, but many of them were just Genesis ports or crappy FMV games).
32x (which I bought recently) was a disaster.
Saturn was given up on way too quickly. Instead of throwing in the towel, SEGA should have FOCUSED on it more, released more good games for it, translated more third party games to the platform. Sega believed that the 'giant reset' when a new console generation begins would have helped them, but instead it only hurt them. It was the final straw for many gamers after the Sega CD, 32x, and Saturn abandonment, they simply didn't want to trust Sega anymore.
Even though I was a stalwart fan of Sega (and Nintendo) back then, I don't blame them. They did it to themselves.
@sdelfin Glad you mentioned the Turbografx! Though i never saw a Saturn, i have an old gaming buddy i still play with on Steam nowadays, and he had a Turbografx (he got it for a port of his favorite arcade game, Cadash) growing up, and i recall seeing a few of those in stores.
But, we had a Kay Bee, and a Software Etc., and didn’t get a Toys R Us until the early 2000s. I would think that any store that would stock a Turbografx would stock a Saturn, but i could be wrong. Either way, yeah PSX ‘s were everywhere to your point of Sony having huge distribution advantages.
All great points you make about the 32x being a financial drain and how that was a substantial detriment to the Saturn in its struggle against the PlayStation! Yeah, i remember Sega marketing the heck out of the 32x … tv ads were and are spendy!
I wasn’t super cognizant of the PSX during its lifetime and wouldn’t own it until near the end of the PS2’s era. I do remember some griping about the system not coming with a memory card, i had not realized or forgotten it didn’t come with a game!
I wasn’t really aware how close the Sega and Sony consoles actually were in price.
Anyways, thanks for the interesting reply!
@Diogmites And thank you for an interesting reply as well. Just a quick follow up to add context regarding the KB/Kay Bee Toys reference. The reason that's relevant is because when Sega launched the system early, in May of 1995, they had such limited stock of the systems for the initial shipments that they had to pick which store chains would get the system first, and they cut KB out of the deal at that point. As I recall, KB was a strong retail partner for the Genesis, so they were not happy and refused to stock the Saturn for a while, if not completely during its run. That left Sony as the big beneficiary in terms of retail presence(especially since the N64 was not a thing yet). I had a hunch from your post that you had a KB as a main store in your region.
@sdelfin Thank you, that is good knowledge! And keen spot! 👍✌️
@Diogmites don't get me wrong I see them but they often sit there for several months with the price going up as it sits there. There may be quite a love from a small group of people now but the games that are popular tend to be expensive so even used the system isn't all that in demand. My local retro game store is more like a museum because most of the expensive stuff has been sitting there for years in glass cabinets. I would be surprised in the area that I lived when the console was on the market that very few people owned it. Going back to when I was at school I knew one person who owned one and he was trying to find someone else to trade games with for a while and not one other person seemed to have one. Mind you I now live in the City that I used to live near and not the town so I would imagine that is why all these years later they show up in the wild more.
I only got the 32X (which I still have) for Knuckles Chaotix. No regrets.
I think Sega surprise launching the Saturn at a price point $100 more than the PS1 was it's biggest downfall. They only released it at Toys R Us, Babbages, Software Etc and EB, causing retailers like Walmart, Best Buy and KB Toys to either not stock or give very little space to the Saturn. Sega of Japan forced Sega of America to release early to get a head start on the Playstation. On top of alienating major retailers, third party developers weren't given a heads up and their games weren't ready at launch, which caused a strain between Sega and some developers/publishers. To make matters worse, there was never a real Sonic game for the platform.
After all that, the 32X hurt them as well. Not only was it a poorly supported confusing piece of hardware, it was the 2nd add on for the Genesis which led to a crowded room for Sega products. Even in stores that carried Saturn, there was a time in 1996 that you could walk into a store and see Genesis, Sega CD, 32X (and even the rare Sega CD/32X combination game), Saturn and Game Gear games. From a hardware standpoint add in the oddity Sega Pico and the Sega Nomad and there was just too much on the shelves to confuse an average consumer, leading to a lack of confidence in the brand by shoppers. While Nintendo had 4 pieces of hardware on shelves, it was pretty clear what was what. Sony having just the Playstation was a huge win though.
Ultimately though I think if Sega didn't try to compete with Playstation and Nintendo 64's 3D and stuck to its initial plan of creating the greatest 2D console of all time and released the best ports of Capcom's arcade fighting games, a killer new 2D Sonic and other titles western gamers were familiar with such as Streets of Rage and Golden Axe, it wouldn't have reached PS1 levels but it wouldn't have been a massive failure either.
@Zenszulu I see! The store we have here never has anything all that rare. At least that i’ve seen. I did get a sealed Lunar Silver Star Story Complete way back in like 2005… which had been difficult for me to find even a few years after it was released.
Anyways, thanks for replying to me about the pricing and availability of Saturns and retro stuff in general in your area! I enjoy reading about different experiences!
I've read that even the engineers who made the 32X were surprised it didn't get canceled before release.
Then there was the horrifying story of the Japanese developers getting physically abused because they weren't doing as well as Tom Kalinske, so its speculately they let stuff like this happen with an agenda at embarrassing Tom over successful business practice.
IMHO: The disaster of 32X was not the reason the Saturn failed. It failed because it was an overly complex and expensive system to manufacture. Sony does the $299 mic drop and that killed the Saturn because Sega could not compete with that without completely redesigning the hardware.
Hmm, I do think had they the hindsight and did not release 32X, 1994-1995 would have been better, that was a crucial year. It's more about the resources: Knuckles Chaotix was originally a Sonic game that got downsized for 32X. Doom was rushed for 32X. Had there not been a 32X, either the Genesis might have gotten some more carts with chips (Like Virtua Racer) instead of 32X games, or Saturn would have had more launch titles, and it SOJ would have had those 32X chips in Saturns, so their launch would have been stronger.
Would it have stopped Playstation? No.
But... like the N64 it might have gotten around 30 million sales, especially if they also did not launch early (though launching early with DOOM might have been not as bad).
My personal take on the 32X has two different scenarios.
Scenario A is just to have it never come out.
Scenario B is a bit more interesting. I would basically boost the power of the 32X to make it nearly or even completely make it into a Sega Saturn. That would make the Tower of Power much more appealing deal. Also consider that if the 32X and Saturn are more closely related that means it could also be backwards compatible with the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. (Though not Master System since there's no Z80) Could be a massive marketing tactic against both the PlayStation 1 and the N64.
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