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Wii U vs Sega Saturn, which “failed console” was worse for its company?
- Thread starter Deleted member 249
- Start date
They definitely know how to adapt, while still innovating, which is pretty impressive
The Saturn library is why I had high hopes for Dreamcast, to be honest, but we know how everything played out. Having a great library is insufficient in the presence of what some consider to be the 2 most influential consoles in all of gaming history for how they changed the way we play, the way games are made and the way the industry functions as a whole.
I'm glad that this is like, 7 pages of Saturn answers, but at the same time who even expected otherwise?
The real reason why Nintendo is alive and Sega is dead is because Nintendo is able to survive, if not thrive, in a gaming market that is indifferent or outright hostile to their philosophy.
Nintendo has never been the "cool" company. It has always focused on trying to appeal to consumers in other ways. Whether it be by being the defacto 3D console with the N64 (3D controller, 3rd person 3D games), motion controls and the "family system" with the Wii, or the hybrid system with the Switch. They also find ways to make their games appeal to the mass market by either innovating at the right time (BOTW) or keeping things simple when needed (NSMB).
In contrast, Sega got by being the "cool" company. Unfortunately, they got frog leaped by Sony with the Playstation. It just wasn't enough to slap on a licensed TV show on the box and be the "It" console and it really showed. They also always don't deliver on their franchises when they need to. Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a perfect example of this. Instead of releasing a familiar and fresh entry to capture the Fire Emblem market they literally just did a reskin of the original game. Yakuza is another one. The series has been declining outside the West for a while due to the fact that they didn't change things up and practically made it a yearly series. Yakuza 7 seems to remedy this but it was due long ago.
Here's a starter:
I feel like I want to write a post explaining my feelings on the Saturn, but given the framing it'll just come off like old-timey console wars. So instead I'll ask, what is it you want to know about?
....but since i can't help myself, without getting too into the weeds, I'll say:
The Saturn had an enormous amount of fighting games and shmups for the time and usually the superior versions of those games if they also appeared on the PS1.
It also has some fantastic multiplayer games. Saturn Bomberman was always trading places with Goldeneye in EGM's monthly ranking of best multiplayer games - I still play it with friends. It's the best fucking Bomberman.
It has some great RPGs that are unique and still highly regarded, like Shining the Holy Ark, Shining Force 3, Dragon Force and Panzer Dragoon Saga.
And NiGHTS is fantastic! One of my favorite games of all time which I still try and replay annually, but I get it's not for everybody.
.....not sure if my avatar from a Saturn game is a benefit here.
I can only say that, for all of its shortcomings, I enjoyed more of my Saturn than I did my WiiU, since I loved SEGA's arcade output while I only really LOVED Xenoblade Chronicles X on WiiU. But, as a corporate display, saturn performance was simply abyssmal
I mean, you need only compare the two consoles that came after each to get your answer. Dreamcast, despite having some killer titles and an enduring fanbase to this day, didn't exactly light the world on fire at the time, understandably; the Saturn kinda killed that trust in a lot of ways. Nintendo, on the other hand, rebounded impeccably with the Switch, a system with an already-stalwart library of original titles and whose collective port-wishlist is approximately every game ever.
Firstly, I need to correct something, Gamerankings has some weird postings on there, Nights isn't their highest ranked Saturn game, it's Radiant Silvergun and Virtua Fighter 2, at least with more than 1 review. Nights is still highly rated, I was on my phone when I checked and is why I was fooled by the listing.
Anyways, I think I know how you feel, I very much felt that way about Dreamcast. It happened to be the first console I bought with my own money that I had earned painting with my Dad over the summer. I was 15 and it was the perfect console for the time, though I still wish it had come out holiday 1997 or 1998 even, with maybe some of those games that they made for Saturn, if the Saturn hadn't existed.
When I got the Dreamcast on launch, I had Sonic Adventures, Ready 2 Rumble, NFL2K, Soul Calibur, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, PowerStone and Blue Stinger. (I had saved plenty of money and the console was cheap if iirc) I think my dad bought R2R and NFL2K. I ended up with most of the Dreamcast library, it's still my second favorite console of all time, only behind the Switch. I think I understand it, part of my love for the Dreamcast was the new experience, I had traditionally been a Nintendo gamer, my little brother got the Playstation and I played the PSX classics on it, but I had never owned a Sega system, I wanted the Dreamcast, I had just started to pay attention to the industry with the start of the 5th generation, the hype around the new consoles and what the Dreamcast was actually capable of.
Just reading your post here, I think I get it, even so, I know the Gamecube and PS2 were better consoles than the Dreamcast, but I still believe that if things had been different for the Dreamcast, had it had launched world wide the same year as Zelda OoT (1998), with Sonic Adventures, I feel it would have really caught the industry with it's pants down... Had it have been able to achieve a 1997 launch (The Naomi board was first demonstrated in February 1998), I think Sega would still be making consoles today, again if Saturn didn't exist. I know that might sting a bit, if you feel about the Saturn like I do about the Dreamcast... Still, I don't believe these consoles were so different really, their library focused on arcade games like fighting and shooting games, but also had classic RPGs, including Grandia series between them... If Sega of Japan just let Sega of America lead with the Neptune/32X for a couple years, they might have been able to release the Dreamcast in the same year as Golden Eye, FF7, Starfox 64 and Turok. How ancient would those other consoles have seemed? and Dreamcast could have had 3 full years on the market before PS2 and before CD writers had taken off.
I think about the what ifs a lot, one thing I've noticed, is how lucky Sony has gotten over the years.
For instance, the Playstation 1:
1. Sega had squandered it's platform support by releasing too many addons that required their own catalog of games during Gen 4.
2. Sega built the Saturn to compete with Nintendo in 1994 and the Super FX 2 chip. They didn't see Playstation coming really, though Sony had come to them after the deal with Nintendo broke down iirc, but Sony basically wanted to use the Sega name and own the rights to disc games on the platform, just like their deal with Nintendo.
3. If Nintendo had decided to use CDs for their 5th generation console, I don't think Square would have left Nintendo, and Nintendo wouldn't have lost multiplatform games like Megaman, Castlevania, and many of the RPGs of that generation... Basically everything we think of when we think of the original Playstation, or the SNES.
Playstation 1 lucked into those mistakes. It is the basis for the entire generation going their way IMO.
Playstation 2 was much the same, difference this time was that Sony knew what they were doing by this time, the industry backed them and Sega was dying before the Playstation 2 even launched. To be relevant to the thread, this is entirely because of Sega of Japan forcing Saturn on us, even before they launched the Saturn, they were looking to create something more powerful and rumors instantly started hovering about a Saturn 2, it was too much for publishers to really bear, and customers had just bought the 32X here in the states, which wasn't bought in Japan yet, because Sega of Japan didn't work with their American counterparts.
I'll stop here, I really need to write a blog post somewhere about the fall of 90s rivals Nintendo and Sega, their mistakes and what could have been.
WiiU tie ratio isn't particularly impressive compared to other Nintendo consoles.
It's the attach rate of their first-party software compared the total software sales that is record high.
It's not by chance that the same software ported to a successful console like the Switch kept selling a lot even years after release.
* What is referred as "First-party software" is actually an approximation calculated by summing every million-seller.
Since most Nintendo games sell at least 1 million units it should be a close enough approximation.
Pinning down Sega's demise to one single platform/console is a mistake.
It was the combination of bad management practices and decisions and external factors (competition from Sony and Nintendo) that brought down Sega in just a few years after its peak in the console business.
Even during Sega peak years (around 1992), they were still doing a lot of mistakes that prevented them to consolidate and strenghten the company.
The company attitude to compete for market share at all cost disregarding the balance sheet, the attitude of releasing anything just to see what stick to the wall, business short-sightedness and inability to create enduring game series were all huge weakness within Sega.
As it was the success in the Mega Drive days was just ephemeral.
The reliance of Sega on introducing new hardware to get market share was certainly a problem however I don't think it's correct to lump together everything, there are some distinctions to be made.
There are some merits behind the Mega CD conception.
Sega saw the positive effect the CD add on had on PC Engine (the only case I can think of an add on that the turn over the entire business of a console) and tried to replicate for Mega Drive.
Mega CD didn't sell big (just over 2 million) but It made sense (and if you look at the japanese mega drive mags of the time you can see how Mega CD games boosted the MD support).
32X on the other hand made no sense what's so ever, it was just harmful because you don't want to create internal competition between your old console and you next gen and split resources when you next gen is your future.
It's common sense but it seems Sega management lacked any of it.
The other disastrous hardware stint Sega had in those years, that's rarely cited, was the TeraDrive which was a money pit for the company.
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The Wii U will probably be a net positive for Nintendo in the long run. Its flop allowed them to merge their portable and home consoles into one, gave them a number of high quality games to use as ports (since no one played them), and served as an excuse to switch architectures and kill BC.
The Saturn on the other hand put Sega in a hole they had no real shot of digging out of -- a hole that ended with their company being liquidated, and their brand and dev studios (that didn't get sold off) taken over by a pachinko company.
The Saturn on the other hand put Sega in a hole they had no real shot of digging out of -- a hole that ended with their company being liquidated, and their brand and dev studios (that didn't get sold off) taken over by a pachinko company.
Yeah, this is kind of obvious.
Nintendo have managed to swiftly move on from the Wii U, to a point that it actually feels almost erased. It remains to be the only console I've ever sold due it feeling so redundant.
The Saturn didn't feel like something SEGA was able to fully move on from. It was too damaging. But it had Shining the Holy Ark, so it's good in my book.
Nintendo have managed to swiftly move on from the Wii U, to a point that it actually feels almost erased. It remains to be the only console I've ever sold due it feeling so redundant.
The Saturn didn't feel like something SEGA was able to fully move on from. It was too damaging. But it had Shining the Holy Ark, so it's good in my book.
I said it contributed, not that it was the only cause.
Saturn did a lot of damage while Dreamcast was the final nail in the coffin.
I always found amusing who think that N64 was in some ways a discontinuation compared the NES and SNES due to the different level of third-party support.
In reality N64 was a straight continuation of the practices that made Nintendo successful with the NES and SNES, the problem was that the times were changing and there was another rival company that introduced a paradigm shift.
Nintendo was, is and forever will be a first-party driven console maker which spearhead their console adoption with their own software.
Why everybody supported the NES? Because Nintendo sized up the full market with their own software therefore every third-party wanted a piece of the cake.
Why many third-party still supported the SNES? Because Nintendo key software made the console popular therefore most third-party wanted to make money on it.
What happened with N64 was that Nintendo first-party software, while still successful (first-party software sold more on N64 than SNES), wasn't enough to counter the avalanche of software available on PS1.
The big difference compared to the previous generations was that that it wasn't anymore a showdown between who have the strongest first-party games instead it was who had more software support in general because Sony was the first console maker to successful adopt a third-party driven business model.
Basically it was a clash between opposing business strategies.
The repercussions of this paradigm shift was felt painfully by Nintendo in the following generation (GC) when they had to think a way to counter Sony's third-party driven model.
Nintendo thought of a plan of combining the strength of their first-party software while at the same time trying to make the GC attractive to third-party by imitating Sony.
This strategy was obviously faulty because it didn't really consider what are Nintendo's core strength so the end result was a console with weak first-party games (Nintendo had to rush many games) and anyway weak third-party support compared to Sony because Nintendo skill set was never centered around attracting third-party support.
The turning point was when Nintendo realized that the first-party driven model has some advantages over a third-party driven model and instead of pandering to Sony they began to doubling down on what are the Nintendo's core strengths.
One last word on the '90s.
If the '80s was the chaotic era which set Nintendo in a dominant position from which grow the company to a worldwide leader in videogames, the '90s was for Nintendo a very important formative period over which the company cemented their unique software strategy (aggressive pursuing of genre kings, focus on local multiplayer, focus on "age less" software, preference of fantasy settings over realism and development of games with common traits).
If one looks at Nintendo key software on Switch, he could see how many games have roots in the '90s.
People saying Dreamcast worked well but that it was too late is a joke.Dreamcast production was a damn mess. Having two completely independent heads (Japan and USA) developing two different projects was a disastrous financial decision -Katana and Dural respectively- not to mention beloved games like Shenmue that had the highest budgets in history for their time but sold like shit.
Note that Nintendo made a profit on every 64 console sold. Saturn was Sega's first original hardware design using a lot of processors that was never inexpensive to manufacture. It was more expensive to manufacturer than the ps1 and n64 in fact and because they didn't own the rights to any of the chips, it was impossible to lower the price to a point where things could balance out.
In fact, in spite of the fact that the Saturn was doing okayish in japan, sega simply did not want to sell them anymore because of the cumulative lost profits on each console. That's what the DC was brought out so early in 1998. It was a much easier machine to manufacture and sega had a shot at developing a way to generate profits on hardware.
In fact, in spite of the fact that the Saturn was doing okayish in japan, sega simply did not want to sell them anymore because of the cumulative lost profits on each console. That's what the DC was brought out so early in 1998. It was a much easier machine to manufacture and sega had a shot at developing a way to generate profits on hardware.
Wii U finally wisened Nintendo up to stop devoting so much resources in an otherwise inconsistent, commercially irrelevant standalone home console business, while at the same time reconfiguring their tried-and-true handheld strategy so as to incorporate premium value as a differentiator against smartphones/tablets.
In short, Switch is Nintendo's soft-exit strategy from home console manufacturing, so while it wasn't as big a failure as the Saturn, the posts saying it had no affect on the company's bottom line are just categorically wrong.
In short, Switch is Nintendo's soft-exit strategy from home console manufacturing, so while it wasn't as big a failure as the Saturn, the posts saying it had no affect on the company's bottom line are just categorically wrong.
When a question has only one correct answer, it's usually not worth a thread. Just look at the poll. 95-5
Weren't there multiple different reasons why Sega dropped out of Consoles? Can you really specify that Saturn was the cause for that?
Pointing out a component of the Switch:s hybrid usage is irrelevant to the documented circumstances that led Nintendo to ultimately converge what had been two separate hardware manufacturing streams and diminishing overall hardware production brands from 2 to 1.
This re-contextualizing of history, if not blatant unacceptance of facts also seemingly ignores Nintendo's prior attempts at hybridization in the past, which in essence was them essentially trying to translate some part of their handheld success onto their flailing home consoles.
Nintendo didn't arrive at the Switch by strictly considering the Wii U, it was a wholesale evaluation of their brands, strategies which worked and which didn't, and choosing the best optimum path forward which not only plays to their strengths as a hardware manufacturer, but still proved to be commercially viable.
I think the PS1 killed it. The casuals (in Europe) left he Megadrive and went straight to Sony. Without the PS1/2 Sega would have done much better. This was simply a case of the market not being big enough for both of them.
Good point! The PS1 was a total beast. So it was definitely a combination of that along with Sega's poor handling of the Saturn.
Funny you should call my logic bizarre, because if memory serves me right, didn't Nintendo converge their handheld and home console manufacturing lines? And isn't the new handheld only Switch a continuation of the same brand instead of its own separate thing as was Nintendo's hardware dichotomy prior to the Wii U/3DS era?
No matter how YOU want to spin it, Nintendo ultimately decided for themselves it was best suited for them to cut the support and manufacturing of 2 hardware lines to 1, and it was the culmination of Nintendo's home console business failing to rebound after years of trying to revive it that ultimately led to full hybrid embracement.
The humongous hole in your argument is that Apple still has a standalone laptop brand independent of iPhone, Ipad, and their desktop options. Shared software is an irrelevant diversion steering the discussion AWAY from HARDWARE.
You couldn't pull up a more faulty comparison if you tried.
Much of this is true but I feel that you misunderstand my post. The point is that Nintendo was used to adapting their systems and games for a world not under ideal conditions to them. Sega was not at all.
Despite what some people seem to think, Nintendo can't afford back-to-back-to-back-to-back failures. Nintendo's shareholders would never allow it. Nintendo's piggybank will never be smashed to buy that thing that the fans want. Money is always supposed to go into Nintendo's piggybank, not ever come out of it. It's a black hole of wealth.Satoru Iwata said:
Nintendo doesn't like to talk about it, but the N64 was a failure. It was a "conservative" failure (sort of like the Virtual Boy), because Nintendo didn't spend a lot of money on it's CD drive (which was part of why it failed), and Nintendo fell into incredible success with Pokemon on the GameBoy, so that kept Nintendo's head above water, but N64 was a failure. Especially in Japan (where Nintendo places a lot of importance). Iwata was brought on board in GameCube's design stages primarily to try and repair Nintendo's extremely damaged Japanese third party relations.
But GameCube, despite it's hugely repaired Japanese third party relations, despite it's fiscally conservative design, despite it's great game sales numbers (relative to it's low hardware sales numbers), despite the massively successful GameBoy Advance picking up a lot of the GameCube's slack... the GameCube was an even bigger failure than the N64. Iwata was right to say that Wii didn't just need to outperform the GameCube, it needed to outperform the GameCube by a wide margin. I don't feel like looking for the link, but I remember there was another interview where Iwata said that Nintendo was 100% ready and willing to throw him under the bus and fire him if he didn't deliver immediate results with the Wii and DS. Nintendo was not that far behind Sega.
But then, Wii was a massive success. The "Nintendo is doomed" clock was reset.
But then the WiiU failed even harder than the GameCube did. It sold less hardware. It's hardware sold fewer games. It was Nintendo's least financially-conservative design to-date. And the 3DS (while not a failure) wasn't in any position to bail anyone out. The Wii became recontextualized as an aberration, and Nintendo now had three big failures, each one worse than the one before. The WiiU was bad for Nintendo, and I'd say it was easily worse for Nintendo than the Saturn was for Sega.
But then, the Switch turned things right back around again. That lifted the pressure and Nintendo's failures can once again be forgiven. If Switch had failed though, Nintendo could have easily joined Sega and pulled out of the console race. Nintendo is clearly not in as bad of a position as Sega right now, but that's due to the Switch and Dreamcast (and how different those two were), not the WiiU and Saturn (and how alike those two were).
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I see nothing in that statement that could translate into "Iwata said that if Wii hadn't been successful, Nintendo would have pulled out of the home console business".
As you've written afterward Iwata just said that Nintendo shouldn't be in the console business if their internal target is to just outsell the GC (measly 20M units) which of course is obvious.
The reason why DS/Wii were of special importance is another (Nintendo could have released other consoles even if DS/Wii disappointed).
In the mind of the Nintendo's management the philosophy behind DS/Wii traced a template which take advantage of the company's unique skill set and that could be replicated in the future to give Nintendo again a prominence role in the videogame industry.
This is the true meaning behind this statement by Hiroshi Yamauchi:
The executive said that Nintendo will "give [its] all" to promote the Nintendo DS. He conceded that the device may not immediately overwhelm audiences, but that he hopes it will help ring in a new era, which may revitalize the games industry. "If we are unsuccessful with the Nintendo DS, we may not go bankrupt, but we will be crushed. The next two years will be a really crucial time for Nintendo."
The idea that Nintendo could continually lose money just because they are cash rich is indeed stupid.
Nintendo's management always acted with business savviness, they will try to reinvent Nintendo if a repeated cycle of consoles failures happen.
N64 was certainly a troubled console.
However the theory that say that what made Nintendo profitable during the N64 era was only Pokemon isn't supported by the data available (operating income in the years before the introduction of Pokemon in the west, first-party software sales on N64).
GC era was the darkest era for Nintendo since when they entered the videogame business, it was an even worse period than the WiiU/3DS era with its three consecutive yearly losses (first yearly losses ever recorded by Nintendo since entering the videogame business).
The reason is that Sony hit the market (and Nintendo) with a paradigm shift during the N64 era.
The questions that arise during that time should have been of this kind:
Is the first-party driven business model a relic of the past?
How can we counter a console maker who center its business on receiving the best and most third-party support when our strong point and whole business model focus on first-party games? (it was a many vs one dilemma)
How can we counter conglomerates which can leverage far more resources than a simple gaming company can?
The plan elaborates for the GC and that originated from the questions above was totally wrong and betrayed a misunderstanding on what really defines Nintendo. They tried to imitate Sony and designed the GC in a way that it was easy to develop games for and struck deals with specific third-parties (japanese ones for the most part).
This of course couldn't work because Nintendo's core strength isn't attracting third-party support and never will.
It didn't matter that GC was priced at $99 since September 2003 because price was never the issue (it was the value!).
The solution that correctly answered the questions above were elaborated for DS and Wii.
Is the first-party driven business model a relic of the past? Maybe but Nintendo has the strongest first-party in the world and they can leverage it to prove new concepts. Nintendo is a unique case.
How can we counter a console maker who center its business on receiving the best and most third-party support when our strong point and whole business model focus on first-party games? (it was a many vs one dilemma)
How can we counter conglomerates which can leverage far more resources than a simple gaming company can?
For third-party driven model to work it need to offer a standard platform (third-party publishers hate unproven concepts that don't have already proven templates on how making profits out of it).
A first-party driven model doesn't have this limitation because with this business model first-party games have higher priority over third-party games, it's the first-party software that need to generate enough momentum to make the platform successful.
So a first-party driven console manufacturer like Nintendo can introduce unconventional hardware design and prove it to the market using its first-party software (it's the software that sell the console but the software act in tandem with the hardware).
However these unconventional hardware designs shouldn't be different just for the sake of being different but they need to serve meaningful purposes (this was the main issue for WiiU and 3DS together with the high hardware cost).
The meaningful purpose served by DS/Wii was introducing interfaces with a low barrier of utilization and software that use them so that even people that were scared by the complexity of the standard control pads could play videogames.
The meaningful purpose served by the Switch is to let people with a busy life to enjoy videogames wherever, whenever and how they want (this was achieved with a modular design).
Instead of following Sony, Nintendo just double down on what make Nintendo special.
It's often forgotten that 3DS was certainly responsible (at least in big part) of the losses incurred by Nintendo in the 3DS/WiiU era.
The first yearly loss was in the fiscal year when Nintendo decided to drastically reduce the 3DS price, six months after the launch.
Both Nintendo and Sega had the same challenges to face up once Sony triggered the paradigm shift (the questions above).
However Nintendo and Sega were different companies with different situations, different backgrounds, different cash balances, different first-party software strengths and different business acumen.
In short Nintendo was in a much better spot than Sega ever was.
Note that while WiiU failed it didn't disprove the business template Nintendo used since after the GC.
The leveraging of the unique hardware/software integration (which favorably play at Nintendo core strengths) is what brought Switch to success.
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It's definitely the Saturn, especially with the benefit of hindsight from witnessing subsequent generations. That said, I love a lot of games in the Saturn library
Saturn was the beginning of the end for Sega as a console maker. The Wii U was a hiccup for Nintendo.