The problem is, Sega of America put all their eggs in the Sonic basket. The great games the Genesis had after mid-1993 basically never had the pull that Sonic had, nor Sega themselves seemed to believe they did. Shiny’s Aladdin and Earthworm Jim were the last games that really received some heavy marketing push and were very favorably reviewed. And yeah, they had Virtua Racing in 1994, but that was expensive and a poor show next to the arcade version.
I mean of course if you compare that version of VR to the arcade one it's going to come off poor, but it was still more impressive than Star Fox in terms of visual fidelity for a 3D game on a 16-bit system, and that was more of the point I think. Besides during that gen you rarely got home ports of arcade games that matched the arcade versions visually, so I can't say Virtua Racing on Genesis looking bad compared to the arcade original is worth a knock on the Genesis TBH.
Then Nintendo pulled a Donkey Kong Country and the tables turned again. DKC was a monster hit - it sold nine goddamn million copies and all by itself instilled a couple more years of life into the SNES.
I see it like SoA bet everything on Sonic 2 to tilt the tables in their favor, and then they thought it’d be smooth sailing after that and the machine would keep selling itself.
Well I mean, that kind of did happen in a sense? Sonic 2 was 1992 right? Well, Genesis maintained marketshare lead over SNES in America until holiday 1994, that's when the shift really happened thanks to DKC. And in Europe as a whole, MegaDrive maintained a lead over SNES the entire generation (though it was much smaller one than the Master System had over NES. Also I'm aware that in specific European countries SNES was more popular than MegaDrive).
Sega basically pulling out of the 16-bit market by end of 1995 in the West didn't help them whatsoever, either; that market still had life to it and Nintendo essentially gobbled it all up since there were no other platform holders in that space really competing in it anymore.
I was mainly talking about 1994 and especially post-Donkey Kong Country games. Apart from Sonic 3, none of the games in your list could set the gaming world on fire like DKC, and by the spring of 1995 all the buzztalk was about the 32-bit consoles. Genesis definitely had the software, but after making all their best efforts about Sonic and how it made Mario obsolete, Sega could hardly push even a great game like SoR 2 against DKC, let alone Ristar or some good JRPGs in a market that was completely dominated by SF2 and its clones.
Look, I get what you mean when talking about selling power and what-not, but a game having strong selling power doesn't necessarily mean it's a good game, and a game that is particularly niche doesn't mean it's a bad game. I think that's the reason I made the reply because I might've inferred that from the comment of yours I was replying to, but I could've interpreted that way by mistake.
Especially if you're talking more in terms of Sega's marketing efforts (or lack thereof) for certain software that could've been pushed harder than it was, because I'd definitely agree in that case. IMO Sega should've at most focused on pushing the SVP chip for Genesis-bound games. Imagine games like Chaotix powered by the SVP on a stock Genesis/MegaDrive, Virtua Fighter on Genesis that was actually more authentic to the arcade version (and not some bastardized 2D version of a 3D fighter), etc.
Sure, the SVP chip in Virtua Racing wasn't as powerful as the 32X, but it didn't need to be for having an impact. Games like DKC and Yoshi's Island on SNES were proof enough of that. Thinking of titles like Ristar, Alien Soldier etc. using SVP-boosted visual effects on a stock Genesis/MegaDrive would've done a lot more for the system in the last couple years in terms of overall mindshare and messaging (let alone for the customer base's wallets) than what the 32X ended up failing to do.
I worked at a development studio making launch titles for the sega saturn and PSX. They also worked on 3DO titles for EA. This was 100% true. Game developers on PC or Console had next to zero experience working with processor concurrency in games. Even Sega's arcade games at the time were not using multi processor hardware for most titles, even still for the few that did, it was a moot point as those teams were not directly handling Saturn game development. they couldn't help all the teams in America and Europe get accustomed to concurrency.
But I mean, that means you worked for a Western studio at the time yeah? Because from what I've read, a lot of Western developers, especially those focused mainly on consoles and the popular microcomputers, didn't have a lot of experience with parallel processing architectures. So if you're speaking from personal experience I understand completely.
That said though, a lot of Sega's more ambitious arcade systems were using parallel processing, and the Away Team that developed the Saturn pulled a lot of people from the arcade hardware division to engineer the system. They took up parallelization as a way to increase Saturn performance because they were already used to it with some of the arcade boards. Like, here are some of the arcade boards that used dual processors:
-Outrun
-X board
-Y board (used 3 CPUs in parallel)
-Kyugo
-Champion Baseball
-Mega Play
...and all of those were before the Saturn! Also again, if you think about it, the MegaDrive/Genesis & Mega CD, or MegaDrive/Genesis & 32X, were essentially dual-processing setups as well since you were able to make games that leveraged both simultaneously (and in fact, a lot of games did just that), with each having their own CPU. I might've exaggerated on how many specific games of theirs up to that point were made on dual-processing systems, but the point being that their arcade division had a lot of experience with that type of design prior to Saturn.
Which is why they chose it as the quickest way to beef up its capabilities. Unfortunately they didn't consider 3P devs much when doing so, or a lot of Sega's 1P teams (lack of sufficient SDKs early on didn't help, but if you had experience with the system back in the day then you'd know a lot more about that side of things than I would).
Sega designed Saturn to be a powerful 2D console. It was capable of limited 3D rendering as a single processor machine. They only revised the hardware design after seeing Sony hardware in action. Sony basically beat Sega to the punch in the jump to 3D being the primary rendering method. Sega japan then went back to hitachi and redesigned the console to contain two hitachi processors. This was a real pain to get the performance out of it for all launch games. The reason I say it was rushed and sega panicked, was because that is what happened. Launch games on the Saturn were being developed with small refrigerator sized development systems that had a ton of issues.
Not contesting any of this: I've heard the stories, read the information. All of this is true. I was just mentioning (maybe not to you specifically, can't recall) the "why" behind Saturn's design also coming down to the fact Sega didn't have the type of resources Sony did. If they did, the VDPs would've been a single custom ASIC as an example, instead of two separate ASICs. They probably would've also waited until the next Hitachi CPU was ready (which would've been late 1994 IIRC) instead of going with dual SH2s.
I think you are conflating a few different things. 32X was capable of some decent 3D processing. However itself didn't require concurrency on the same level as Sega Saturn. It was also a failed peripheral, and probably less directly related to the reason Saturn failed.
Didn't claim that it was a parallelized design in the same league as Saturn, just that use of it in tandem with MegaDrive/Genesis was a form of parallel processing. In fact one of the purposes in putting the 32X out there was seemingly to get Western devs more used to Saturn development down the line, since they both shared a dual-SH2 design.
Although that could've been a bit of PR spin to justify the add-on once it started facing market troubles.
what I'm trying to say ( i didn't really want to type a lot on my phone ) is that the development hardware and software made PSX development so much simpler then Sega Saturn development. regardless of the language used, it was just easier to get up and running (mind you debugging was still a pain) but you are not incorrect in saying C language was preferred to having to write assembly or hand optimize performance for Saturn.
Yeah, I think we both agree on this as well.
EA threw more support behind Sony by comparison. Sure they released ":some" titles, but it was far from every EA game having a saturn port. They released 27 titles total for the Saturn.
But you have to keep in mind the PlayStation was commercially viable longer than Saturn in the West. Remember, Sega basically said the Saturn was "not [their] future" at E3 1997 (thanks, Bernie!). Various 3P publishers started gradually cancelling planned Saturn games & ports, EA among them.
No I recall the battle EA had with them. It was basically a way for EA to avoid paying the fee for cartridge hardware that Sega enforced. Sega ended up losing the resulting court battle ( over lockout chips that blocked EA cartridges ) and EA was able to make their own cartridges legally. Despite that, EA and Sega basically didn't get along well after that. This was also why sega threw so much behind "Sega Sports" which made them a direct competitor of EA. This extended to the Sega Dreamcast and was directly one of the reasons EA didn't support it.
Details here:
http://segabits.com/blog/2013/05/20/monday-memories-ea-not-supporting-the-dreamcast/
Hmm....I dunno about some of this. Wouldn't Sega losing that case have had implications for Nintendo, because they also had anti-piracy features built into their systems at the time, and what would've prevented a company like EA attempting to do the same to them?
Also considering that EA provided virtually zero support for Nintendo consoles during the 16-bit gen, and did numerous releases for the MegaDrive/Genesis (including one of my favorites, Haunting Starring PoultryGuy), I don't think it's true that the relationship between EA and SoA was soured after that court case. If it was, it wasn't enough to impact EA's support for MegaDrive/Genesis in terms of software, that's for sure.
Sega already had the Sega Sports line going from the get-go, one of the launch games was a baseball game IIRC and either used the Sega Sports branding or something that was a predecessor to it. So I'm not sure how much Sega having its own sports lineup affected things with EA at that time, because it's not like EA were known for being "the sports publisher" way back then like they'd eventually become known for near the end of the 5th generation. Their software library was actually pretty diverse early on, and I don't think Sega having their own sports lineup became an issue for EA until the Dreamcast with Visual Concepts.
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. PS1 was easier to get result out of with C language compared to Saturn (and N64), that much is absolutely true. But the best games (on technical level) on the system still needed to utilize assembly language as time went on. You just didn't need to rely on assembly as much on PlayStation as you did on Saturn for squeezing out maximum performance.
Ceallach
, welcome back. It seemed like you'd been off GAF for some months and I recall your thread about being on a carrier in the middle of the ocean back in 2020. 
