Eddie-Griffin
Banned
While outside the US the PS2 may have actually did damage prelaunch, it doesn't apply to the US, and places like the UK had similar problems with Sega making strange decisions.24 November something had changed.
The Playstation 2 had a Pre-launch
The big thing US had that UK was missing was America had their football game but the UK didn't have theirs. If they did maybe DC might have had similar success as the US. Europe is the one region where lack of EA actually hurt the console big time.
The Saturn fell behind not too long after it's early lead and games on both consoles generally sold more on PS1, sometimes by absurd margins.The focus SoJ had to take off the Saturn to shift to Dreamcast is a direct correlation between Saturn starting to decline there and build-up for Dreamcast occurring, though. It's a very clear link IMO.
I wouldn't say PS1 uncertainty and N64 delay were the only major factors that helped SEGA in the 1994-1997 period (going by that logic, the N64 delay was also a major factor benefiting the PS1 especially in Japan). When a game like Virtua Fighter (and then VF2) has a near 1:1 attach ratio with system sales out of the gate, I think you have to contribute some of Saturn's early success in the Japan reason to SEGA's software output.
Especially considering that attach ratios were higher for Saturn than PS1 throughout the generation in that region, it wasn't just early unknowns with the PS1 and N64 being delayed which played big factors for Saturn, otherwise other systems like the Jaguar would've seen better sales, same with the PC-FX, and the 3DO would've lasted longer in the Japanese market than it did, too.
And 1:1 VF sales got it an ltd of 600k~ games not 1:1 on playstation did better than that. The combination of N64 delay, Saturn releasing early enough with games buyers wanted, along with Sony being an unknown, was a very large part of why Saturn had almost 2 years of being just ahead of PS1 in japan. PS1 slipped ahead before FF7, which along with other titles made sure it stated ahead after they came out.
The momentum drop was like hitting a brick wall. That doesn't happen if the reason consumers were buying your machine before wasn't fickle. Sega sold most of Saturn's japanese LTD by mid 96 or so. It was free falling only selling 5,7~ million units, which Nintendo almost caught up to.
Also the Jaguar wasn't a thing in Japan, and 3DO started out the most expensive of the 3 then dropped to a similar price, considering that, it did pretty good in japan.
The thing is there wasn't anytime, Saturn was declining and the bleeding was getting worse, there was nothing Sega could do with the Saturn at that point.Thats one way to look at it, for sure. But a delay in Japan specifically would've given more time for Saturn, more time for bug-free Japanese DC launch and more units available at launch (NEC could've fulfilled their PowerVR2 manufacturing targets). An early '99 Japan/late '99 American launch doesn't change much for the Western side of things but could've really benefited Japan.
Saturn went from 1.8 million late 96-97 to 600k~ sold during the 97-98 full period and by the time the DC was announced it was struggling to get past 200k for the 98 year, and ended up 300k at the end of it.
Sega had a reason to scrap the Saturn in pretty much every region it was released in.
But this was due to SEGA's own doing rushing the Dreamcast to market before a lot of their Japanese base or even large chunks of the Japanese gaming community were ready. A lot of Japanese Saturn owners felt betrayed by Dreamcast getting rushed to market, SEGA basically made the same mistake with Dreamcast in Japan they made for Saturn in the West as a result.
This could've been avoided and because so I do think they could've salvaged Japan but it'd of had to been done before the system released, and if that meant delaying it to early 1999 then so be it. Also IMO the Japanese DC launch should've had a JRPG present, maybe an upgraded version of Shining The Holy Ark or Panzer Dragoon Saga, or a preview for Skies of Arcadia included with each system as a decently-sized demo disc. That they didn't see the need for a JRPG early in its life when FFVII (and DQVII even moreso) took Japan by storm.
Maybe they could've gotten another Soul Hackers follow-up from Atlus, point is they needed a JRPG for the Japanese Dreamcast launch.
Even without rushing the DC didn't have much of a chance. Saturn gave them around two years of the only success any of their machines have had in the region, then fell apart.
As for Jrpg that's what Shenmue was supposed to be, the big huge graphically appealing rpg simulation (that's not really an rpg) that was supposed to bring people in so they end up buying Skies, Grandia II, or Sakura3 later. All if which didn't do too hot.
Sega would have needed different types of rpgs if they wanted to get more japanese buyers. It would have been better to launch with a fictional VF3 honestly. The issue with that is they rushed a third party to rush the port and didn't market it the way they should have. Goes double for the US release.
Iirc didn't Shenmue's R&D basically also serve to cover R&D for several other SEGA games like VF4? That's how I remember it being pitched a couple of times back in the day. Suzuki was basically building an engine in Shenmue that could serve for other SEGA games, and I think that's supported by later releases like Yakuza building off Shenmue's DNA.
So Shenmue as a whole may've not recouped its costs but the R&D put into its engine helped reduce dev costs for a lot of SEGA's future releases, at least that gen.
Yeah it's insane that they did seem to ignore soccer in the European region WRT Visual Concepts. That should've been a priority.
Not really, later yeah for some games, but the first Shenmue wasn't the only game that lost a ton of money, but so did Shenmue 2, and it's no surprise they tried to salvage the engine and assets in some cases, but they couldn't make that back.
It didn't help that Shenmue 2 was a huge money sink but they skipped the region that actually somewhat brought Shenmue. Instead they ported an Xbox version for america but with next to zero marketing.
It was also bringing gameplay people already said was archaic and chunky with the first game to a system that focused on flexible and relatively precise third and first person game controls
Given things like SoTC, Shenmue 2 likely would have done a bit better on PS2, but likely still wouldn't have been very successful.
Also yes. No soccer, no Cricket or Rugby for Europe, no Drift games or Baseball for Japan.
They really dropped the ball. Instead of sports Sega pushed out like 300 racing games, most very similar to each other, and fishing. Whoopie.