Does Sega Have Secret Plans To Release A New Home Console?

[MrPopo]

Architecturally the Saturn was a mess. There's a reason that many devs jumped ship to the Playstation.

Devs jumped ship to the PlayStation because it had a larger install base. It rarely has anything to do with how difficult it is to develop for - otherwise, the PlayStation 2 would have been trampled by the Dreamcast.

False comparison. PS1 and Saturn came out at the same time, but the PS1 launched stronger out of the gate. With Dreamcast vs. PS2 people were wary of the Dreamcast (and some just hated Sega, like EA) and knew that the PS2 was going to sell like gang busters.

[elvis]

Architecturally the Saturn was a mess. There's a reason that many devs jumped ship to the Playstation.

It wasn't a mess. It was different. It sported two mid-powered processors compared to the trend of packing a powerful single processor.

Early titles suffered, just like the SNES did with it's very slow main processor in the early days. And like the SNES, as developers got used to the unique hardware, things improved greatly, showing off some incredible feats of programming and hardware manipulation.

Also the the Saturn's SH2 is a marvel at 2D scaling, and the 4MB vide ram (double the Playstation's) meant that it was miles ahead of the PSX for it's 2D abilities.

Fast forward to modern consoles, and you occasionally hear the same tripe these days. People love nothing more than to paraphrase developers who insist the PS3's Cell architecture is "too hard" to work with, despite the console still being new. We're only *just* starting to see what people like IBM are achieving with the Cell processor, and they've been using it with far more high-end code than Sony for a lot longer.

Long story short: "difficult hardware" is a cop-out, and typically only spouted by lazy developers. As usual the vocal majority are saying things not representative of the silent majority.

And again, "devs jumping ship" had nothing to do with the hardware. It had to do with the fact that Sony Europe, Japan and America were united in their policies and push. Sega's internal bitchiness drove a lot of developers away who were even remotely interested in cross-region publishing. From the 32X on, Sega had huge problems keeping their dirty laundry private, and it affected their third-party relations in a massive way.

[MrPopo]

Also the the Saturn's SH2 is a marvel at 2D scaling, and the 4MB vide ram (double the Playstation's) meant that it was miles ahead of the PSX for it's 2D abilities.

Which was a HUGE selling point at the dawn of the 3D era.

[Beak]

Also the the Saturn's SH2 is a marvel at 2D scaling, and the 4MB vide ram (double the Playstation's) meant that it was miles ahead of the PSX for it's 2D abilities.

Unfortunately, then, particularly so, people were completely 3D crazy.

[the7k]

False comparison. PS1 and Saturn came out at the same time, but the PS1 launched stronger out of the gate. With Dreamcast vs. PS2 people were wary of the Dreamcast (and some just hated Sega, like EA) and knew that the PS2 was going to sell like gang busters.

And none of that has anything to do with how the systems are built.

My point is that it doesn't matter how difficult it is to develop for a system. All that matters is its popularity.

[MrPopo]

False comparison. PS1 and Saturn came out at the same time, but the PS1 launched stronger out of the gate. With Dreamcast vs. PS2 people were wary of the Dreamcast (and some just hated Sega, like EA) and knew that the PS2 was going to sell like gang busters.

And none of that has anything to do with how the systems are built.

My point is that it doesn't matter how difficult it is to develop for a system. All that matters is its popularity.

It is a factor. In the case of Dreamcast vs. PS2 it wasn't a large enough factor to outweigh the "PS2 will be a juggernaut" factor.

[the7k]

If it is a factor, it's so minor you'd need a microscope to see it.

Developers don't make decisions. Publishers make decisions. Publishers don't care how difficult a console is to program for, all they care about is how much bank they'll make by putting said game on that console.

[jfrost]

Publishers do care about the difficulty in development, since they raise costs.

[the7k]

Publishers do care about the difficulty in development, since they raise costs.

Yeah, but if the platform is more popular, then there will be more profit in it.

The Xbox and Gamecube were both designed to be easy to develop for. Did they come close to even touching the PlayStation 2? No.

If the two platforms are on even ground, then yes - ease of development will probably be the tie-breaker. However, I've yet to see a console war (with the exception of SNES vs Genesis... and even then, the SNES had the advantage of better brand loyalty/recognition thanks to the success of the NES) that wasn't lopsided.

[elvis]

Also the the Saturn's SH2 is a marvel at 2D scaling, and the 4MB vide ram (double the Playstation's) meant that it was miles ahead of the PSX for it's 2D abilities.

Which was a HUGE selling point at the dawn of the 3D era.

It didn't hurt sales by being better at 2D, and being even keel at 3D.

For the arcade-loving home users, it certainly sold a hell of a lot of arcade shooters (mostly in Japan, as many never saw a US release due to said Sega inter-region-fighting).

Publishers do care about the difficulty in development, since they raise costs.

Once again, the "difficulty" was overblown by a few vocal-yet-lazy development houses. There were plenty of people who had no problems with it (Capcom, to name one market giant).