what if the dreamcast was backwards compatible?

[jackspicer]

I was just thinking how the dreamcasts history would have changed if it was backwards compatible/ able to play saturn games. Would it have it sold even stronger in japan, would the people in the states who couldn't afford a saturn be more likely to buy sega's console, What would the retro gaming seen be like today? would racketboy be able to put food on the table without the demand for ram carts and mod chips

[Mozgus]

We would have loved it, but it wouldn't have made much difference in the end.

[GSZX1337]

We would have loved it, but it wouldn't have made much difference in the end.

Agreed. It'd be different is the Saturn was, ...successful.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I must agree w/ Moz on this one. However if the question was "What if the Saturn was backwards compatable w/ Genesis + its add-ons?" , it would be a different story.

[lordofduct]

^^agree^^

[Mozgus]

I must agree w/ Moz on this one. However if the question was "What if the Saturn was backwards compatable w/ Genesis + its add-ons?" , it would be a different story.

Then Saturn would have been a complete hardware disaster. It was already a complicated machine to begin with, to developers. I don't think any manufacturer on this planet could have crammed genesis, 32x, and sega cd functionality into the Saturn, without huge side effects. That's assuming they didn't go to emulation route, which would have surely been very poor.

Also the initial price point of the Saturn was one of it's main killers. It would have bombed in a month if it were $150-200 higher due to the legacy hardware. (again, assuming the non-emulation route.)

[LivingtheDream]

I don't think it would have mattered that much. Sega based its home consoles on the hardware powering its arcade games in the Saturn/Dreamcast era so it was pretty hard for them to offer backwards compatibility on their consoles after the Genesis/Mega-Drive (which could play Master System games with the use of an adapter).

In the early mid - late 90s arcade games were still a big part of the industry so the idea was to develop games for "expensive" standardized arcade hardware that you could later downsize and market to the home user. In other words Sega was developing "killer apps" for the arcade that could later be ported to their next-gen home console.

They screwed up with the Saturn (in America at least) because of two main reasons;

1) Sega knew 3D was around the corner but they didn't expect it to take off as fast as it did. In other words they were expecting 2D-gameplay to stick around for a longer time in the mainstream.

Which ties in with the second point...

2) Sega's approach to 3D was odd (they didn't use triangles in the Saturn days) and when you add that to the fact that the Saturn was already hard to program for in the first place and well....it's easy to see why 3rd party developers preferred programming for the PSX.

BTW don't get me wrong here...I'm not saying the PSX can do better 3D than the Saturn. All I'm trying to point out here is it was hard to program for the Saturn when you compare it to the Playstation One.

As for backwards compatibility in the Dreamcast; I don't think that is such a good idea and I can understand why Sega didn't opt to do it. They would have had to include a lot of extra hardware in the console to support that (emulation at full speed would have been impossible). The Dreamcast like the Saturn was based on Sega's current generation of Arcade hardware for easy porting of arcade games to the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was also designed to be very easy to program for...Sega learned from the mistakes it made with the Saturn.

[lordofduct]

ummm... it's a hypothetical... we are extending our imagination for the sake of glamour.

[mobiusclimber]

I actually think this might have saved the Dreamcast, and I'll tell you why: the US embraced the DC a lot quicker and w/ more enthusiasm than the Japanese. But Sega was always trying to win over the Japanese, and spending lots of money trying to, which was a total waste in the end. If the DC supported backwards compatibility w/ the Saturn, I think it would have not only looked more appealing to the Japanese, but since there would have been incentive for it, I think so of the later period Saturn games that either got cancelled or sold poorly b/c of the DC being out would have came out or done better since you could play it on the DC. Sure, this wouldn't have meant too much to the US, we never cared for the Saturn as a whole. But the Japanese market is what ultimately doomed the DC (well, and the PS2 of course). I think this might have saved it.

Of course, the problem w/ this hypothetical thinking is whether it would have been easy or difficult to do and if it would have been costly or cheap to do. I'd bet it would have been difficult and expensive, which means it wouldn't have helped them.

What Sega really needed to do was continue supporting the Saturn after they brought out the DC. Killing off the Saturn ruined their relationship w/ the Japanese market and spoiled their relationship w/ US & EU Saturn owners, many of whom probably didn't want to buy the DC for fear it wouldn't be around for very long (a fear that was justified in a self-fulfilling but still very real way).

[GSZX1337]

However if the question was "What if the Saturn was backwards compatable w/ Genesis + its add-ons?" , it would be a different story.

SEGA: Hey, remember that kick ass console and shitty add-ons we came out with? You can use them on your new console!

That endeavor would've been very costly, and considering that the Sega CD and 32X were failures, it wouldn't have been worth it. Sega fucked up when they came out with the add ons.