| A CD based Sega system was a great idea but not as an add on, the reality is the cost of hardware back then and the nature of the console market being technology illiterate was the issue. I was one of the few who got the original Sega CD, the early version one that mounted underneath the genesis. It had cool games like Darkwizard. The real issue was the cost of add on peripherals were too high to get any kind of market penetration. Back then parents bought videogames for kids for their christmas or their birthdays. They'd rent their favorite games from blockbuster/convenience store and then get their parents to buy their favorites. The reality was consoles and games were expensive and most kids rented games back when sega and nintendo were the kings of gaming before PC gaming had taken off in 1990's. So the financial barrier to console ownership and the high price tag for parents was the real issue. Sega had a lot of good idea's but not conceived in the right way or at the right time. They acted as if the gaming populations parents were rich. That was the real issue with many console companies that allowed Sony to get a foothold into console gaming. Playstation was as popular as it was because of piracy and backups thereby increasing its market, it was "microsoft" method of console dominance - we don't care if you pirate as long as you use our console. Even if sony didn't intend that, Sony PS1 and PS2 became huge because of ability to pirate games on the platform. Piracy paradoxically drove sony to success. Everyone forgets places like china, india and third world countries at the time that couldn't really afford games because the the ridiculous prices. |