| In the end, PR and Sony's pockets beat SEGA. That's really it. SEGA had many self-inflicted wounds for sure. Games: what games set the world on fire on PSX, really? Resident Evil in '96 and FFVII in' 97? And the Saturn had killer games esp in '96. So it's def not the library IMO. Hard to code for: devs had no problem dealing with the Playstation 2 a gen later, and the DC was easy to utilize but everyone dropped it when SEGA discontinued it, even tho the user base was good (in the USA at least, not sure about EUR). Consumer good will toward SEGA: yeah, but look at reliability issues with Sony and MS systems. They were pretty bad, esp with the 360, but these didn't hurt their console long-term health at all. The SEGA CD was not a flop in the States at least. It was always a high-end, kind-of-unnecessary cool product with some great games, but no killer app. It was successful for SEGA. (The 32x WAS a huge eff up tho for everyone involved. But I don't think on a mass-consumer level it's brief existence single-handedly crippled the Saturn). People will buy anything that's marketed well in the States (can't speak for EUR). The Saturn was marketed like CRAP in the US. SEGA had its head up its ass and threw out all that made the Gen more successful than the SNES. We can talk tech and minor details about what worked and didn't work for the consoles, but it's really just marketing and no good Sonic at launch (or ever) that doomed it. |