What Went Wrong With The Sega Saturn?

Since bowing out of the console race over 20 years ago, we’re still yet to see anyone quite like Sega. Hitting lofty heights and shocking lows with as much breakneck speed as their nippy blue hedgehog, all in the space of a decade, it’s no wonder the saga of Sega in the 90s still holds an air of reverence. At the height of Nintendo’s power, they beat that goliath at their own game, taking the home console market by storm until it all came crashing down in a storm of company division, fierce competition, and baffling decisions in a swiftly changing market. And one console sits at the heart of this storm: The Sega Saturn. Here's the story of What Went Wrong With The Sega Saturn.

#Sega #SegaSaturn #WhatWentWrong

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[TeamTripleJump]

Were you Team Nintendo or Team Sega in the 90s? Can anyone hope to join the console game today as a viable 4th competitor? 🎮

[rodneyabrett]

Sega always had this habit of releasing consoles in-between other console's life cycles, so they always felt like a 1.5 upgrade from previous gen. There were some advantages of being first to market, but this also came with some disadvantages as well. Your competitors know what your retail price and hardware capabilities are ahead of their own launch and can counter with a lower price point and better hardware.

[adamrad]

I absolutely loved the Sega Saturn. My older sister's boyfriend sold me his Saturn and games for really good price in around 1995. I was 14 and had a next-gen system with a decent amount of games, and it left such a great gaming mark on my life, that I'll always look back with such fondness on the Saturn.

The number of hours I spent playing Virtua Fighter, Albert Odyssey, Daytona USA, Bug, Myst, Nights and others was pretty extraordinary.

I also ended up getting a PlayStation and Dreamcast over the next year or two, but there was always something special about the Sega Saturn to me.

[mfnick]

The Saturn is genuinely my favourite console of all time. Now I’m not naive, Im not saying it’s the best, but personally this is the one that I love the most. Just at the right time in my life to really hit me and there was something about it being the underdog and the specialness which came with importing games no one knew about. The games just appealed more than most PS stuff too. I loved it so much. I eventually moved onto the N64 when they stopped supporting it but this was the console for me.

[deemz]

People always talk shit about Sega. But I will go to my grave singing high praise for the Dreamcast.

[mattball]

I absolutely love this series. I'm a software engineer by trade and I've always had an interest in the history of the industry, so there's something about the format of a well-researched breakdown of an important event that really tickles my brain. Also, excellent biscuit prop work. 10/10, no notes.

[Ammars]

Probably one of the best competition slogans I've ever heard: "If you still want a Saturn, your head is in Uranus"

[Globalastral]

In 2001, I did a home stay exchange in Tokyo. Dreamcast was long dead by then. My home stay brother had a Saturn with a good selection of games including DBZ Legends.
Seeing the Saturn from a Japanese perspective rather than the American view was extremely different

[prtn]

When I was a child and these two titan consoles were battling it out, I didn't know which one to pick. Fortunately, Blockbuster had a service where you could rent consoles, so I rented both a PlayStation and a Saturn and playtested both with the same games. The PlayStation won my heart, and I have never looked back

[moochoman]

I loved my Sega Saturn. Die Hard arcade, virtua fighter, virtua cop, Sega rally, knights into dreams. Loved it!

[BlazeHeartPanther]

Even though I grew up with Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 as a kid, I've been getting into older Sega games as of the past 10 years and Saturn has to be one of my favorites for some of its fun, unique, and underrated games that don't get as much recognition that I feel they deserve.

[ParanoidThalyyMVS]

I love the Saturn to bits, glad to have one, it's my absolute favorite Sega console.

[GuiltyKit]

I barely even knew the Saturn was a thing. By the time anybody I knew had even talked about it, it was already gone from store shelves. I saw a few copies of its games at a second hand store, but that's about it.

Later on in life I met exactly one person that had owned one and talked about a couple of their favorite games on the platform like Guardian Heroes and Dragon Force.

Which is sad because having gone back and looked at it, it really had some pretty good games on it! It's not like the Jaguar that deserved its summary execution.

[carpathianpsychonaut]

My original release-day Saturn still works and has a place in my gaming heart. Not even close to perfect but there's still just something about

[mikejones-ndni]

Sega Genesis was actually a pretty sweet system. It definitely competed with the Super Nintendo. And they did a great job marketing they also had some really good exclusives. I never really understood how they messed it all up. They should make a movie on it like they did about Tetris

[chrisjfinlay]

This was a fantastic, well-researched and incredibly well-presented piece. I never had a Saturn growing up - I had a Mega Drive at launch and didn’t get a new console until midway into the Dreamcast’s life - but a friend of mine did and we spent hours playing Sega Rally at home. Weirdly, we also spent a lot of time playing Command & Conquer on it…

[nicolemonrue]

I was on Nintendo's boat at the last years of the NES. I saw a commercial for the Sega Genesis and lost my damn mind. FINALLY there was a system that made games that looked like the arcade! Me and my brother were the only kids in our neighborhood that had one and we had company all the time. Then we got the Sega Cd, then the 32X, then the Saturn. After Saturn i jumped off Sega's boat and back to Nintendo. The super NES was out and i saw super metroid so it was a wrap.
I used to work at Toys R Us and when they discontinued the Dreamcast, they had it on sale for $50 and the accessories were super cheap. So i bought it and all the accessories and a ton of games for $200. I'm glad i kept everything because i get many offers for it lol

[stevolution]

Such a sad story. I was a massive Sega fan in the 90s (still am, in truth), and I actually bought the Dreamcast the day after it was released in the UK (only games console I've ever bought on launch). It was such a groundbreaking system, so far ahead of its time, and I honestly still believe that Sega would have been Sony's main gaming rival for years to come if they hadn't burned so many bridges and tarnished their reputation so badly with the Saturn debacle.

[ThisFace]

Imagine the atmosphere at Sega after that $299 line.

[jordanwhite]

I think what's absolutely insane is that if Sega of America and sick of Japan could have found the middle ground between but what both of the them wanted and then ironed out all the bad parts and exemplified all the good parts. They could have made a monster machine with absolutely great games and a pipeline that would have been a real rival. And it's still boggles my mind that Sega has this exact internal problem till this day.