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| - History - |
| In May of 1995 Sega released its "Next Generation" system dubbed Saturn.
Sega had a very large advertising campaign with top music performers doing
ads and other high profile campaigning. The Saturn was highly anticipated
and sold quite well when it launched. There was some confusion about backwards
compatibility though that caused some problems. It was also pretty expensive.
The $300 price tag was concidered a tad too much for alot of people but
support stayed consistent.
Then... In September, Sony released its 32-bit console... The Playstation. A barrage of extremely well done ads swept gamers off their feet. The Sony magic was hard to deny. In fact, the single most descisive factor in choosing between the Saturn and Playstation became the ads. The PSX had a few of the same games that the Saturn did and this is where Sega started to show weakness. the PSX ports of the same games were for the most part better. The games were smoother and had true transparencies. PSX games also had a higher polygon count. The Saturn however was king of 2D games. All of the 2D games for the PSX seemed sluggish or choppy. The Saturn was able to handle sprites better because it was designed to do so. Before the PSX, 3D graphics were concidered a genre and it was not believed that they would ever become widely used. The Saturn was designed around a current system of using multiple processors to handle different things. In the old way of doing things, this was a great method but the new era would make this cumbersome and obsolete. The simple truth is the PSX was ahead of its time. The Saturn was designed for a world that already existed...whereas the PSX created a whole new gaming world. Even though the Saturn didnt have as advanced 3D capabilities as the PSX it wasnt neccesarilly inadequete. Games like Sega Rally, Nights and Virtua Fighters 2 showed that the Saturn was every bit as powerful if the programmers would take the time to use the hardware effectively. The problem was that 3rd party companies lost interest in the Satun slowly because the PSX was just outselling it. By the time Sega was able to develop games of the same quality as the PSX it was already too late. There just werent enough people buying the games. Eventually, Sega would decide to move on to a new system and it is now believed that the Dreamcast will be the salvation of Sega despite sluggish Japanese sales. In fact, the Dreamcast had already broken the PSX's presale record a month before the launch date. The Saturn may have been beaten but it was a very powerful system. the untapped potential of the system can be seen in the last few games released for it...namely Panzer Dragoon Saga. It is a shame that the Satun could not have achieved more success than it did. Despite the fate of the system I highly reccomend buying one. they are really cheap now. ...and the games are a lot of fun. |
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