3 ms·

Sega had Sonic Adventure, Soul Caliber, Phantasy Star, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi. On the gaming front they had everything they needed. On the pricing front t

Sega had Sonic Adventure, Soul Caliber, Phantasy Star, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi. On the gaming front they had everything they needed. On the pricing front though... oh boy. You are not gonna survive as a hardware company when Sony jams a DVD player into their gaming console and sells at a $100+ dollar loss just to pump up the DVD standard

Dah00n 3y ago
Especially not when most (all?) of those games were also on the playstation.
- brirec 3y ago
  All of those games were Sega exclusives (I think even first-party Sega IP) until Sega threw in the hardware towel and began making games for other platforms. Edit: Soul Caliber isn’t Sega IP, but the rest are
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  Most those are first-party Sega games - certainly not available in PlayStation until Sega threw in the console towel and became a third-party developer. Also, folks? Soul CalibUr.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - LarsDu88 3y ago
    It was a solid 2-3 years before those games were ported to PS2, Gamecube, and (in the case of jet set radio) Xbox! 13 year old me gasped when they announced Sonic Adventure would be released on Gamecube. That's when I knew the jig was up. It was like when the Soviet Union opened a McDonald's in Red Square. You knew the jig was up!
astrobe_ 3y ago
I've always wondered how much of the success of the PS1 could be attributed to the fact that games could be basically free because of the CD/DVD medium instead of cartridges, which required more dedicated hardware to make "backups".
- MBCook 3y ago
  It was huge. Even without piracy, manufacturing cartridges was expensive. Nintendo made them all and made you pay for the privilege above base costs. The lead time was long and you could be screwed due parts shortages. Got a great game you want to sell? Sorry, Goldeneye is too popular so we’ll make more of those first. Good luck waiting. CDs cost basically nothing. Sony would make them (because of the copyright protection) but Sony was a music company. They could easily churn out millions of the things a week, or maybe a day. So it was possible for them to just make more physical product to sell the Nintendo ever could. Far cheaper. Storage size was also a big issue. Full motion video, CD quality audio, more levels… The PlayStation could do things that the N64 just couldn’t do to storage size. Do you remember the “magazine“ PlayStation Underground? You would sign up and Sony would send you a disc once a month with videos and demos and such. Something like that is 100% impossible (financially) with cartridges.
  - throwawaymobule 3y ago
    PlayStation was actually under Sony music in their corporate hierarchy due to internal politics. A YouTube channel called lowspecgamer has a pretty good video about the system's development.
MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
They had all those games after the Sega CD, 32x, and Saturn failed. The Dreamcast was great but because of prior failures they tried to beat Sony to market with in-between specs and were therefore easily out-marketed when Sony started hyping their PS2 like crazy.

Dah00n 3y ago

Especially not when most (all?) of those games were also on the playstation.

brirec 3y ago
All of those games were Sega exclusives (I think even first-party Sega IP) until Sega threw in the hardware towel and began making games for other platforms. Edit: Soul Caliber isn’t Sega IP, but the rest are
loloquwowndueo 3y ago
Most those are first-party Sega games - certainly not available in PlayStation until Sega threw in the console towel and became a third-party developer. Also, folks? Soul CalibUr.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- LarsDu88 3y ago
  It was a solid 2-3 years before those games were ported to PS2, Gamecube, and (in the case of jet set radio) Xbox! 13 year old me gasped when they announced Sonic Adventure would be released on Gamecube. That's when I knew the jig was up. It was like when the Soviet Union opened a McDonald's in Red Square. You knew the jig was up!

astrobe_ 3y ago

I've always wondered how much of the success of the PS1 could be attributed to the fact that games could be basically free because of the CD/DVD medium instead of cartridges, which required more dedicated hardware to make "backups".

MBCook 3y ago
It was huge. Even without piracy, manufacturing cartridges was expensive. Nintendo made them all and made you pay for the privilege above base costs. The lead time was long and you could be screwed due parts shortages. Got a great game you want to sell? Sorry, Goldeneye is too popular so we’ll make more of those first. Good luck waiting. CDs cost basically nothing. Sony would make them (because of the copyright protection) but Sony was a music company. They could easily churn out millions of the things a week, or maybe a day. So it was possible for them to just make more physical product to sell the Nintendo ever could. Far cheaper. Storage size was also a big issue. Full motion video, CD quality audio, more levels… The PlayStation could do things that the N64 just couldn’t do to storage size. Do you remember the “magazine“ PlayStation Underground? You would sign up and Sony would send you a disc once a month with videos and demos and such. Something like that is 100% impossible (financially) with cartridges.
- throwawaymobule 3y ago
  PlayStation was actually under Sony music in their corporate hierarchy due to internal politics. A YouTube channel called lowspecgamer has a pretty good video about the system's development.

MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago

They had all those games after the Sega CD, 32x, and Saturn failed. The Dreamcast was great but because of prior failures they tried to beat Sony to market with in-between specs and were therefore easily out-marketed when Sony started hyping their PS2 like crazy.