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"And if you are in a discussion about if VDP1 is 3D capable" This was not the discussion. The discussion was if Sega missed the total shift of gaming to 3D gam
by KingOfCoders 3y ago
"And if you are in a discussion about if VDP1 is 3D capable"
This was not the discussion. The discussion was if Sega missed the total shift of gaming to 3D games that was brought on by 3D graphics cards and that propelled PCs into the mass gaming market (before 3D it mostly excelled at thing consoles couldn't do, like text adventures and point&click). And that it didn't need 2D hardware (at least for the international market, JP had e.G. more Shmups and it seems less interest in 3D shooters) but dedicated 3D hardware like the PowerVR2 they did put in the Dreamcast (too late, and I wrote Dreamcast software and loved the machine, so I'm not against Sega hardware in any way). And if they had anticipated the move of games (the vast majority of todays AAA titles are 3D games, for the better or worse, and in the Top 10 of most sold games, 8 are 3D and 2 are 2D or 2.5D) in it's majority to 3D, they at least had a chance to overtake the Playstation and survive as a game hardware vendor. The Saturn was only on par with the Playstation (e.G. at the time I owned Tomb Raider on both), which wasn't enough.
If you take a look at the most sold PS1 games, it's mostly 3D games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati...
The Wikipedia page says this about 3D of the Saturn:
"[..] which resulted in the creation of the "SuperH RISC Engine" (or SH-2) later that year [..] According to Kazuhiro Hamada, [..] we realized that a single CPU would not be enough to calculate a 3D world." Although the Saturn's design was largely finished before the end of 1993, reports in early 1994 of the technical capabilities of Sony's upcoming PlayStation console prompted Sega to include another video display processor (VDP) to improve 2D performance and 3D texture mapping"
Sega build the Saturn without a focus on 3D. Because they saw 3D coming too late, late in and after development had mainly finished, they added a 2nd CPU and added a VDP for 3D texture mapping to compensate for the lack of 3D capabilities.