Topic: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt*

[Stratos]

Pity the Pern Project seems to be no more (Nintendo Reverse Engineering Project). Looks like it was assimilated into Drunken Coders but it lost all of his non-GBA and DS stuff. I referred to his work a lot when I dabbled in programming. Of all the people out there he'd be able to lay this to rest.

[Kytim89]

The Wii 2 could eliminate either Sony or Microsoft from the market.
 
http://www.gofanboy.com/home/fanboy-features/3359-the-nintendo-wii-2-could-effectively-eliminate-sony-or-microsoft

[NWR_insanolord]

The Wii 2 could eliminate either Sony or Microsoft from the market.
 
http://www.gofanboy.com/home/fanboy-features/3359-the-nintendo-wii-2-could-effectively-eliminate-sony-or-microsoft

Linkbaiting at its finest. It's barely two paragraphs long and makes no real argument.

[Stratos]

Their strongest argument is pointing at Sega. Except Sega was a different type of company. Both Sony and Microsoft have deep financial pockets from their other departments and Microsoft has already shown they are willing to take financial hits with the intent of seeing them pay off in the long run. Sega did not have the financial arms of Windows and TVs and DVD players.

[Chozo Ghost]

Plus Sega shot themselves in the foot with the 32X/Sega CD fiasco. They released so much dead end hardware that never went anywhere that they lost a lot of fans, and people were very leery to buy any hardware from them because they feared Sega would just abandon it and then launch another piece of hardware.

In all honesty, I think Sega did learn their lesson and tried to make amends when they launched the Dreamcast, but the damage was already done and it was too late to regain their reputation.

[TJ Spyke]

It didn't help Sega that at one time I think they were trying to support 5 or 6 different systems at the same time: Saturn, Genesis, Sega CD, Sega 32x, Game Gear, even Master System in some regions (like Brazil). Some people think Sega made the wrong decision to shift their resources from Genesis to Saturn in 1995 since the Saturn and PlayStation combined only made up like 15% (or around that) of total sales that year and the SNES and Genesis made up most of that years sales.

The Dreamcast did start great, it had one of the most successful launches of any system up to that point. It was just that in 2000 the sales dropped off and never recovered. As it has already been mentioned, Sega didn't have the money to stay afloat with a system that kept losing money. They already had a debt of hundreds of millions of dollars, so going third party was really their only chance to stay in business.

Stratos, I think even Microsoft may have a limit. If the Xbox division started causing the company itself to lose money (while the Xbox division lost a lot of money, Microsoft as a whole was still profitable), they may consider other options. If Sony had had a second straight year of losses due to PS3/PSP, they may have chosen to drop one.

[Chozo Ghost]

Around the same time as Sega developed and launched the Saturn they had plans for another console called Neptune, which never left the prototype stage. Neptune was supposed to be basically a combination of the Genesis, 32X and Sega CD all fused together into one single console. The Neptune would have therefore been a 32bit CD based console just like the Saturn was, but it would have maintained backwards compatibility with the prior Sega hardware at the same time.

I kinda think that if Sega had chosen the Neptune instead of the Saturn they might still be in the hardware business to this day. While the Saturn broke compatibility, the Neptune would have preserved it and at the same time not enrage the consumers who invested in the 32X/Sega CD because with those accessories consumers could basically convert their Genesises into the Neptune via the addons, so that way Sega could have carried on with their existing consumer base without abandoning them as was historically the case.

[ThePerm]

I don't know if Sega really was going to go through with the Neptune, for all intensive purposes that was just what they would call their next system if they didn't call it Dreamcast. I wouldn't picture it as any more than idle talk. Saturn had 3 years, but after 3 years Playstation ate it up. By the end of 1997 when Sony was eating their exclusives they had no profit, it was time to move on to Dreamcast.  Not to mention they never released Sonic X-treme. Considering that game looks amazing I would say they screwed up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpfMxNi5bAI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZb7LE6G5Gg

i had a saturn and I was just waiting for it to come out, until then I played Mario 64, which actually did.

[Ian Sane]

Reading about the Sega and the whole Saturn/32X fiasco the general vibe I get is that Sega's failure is largely due to xenophobic jealousy and spitefulness.  Sega of Japan were ****-ups.  Sega of America were not and were largely responsible for the Genesis' success.  Sega of Japan was not too thrilled that Sega of America had made them look like tools (true ****-ups often see peer success as exposure of their own failings) and created a rift between the two resulting in the left hand not knowing what the right was doing and thus having TWO Genesis successors at the same time: the Japanese Saturn and the American 32X.  Sonic X-Treme was also developed by the American STI but was in development hell due to interference from Sega of Japan.

Though I think Sega's biggest failure was that neither the Saturn nor the 32X were really designed to push polygons.  Sony and Nintendo realized that 3D games were the future and Sega did not.

[Kytim89]

Reading about the Sega and the whole Saturn/32X fiasco the general vibe I get is that Sega's failure is largely due to xenophobic jealousy and spitefulness.  Sega of Japan were ****-ups.  Sega of America were not and were largely responsible for the Genesis' success.  Sega of Japan was not too thrilled that Sega of America had made them look like tools (true ****-ups often see peer success as exposure of their own failings) and created a rift between the two resulting in the left hand not knowing what the right was doing and thus having TWO Genesis successors at the same time: the Japanese Saturn and the American 32X.  Sonic X-Treme was also developed by the American STI but was in development hell due to interference from Sega of Japan.

Though I think Sega's biggest failure was that neither the Saturn nor the 32X were really designed to push polygons.  Sony and Nintendo realized that 3D games were the future and Sega did not.

I wonder if every company has this issue?

[that Baby guy]

Yes.  Every company has this issue.  Every single one.

[Luigi Dude]

I wonder if every company has this issue?

Most Japanese videogame companies that weren't Nintendo have had problems like this, of course not quite as extreme as Sega.  Most of them basically make their American branches an independent company that is allowed to do whatever it wants to appeal to the American market.  Because of this, certain problems always come up from time to time when the American branch will do something without the Japanese permission.  This will then lead to actual arguments between both companies that can sometimes get messy.

Nintendo manages to avoid these problems because they have full control over everything it's American branch does.  The president of NOA needs to get permission from the president of NCL for everything they do, and I mean EVERYTHING.  Unlike other companies, NOA is not allowed to argue with NCL.  Anything the Japanese side says, the American side has to agree.  Yamauchi was the kind of man who wanted to be in full control over everything that happened with his company and how his products were handled in every territory in the world. 
 
He wasn't going to allow any internal drama mess with his plans for global domination.

[Chozo Ghost]

Yamauchi was the kind of man who wanted to be in full control over everything that happened with his company and how his products were handled in every territory in the world. 
 
He wasn't going to allow any internal drama mess with his plans for global domination.

That ended up being both a good thing and a bad thing. It was a good thing because it prevented NoA from launching its own gaming hardware that would have schizomed things like what happened to Sega. However, it was also a bad thing because it prevented NoA from taking measures to appeal more to their American audiences, and that meant Nintendo products were dominated with a Japanese mindset, and the result was many American gamers slamming Nintendo as being Tikuchu, or whatever you call it... So it was good and bad, but since Nintendo is still around today and very profitable I would say the good far outweighed the bad, because Nintendo might well have went the way of Sega were it not for Yamauchi's imperial rule of the company from Japan.

[TJ Spyke]

and created a rift between the two resulting in the left hand not knowing what the right was doing and thus having TWO Genesis successors at the same time: the Japanese Saturn and the American 32X.

Not at all true. Sega of Japan made the 32X. In fact, they wanted to release it as a brand new system (despite the fact that it was basically just a Genesis with more colors and slightly faster processor), it was Sega of America who convinced them that just release it as a add-on tot he Genesis. 32X still failed, but it was not as big of a disaster as it could have been if SOA president Tom Kalinske hadn't stood up to his Japanese bosses and told them it was a bad idea.

You are correct in that they were indeed making a successor system though, and all because Sega of Japan hadn't bother telling their own regional branches about it. Of coarse Sega of Japan picked their own design rather than someone else's (by that time Kalinske was just worn out and was sick of constantly having to fight with his bosses). Sega of America was basically it's own company. Nintendo of America is little more than a branch office that basically just does advertising and promotion.

[Chozo Ghost]

(despite the fact that it was basically just a Genesis with more colors and slightly faster processor)

It was also 32-bit instead of 16-bit, which was the whole point of it.

Nintendo of America is little more than a branch office that basically just does advertising and promotion.

Don't they also handle the localization and translation of games as well? In any case, I guess we should blame NoA for not bringing titles like Captain Rainbow to these shores. Didn't that game only sell like 6,000 copies in its first week or something pathetic like that? I'm sure it would have done better over here, but at the very least it couldn't have done worse...

[TJ Spyke]

But 32X games were not that much different from Genesis games. It was a souped up Genesis, but Sega of Japan wanted to call it a new system and charge full price for it.

I was exaggerating a bit with what NOA does, but they basically can't do anything with NOJ's approval.

[BranDonk Kong]

The 32X sucked. Play Mortal Kombat 2 on the Genesis, and then play it on the 32X...it's the same thing. 32X version had better sound, almost on par with the SNES version...that's about it.

[Stratos]

The 32X sucked. Play Mortal Kombat 2 on the Genesis, and then play it on the 32X...it's the same thing. 32X version had better sound, almost on par with the SNES version...that's about it.

So 32X was an upgrade that made the Genesis equal to the SNES? /Nintendo fanboy comment

[NWR_insanolord]

The 32X sucked. Play Mortal Kombat 2 on the Genesis, and then play it on the 32X...it's the same thing. 32X version had better sound, almost on par with the SNES version...that's about it.

So 32X was an upgrade that made the Genesis equal to the SNES? /Nintendo fanboy comment

Hey man, the Genesis had Blast Processing, with the kind of speed the SNES just couldn't handle. Genesis did what Nintendidn't.

[Mop it up]

Nintendo put their new processors into their cartridges instead of creating add-on systems.

SNES is what Genesisn't!

[Chozo Ghost]

The 32X sucked. Play Mortal Kombat 2 on the Genesis, and then play it on the 32X...it's the same thing. 32X version had better sound, almost on par with the SNES version...that's about it.

So 32X was an upgrade that made the Genesis equal to the SNES? /Nintendo fanboy comment

Actually, he said it made the Genesis ALMOST equal to the SNES.

But in fairness, the 32X was VERY poorly supported. It had very few games to begin with, and of those many of them probably only scratched the surface of what the 32x was capable of. Mortal Kombat II might have been a very poor example of 32X capabilities... what about Virtua Fighter or something like that?

[Kytim89]

The Genesis, 32X and SEGA CD all put together reminded me of those old megazords that combined together to form one giant machine.

[Stratos]

I've seen people stack the 32X like 5 or 6 units high. It's LOL worthy.

[BlackNMild2k1]

1st of all, your pic is broken (you only see it cause it's in your cache)

2nd of all, at least use the correct picture

[Kytim89]

The power consumption of this thing must have been enourmous.