The PowerVR/SEGA Japan's relationship was longer, i.e. that Virtual On port

PowerVR PCX2 wasn't in 'very limited' quantities. NEC had it and that greatly helped its presence in the Japanese market. Brand loyalty is king there.

Not only the 32X was a cancer, but so was Shenmue's development. I might get lynched for saying this...

Another coincidence is that both 3dfx and SEGA had expensive and aggressively arrogant marketing campaigns. Let's not forget the commercials that aired when the Voodoo3 launched.

Holering wrote:

I'm not sure but I think Sega was bought by Microsoft?

Busy time period, but looks like they only had talks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega#Shift_to_th … E2.80.932005.29

In the end one died when most didn't expect it (those that didn't pay any attention) and the other still exists. All 3DFX needed was another year and they could have survived but their prices were just too high for the performance they gave at the time and is why ATI did so well in the oem market. Dirt cheap pays the bills and everyone else except for Matrox knew well and 3DLabs. It is a shame that Rampage never made it to market.

Just think of what would of happened if MS bought Sega, instead of Bungie.
Console FPS was not that popular of a genre before Halo.
I don't think Bungie, even had plans to take it to console. It was gonna be a Mac game first then PC, if I remember the magazine articles I read correctly 🤣.
Xbox woulda probably failed, and MS would of wrote the whole console thing off.

leileilol wrote:

Not only the 32X was a cancer, but so was Shenmue's development. I might get lynched for saying this...

3dfx going down had nothing to do with Sega. The management at 3dfx made a lot of bad business decisions going back at least 2 years before they filed bankruptcy. They were also fond of throwing lavish office parties, if the rumors are true. They had too many projects going at the same time. Rampage took entirely too long to become a reality and during Rampage development they were constantly pulling resources away to design the Banshee, V3, and VSA-100 (V4 and 5). Rampage never got finished and V4/V5 arrived too late to make a difference. The acquisition of STB did not go smoothly, either, and they lost a lot of OEM business because the quality at the Mexican plant was deemed inferior to plants located elsewhere. nVidia created a new business model where they did nothing but design the chips and create a reference design, then outsourced production to board partners, and that worked better than both designing the chips AND producing the boards in house. ATi also picked up on this business model not long after. nVidia also created the 6 month development cycle where a product would either be created or refreshed every 6 months with older technology either being moved downmarket with a reduction in price or eliminated from the product range, and again ATi adapted, 3dfx did not. 3dfx could not keep pace with this development cycle because they were stretched too thin.

Sure, but I think you can't argue the fact that had 3Dfx provided a chip for SEGA's console, it would have established a healthy revenue. It's kind of the same deal with AMD nowadays, they've managed to secure both PS4 and XBOX One, which ensures them a hefty amount of money!

Re: PowerVR: I would be interesting in actual sales numbers. Surely PCX2 must have been sold much less than eg. Voodoo1? Hard to compare it to other chips/cards, it is the only relevant add-on 3d accelerator asides from Voodoo1/2, and m3D was much cheaper. The Apocalypse 5D integrated 2D and 3D, but was probably too expensive for what it could do, and judging from ebay it didn't sell very well.
Neon 250 (Series 2) indeed sold very badly because it was late to market, not enough power at the time it was introduced. Even if the chip might partially support PowerSGL the target of PowerVR specific ports were PCX1/PCX2.

Kyro and Kyro2 didn't do so badly, they were somewhat competitive at the time and price point. No PowerSGL support anymore.

Re: Dreamcast: I though the problem with the Dreamcast was that copying games was to easy, no need to even mod the console, so games didn't sell too well, development for DC stopped and SEGA didn't receive the license fees they needed. (That's from memory, maybe somebody has better details.)

F2bnp wrote:

Sure, but I think you can't argue the fact that had 3Dfx provided a chip for SEGA's console, it would have established a healthy revenue. It's kind of the same deal with AMD nowadays, they've managed to secure both PS4 and XBOX One, which ensures them a hefty amount of money!

if it wasn't for the money coming from the console market, AMD would be nearly bankrupt now .

as for the topic, Sega was actually bought by Sammy (a company that produces Pachinko gambling machines machines in Japan), the sale took place in 2004 I think . Sega by that point had split up its development divisions into more or less developers onto their own (albeit still under Sega's name), but that kind of failed and some went out of business , which hurt Sega itself (no doubt hastening the merger with Sammy). Their relationship with MS probably began and ended with WindowsCE , although some of those Sega 3rd parties like AM2 and Smilebit (or AM6 by its former name) did release some games for the Xbox.

I personally don't think the relations between 3DFX and Sega caused the downfall of either company. the Dreamcast wouldn't have done any better with a 3DFX GPU inside , and given its short life and fairly low sales (for all the hype , its sales figures were nearly identical to those of the Saturn) , I don't think it would have brought in that much revenue into 3DFX.

Frankly Sega was already heading towards an iceberg , and I would argue 3DFX's decision to make their own boards probably had a much bigger effect on their downfall.

idspispopd wrote:

Re: PowerVR: I would be interesting in actual sales numbers. Surely PCX2 must have been sold much less than eg. Voodoo1? Hard to […]
Show full quote

Re: PowerVR: I would be interesting in actual sales numbers. Surely PCX2 must have been sold much less than eg. Voodoo1? Hard to compare it to other chips/cards, it is the only relevant add-on 3d accelerator asides from Voodoo1/2, and m3D was much cheaper. The Apocalypse 5D integrated 2D and 3D, but was probably too expensive for what it could do, and judging from ebay it didn't sell very well.
Neon 250 (Series 2) indeed sold very badly because it was late to market, not enough power at the time it was introduced. Even if the chip might partially support PowerSGL the target of PowerVR specific ports were PCX1/PCX2.

Kyro and Kyro2 didn't do so badly, they were somewhat competitive at the time and price point. No PowerSGL support anymore.

Re: Dreamcast: I though the problem with the Dreamcast was that copying games was to easy, no need to even mod the console, so games didn't sell too well, development for DC stopped and SEGA didn't receive the license fees they needed. (That's from memory, maybe somebody has better details.)

Piracy on Dreamcast was certainly a factor, but not a main one, alot of platforms had crazy amounts of pirated software (and thats both in computers and consoles) and it didn't impede their success (the C64 being an example). The Dreamcast failed because sadly most people didn't care, the PS2 was more interesting to average Joe. Sony had the brand while Sega killed theirs (the Saturn is one of my favourite systems, but I will say their marketing and stupid decisions in regards to both hardware and game selection and importing hurt it, although having a huge company like Sony enter the arena didn't help).

The Dreamcast failed because sadly most people didn't care, the PS2 was more interesting to average Joe.

This is really it. The piracy accusation has always been a red herring to try to wallpaper over the fact. The PS2 was so good that Dreamcast would have had real fight on its hands even if the PS2 didn't play DVD movies. But it did, and since most people hadn't bought a dedicated DVD player yet, the PS2 was this /incredible/ deal where you got a great console plus a new DVD player tossed in for free. Dreamcast sales tanked. In the eyes of the general consumer, it became a previous-generation console.

[Joe Average didn't have to be be convinced that the PS2 was a great console; he already owned a PS1.]

pewpewpew wrote:

The Dreamcast failed because sadly most people didn't care, the PS2 was more interesting to average Joe.

This is really it. The piracy accusation has always been a red herring to try to wallpaper over the fact. The PS2 was so good that Dreamcast would have had real fight on its hands even if the PS2 didn't play DVD movies. But it did, and since most people hadn't bought a dedicated DVD player yet, the PS2 was this /incredible/ deal where you got a great console plus a new DVD player tossed in for free. Dreamcast sales tanked. In the eyes of the general consumer, it became a previous-generation console.

[Joe Average didn't have to be be convinced that the PS2 was a great console; he already owned a PS1.]

I personally really like Sega's systems (Saturn being my favourite one), but yes, Sega simply didn't have a chance , even if they marketed the system as well as they could , there is no escaping the fact Sony was the 800 pound gorilla in this who could throw alot more money at things like marketing, exclusivity deals, etc. Even Nintendo took a hit, and they were a bigger company than Sega ever were . They had their cash reserves from the NES days, as well the Gameboy/Colour having almost a de facto monopoly on the handheld market.

the arrival of the Xbox would have also pretty much killed them , especially given its relative success in the western market, where the Dreamcast did well (it wasn't a huge seller in Japan , unlike the Saturn , which did well in Japan but poorely in the west).

I also really like SEGA's consoles, but they were a trainwreck about to happen. IMO, the Dreamcast came out too early and SEGA truly pissed on loyal fans that bought the Saturn. They should have probably supported it for another year before launching a new console. Words are easy though, but honestly I think SEGA fucked up by spending a lot of money on R&D and consoles/add-ons that few bought and SEGA abandoned way too early, pissing off fans. If I had bought a Saturn in late 1996 or 1997 I would have felt ripped off when they completely abandoned it 1998.

Anyway, there was a ton of stupid moves on their part, right from the get go. They had a chance to team up with Sony at one point to release a "next-gen" console. That was before the Saturn or PS1 came out obviously. Sega of Japan turned it down AFAIK. Also, they were in talks with SGI about a 3D chip. That eventually ended on the N64.

Also, remember how the MegaDrive/Genesis was just abandoned in 1995, essentially leaving Nintendo's SNES to sell like crazy around that time? That was once again SOJ's choice and it made sense for SOJ only, because the MD never really caught on there.

SEGA's R&D is fascinating though, so many consoles that never saw the light of day. They were even in talks with Nvidia for an NV2 powered console.

Sega made alot of mistakes for sure, but like I said part of this was that they were simply too small to survive, they didn't have Nintendo's cash reserves , and were affected much more by Sony arriving on the scene.

there was alot of talk that the people at Sega were very much game creators first, and businessmen 2nd . the R&D is one aspect of it. The guy who headed Sega until 1999 came from Sega's arcade division. In some cases the concept of lunatics running the asylum works (Apple until 1985 for instance) but with Sega it kind of hurt them.

F2bnp wrote:

I also really like SEGA's consoles, but they were a trainwreck about to happen. IMO, the Dreamcast came out too early and SEGA truly pissed on loyal fans that bought the Saturn.

I can see your point and I would've felt the same. Actually, I did buy the Saturn around 1997 from Funcoland (got with Mortal Kombat Trilogy and that purple cross platform lightgun), but I was pissed at the quality of the Saturn ports. The sound always sucked and I wasn't too happy about it and the mesh graphics (Lost World had broken physics and polygons which really sucked). During launch time (early 1995) I was at Toys R Us staring at Panzer Dragoon on one of their Saturn displays. The TV seemed big and it was about 7' in the air; I was so impressed, and now I want to blow my brains out (yup, good ol' days). Anyway, yeah I always thought the Saturn had the best games during launch because of "Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3" and Nights, but I ended up buying a PSX because of Doom and the consistent quality of the sound in other titles. I don't know wtf happened after 1996, but after that time the Saturn just got bad. I think the Sega CD is even better; heck even the 32x was cool considering it was on the Genesis IMO. Oh wait, never mind what I said about the 32x; I think the Saturn killed it.

I don't know why Sega had this obsession with dual CPU's in it's last couple of consoles. They made the consoles more expensive and more difficult to program for. Dual CPU's hadn't even gone mainstream for home PC's yet at that time. I remember when Playstation first came out, it was $100 cheaper than Saturn and even though Saturn came with Virtua Fighter as a pack in, it was hardly compensation for the extra price you paid. I remember going into Toys R Us and their video game section was dominated by Saturn games. Playstation only had a small selection but that changed as time passed and the Saturn section shrank while the Playstation section grew. If you had been buying based on the number of games available at the beginning of the cycle, then you would have gone with the Saturn because it had more support, but that support faded quickly after the first 6 months or so. I also remember Toys R Us doing incremental price drops on the 32x until they were finally blowing them out at $19.99. I wish I had the money to buy as many as I could back then.

Slipheed on the Sega CD (its redone for this system with voice overs too) still impresses me to this day.
Its a 3d game and the Poly count\fps is smooth\high for the time especially during the cut-scenes where you can see all the ships, and its running on very weak hardware!
2-cpu's really did help when they were used to good extent back then.

Sega never did leverage\Market\Advertise why it helped.... JUST BLAST PROCESSING 🤣 !!

AlphaWing wrote:

Slipheed on the Sega CD (its redone for this system with voice overs too) still impresses me to this day. Its a 3d game and the […]
Show full quote

Slipheed on the Sega CD (its redone for this system with voice overs too) still impresses me to this day.
Its a 3d game and the Poly count\fps is smooth\high for the time especially during the cut-scenes where you can see all the ships, and its running on very weak hardware!
2-cpu's really did help when they were used to good extent back then.

Sega never did leverage\Market\Advertise why it helped.... JUST BLAST PROCESSING 🤣 !!

Yeah, IF the game took advantage of the second CPU then it was great BUT, as was mentioned earlier, cross platform developers couldn't be bothered to include the second CPU in their ports so the games only used one on Saturn and many suffered for it.

Yep I was one of them.
I was an early adopter of the Saturn... did not own a PSX... unless you count the first fat PS2's that had, a PSX1 in hardware on it later after that gen 🤣.