hey guys~

[stu]

More from Kalinske:

The rise and fall of Sega: from the eyes of Tom Kalinske
By Ben Kuchera | Published 5 years ago
Sega was a company that had it all. They were beating Nintendo at the hardware game, consumers thought their software offerings were more grown up, and the money was rolling in. Then they made some bad hardware decisions (32X, we're talking about you) and lost it all. They ultimately became software-only, and it's been a while since they've released a truly great game. What happened? Could it really be as simple as the ego of the Japanese leadership?

Tom Kalinske, ex-president of Sega, seems to think so. He spoke to Sega 16 about his history with the company, and drops some bombs about how close Sega came to some very good hardware.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I'm not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn't good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren't the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

Ouch. Later in the interview Kalinske goes on to talk about the deal he tried to strike with Sony to codevelop hardware. That deal fell through, as did Sony producing optical drives for Nintendo, so if Sony wanted to get into the gaming hardware business they would have to do so themselves. Imagine, if either Sega or Nintendo had managed to wrangle a deal with Sony, the PlayStation would never have existed. What would the gaming world look like today?

Kalinske has a lot to say about his time at Sega, and he comes off as being honest and fair in his assessments of the company. This is a great read for Sega fans, or people who are interested in how the industry came to be the way it is.

I personally think that Tom Kalinske and the SOA management often take too much of the blame for the failures of Sega during the period from 1994 through to him eventually resigning from Sega. I think that during that period of time that SOJ were jealous of the success the SOA and SOE had with the Genesis/Megadrive in the US and Europe and were trying to undermine the US and European operations, by not keeping them in the loop with what future plans were being laid.
I think once Kalinske saw what SOJ was planning with the Saturn and how unnecessarily complicated and expensive it was, that he started to try and help by finding alternatives, like the SGI chipset and partnering with Sony, but the boneheaded SOJ management refused to budge on everything and I think by the end Kalinske just felt sidelined and left out of the loop, this is despite the fact that the US market was the one making Sega their millions.
The Japanese division really screwed the US division over in my opinion and it is the Japanese division that should take most of the blame for what happened.

[Neohound]

Stu, I don't know a whole lot about the subject but that does sound like a good appraisal.

[CruSega]

Some good news, Sony going 3rd party -

http://kotaku.com/5852377/playstation-g ... says-hirai

PlayStation Games "Not Just For Sony Devices" Says Hirai

After losing $10 billion dollars, SCEI has invested $2 billion into Vita and hopes that it can turn profits around for them, however knowing that it will take years to earn back $10 billion & seeing that PS3 needs a graphical enhancement to compete against Wii U, Sony has opened up software 3rd party markets in case SCEI goes bankrupt in a few years.

Well, that's what people were murmuring when SegaSoft was launched in the mid 1990s. Sony stock (SNE: Nasdaq) is hovering near 52 week lows which means investors aren't excited about Sony at the moment. In the past decade, the Walkman has been curb-stomped by the iPod, Samsung is the new king of the Televisions. Many revenue streams have ended or been reduced at Sony. If I were Sony, I'd dump the movie and music division. Other than the odd "Spiderman" and owning the license to the Bond franchise, Sony Pictures is the weakest of the big 6 studios.

[CruSega]

More from Kalinske:

The rise and fall of Sega: from the eyes of Tom Kalinske
By Ben Kuchera | Published 5 years ago
Sega was a company that had it all. They were beating Nintendo at the hardware game, consumers thought their software offerings were more grown up, and the money was rolling in. Then they made some bad hardware decisions (32X, we're talking about you) and lost it all. They ultimately became software-only, and it's been a while since they've released a truly great game. What happened? Could it really be as simple as the ego of the Japanese leadership?

Tom Kalinske, ex-president of Sega, seems to think so. He spoke to Sega 16 about his history with the company, and drops some bombs about how close Sega came to some very good hardware.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I'm not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn't good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren't the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

Ouch. Later in the interview Kalinske goes on to talk about the deal he tried to strike with Sony to codevelop hardware. That deal fell through, as did Sony producing optical drives for Nintendo, so if Sony wanted to get into the gaming hardware business they would have to do so themselves. Imagine, if either Sega or Nintendo had managed to wrangle a deal with Sony, the PlayStation would never have existed. What would the gaming world look like today?

Kalinske has a lot to say about his time at Sega, and he comes off as being honest and fair in his assessments of the company. This is a great read for Sega fans, or people who are interested in how the industry came to be the way it is.

I personally think that Tom Kalinske and the SOA management often take too much of the blame for the failures of Sega during the period from 1994 through to him eventually resigning from Sega. I think that during that period of time that SOJ were jealous of the success the SOA and SOE had with the Genesis/Megadrive in the US and Europe and were trying to undermine the US and European operations, by not keeping them in the loop with what future plans were being laid.
I think once Kalinske saw what SOJ was planning with the Saturn and how unnecessarily complicated and expensive it was, that he started to try and help by finding alternatives, like the SGI chipset and partnering with Sony, but the boneheaded SOJ management refused to budge on everything and I think by the end Kalinske just felt sidelined and left out of the loop, this is despite the fact that the US market was the one making Sega their millions.
The Japanese division really screwed the US division over in my opinion and it is the Japanese division that should take most of the blame for what happened.

True. And quite pathetic that a multi-national corporations should be feuding internally. Its not Kalinske's fault that SOJ flatout rejected the chipset that would ultimately end up in the N64.

But I do believe Kalinske was responsible for the disastrous stealth launch in May 1995 right after E3 and that crippled the Saturn with 6 launch titles (only Panzer Dragoon was worthy) and nothing new to play for the remaining summer months while people were getting more and more excited about the PS1.

Had the 32X never made it to the market, Sega could have poured their resources into the Saturn which could have used Virtua Racing (not the crappy one from TWI) along with Star Wars Arcade at launch.

A true Saturnday launch in the fall of 1995 could have been:
-Virtue Fighter Remix, Virtua Racing Remix, Star Wars Arcade Remix, Full-Screen Doom with all levels and front+back facing enemies, Daytona CCE with better control, Panzer Dragoon, Clockwork Night (1 and 2 combined).
-no alienated retailers such as KayBee Toys, Walmart, etc
-3rd Party Titles at launch that took advantage of the unique Saturn architecture
-200 000 early adopters not burned by 32X who likely would have purchased Sega's new system instead of being angered to never have another Sega product in their homes again

Tom thinks it wouldn't have mattered, but I disagree. Sega had a lot of fans back then who jumped ship after the 32x bomb and the Stealth launch of the Saturn. And at $399, it was overpriced-worse since it appeared to be the weaker system by most publications and most gamers.

One last thing about the later Kalinske years-the "Theater of the Mind" ad campaign sucked ass compared to the Genesis commercials.

[stu]

@CruSega - I agree that the early launch was an epic fail for Sega and from looking through the SegaBase articles it seems that the idea for the early launch was yet another SOJ ordered screwup. The original date for the Saturn launch was to be September 2nd 1995, however SOJ under Hayao Nakayama were getting worried about the hype surrounding the impending launch of the Playstation. Nakayama ORDERED SOA to launch the Saturn early, without any of the best games and without letting the major stores know about it. This is what SegaBase has to say:

Source: http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index. ... rn+p2&bl=y

Quote: On 9 March 1995, Sega of America issued an official press release concerning the impending U.S. launch of the Sega Saturn. The console would make its official U.S. debut on 2 September 1995. It claimed internal figures showing that Saturn sales in Japan had exceeded 500,000 units in the first month alone, outselling the Sony PlayStation by a 30% margin, and predicted that Saturn would go on to sell 1 million units in Japan by April and 2 million by the end of the year. Sega itself was described as "... a nearly US$4 billion company known as a leader in interactive digital entertainment media with operations on five continents" and much ado was made about "the company's superior product line." Curiously, no definite price point was officialy set for Saturn even at this late date; however, most analysts predicted that it would be in the US$400-500 range. It was a bit steep, to be sure, but Sega promised a lot for its new system.

Shortly thereafter, yet another delegation from Japan paid its respects at Sega of America headquarders. Paid its respects is probably not the correct term; arrived to give Nakayama's latest marching orders was probably more like it. The 32X debacle had caused Kalinske's Japanese masters to begin reasserting control of what they considered to be their errant American underlings. Sega of Japan was concerned about the growing PlayStation hype. Sony was rumored to be planning a massively expensive pre-launch marketing campaign to make sure that the PlayStation got plenty of media exposure for its upcoming launch that fall. Nakayama was taking no chances - he was convinced that Sega needed to strike the first blow and hopefully knock Sony out of the running before PlayStation could get up a full head of steam. Why? Sony had deep pockets; Sega didn't. Sony could easily outspend Sega in a marketing war; therefore, Sega would have to beat them on product alone. With this in mind, Nakayama ordered Sega of America to accellerate the U.S. launch of the Saturn and bring it to market at the first available opportunity. The price of the Saturn in the U.S. would remain unchanged - about US$400 or so. Kalinske vehemently objected, as did practically everybody at Sega of America. All of them, in one form or another, were trying to tell Nakayama the same thing: "It's too early to launch the Saturn in America. The price is too high, and we have practically no software for it." Both Nakayama and the rest of Sega's corporate board of directors refused to listen, for Sega of Japan was by now calling the shots. The future of Sega was at stake and the odds were long. Since Sega could never conceivably outspend Sony, they had to find a way to outsell them. Such a move required a daring stroke, one that would gain instant market attention. An early launch of the Saturn in the U.S. would do just that; futhermore, it would give the console valuable lead time in this new market that was still anybody's for the taking. Saturn had proven itself in Japan against PlayStation, it seemed, so there was no reason not to expect the same in America. Sega of Japan did not want Saturn to suffer the same fate as the 32X - a fiasco for which some personally blamed Kalinske. The pleas of Sega of America was overruled by Nakayama, and from that point forward Kalinske and his staff would have practically no say in managing the affairs of Sega's U.S. market interests.


Segabase also explains why SOJ started to meddle in the running of SOA, it would seem that SOJ beleived that SOA was losing Sega money, this is despite the fact that The Genesis/Megadrive was beating the SNES in both the US and Europe. Here's a quote :

Source: http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index. ... aturn&bl=y

Quote:
Starting as early as 1994 but becoming plainly evident to all by 1995, Sega of Japan once again moved to reassert itself as the dominant force within Sega's corporate structure. Its executives had long resented the arrival and marketing tactics of Tom Kalinske, president of Sega of America, who had indeed brought Sega to the pinnacle of its success but only at great expense. Sega now had no cash reserves of which to speak and was operating under a mountain of debt that continued to increase with each quarter. While this was not troubling news to Kalinske and his staff - after all, deficit spending was and continues to be a staple of the American economy - it caused a great deal of concern with his more conservative-minded Japanese peers. They simply could not understand the American business axiom of "spending your way into a profit." They felt that Kalinske was fumbling Sega's transition from 16-bit to 32-bit systems in the one market that mattered the most, so they began to work on Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama, Kalinske's boss, in order to convince him that Kalinske's tactics would inevitably ruin the company. They knew that Sega had to get its act together fast in order to make the 32-bit console transition successfully - one that was as a matter of fact already underway - and were thoroughly convinced that only they could provide Sega with the proper guidance in this new market. Sega of America would be a useful tool and its talents could indeed be tapped as the company's impending 32-bit console transition commenced, but that was all. No more American meddling. Sega of Japan was taking back the reins of power, and it would brook no discontent from the West.

[MrSega]

CruSega. I totally agree with you. Kalinske made the wrong call here and SOA exercised poor judgement when they developed "Mars/32X" in mid 1993, I don't understand thier zeal. I mean 32X was developed during the heyday of Sonic so didn't Sega of America wonder if SEGA of Japan would send them a stronger potent chipset by 1994?

As for Nakayama rejecting the N64 chipset, I'm glad he did. Considering the fact that Nintendo 64 was a commercial failure in Japan & that it was EVEN more a pain in the ass to program than Saturn, he made the right call.

Here's proof that 32X/Mars was a Sega of America led project and that SEGAJUPITER was a Japanese led project.

http://www.trademarkia.com/segajupiter-74495742.html

http://www.trademarkia.com/seganeptune-74495744.html

Both marks were filed in early 1994, which match the time SEGA of Japan sent out chipsets,prototypes,patents and silicon to Sega of America for thier vaporware system project "Jupiter".

Sonic Xtreme started off as a 32X/Mars project. More proof that Mars was an American made machine. As SEGA of Japan NEVER autorized Sonic Xtreme's development.

http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?c ... 1&artid=21


http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?c ... 1&artid=20

[CruSega]

CruSega. I totally agree with you. Kalinske made the wrong call here and SOA exercised poor judgement when they developed "Mars/32X" in mid 1993, I don't understand thier zeal. I mean 32X was developed during the heyday of Sonic so didn't Sega of America wonder if SEGA of Japan would send them a stronger potent chipset by 1994?

As for Nakayama rejecting the N64 chipset, I'm glad he did. Considering the fact that Nintendo 64 was a commercial failure in Japan & that it was EVEN more a pain in the ass to program than Saturn, he made the right call.

Here's proof that 32X/Mars was a Sega of America led project and that SEGAJUPITER was a Japanese led project.

http://www.trademarkia.com/segajupiter-74495742.html

http://www.trademarkia.com/seganeptune-74495744.html

Both marks were filed in early 1994, which match the time SEGA of Japan sent out chipsets,prototypes,patents and silicon to Sega of America for thier vaporware system project "Jupiter".

Sonic Xtreme started off as a 32X/Mars project. More proof that Mars was an American made machine. As SEGA of Japan NEVER autorized Sonic Xtreme's development.

http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?c ... 1&artid=21


http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?c ... 1&artid=20

Difficult to program for or not, I have yet to see one Saturn title that rivaled Mario 64, Star Fox 64 or Wave Race in terms of eye candy. Even Crusin' USA was better than any Saturn racing game, technically speaking. My only beef with N64 is the lack of textures probably due to the cartridge limitation. My beef with Saturn: cannot do transparencies, cannot product real time shadows, real time lighting, clipping issues, pop-up galore, low polygon count (under 100 thousand texture mapped polygons per second), qualateral polygons which gave Core fits trying to program Tomb Raider 1.

Saturn seemed most comfortable with 2D fighters such as StreetFighter Alpha with the 4mb cartridge or 2.5D games like NiGHTs or Clockwork Night. Saturn obviously couldn't produce a full interactive 3D environment like Mario 64 did-at least not with polygons..except maybe Tomb Raider 1 (but it was no match for Mario 64), and Sony also made certain that would be the last time Lara Croft would appear on Saturn.

[stu]

Hmm its kind of interesting as back in July I speculated on what alternatives Sega had to using the Saturn chipset. It was posted in this thread:

http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtop ... =44&t=3621

Here's the post:

I personally would of preferred Sega to have canned any 32 bit upgrade to the MegaDrive/Genesis, the Japanese plan would of only added a new CPU and doubled the number of colors displayed, which really wouldn't have made a difference. The problem with upgrades is that developer can't count on there being enough customers owning the upgrade to make it worth developing games specifically for that system, it also divides the market and it ended up diluting Sega's efforts for the Saturn.

As for the Saturn, instead of rushing the upgrade process and badly mangling the inclusion of the 2nd CPU and VDP chip, they could of delayed the launch to 1995 so that they could gone with either of 2 options

Option 1 would of been to have dropped the dual CPUs and incorporated 1 powerful CPU, maybe a PowerPC chip or an SH3 chip and thereby making the improved system more powerful than the PlayStation, but with a nice streamlined development system as well.
The 2nd option would of been to have stuck with the dual CPU and VDPs, but focused more time on putting together a better development system with proper documentation and tools, this would of simplified the development environment for the system and made it less of a headache for developers, even Yu Suzuki himself lamented some of the hardware decisions made with the Saturn. He is reported to have made the following statement.

Quote: "One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs—most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn."

Either of these would of been better than what eventually came out and it would of given Sega a chance against the PlayStation.



A couple of other options would of meant scrapping the Saturn spec entirely and developing a new system for 1996, these might of allowed Sony too long of an advantage though.

- Developing a CD based console and arcade system from the SGI chipset when they were offered it instead of passing it up and allowing the tech to go to Nintendo for the N64

- Buying up the 3DO M2 chipset from 3DO, since Sega was rumored to have been interested in it at some point and develop a new console and arcade system from that.

All these options are hypothetical possibilities, it's really easy to pick over the mistakes Sega made in the past, by using hindsight, but it is fun to speculate on what could of happened.

[CruSega]

Hmm its kind of interesting as back in July I speculated on what alternatives Sega had to using the Saturn chipset. It was posted in this thread:

http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtop ... =44&t=3621

Here's the post:

I personally would of preferred Sega to have canned any 32 bit upgrade to the MegaDrive/Genesis, the Japanese plan would of only added a new CPU and doubled the number of colors displayed, which really wouldn't have made a difference. The problem with upgrades is that developer can't count on there being enough customers owning the upgrade to make it worth developing games specifically for that system, it also divides the market and it ended up diluting Sega's efforts for the Saturn.

As for the Saturn, instead of rushing the upgrade process and badly mangling the inclusion of the 2nd CPU and VDP chip, they could of delayed the launch to 1995 so that they could gone with either of 2 options

Option 1 would of been to have dropped the dual CPUs and incorporated 1 powerful CPU, maybe a PowerPC chip or an SH3 chip and thereby making the improved system more powerful than the PlayStation, but with a nice streamlined development system as well.
The 2nd option would of been to have stuck with the dual CPU and VDPs, but focused more time on putting together a better development system with proper documentation and tools, this would of simplified the development environment for the system and made it less of a headache for developers, even Yu Suzuki himself lamented some of the hardware decisions made with the Saturn. He is reported to have made the following statement.

Quote: "One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs—most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn."

Either of these would of been better than what eventually came out and it would of given Sega a chance against the PlayStation.



A couple of other options would of meant scrapping the Saturn spec entirely and developing a new system for 1996, these might of allowed Sony too long of an advantage though.

- Developing a CD based console and arcade system from the SGI chipset when they were offered it instead of passing it up and allowing the tech to go to Nintendo for the N64

- Buying up the 3DO M2 chipset from 3DO, since Sega was rumored to have been interested in it at some point and develop a new console and arcade system from that.

All these options are hypothetical possibilities, it's really easy to pick over the mistakes Sega made in the past, by using hindsight, ubut it is fun to speculate on what could of happened.

The finalized Saturn specs were certainly not ready for prime time. But Sega wanted a taste of success in the Japanese market so bad, they just had to do anything to cash in on the VF craze in Japan. Despite what some say, Sega was never successful in Japan. The Master System was kept alive by Europe where it was a huge success. The Genesis was big in America and Europe. Neither made a dent in the Japanese market.

In fact, I still have my EGM 1989 issue that was touting the TurboGraphx 16 as the next successful console due to its support in Japan. Nobody expected anything from Service Games who's roots are not even Japanese but American- which also might explain why Sega has had the same problems there as MS has experienced. While "Sega" sounds Japanish, there is nothing Japanese about it and the natives know it. Its a hybrid company, founded by an American that wanted to provide entertainment/Games for US Service man post WW2 stationed in Japan.

[madmax2069]

My only beef with N64 is the lack of textures probably due to the cartridge limitation

That didn't really have anything to do with a cart limitation per say (it certainly didnt help), Cart size effected sound/music, CGI (RE2) more so then textures. It was mainly due to is 4 KB texture cache (not much at all, heck the PS1 had 1mb) They had to use such a ultra low quality/low res texture to conserve texture cache, They used those ultra low res textures and basically streached them to fit what ever they wanted to use it for, and on top of that bilinear filtering only made matters worse. And when mipmappingwas used the texture cache was basically halved to 2 KB. Even if the carts could hold as much as a CD it wouldn't change the issue much at all because of the 4 KB texture cache limitation. I know the expansion pack doubled the ram from 4mb to 8mb, i dont know if it did the same to the texture cache, if it did double the texture cache 8 KB still isn't a lot to work with.