Talk:Sega Saturn

Source

• https://web.archive.org/web/19970606034540/http://www.next-generation.com:80/news/011497a.chtml
• http://web.archive.org/web/20000312083957/http://headline.gamespot.com/news/97_05/15_belt/index.html

Sonic Xtreme

"Sega tasked the U.S.-based Sega Technical Institute (STI) with developing the first fully 3D entry in its popular Sonic the Hedgehog series."

Technically, the first 3D Sonic was the fighting game made by AM2. Maybe change it to stay first fully 3d platformer entry?

Mortal Kombat 3

"Stolar, who had arranged a six-month PlayStation exclusivity deal for Mortal Kombat 3[103] "

Mortal Kombat 3 wasn't timed exclusive, it came out on Mega Drive and Super Nintendo and the PlayStation version was published by Sony themselves. It's possible the Sony agreement meant no port of Mortal Kombat 3 on 3DO, Jaguar and Saturn - but in that case it could mention it being a 32-bit exclusive deal.

Pretty subjective to be an "encyclopedic article"

"Although the Saturn is remembered for several well-regarded games, including Nights into Dreams, the Panzer Dragoon series and the Virtua Fighter series, its reputation is mixed due to its complex hardware design and limited third-party support. Sega's management has been criticized for its decisions during the Saturn's development and discontinuation."

"its reputation is mixed due to" I'd like to see this phrase IN ALL SONY CONSOLES articles. Will not happen, of course. Not for being false. Sony consoles, specially the first 2 generations, have historically linked its giant success to its massive piracy in, at least, SOME important markets. Any word about that in Playstation articles? NO.

"Sega's management has been criticized for its decisions during the Saturn's development and discontinuation."

yeah, well, I DO NOT remember SEGA being criticised during the development of the Saturn and the firsts months or even year of the system. On the contrary. But, I suppose you can always wrote what the hell you want, following a script made by Sony... fans? Or perhaps executives?

Perhaps Wikipedia is not a Encyclopedia, but just a pamphlet to create its own history in everything, being stupidly partisan? Perhaps.

79.157.48.72 (talk) 22:10, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Do you have any constructive suggested changes to this article? Sergecross73 msg me 23:01, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Very poor article

This is full of misinformation unfortunately, the designer of the Saturn himself has already debunked the information from Next Generation Magazine and such. The Saturn did not have a second VDP added to it, it had a second CPU added to it along with a few other things that have yet to be expanded upon.

Genesis sales in North America nosedived at the end of 1994 and the SNES had a big resurgence and started to dominate the 16-bit market. We know from internal reports that Sega of America overproduced Genesis games and demand from retail dried up, leaving them stuck with warehouses of unsold stock which had to be written off, and consoles that had to be sold to Majesco at rock bottom prices.

Yuji Naka himself states that he never gave any ultimatum about Sonic Xtreme and that this is a lie. etc etc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23CC:B4A9:FC01:71B9:A4A:AE74:3464 (talk • contribs)

Feel free to provide reliable sources for specific changes you'd like to make. Sergecross73 msg me 12:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

We've heard a bit now about Genesis hardware write-offs, but it can be easily argued that Saturn was the reason for that. There was very clear disagreement between Sega and Sega of America at this time, and it can be seen in the contrasts between Kalinske's interviews about this time period and statements that Shoichiro Irimajiri has made in Sega financial reports and a lecture none of us want to pay $35 to see (reference: Talk:Sega#Shoichiro Irimajiri's claims). Genesis demand dries up because people know Saturn, and PlayStation, are coming up - Nintendo is less affected because N64 is a ways off and they've always been better known for their game franchises than Sega or Sony at the time. We also know from Irimajiri (but again, needs to be verified against a heavily paywalled source in the Japanese language) that American retailers required Sega of America to have at least 500,000 units in back stock and had to take back unsold units.

As for Yuji Naka, we discussed this at Talk:Sonic X-treme. Everyone in this story is an unreliable narrator, and that goes for Naka as well. Honestly it's hard to take his words at face value when there are tons of sources that detail animosity between him and the American developers at STI where he worked.

I'd be interested to see a source on the hardware claims. Red Phoenix ^talk 00:59, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Commercial failure?

Is it fair to say in the intro "At 9.26 million units sold worldwide, the Saturn is considered a commercial failure"? This would only be accurate from a US/Western perspective and doesn't comply with WP:GLOBAL. In Japan, which by the way was the largest video gaming market at that time, this console was not a commercial failure at all. This should be changed to clarify that it was a failure specifically in the NA/Western market but not as a global rule. Sceeegt (talk) 20:37, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

It certainly did better in Japan, but I've never seen reliable sources commentary refer to it as something like a commercial success, no. Sergecross73 msg me 20:57, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Then wouldn't that also not make it a commercial failure either? The way it's written now makes it sound like a uniform global failure, which would only be applicable to something like the Jaguar. Sceeegt (talk) 21:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Er...do we really not have any sources calling the Saturn a failure in Japan? Or just in a worldwide context? I find that hard to believe... Sergecross73 msg me 21:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Well I haven't come across sources stating that ("in Japan"). By the way there already exist sources about the Nintendo 64 being a commercial failure in Japan yet that article always had a more positive intro all because of the US-centric point of view. This article needs the global balance as well. Sceeegt (talk) 22:20, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't believe there's any shortage of sources calling the Saturn a failure in a general sense, so it's really up to you to find sources that commonly describe its Japanese release differently.

Additionally, this is a WP:FA, the highest rating a Wikipedia article can get. That doesn't mean "perfect", but it's been extensively written and reviewed. The N64 has no such rating, so it's not particularly something to aspire to. Not that it matters. They're also very different platforms with different situations . We don't need absolute parity between articles with labels used necessarily, we just need to make sure we accurately depict what reliable sources said about each respective console. We need to WP:STICKTOSOURCE more than anything. Sergecross73 msg me 23:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, sources overwhelmingly describe it as a commercial failure. (And rightly — Saturn was successful in Japan, but Sega needed it to be successful in the west too.) Popcornfud (talk) 11:31, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Again that doesn't take WP:GLOBAL into account. The commercial failure is stated by the English-language sources we know but it usually doesn't have a global perspective. Sceeegt (talk) 12:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

If you can produce some reliable secondary sources (in any language) to support your position then we can take a look. Popcornfud (talk) 12:38, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

You're not taking WP:V into account - the most basic of things we must follow on Wikipedia. You need sources to support your stance. Probably multiple to avoid falling afoul of WP:FRINGE. WP:VG/S has a massive list of sources commonly deemed usable or unusable. That may aid your search. Sergecross73 msg me 13:32, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

So, here’s a bit of historical context from someone who wrote a lot of this article (but I’m not responsible for it’s FA quality, thank you TheTimesAreAChanging for your phenomenal work):

The most I have to say positive about Saturn in Japan is very much that the console was targeted heavily for the Japanese market, as Sega had never been successful in Japan with home consoles before then. To that end, yes, in Japan it did… okay. A GamesTM source I used when working on Segata Sanshiro pointed out that the Saturn “competed closely” with the PlayStation in Japan.

Sega’s financial losses from ‘96-‘97 through 2002

But consider this: it’s hard to call the Saturn a commercial failure or not for Japan alone in part because of how Sega did their books. Sega Enterprises, Ltd. Is often called “Sega of Japan”, but make no mistake, there is no subsidiary that covers just Japan in Sega’s history. By contrast, all American sales go into Sega of America’s sales, all of Europe’s go into Sega Europe, and so on. The difference here is that Sega Enterprises had to pick up the tab for SoA and SE’s losses, and that goes against their books as well, whereas a commercial failure in Japan (i.e. the Genesis) wouldn’t show on SoA’s books. In other words, it’s harder to call something a commercial failure or not in the Japan region alone unless you just go off the company’s whole books… and if you refer to the Sega article’s section of this time period, Sega posted gigantic losses at this time, most of which was the consumer division - arcades weren’t really the problem just yet. And yeah, a lot of Sega Enterprises’ losses were for covering the losses of SoA at this time. It cost a lot of people their jobs as well.

I think therefore, one has to call the console a commercial failure as a whole. Sega Enterprises, Ltd. took huge losses over the Saturn, so much so that Dreamcast couldn’t save it and they were headed for an uncertain end which the death of Isao Okawa and his gifts back to the company spared until the Sammy merger. Being successful in one territory doesn’t make the console not a commercial failure when it’s literally killing the whole company. Red Phoenix ^talk 17:29, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense, thank you for that breakdown. Sergecross73 msg me 17:54, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for such a detailed piece. I'm not at odds with the point you're making: it's rightly a failure when the company is being bled. Let me paraphrase what I want to say, which is that the way it is currently written is misleading. If we just say it's a commercial failure full stop, then it would likely be misleading in this case (that'd be better suited for a product like the Jag).

I am actually going to make an edit now to the last paragraph with sources from VG247 and TE (which are reliable sources per WP:VG/RS) that I believe helps to at least balance things out a bit, without making any alteration to the 'commercial failure' part. Let me know if it looks good. Sceeegt (talk) 22:48, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I haven’t dug into the edit in detail, but from a cursory glance it looks all right. I think it’s important to know that how well something sells does not equate to whether or not it’s a commercial failure; that has more to do with profit and loss, and while a publicly traded company’s whole company numbers are public, profitability and profit margins of individual products are not, and we know Saturn was an expensive beast to make, which is why Sega went the complete opposite course in using off-the-shelf components to make Dreamcast. Could Saturn have made money in Japan with the number sold there? Hard to say, especially since video game consoles sell at break-even or a loss with the intention that accessories and games make all that money back and more (the “razor and blades” model; televisions also sell on this model), so we’d need numbers from the whole product line for just Japan.

An example where sales numbers do not equate with commercial success is Shenmue (video game). 1.2 million copies sold is a great number for a video game, but not when the budget was so badly overblown that it was a loss anyway. A publicly perceived success can still be a commercial failure if the money isn’t there for some reason or another. Red Phoenix ^talk 23:18, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

You make solid points there, the Shenmue example is a good one! There's another part in the article intro that reads a bit misleading, in relation to what you say: "At 9.26 million units sold worldwide, the Saturn is considered a commercial failure" reads to me that the product is a commercial failure because it sold 9 million. There's no acknowledgment here of the financial toll on Sega during the Saturn era, in relation to what you (rightly) said, so I think this part needs modifying too? - I would personally move the 9 million sold part in the final paragraph. Sceeegt (talk) 23:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I think a little simple rewording may be in order; simply separating these facts into two sentences would do it. Sales certainly are a part of the failure, and that’s why they are associated, but it’s fair to say that’s not the whole story that it just didn’t sell enough. Red Phoenix ^talk 00:15, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Hmm I've just reworded it and separated the two, while making some other tweaks in that same paragraph to simplify (I guess no need to repeat the 'May 1995 launch' when it already says so in the first paragraph). I feel like it's well balanced now. What do you think? Sceeegt (talk) 00:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it still needs work. I dont think mentioning Japanese sales being "the highest of any Sega console in Japan" is the most accurate way to lead into its sales performance. It's true, but it lacks context, as no other Sega console did all that well, and it's misleading when, as outlined above, overall it was a financial disaster for Sega. I am a huge Sega fan, but this feels like fans trying to rewrite history in a more positive light. Sergecross73 msg me 03:15, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree; I understand the idea was to point out it is the best-selling Sega console in Japan, but by 1999 Sony sold over three times that many PlayStations in Japan alone. It’s important not to overplay this, as while factual, it is POV-pushing to an extent to really call it a success in a territory when its primary competition outsold it by quite a bit. Also, not a fan of citations in the lead; facts in the lead should rarely be cited as the idea is it should be covered and well sourced in the body. Red Phoenix ^talk 12:54, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Fair. I really want to be neutral and avoid bias. I'm thinking it's best to move that part about being highest Sega console in Japan to the bottom of the paragraph, after the millions sold. That may fit well. Sceeegt (talk) 13:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC) ... I've just made this change and agree it looks better. But I have also modified 'most successful console' to 'best-selling console', precisely for what you and Red Phoenix have said about not overly "marketing" its better performance in Japan. After all it still got outdone by PS. --Sceeegt (talk) 13:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

You still haven't addressed Red Phoenix's point about citations in the lead, which I agree with. Please see WP:LEAD - the intro shouldn't be covering anything that isn't covered in the body of the article. This isn't covered in the body, so it doesn't belong in the intro. Honestly, I think your additions belong more in the Sega Saturn#Decline area, around where its mentioned that it outsold the N64 in Japan.

Also, I still think "best-selling console" by itself lacks context too. It feels like the sort of comments company's make to make their sales more impressive. Similar to when they say things like "sales increased 400%" and it sounds like a lot until you realize what a 400% increase over 10 sold is... Sergecross73 msg me 17:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Fair. In that case would it be OK to make the change like this:

"The Saturn is considered a commercial failure and had high financial cost to Sega; this was affected by the cancellation..."

And at the end of the paragraph like what Red Phoenix said:

"...succeeded in 1998 by the Dreamcast having sold 9.26 million units sold worldwide, majority of which were in Japan."

Without including citations as it's the lead. Finally anything regarding it being Sega's 'best-selling system in Japan' would be down in the #Decline section. I think that should be well balanced. Sceeegt (talk) 01:26, 6 September 2024 (UTC)