The Brink Plays Games With Sega

It was once a powerful video game company that many thought would challenge Nintendo for dominance. So what happened to Sega to make it fall so far?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are you? You may have ascertained
that I am not at due to the nature of

(00:26):
my voice, which is probably a bit more um lower
than usual. Been coughing a lot rough times in the
Strickland household. But I'll be okay. So because of my
condition that I'm a bit under the weather, We're going
to present to you something special. You know. I did

(00:46):
this a few weeks back where I brought up an
old episode of Business on the Brink, the show that
I used to do with aerial casting where we would
take companies that were at a real inflection point, either
they were just about to take off or they were
just about to disappear and talk about what happened and
how we got there. And a lot of those companies,

(01:09):
of course, have something to do with tech. So today
I thought we would do the episode titled The Brink
plays Games with Sega. I hope you enjoy Sega. From
Slot Machines to Sonic the Hedgehog, this company played its
way into people's hearts. But in the nineties they made

(01:31):
a few key mistakes that would make them lose the
trust of their gamers, and by the time they came
out with elite new system worthy of consumers praise, it
was too late and the market was gone. Learn how
this company spun out of control and out of the
console game. This is Sega on the brink. Hi everybody,

(01:58):
I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Arial Casting, and I want
to apologize that intro had far too few puns in it.
Game over area over. So this was a request from
a from a Tony. Yeah, isn't your husband's name Tony? Yes,

(02:19):
there may or may not be any relation to that,
but you know what, it's a really good suggestion. If
my wife had made a suggestion, I would have gone
with it too, So totally cool. I put it in
listener suggestions because he doesn't work on this podcast, so
it's a listener suggestion. Totally Yeah. So this is a
great story to cover in the sense that it's easy
to forget it now. But Sega for a while was

(02:41):
writing high in the video game console world, and for
a brief period it looked like they could become the
dominant name in video game consoles, and then everything went wrong.
So it's to the point now where people who think
back on the Sega consoles, they tend to fall into
two camps. They're either the people who wistfully remember how

(03:04):
awesome those game consoles were more there people who think
of it as a big joke. It's a little both,
a little both because largely because of the very moves
we're going to talk about in this podcast. But just
in the interest of full disclosure, I was someone who
got hold of a Sega Dreamcast system, which we're going
to talk about in this episode. I got it after

(03:26):
the Dreamcast had already made a splash and was fading
from memory, So this was they weren't making new Dreamcast
games by the time I got hold of the system,
it was all the used game market. But I was
blown away by the Dreamcast. So when we talk about
people who truly loved that system, I'm one of those people.

(03:46):
I want to mention at the beginning of this that
as much as we say that Sega has kind of
fallen out of memory, people were saying they might make
a comeback, and the fact that there's a Sonic movie
coming out a Sonic movie that is rapidly undergoing massive
change is as we record this. The news recently broke
that because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the Sonic

(04:08):
the Hedgehog teaser trailer, they are going to redesign Sonics look,
which is a pretty massive undertaking for a for a
c g I movie. It is. I'm really rooting for
them to get it right, because I think a Sonic movie.
I enjoyed the stories when I played the games, and
I think kids would enjoy a Sonic movie. I didn't
realize there was a story. Here's a story dr about
Nick Steel's little animals and turns them into I just

(04:31):
figured you ran really fast and when you hit stuff,
rings popped out of you. I mean, which I mean
that happens to me. Yeah, it's I mean, I get it.
It's true to life. Well, let's talk a little bit
about just a little bit about Sega's origins to kind
of set the scene of how they were able to
climb in the home console space. Now, obviously, the story

(04:52):
of Sega starts before there was a home video game
console market. We're actually not going to start at the
very beginning of the company that becomes Sega because it's
a lot of little steps, it's not very important. There
was a slot machine company made in Hawaii, and eventually
the Army said, we don't want slot machines on US

(05:13):
army bases anymore, which is where they were selling their
machines too. So they went over to Japan where they
still could sell games, and they became Service Games Japan. Yeah,
as service thus the nod to making games for like
military installations. Yes, And when they went over to Japan,
they're being run by Martin Bromley. Now, in nineteen sixty
that company liquidated and split into two divisions. I'm gonna

(05:37):
pronounce this probably very poorly, Nihan Goriku Basan which traded
under the name Automatic Inc. For distribution, and then Nihan
Kaeso would traded under the name Sega Inc. Sega is
short for Service Games, taking the first two letters of each.
So they made slot machines, but they also made juke boxes,

(05:58):
so that you know, obviously this is arcade game days.
And where do we go from there. Well, eventually those
two companies recombine. Now at the same time, you've got
Rosen Enterprises Inc. Also in Japan at the time run
by David Rosen, who is another army man. His company
started as an art exporting company, taking art from Japan,

(06:18):
exporting it to the US during the Korean War, and
then he became an arcade game importer in nine and
then he became a producer of electro mechanical arcade games.
So the precursor to video games, right, this would be
games that would actually have moving components to those. So
a pinball machine is sort of a variant of these games,

(06:40):
but you had all sorts of different ones. There's a
great arcade game museum in San Francisco where you can
actually see some of these electro mechanical and you can
play them, these electro mechanical games. And it is funny
to see how human ingenuity came up with ways to
convince people to part with their change. I believe even
and I would part with a lot of change there,

(07:02):
I'm certain. Now. Rosen was very successful at this, and
in part because he had other engineers helping him from
companies like Nihang Kupasan, and so he started looking for
mergers and the one that panned out was with Nihang
Kupasan or Sea, and they merged in n and I'm
gonna call it MGB. From this point, they acquired Rosen

(07:24):
Enterprises and Rosen became the CEO, and they renamed the
company Sega Enterprises, taking the Sega from m GB what
they were trading under, and taking Enterprises from Rosen Enterprises.
And at that point they were making the electro mechanical
arcade games and jukeboxes, and they started coming out with
their own games in sixty six. The first one that

(07:47):
really got some traction was a game called Periscope, and
they even started opening up essentially arcades. They were called
game centers, but I mean they're like arcades in the
sense of like the video U arcades made famous in
the nineteen eighties. Periscope, by the way, was so good
that they started importing it to the US. Yeah, so
there actually ended up being an international market for the game. Yeah.

(08:09):
And then in nineteen sixty nine, Sega was acquired by
Gulf and Western, who had been largely trading in pinball machines.
From my understanding, so now Sega has pinball machines. Yeah,
so they start doing those as well. As a pinball enthusiast,
I appreciate that I love pinball games and Sega was
then trading on the US stock market, so they were

(08:33):
now not just on Japanese markets but also in the US.
In fact, primarily in the US by this point, and
they had Sega Enterprises Incorporated and they essentially shifted their
operations to the United States, although they maintained an operating
arm in Japan as well. Yeah, it was an ltd.
After that, they started moving into video games, both in

(08:54):
the arcade and at home and seeing the trend. There
have been a couple of games that people have attributed
to this. The one that is coming to my mind
is Pong. So they saw Pong and they said, well,
this is the way things are going. Let's jump on
the train. And they even acquired the US gaming company
called Gremlin in seventy to help them expand into that market. So,
you know, we kind of skipped over a lot of

(09:15):
the early seventies, but that was more of the same.
It's really when you get into the mid to late
seventies where the arcade games, the video games story coming out,
where this this story starts to change. Uh, they were
doing pretty well, that division was doing pretty well, but
the overall parent company it was a different story. Yeah,
So Golf and Western hit some trouble and they sold

(09:39):
the U S division of Sega to Midway Games in
at which point Sega became a primarily Japanese company again.
Sega North America was absorbed into Midway. Midway is another
company we'll have to do a brink episode on sometime
in the future. Midway famous in the United States for
the Mortal Kombat series. Midway is no more. So that's

(10:01):
another story that has its own brink moment, but we'll
save that for its own episode, you know. And Saga
does have operations in the US again, but at that
time they shifted. So Rosen wanted this video game market
that they had built, so he and some others bought
it back from Gulf and Western. They buy back the
Japanese branch, right, so the North American branch that's part

(10:24):
of Midway. Rosen goes back to the Japanese side and
purchases that one back from the parent company. Yes, and
in three Sega had its first console, the s G
one thousand, which was I'm sorry if I offend anybody,
nothing to write home about. They also had a micro
computer come out at that time, which I think was
the s G two thousand or three thousand. I covered

(10:46):
this for a living, and I don't remember ever reading
about the s G one. Yes, well, they had a
really hard time competing with Nintendo because Nintendo already had
market share. And then in six Sega came out with
their first successful console, the Sega Master System. Yeah, but
then the Nintendo Entertainment System was still pretty much the

(11:10):
dominant player in that space. I mean, remember that the
Nintendo Entertainment System was the system that was able to
bring the video game home market back from the crash
of three. Well, Sega realized that they were not necessarily
going to get Nintendo's markets, so they focused on markets
that weren't saturated with Nintendo already, places like Brazil in Europe,

(11:30):
and they became the second most popular home system in
the world, kicking Atari out of that spot, which I'm
surprised Atari was even in that spot. I'm guessing it's
from lack of competition. Yeah, no, because no one else
wanted to get into the video game console market after
that crash, right, so Nintendo. Everyone thought Nintendo was crazy
for getting into a market just as it had imploded,
and Nintendo was able to prove that there was still

(11:53):
a market there, but no one else had anything ready
to compete in that space because they had all either
gone out of business or had changed their minds about
developing a console. So it was kind of open ground.
And so even though the Sega system wasn't catching on
big here in the United States, so a lot of
people in the US were completely unfamiliar with it, there

(12:16):
was enough demand in other countries for it to be
a big success. Well, all of that was about to change, well,
at least the not being in high demand in the
US part, because in eighty eight they came out with
the Sega Mega Drive, which in the United States is
better known as the Sega Genesis. Yeah, and it was
not only a really popular console, but it was also

(12:36):
really the first sixteen bit console there was, which is
probably why it was so popular. Yeah. It was a
dramatic improvement over the eight bit systems like the Nintendo
Entertainment System that came before it, and it got the
jump start on the Super Nintendo, which was another sixteen
bit system. Yeah. Along with that system, they implemented a
good marketing strategy. They had really good games, which we

(12:58):
know is very important for the six US of a console. Yeah,
you need to have a good launch library. Yeah. This
is around the time we get Altered Beast. Yeah. I
watched a long play of that just the other day
and I forgot how bonkers that game. It is crazy. Yeah,
it's pretty nuts. If you don't know what we're talking about,
do a YouTube search for Altered Beasts Sega and uh. Yeah.

(13:20):
It's all about transforming into various types of monsters as
you make your way through multiple levels, and it's really hard.
It's a really hard game. But this gave Nintendo a
fight because up until that time they had the mark share.
By nine one, Sega was doing real well both in
the arcades and in the home console arena. And the arcades,
they were coming out with three D games like Virtual Racing,

(13:41):
Virtua Fighter, virtual games. There was virtual Tennis. I remember
that was all under the Sega label. There is Virtual
Virtue of Virtuous people now virtually Virtuous, and it's I
can identify with that. By that time, Sega was in
forty four countries and they came out with Sonic the Hedge. Yeah,
kind of their answer to uh to Nintendo's Mario. It

(14:04):
became like the mascot for Sega. Yeah, and it looks
like Sonic might outpace Mario. Well you can run really fast, mao. Well,
Sonic jumps higher. U. Now, Nintendo did gain groundback with
SNS when it came out. So Sega did a couple
of moves that would spell to bring for them. One

(14:26):
was the Sega thirty two X cartridge and the other
was the Sega c D. Yeah, these were both additions
to the Genesis. It was an attempt to boost the
genesis is power and to extend the lifespan of the
console by giving it additional capabilities beyond the basic system.
And essentially the company had a couple of choices, right,

(14:48):
they could have gone down that route to try and
augment an existing game console, or they could have designed
the next generation console to have those things built into
it natively and launched that. They decided to go with
the augmenting approach, so more more like a computer where
you would buy a new graphics card for it. Yeah.

(15:09):
Shortly after, they did also design a console which was
a whole another problem. Yeah, the Sega Saturn. The Sega
Saturn in ninety four. Now, Sega Saturn was a really
big hit in Japan, and at that time they also
launched things like in door theme parks and the Sega Channel,
which is a whole story of its own. But Sega
Saturn big hit in Japan, but not a big hit

(15:29):
in North America, and the peripherals for the Genesis weren't selling.
So these three moves are the things that brought Sega
to the brink. The stuff that would push Sega over
are yet to come, but this kind of sets the stage.
So with that in mind, let's take a quick break
and when we come back, we'll explain a bit more
about what pushed Sega over the edge. Alright, so we

(16:00):
mentioned the Sega Genesis and the Purples, or if you prefer,
the Sega Mega c D system. It was the Sega
c D in the US, it was the Mega c
D in Japan. So let's talk a little bit more
about this peripheral and why it failed to really get
a lot of traction. This was the peripheral, the additional

(16:21):
thing for the Genesis that would give it more capabilities.
The Genesis when it released was a cartridge based system,
very much like the Nintendo Entertainment System. Yes, s, even
the Nintendo sixty four that would come out later was
still cartridge based So what were the thoughts behind going
to a CD based system? All right, Well, first, the

(16:45):
Sega c D would allow for full motion video games,
which sounded good in theory back at the time. Yeah,
but they were really grainy. Yeah, and a lot of
them had very little to know gameplay. Let me let
me tell you about one of them. Sure, I'm the
famous One night Trap. Have you heard about this one? This? Yeah,
it started a person who had formerly start on the

(17:07):
show Different Strokes. Uh. It's about a group of young
women who are having a sleepover party and you're playing
a super creepy neighbor I'm guessing who is looking in
on the home while the women are having their party,
and there's about a billion masked intruders trying to get

(17:29):
in there, and you activate a series of traps in
various rooms to stop the invaders from getting at the
young women. And I'm talking about like crazy traps like
people are are. You're watching these guys sneak past a
wall and you hit a button at just the right
moment and then a video would play where the wall
would like rotate around, possibly sending those intruders to their demise.

(17:54):
You don't really know it was weird. And yeah, full
motion videos sounded great because you're like, look at the
amazing technical capability. We can actually show full motion video,
but it meant that we had to pre record everything,
so there was very little control, Like you couldn't control
a full motion video person imperfect motion because that capability

(18:16):
wasn't there. You would essentially do a choose your own
adventure kind of approach to games, which meant that there
was very little gameplay to actually have. Yeah, the CDs
were supposed to be able to store a lot more
information than cartridges could. Now on the flip side, you
had companies like Nintendo saying we don't want to go
down that path because we feel that the CD format

(18:37):
is easier to pirate, And in fact, Sega would have
problems with that as somebody who may or may not
have come into possession of an enormous folder of pirated discs.
I know nothing. Yeah, but there are other problems with
the Sega City beyond being piratable. Yeah, and you're right,
they could hold more storage. They also had better audio

(18:58):
because they used an audio D drive not a CD
ROM for it. But these units were not universal. So
depending on what version Genesis you got you'd have to
either get a Sega c D that was compatible with
that specifically, so some sat like completely underneath and some
we're on the side of. So that's that's confusing to
the consumer. Yes, and then all of these peripherals had

(19:18):
their own power sources, right, so so it's not like
they even could just take power from the main console.
You had to plug them in separately. And also it
meant and I love that you have this note here
because it's it's a clear problem. It meant that you
were already limiting your market right because the only people
you can sell that peripheral to our people who either

(19:40):
own a Sega Genesis or buying a Sega Genesis at
the same time, and they just want to have the
full thing kitted out, which takes a lot of money. Yeah,
So so you're essentially saying these existing customers I already have,
I'm trying to up sell those customers, but you're not
winning new customers with that approach, So you've already limited
the amount of success you can have that product, as

(20:01):
opposed to coming out with a brand new console that
might win not just your existing customers but new customers.
And that ended up being one of those strategies that
ultimately would come back to slap them in the face.
And and we'll get to that because they did design
a CD console it was a Saturn. But first I
also want to talk about the thirty two X. It

(20:23):
was actually made to compete with the Attari Jaguar, and
I have very little software support. Yeah, which is kind
of interesting because the Attari Jaguar, it turns out you
didn't really need to compete against it now and that's
the only reason I wanted to mention. It was supposed
to bring arcade quality games to your home. It was
called three two X because you had the sixteen system

(20:44):
system and that's cool, but again expensive. You can't really
enter in if you've got to buy three separate machines
unless you've got a lot of extra money. And the
thirty two X only sold six and sixty five thousand
units globally. It sounds like a lot, but it's not. Also, uh,
it couldn't quite match the quality of the arcade experience,

(21:05):
and that was the big selling point, right They were saying,
this is going to bring the experience you have at
the arcade into your home, and the reality was it
wasn't quite good enough for that, and so some of
the people who bought it felt like they didn't get
the promise that they were, you know, it wasn't delivered upon. Yeah.
So then we get the Saturn CD, which we previously

(21:28):
said did really well in Japan and not so great
in the US. Yeah. In Japan, it's sold almost five
hundred thousand units in the first month. But then they
announced to be three in the US, and they were
trying to compete with the very new PlayStation and the
Nintendo sixty four, which we're both already out or just
about to come out, and so they panicked and they

(21:50):
announced that the Saturn was coming out six months ahead
of schedule, and it was going to cost four hundred
dollars instead of the around eight hundred that it would
cost you to get basic model from Japan. Yeah, so
this was an attempt for them to try and steal
some of that market share away from their competitors, right,
Like there vastly under pricing the console is one of

(22:12):
the strategies that a lot of console makers have where
you sell the console at a loss and you hope
to make it up in selling titles games. Except for
they didn't have enough games because they didn't think a
lot of the Japanese games would translate well to America,
so those didn't get released in the US. And then
you've got all of these game developers who are trying

(22:32):
to program these games for the release of the Sega Saturn,
which is already a little bit more complicated to program
for because it used dual CPUs, which is a redesign
after they found out what the PlayStation specs were. Yeah,
and so they're rushing to get their games out. And
Jonathan and I are huge geeks. We've had all these
conversations about how rushing a game just leads to poor gameplay. Yeah,

(22:57):
and that was true in this case. And so there
was poor gameplay, there was a very limited library. And
then they also didn't adjust their marketing for the gamers
that were growing up. They were still focusing largely on teenagers. Yeah,
and as it turned out, the people who grew up
with games were sticking with games, and if you marketed
toward them, you tended to do well. And if you

(23:20):
just kept on aiming for a constantly refreshing young market,
it didn't do as well. And that really hurts Sega. Yeah,
I I think the process of making it difficult to program,
like we've heard that before two. PlayStation three had a
similar issue because they changed the architecture for the system,
And if you were working for the company, So if

(23:42):
you were working for Sega, if you were a developer
and you worked for Sega, or you were a developer
and you worked for Sony, you had a better chance
of developing a decent title for that console. But if
you're a third party developer, and third parties are the
ones that are making some of the most popular titles
out there, certainly, and you in counter this problem, then
internally you start asking yourself the question, doesn't make sense

(24:05):
for us to even make a game for the system,
considering how much time and effort it's going to take,
Or should we just focus on making titles for a
competing system where we know we can turn them out faster.
So it was a whole combination of things, largely on
Sega's rushed decisions to try and compete more vigorously against
the PlayStation in sixty four that really set them back well,

(24:28):
and they couldn't even because this rush deadline also meant
that their systems were in core supply shortly after they
announced that their system was coming out early. PlayStation well,
I guess Sony said, hey, our PlayStation is only two
hundred dollars and so three nine. So now they're coming
out early, but they can't compete with PlayStation in price.
Yea and Nintendo had better games and gameplay, it's more powerful,

(24:52):
so it was it was like a double whammy. So
you found a quote from the guy who had was
CEO of Sega during this time, Tom Kolinski. He had
an interview and his quote is I'm going to read
it out verbatim. Had we waited until we had more
and better games launching with all retailers instead of with

(25:13):
a few with marketing that could reach every player, we
would have been much more successful, even if that meant
waiting for a late October or November launch. So we
usually put our lessons at the end of Brink episodes,
but here's a lesson right in the middle of this one,
which is sometimes being first is not as important as
being best. Yeah, and I'm sorry. We probably could have

(25:34):
just said that quote instead of talking for the last
seven minutes, But then you wouldn't have the Brink. You
wouldn't have the braink But also around this time, our
kid Attendant started falling. It didn't help. I mean, we
still have arcades, but and they do better overseas than
in the US. But in the US, in the US,
it used to be a staple, like every mall had
at least one arcade, and now like there's only a

(25:56):
few game centers or bowling alleys that that even carry
video games. So yeah, it's they're few and far between
in the States. And I believe that at the time,
Sega was looking at a merger with Bandi, and in
ninet that was called off, and all of these things
led to downsizing in layoffs, not surprisingly. Yeah, so they

(26:18):
really were setting their hopes on the Dreamcast. They really
thought maybe the Dreamcast system could succeed where the Saturn
had failed. They really put a lot of work and
design and the Dreamcast and it showed. But the damage
had been done already right there. The missteps they made
with the Genesis peripherals, the missteps with their c D

(26:39):
system had kind of turned a lot of gamers off.
They had a bad perception of Sega the company as
far as hardware as concerned. Yeah, but we're going to
talk more about that right after this quick break. All right,

(27:00):
so now we're going to talk about the Dreamcast system
I still own. I think we own one too. It's
actually really easy to hook it up because you can
just hook it up through a coaxial cable to your machine.
In fact, you could even feed cable through a cable
system to your game system and then from the game
system to the television, because I used to do that.

(27:21):
My my Saga Dreamcast, which I do still own, is
not currently connected to my television, but it could be.
It should be, Jonathan, it should be. Well. The Dreamcast
came out in Japan and ninety nine in the US
about a year apart from each other, not like a
few months apart, but about a year. And it was
a sixth generation console for home by Sega and the

(27:43):
last one and uh, gamers who got it saw that
the system was pretty boss. Yeah, people still say that
it's not everybody. A lot of people say that it's
one of the best consoles that's been created. It the
least a toe to toe with the competing consoles on them.
It was. It was advanced compared to the competing consoles

(28:06):
on the market. It even I would argue it didn't
equal the following generation of consoles, but it was pretty
darn clothes. Well. It was the first one to have
a built in modem for online gaming, it was the
first one to do voice recognition for online gaming, and
it had really great graphics and really great sound. It

(28:26):
also had that that fish Man game, you know what
it was man, which is interesting. If you're not familiar
with it, you should or should not, go look up.
I can't. I can't even recommend for you to go
look at a YouTube rio because it's weird. Yeah, if
if you feel the need to not sleep ever again,
go look it up. But then they came out with

(28:48):
really great games, absolutely Crazy Taxi and Jet Grind, radio
imports of their Arcade games that also we're really great
on this console, shem You, and Soul Caliber too, just
to name a few. Yeah, Soul Caliber was probably my
favorite series. Yeah, and they even won an award for
the most successful hardware launch in history, and it sold
over five hundred thousand units in the first week, as

(29:09):
opposed to the Saturn, which had only sold that many
in a month. Yeah, so incredibly well out of the gate.
But unfortunately that was not sustainable. Yeah, because then we
got the PlayStation two. Yeah, and the PS two ended
up winning over a lot of people right away. PS
two is a great machine. I still think the Dreamcast

(29:29):
is better than the PS but a lot of people
had already switched over to PlayStation Yeah. There are a
lot of people who are already in the Sony ecosystem,
and they thought, oh, well that I already loved this
game system, I bet this one's going to be it's
too I bets twice as good. I'm gonna go with that.
So they stopped making the Dreamcast in two thousand one,
and support for it ended in two thousand three, and

(29:50):
games were produced into two thousand seven, over thirty of them.
But unless you get a really ambitious kickstarter, you're not
going to get more games. Interesting. I didn't realize they
were being made even that late. I know that I
got my Dreamcast after two thousand one, which is when
they had stopped making the Dreamcast. But you know, I've
only been around for two years. In the US, you

(30:12):
had a lot of fans that were making games. You
had a lot of crowdsourced gotcha games. Apparently it was
pretty easy to make them for the Dreamcast. It's definitely
easy to pirate them, not that I would know from
personal experience. I didn't fired them. I just I just
got hold of something, and I mean someone I know
got hold of a whole. Yeah, I just keep digging
that whole Jonathan um. In March of two thousand one,

(30:32):
they announced, you know, we're out of console game We're
just going to focus on software and third party game publishing.
They did some restructures. The first game they released for
another competitor was for Nintendo. I feel like this was
probably what broke the spirit of the company right because
the Dreamcast, like we said, was truly a revolutionary product.

(30:52):
It was a good game console, people liked it, and
yet the company, like the actual hardware, ultimately failed in
the market. Like it had a great reception and had
early buzz, but it wasn't able to keep on with that.
And I think that must have been a very hard
decision to come to at Sega, to say, listen, we

(31:14):
gave it our best shot and it wasn't enough. Yeah,
it even gets a little bit sadder before it gets better.
They looked at a bunch of mergers. The president of
Sega at that time of Sega Japan passed away shortly
after that. He did give seven hundred million dollars to
the company UM to try to help bolster it's it's success,

(31:35):
it didn't really help. In two thousand three, they announced
a merger of Semi Corps, which made Pachinko machines and
things like that. Yeah, and then Namco said no, we
want to buy Sega, and then both of those fell through.
And then a few months later Sammy Corp. Came back
and bought Sega. But in two thousand twelve they had
to restructure again, so they cut more jobs, they closed

(31:57):
multiple branches, and they announced that they would only be
focusing on developing digital contents so free to play in
phone apps and things like that. Yeah, far cry from
the old arcade and console days. Yeah, and then driving
their existing IPCA Sonic. Sonic still comes out with games
and people still like them for the most part, so

(32:18):
they can make some money licensing that intellectual property. And
since then they've even they've even made a few acquisitions,
and like I said, there have been some talks of
a comeback recently. Yeah. So so they continue to make
games for other platforms, but they haven't shown any sign
of getting back into the the home console market. Apart
from there were rumors every few years. Yeah, but I

(32:41):
heard about something in twenty but I couldn't substantiate it. Yeah,
so we hear this pretty much every few years, like,
let's wait till e three and maybe we'll hear another
announcement of this beloved game company coming up with a
console again. And honestly, there might be a possibility of
that happening. You know, we've got the next generation of
consoles right around the corner. Sony's getting ready with their

(33:03):
big announcement for the PS five. They've talked a little
bit about it already. There's always rumors about what the
next Microsoft console is going to be, So maybe we
will see another attempt in the future. It is very
challenging to get into a market that has been dominated
by three powerhouse players. I think their biggest hope would

(33:24):
be really banking on those gamers who are now grown
up in middle aged. All that hurt to say, and
now have you know, expendable income to relive their fond memories.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you my elderly ears. I
was putting myself into that category as well. Jonathan, there
there are a couple of fun facts. I do want

(33:45):
to at least say one of them, which is the
Sega Genesis motto, which is Genesis does wet nintend don't. Yeah,
now I remember that ad campaign. Yeah, And there's some
other things we could talk about. We didn't mention the
infamous game gear. That was a handheld game system that
Sega came out with, but it was plagued with problems,

(34:06):
not the least of which was if you wanted to
play it, you better have a steady supply of batteries
on hand because it drained those suckers and it took
like six from That was not the most efficient game
system out there. And um, yeah, there's there's a lot
more we could say obviously about Sega, but that was
the real nut of the problem that they faced was

(34:27):
that they probably, rather than go with the Sega Genesis peripherals,
should have thrown more attention and support behind and that
might have given the Saturn a real chance of success. Instead,
they kind of confused the market and cannibalize their own sales,
and then by the time the Dreamcast came around, which

(34:48):
was again truly an awesome console, they just didn't have
enough goodwill out there and enough enthusiasm too push them
hard enough so that when Sony came out with a
p S two, they could really compete, which is a shame.
But you know, we don't know what the future holds.
Maybe we will see Sega return truly from the brink.

(35:09):
I would say right now, they're still beyond it because
they're a shadow of what they used to be. But
who knows. Maybe once they do the Sonic the Hedgehog
redesign for the movie. Yikes, I've seen some good fan
art of what the redesign could look like. Yeah, but
that's fan art, I mean maybe. Honestly, I was surprised
to see that a company would take that initial reaction

(35:33):
so seriously as to go that incredible step, because I
mean that is that that's not a small endeavor to redesign, reanimate,
re render all of that work, because you figure they
must be almost done with the movie by the time
they're releasing trailers, at least a good portion of the movie,
and then you're essentially deleting the character and reinserting the

(35:55):
character with possibly with the same animations, but it's still
a totally different design. Is gonna cause all that rendering
to back again well, especially after researching this episode and
talking about Sega. I hope that the redesign is successful
and that a new generation falls in love with little
Blue Speedy Hedgehog. Yeah I do too. I hope you

(36:17):
enjoyed that episode of Business on the Brink. That was
an interesting show to work on. Big shout out to
my co host Ariel who I mean, you just don't know.
She did so much work on that show. She was
an incredible researcher and organizer and was a joy to
work with. Uh. We also did large Nerdron Collider together,

(36:41):
which is currently on hiatus but is planning to come
back very soon. She's actually on vacation right now with
her family, so wishing her all the best. Wishing you
all the best. Hope you are happy and healthy and safe.
I'll be getting there soon enough. It's just a little
momping the road and uh yeah, that's it for this episode.

(37:03):
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(37:50):
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