Comments on: Why Sega should release a new console

Don Reisinger thinks the only way to save Sega is with a new video game console. Is he right?

[writteininwaters]

If this is the same guy who posted the Apple gaming console article, then he has to be the biggest moron at CNET. Actually, he probably still is either way. Did you hire some former QA tester as a gaming business expert?

[thabassman]

except for the fact that 90% of all sega games suck.

[elmagicochrisg]

Such as?...

And even if so, that still gives us 10 percent quality games. I for one have never bought a console to play everything. Just the ones worth my hard earned money. The Saturn was worth buying just for Panzer Dragoon Saga alone. The Dreamcast was worth buying for so many games I won't even go in to that...

[cdrg]

Maybe Sega should just start making Dreamcasts again, update the online capabilities to today's hi-speed standards, slap a ridiculously low pricetag on it and sell it as an alternative to the uberexpensive megaconsoles on the market now. Dreamcast games still look and play great, and with a VMU adapter they look positively stunning on todays widescreen HDTVs. Top it off with new game development and also make the entire Sega archive of games downloadable and/or playable online. The fact that Dreamcast could still hold it's own today is a testament to how good a system it truly was/is. What a total shame/sham that it was discontinued. Sadly, that was the last straw for me with Sega. I truly hate to see them become the next Atari, they were too good for that. But no way do I give them my money again for another console...they'd have to prove themselves first.

[elmagicochrisg]

If everyone thinks like you, there is no way they will be able to prove themselves. And I do think you meant VGA cable, not VMU adapter... -_-

[echoelman]

So wait...Sega should jump back into the market with a console that's more powerful than the 360 and PS3, sports a BD drive...and costs HOW much? The PS3 has survived long enough to reach its golden age because Sony has deep pockets. The author is suggesting that Sega tumbles out of the gate two years late with a $600 console that people wouldn't buy for $400.

[elmagicochrisg]

That's a nice fact you bring up there. If Sony only had the same amount of cash to support their console as SEGA had, they would already be out of the picture...

[johnzocco]

Sega had only one succesful console, the Genesis. Everything that came out from Sega after the Genesis was a failure, the Sega CD. the 32X. Saturn & Dreamcast. I own them all, and I still have them, but when the Sony Playstation came out, it crippled Nintendo and decimated Sega. Then when Microsoft released the XBox, Sega decided to throw in the towel and quit making consoles, concentrating on games. Nintendo, on the other hand, decided to stick it out, and after years of struggling since the Playstation came out, finally found success with the Wii, not to mention that Nintendo always dominated the portable game market with its various GameBoys and eventually the very innovative DS, which kept it from going under. Right now there are three gaming consoles on the market, the XBox 360 & Sony PS3 for hardcore gamers, and the Nintendo Wii, with its unique and superb motion sensitive controller, for casual gamers. While the PS3 started off slowly, it is now starting to pick up steam. The XBox 360 has been doing well, despite issues involving overheating and other quality control problems. And then there's the incredible success of the Wii. What would a fourth console bring to the gaming masses that these three don't? Where would Sega get the money to build such a console? What about the games? No, no and no! Get over it, Sega is dead! It had several opportunities and blew them. Sega I loved you. Thanks for all the great games on the Genesis and DreamCast, but face reality. Game's over Sega, R.I.P.

[richcsst]

Actually, they had two successful consoles. The one before the Genesis was called the "Master System" and did very well against the Nintendo NES and Atari 7800. Nevertheless, the rest of your points are valid.

Here's what each console has going for it:

Xbox360 - Great on-line service and community, which supports a lot of great games. Decent hardware technology, but not cutting edge. The "Live" service is what made it a popular system.

PS3 - This has state of the art hardware (the best of the three), and plays BluRay better than any other player. It's solid and stable design, and 1080p rendering potential make for a great long-lasting platform. It's only drawback was a temporary lack of good games, which seems to be correcting itself quite quickly. The online service is lacking, but that seems to be improving just as rapidly as well.

WII - Nintendo concentrated on "funness" and game play over hardware and technology. The only thing advanced about their system is the controller. The WII is merely an overclocked Gamecube, but what makes the WII strong are the group/family/party friendly games it offers.

If Sega came out with a console, it would have to offer something the others don't, and I don't see a struggling company able to do that by taking such a big risk.

My suggestion is if Sega is going down the new console path, that they create something new. Something that competes with the PSP and DS. Something that has high-definition wearable displays (glasses), and is small and compact, yet very powerful. That would be a personal gaming system. The wearable displays would make it appear, optically, I was playing a game on a very large 1080p screen "15 feet" in front of me. I just may buy it.

[nochance0]

Moronic uniformed drivel is normal for blogs, but for the love of god, SEGA WAS BOUGHT IN 2004. You are a lazy fool who would rather slam out a piece than write one that actually had any actual content.

[preacher1010]

Mr. Don Reisinger,

Are you so far off on your crack cocaine and alcohol? or are you just ******* NUTS?

[richcsst]

Why put another console on the market? I'm all for competition and capitalism, but Sega's problems aren't its lack of a hardware offering.

Sega's problems stem from poor product offerings period. They have ruined their former cash cow, Sonic, and turned him into something that people don't like.

The Sonic people loved was the one on the Genesis, and not the one with all of his bad-acting little buddies and hover-boarding lameness. Sonic went from bad-ass to teletubby, and they wonder why there is so much trouble. Leave the warm a fuzzy cartoons to Disney and get back to what Sega was originally, a company with a lot of bad-ass cool games. Leave the "rescuing the princess" to Nintendo. They have the formula down pat, stop trying to counterfeit it. Sonic never talked, he was an animal that rescued other animals.

The Master System and Genesis were successful only because of the good software offered with them, not the hardware. I'll tell you right now, when the Genesis was available, people were less concerned about specs and concentrated more on game quality. Ask Atari how much specs mattered. Their Jaguar, a far superior machine over any of the competition at the time (except for that controller), but a complete failure due to lack of cool games. This was why Sega's later offerings were failures too.

There's more to a game company then their most successful product. What makes them continually successful is coming out with other successful products and not just run their mascot into the ground with crappy sequels.

I have a few suggestions for Sega:

1> The Sonic franchise needs to dump the "teletubby" image and pretend a Sonic cartoon series never existed. Cut his vocal cords, kill off his buddies, and return him to the animal kingdom where he belongs. Use the formula that actually worked.

2> Create new games. Stay away from the "band of ragtag heroes, where the main hero dies" genre. This may be the mainstream way of doing things in Asian cultures. The west thinks it sucks and in annoying.

3> Stop using androgynous allegedly "male" pretty boys with floor length hair in your games. Asian cultures may think it cool and a sign of manliness, but western cultures see them as feminine, weak, and freakish for a male. Western cultures tend to consider masculinity is demonstrated in characters like Arnold Schwartzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Vin Deasel, Harrison Ford, etc. Masculine men with facial lines, square jaws, short hair, facial hair, muscles, etc. Duke Nukem is a great example of a western male hero video game character. You can't expect someone in a western culture to take you long-haired, pretty-boy, carries a sword the size of a bus freak of a video game character seriously.

I am so freakin' tired of these bus-sword wielding, fight the demons, half animal/demon, freak-show, hit them a million times with a sword (that would cut an army in half) barely doing any damage, pretty-boy, long haired freaks in video games!

Do something NEW. This is how a company survives, not relying on its old and tired first new things that made them big.

Consoles are too large an investment now days, too competitive, and due to the speed of technology, too expensive to design and manufacture to hope for a profit to rescue a dying company. Both Sony and Microsoft demonstrate it takes very large bank accounts to survive a console release now days.

Consoles now compete with PC's. Imagine trying to put the power and advances a PC offers (for typically a couple thousand bucks for a game capable machine) into a small and compact console and make a profit off of it big enough to make the endeavor worth while. No, a new console will only hurt Sega. Sega needs new and original games instead of the useless and lame clones they have been releasing.

[elmagicochrisg]

And the first game announced for the new SEGA console is... ... ... Duke Nukem Forever.

FAIL !

[RRosal]

Interesting advice for Sega to look into, but as I've found with most fans of anything-petitioning and writing in for something to be released to the market is easy to do, its the putting the money where the mouth is part that becomes the problem. Sadly, I see Sega following Atari down the "we had it all in our days, but no more..." road.

[Tod Smith]

Some one is smoking crack. You know how much $$$s it takes to lanuch and maintane a platform.

Sega should sell to MS.

[elmagicochrisg]

Yep, said the same thing a few pages ago...

[AnimeFanDude]

CNET needs to stop this pathetic person from writing freaking stupid articles like this. Does this person even play games? From writing the stupid article "Why Apple should release a game console" to this article, the complete lack of understanding of the gaming world by this person is appalling.

DON, if should are so sure that releasing a console is going to be so good for Sega, go buy Sega stocks with all your $ if Sega actually makes a console.

I love Sega as a company growing up and I still do. As much as I want Sega to succeed, this extremely irrational suggestion by Don is like telling Sega to commit suicide. The R&D costs alone would be hard for Sega and then for Sega to sell every console at a loss. Dude, Sega isn't Microsoft, it doesn't have the same amount of $ nor the strong background of first party games to back it up.

DON, GO AWAY AND STOP WRITING, YOU ARE HORRIBLE!!

[Composer_1777]

If it was that easy to make a console everyone would be making one. Game development is also costly, one blockbuster game won't give them a surplus of cash flow. I think any major developer would want to purchase SEGA, considering it still has some decent brand equity and can be revived. Nintendo would be most likely to purchase sega, in my opinion. I don;t view the sega Genesis,saturn and dreamcast as flops; i think of them as a victim of circumstance. They tried to stay ahead of the Market cycle, which cannot be done. If you release a console prematurly and the previous console isn;t in the declining stage, your technology will be out of date when the market is ready for the next system. Sony realised this and perfected it, but this time around they might have made a similar mistake. Sony didn;t expect microsoft to do everything so perfectly. Even so, it's safe to say that Xbox 360 was in the normal cycle and PS3 was late, but sony was hoping it would last through the next cycle... i'm not so sure that was a good idea...

[peterj_1992]

I think that Sega shouldn't make a gaming console since they usually lose a lot of money (the Microsoft XBOX division just started making profit recently) but if they were to make a portable console that it could be a success. Since the DS and the PSP are only ones in this genre, and those two are starting to get pretty outdated, they would probably have a very good chance of success; but they would have to get into that market before microsoft or apple does.

[elmagicochrisg]

Pff... **** portables...

[chronoex]

"Blogs and opinions do not count as news!"

This is entirely true, but they're not marketing this blogger's opinion as news. He writes a blog, that's labeled as a blog, that's meant to express his opinion and perhaps stir some talk.

Don is not saying this is news. Cnet is not saying this is news. Stop thinking this is news.

[mk-1601]

Don, have you ever met anyone who agrees with this completely deranged theory that you keep banging on about? The console market is more saturated than it ever has been since the early 1980s.

It's obvious that you don't read these comments, or you might have the common sense to address how exactly Sega would fund the development of a new platform (and software for it), and how the Dreamcast fanbase is supposed to be large enough to support a new Sega console, when it couldn't support the Dreamcast itself.

You might also want to check out how Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games has sold. Your belief that Sega have no commercially viable IP is perhaps the most bizarre part of your argument, claiming as you do to be a Sega fan.

[megaduce417]

K, first off....Wow!! Now, with that out of the way, let's just say that Sega (love'm for past games) did make another console. How would they fit in? Hardware wise?

My Wish List:
1) a Slim form factor
Small lite and powerful
2) Find other technology
There is a lot of different but powerful tech out there and some other companies can offer the same tech for cheaper
3) Blue Ray or not to Blue Ray is the question?
They could build it with Blue Ray but why add on more cost when BR hasn't still caught on?
4) A quiet cooling system
5) Offer different colors out the gates
Seems minor but sales in Japan speak other wise.
6) Online Now
Have your network up and running before the system comes out. Blue print....Xbox 360
7) USB 3.0
IF you are going to do it...do it right and ahead of the rest.
8) Blue Tooth Technology
Controllers and other accessories
9) Open Source OS
Put Linux in the game to help push the system.
10) Backwards Compatible
Offer DVD's with old games on them.
11) Package a game with the system
They used to do that you know...
12) Wi-Fi with Media Center Software out of the Box!
Wouldn't be nice to just hook it up and have it see your wireless network?
13) Easy setup
14) Flash technology
No hard drive, extend it to flash (320 GB) would be enough. Also ability to add external hard drives.


What would you add to this list?

KB

[polis12]

Beside the fact Sega could not compete in the market as it now stands, in addition to not having the money to R&D a new console, you want a 320GB FLASH drive?! Do you even have somewhat of a clue on how much Flash based drives cost, or did you just post that speculation wildly? Basically instead of having a topped out PS3 at $600, which many consumers have trouble justifying, you instead would have a SEGA console with a couple banks of Flash hard drives that would cost around $6000. I got a good laugh out of that one, but the rest of your suggestions are pretty good though. Try again on the Flash Hard drive, the technology to price ratio isn't there and won't be for a long time.

[clsmithj]

I still have my Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X they were the last Sega hardware I purchased. Didn't by a Saturn out of protest that Sega dropped support on the Genesis so I bought a PSX.
Didn't by a Dreamcast because back then I was a PSX fan and new Sony was going to release a competitor unit and waited, ala PS2.
I was surprised when Sega dropped out of the market so quickly with Dreamcast not waiting for Nintendo or Microsoft to release their hardware. I see that as a mistake that Sega made, if they stayed in longer they probably could have been number 2 behind Sony against Gamecube and Xbox. But dropping out completely was a death toll for the company.

Another death toll was releasing Sonic to the competitor hardware, at the time when they first did it with Sonic Heroes it felt like a good thing (playing Sonic on the hardware that beat their company haha) but in the long run it only made Sonic a second rate mascot without his primary console.

[DracIsBack]

"I was surprised when Sega dropped out of the market so quickly with Dreamcast not waiting for Nintendo or Microsoft to release their hardware. I see that as a mistake that Sega made, if they stayed in longer they probably could have been number 2 behind Sony against Gamecube and Xbox."

They dropped out of the market quickly because they were bleeding money. It's a simple as that. They weren't really prepared for the changing market dynamics of big-money-losing-consoles *and* expensive game development.

I don't know another console that had 300 games, sold 11 million units and yet was discontinued in two years except the Dreamcast.

Could they have held on? I think they would have been broke. Remember: Microsoft spent four billion more than they ever earned on the original XBox to carve out a very, very, very, very distant second to the PS2. With that kinda money being tossed around, Sega couldn't afford to compete.

[ReVeLaTeD]

Genesis only sucked because it tried explicitly to be a direct alternative to the SNES. That was a fatal mistake. However, it popularized Sonic more than NES did for Mario.

32X...let's just forget that addon, shall we? :/

Sega CD...this was revolutionary for its time and quite frankly, paved the way for what we now are playing on. Plus Sega CD was the only console to truly make use of full motion video - great for those gamers who wanted that sort of thing. It's what made Working Delays into a legend.

Sega Saturn - NiGhTs was never done better than on this console. Unfortunately, it was not pushed properly at all. At its core, it was better than PlayStation, and should have capitalized on the PlayStation's propensity to overheat and need to be turned upside down. Instead, they tried to push Virtua Fighter and Virtua Cop as the next coming when they were really garbage. Games like Magic Knight Rayearth, NiGhTs, and Dragonforce should have been front and center. Plus an add on internet connection - which no other system at the time could touch.

Sega Dreamcast - I don't care what anyone says, this console was WAY ahead of its time. Aero Dancing feat. Blue Impulse, Sonic Adventure 1, sports games, Skies of Arcadia, and of course, THE BEST console port of Marvel vs. Capcom 2...it had loads of potential, wasted. Its failure is that it was pushed heavily in Japan and hardly out here. Controller to this day is still one of the most comfortable for fighting games. Modular system for rumble and memory hasn't even been thought of by anyone else. Not to mention built in modem and disc-based internet browser (which the PlayStation lacked at the time)

Do I want another console from Sega? Not directly from them, no. But I do wish they would team up with someone else to develop one. Sega had the right ideas at the wrong time and pushed them bass ackwards. If Microsoft were smart, they'd pick up that ball and run with it, because no matter what any of you say, Sega innovated with almost all of their consoles.

[juggalo0082]

If Sega did come out with a new counsel i would be the first in line to buy it.
but to get the non Sega zealots to buy it would have to be cheap and very powerful with an extensive launch library. it would be nice too if it could play all the old Sega games like the master system,
genesis, Sega CD,32x, saturn, and dreamcast

[Jtthegame316]

If the games that came out on it were as good as the saturn and the dreamcast i would buy another sega console in fact i would probably just own the sega console if it was as awesome as the dreamcast. dreamcast did not do to bad it was just sega did not have the money to keep it going if sega would of been i company with the money of microsoft they could and would of kept the dreamcast going. just they could not afford to keep losing money on a console. i don't like the kind of gamer we have these days though they buy based on brand name rather then on the games on the console. i still buy based on games one the console so i am sure sega would sway me cause i just like great games and a console with great sega and capcom games are a winner so that would be great if they made a console with capcom.