The Sega Saturn console will celebrate it's 13th birthday in America, on the 11th of May. Known as one of the greatest disasters in video game history, I take a look back at the ill-fated console and try and work out exactly what went wrong.
For those of you not familiar with the Saturn, the Saturn was a fifth-generation 32-bit console, which was launched in Japan in November 94' and in America/Europe in May/June 95'. The Saturn was hailed by Sega to be the answer to Sony's Playstation.
Sega originally planned a September 2 release date followed by the PlayStation console a week later. However, the president of Sega at that time, Tom Kalinske dropped the bombshell that the September release date was deliberately faked and the console would be shipping alot earlier, in fact it would ship the very day he made the announcement.
Whilst the launch was exciting and unexpected, the effect on the retailers and the non-Sega publishers would do more harm than good. Following several months after it's north american release, the Saturn would have a very small library of Sega-published games and most likely resulted in publishers using Playstation instead of the Saturn.
The system came with a port of usually arcade-based Virtua Fighter, followed by games such as Daytona USA, Worldwide Soccer and Clockwork Knight. Daytona USA proved to gamers that the Saturn was rocking or rather not rocking, as good hardware as it's more dominant competition.
By September of that same year, it was clear the console hadn't been a great a success as Sega had hoped. They managed to sell around 82,000 consoles. However, when the PSX or Playstation was released, it surpassed the saturns numbers by 18,000 even on release and went on to sell 102 million consoles in total. The Saturn sold 17 million before it was discontinued in 2000.
So, what was the nail in the coffin for the Saturn? Was it the poor range of games, available upon release. Maybe the console never really gained the momentum it should have. Perhaps it was the confusion of it's North American release date? Or, maybe it was just that the Playstation was just that damn good?
If you had a Sega Saturn, then let us know what you thought of the doomed console.
Sega originally planned a September 2 release date followed by the PlayStation console a week later. However, the president of Sega at that time, Tom Kalinske dropped the bombshell that the September release date was deliberately faked and the console would be shipping alot earlier, in fact it would ship the very day he made the announcement.
Whilst the launch was exciting and unexpected, the effect on the retailers and the non-Sega publishers would do more harm than good. Following several months after it's north american release, the Saturn would have a very small library of Sega-published games and most likely resulted in publishers using Playstation instead of the Saturn.
The system came with a port of usually arcade-based Virtua Fighter, followed by games such as Daytona USA, Worldwide Soccer and Clockwork Knight. Daytona USA proved to gamers that the Saturn was rocking or rather not rocking, as good hardware as it's more dominant competition.
By September of that same year, it was clear the console hadn't been a great a success as Sega had hoped. They managed to sell around 82,000 consoles. However, when the PSX or Playstation was released, it surpassed the saturns numbers by 18,000 even on release and went on to sell 102 million consoles in total. The Saturn sold 17 million before it was discontinued in 2000.
So, what was the nail in the coffin for the Saturn? Was it the poor range of games, available upon release. Maybe the console never really gained the momentum it should have. Perhaps it was the confusion of it's North American release date? Or, maybe it was just that the Playstation was just that damn good?
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