But one i have been thinking about after doing my sales research for the Dreamcast is could the Sega Saturn have been number one in the 5th generation?
The crazy thing is i think it might have been possible, before the pitch forks come out il try to explain with some good old facts
The story of the Saturn in a gist is as follows, SOJ Makes SOA to drop the collaboration with Sony (Who goes on and makes the PSX), Partnership with Silicon Graphics (Which in turns makes the N64), Forces them to launch the 32x, Forces SOA to launch the Saturn early. Then Sonic Xtreme is canceled and the final nail in the coffin is when Bernie Stollar make's the famous comment at e3 97. The result of killing the Saturn early put Sega in so much debt that even though the Dreamcast sold well and made a profit it did not matter as Sega is in too much debt from the Saturn costing them 300 million dollars.
We also need to lay down some other facts before i say my opinion
Nintendo does not release the n64 til 96 and not in some regions until 97 giving the Saturn & PSX a almost 3 year head start. The main reason Sony became the king of the console market is because their competition made stupid mistakes (Sega as mentioned above) and Nintendo sticking to cartridges which increased the price and also turned most devs away from them and instead going to Sega or Sony.
Now lets rewind the clock to early 95
So lets say SOJ lets Tom K and SOA to do what they want and instead build the launch to September 2 1995, if one reads magazines and articles from the time you will find that most Developers had no real interest in working with Sony and Sega had a good standing among Developers. The main reason lots of original Saturn exclusives or Multiplats left the Saturn for the PSX is because of the early launch. This means the Saturn would have a much better launch than the PSX (Even the rushed launch had a better line up than the PSX) this would also mean that any games that where rushed would now have time to be completed like Daytona & VF and also means that any games that where originally released in the gap of May to September might have been released at launch like Astal, Virtua Cop or maybe even Sega Rally. This would also help the Saturn as it would have a bigger launch line up & has built in memory card and a free game which would be a better deal for consumers.
The result of this strong launch meant that it would most likely block most of the success the PSX had in those early days and would have lead to other big PSX exclusives head to the Saturn (FF7 Maybe?)
Fast forward to 96
Lets pretend that the games coming out for the Saturn where the same as real life
This means the Saturn would have had the following tipple A games exlusive
Nights, Panzer Dragoon zwie, Sonic Xtreme, VF2, Tomb Raider and the Netlink (With most likely greater support)
And the already big fan base from last year
While the N64 only had Mario 64 and the PSX big game was Crash Bandicoot
To me with all these factors would have pushed the Saturn to the top (Assuming the n64 status stayed the same)
With this and the fact that the Saturn was a huge success in Japan at the very least if stuff was done correctly it could have reached the number two spot
It would have been interesting how much the gaming landscape would have changed if this was the case
Love to hear your opinion!
Read console wars if you want a good background where it all went wrong
