Sega's plans for the year
Originally posted by Silender@July 04 2002,12:40
Sega knows how to make the perfect system but their marketing is the worst of all the companies. If Sega's marketing was like Sony's, Dreamcast would still be around and be one of the best.
I feel as though everybody now knows what it takes to make the perfect system. No dual CPU nonsense, lotsa colors, really fast, great sound. Case in point, the XBox - whether you like Microsoft or not, you have to admit it is, on paper, a really powerful system.
However, the issue is cost - for the consumer and the maker. Microsoft can afford to lose money in the hundreds of millions, but companies like Sega can't. It's that supply and demand jazz.
I really think if MS hadn't made the Xbox so bulky and stupid looking (and looked more like the PS2), and prepackaged the DVD accessories, that the XBox would've sold a lot more to other audiences, i.e. those wishing to purchase a DVD player. Microsoft is a household name, and some survey found a good 75% of general PC users are happy with MS products. So they'd have that kind of leverage already. Instead they catered to gamers (focusing on it's powerful graphics and promise of gaming glory), and history proves this populace to be very fickle.
So, I don't think it's just only Sega's marketing strategy. It's their system design. Consider the debacles following the Genesis - the Sega CD, the 32X, the Saturn, and to a lesser extent, the Dreamcast. The first three were way too expensive, didn't have a large library - essentially the systems didn't justify the cost. The dreamcast, if it had a few more features (i.e. DVD) and power, rather than rushing to capture the market before the PS2, could've been around today.
To me, the most important thing is the games. Video games are cyclical - when the next big thing comes out, designers cater to that type of thing (ie, graphics) and it takes a while before there's any quality to go along with it. Competition forces designers to quit focusing on just one aspect.