Sony's system was better in so many ways that counted for a lot more.
Not least the fact you could buy a cheap development kit off Sony and simply plug it into a PC environment. You're up and running very quickly. This was a massive break from the past where SDKs were these really expensive custom machines.
Sony delivered a machine with performance focused heavily on what devs and consumers wanted. Cheap, fast 3D geometry performance, flexible hardware with good tools and technical support. That was the original point of Sony acquiring Psygnosis, they were the guys you rang up if you had an issue with your game.
Saturn has none of this. It had clunky expensive hardware, a complex development environment while Sega's assistance to third party devs was minimal. Even their internal teams grappled with this monstrosity.
Sony iterated on the PS1 hardware design quickly and further cut the costs to consumers. Sega were beaten on every front that mattered, including public perception.
Sega threw so much expensive hardware about (32x, Mega CD) just prior to the Saturn that ended up junked, nobody knew if this machine would actually be worthwhile. Whereas Sony aimed at the young adult gamers with spare cash in their pockets. It was a perfect storm. Saturn sank without trace, for many good reasons. The market had spoken.
PS2 won because it focused on deeper and more complex games that the era demanded. Arcades were dying. Porting coin ops to the home to enjoy two minute spurts of gameplay were no longer as desirable as they had been. Gamers expected to sit down and get immersed in a deep title that gave them 20 hours of story or 50 hours of gameplay progression. That's why PS2 won. Not because Dreamcast was incapable of this, but because PS2 was much better at delivering this prevailing trend of home gaming. Sega's arcade greatness killed their home console.
@Lorfarius No but that is the point of having multiple pages. If you can do it off an SD card then I'm pretty sure you can do it on internal memory too! I was just expecting for the money more internal storage because it's not 1998 any more after all
It's great, a little pricey, but the mystery for me is why you only get 200 blocks internal and need to add an SD card to get more. The original had 128kb with 100kb for storage. A reasonable amount in 1998. No doubt chosen for cost concerns. Since then however everyone had these paged virtual memory cards on various other platforms. Is it too much to ask to have a pitiful 1mb internal or a mere 512kb at this point, a quarter century on? The cost difference must surely be negligible today, the size of the memory chip irrelevant.
Comments 4
Re: Saturn Was "More Powerful Than PlayStation" Claims Argonaut Founder
Sony's system was better in so many ways that counted for a lot more.
Not least the fact you could buy a cheap development kit off Sony and simply plug it into a PC environment. You're up and running very quickly. This was a massive break from the past where SDKs were these really expensive custom machines.
Sony delivered a machine with performance focused heavily on what devs and consumers wanted. Cheap, fast 3D geometry performance, flexible hardware with good tools and technical support. That was the original point of Sony acquiring Psygnosis, they were the guys you rang up if you had an issue with your game.
Saturn has none of this. It had clunky expensive hardware, a complex development environment while Sega's assistance to third party devs was minimal. Even their internal teams grappled with this monstrosity.
Sony iterated on the PS1 hardware design quickly and further cut the costs to consumers. Sega were beaten on every front that mattered, including public perception.
Sega threw so much expensive hardware about (32x, Mega CD) just prior to the Saturn that ended up junked, nobody knew if this machine would actually be worthwhile. Whereas Sony aimed at the young adult gamers with spare cash in their pockets. It was a perfect storm. Saturn sank without trace, for many good reasons. The market had spoken.
Re: "The Wrong Console Won" - Dreamcast Is Getting Its Own Rave Event "To Correct The Record"
PS2 won because it focused on deeper and more complex games that the era demanded. Arcades were dying. Porting coin ops to the home to enjoy two minute spurts of gameplay were no longer as desirable as they had been. Gamers expected to sit down and get immersed in a deep title that gave them 20 hours of story or 50 hours of gameplay progression. That's why PS2 won. Not because Dreamcast was incapable of this, but because PS2 was much better at delivering this prevailing trend of home gaming. Sega's arcade greatness killed their home console.
Re: Review: Dreamcast VM2 - An Essential VMU Upgrade For All Sega Fans
@Lorfarius No but that is the point of having multiple pages. If you can do it off an SD card then I'm pretty sure you can do it on internal memory too! I was just expecting for the money more internal storage because it's not 1998 any more after all
Re: Review: Dreamcast VM2 - An Essential VMU Upgrade For All Sega Fans
It's great, a little pricey, but the mystery for me is why you only get 200 blocks internal and need to add an SD card to get more. The original had 128kb with 100kb for storage. A reasonable amount in 1998. No doubt chosen for cost concerns. Since then however everyone had these paged virtual memory cards on various other platforms. Is it too much to ask to have a pitiful 1mb internal or a mere 512kb at this point, a quarter century on? The cost difference must surely be negligible today, the size of the memory chip irrelevant.