Sega of Japan, Where art thou?
Jeremy Goodwin
jgoodwin@mail.snu.eduSynopsis: Sega of Japan should stop sending two bit companies to screw the American market. They should do it themselves.
Text: From the earliest days of the Sega Master System, Sega of Japan has been happy to send someone else to reap the bountiful harvest of the United States video games market. Sega of America has shown time and again that it is incapable of pandering to the US video-gamer in the way that (s)he wishes to be pandered to...with lots of Role Playing Games, healthy third-party support, and a stable full of creative, forward looking game designers.
After Sega of America's initial failure to compete against the massive Nintendo Entertainment System, they sold the marketing and distribution rights to the SMS to Tonka Toys. Tonka followed in SOA's footsteps, displaying their inability to properly market the product, and making horrid decisions on which games to translate to this market which made even SOA look good.
Then came the Sega Genesis. Unlike the SMS, the Genesis possessed several key games on its release: Altered Beast (the hit arcade translation) Phantasy Star II (the ubiquitous RPG) and several other pumped up follow ups to their more successful SMS products such as Space Harrier and Hang On. The Genesis had relatively healthy third party support, but was still unable to convince Konami to come on board. The other major third party developer: Capcom, did not follow to the Genesis until the platform had been dealt a nasty blow by the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The only game that kept the Sega Genesis from being completely destroyed by the Super Nintendo was Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic was the biggest splash in the 16-bit market, and the sequels just got better and better.
Why hasn't the Sega Saturn succeeded? What is Sega of America doing wrong with this system? What holds back the ranks of Saturn faithful from entering into Paradise as is their birthright?
Bad advertising and slow or nonexistent translations from Japan hold us back. Confusing advertising campaigns and minimal print advertising of first-party Products fail to seed the market properly. Games are few and long in coming. The packaging that Sega has chosen is ugly and wasteful.
If things are so bad, perhaps we should look at all the reasons that the Saturn has not completely tanked...it should be fairly evident to the Saturn faithful. We have great games. We have NiGHTS. We have Virtua Fighter Two; Virtua Cop Two. We have future games that are looking great, like Burning Rangers, Sonic R, the long awaited Sonic 3d romp We have Sonic Jam. We have gotten several Japanese RPGs translated...Albert Odyssey, Shining Wisdom, Shining the Holy Ark, among others. But this is not enough to keep the system rolling indefinitely.
We don't need to change everything to make the Saturn all that it should be, we only need to take some cues from Japan. Downsize the packaging for games, drop the price of the console (if possible.) Drop the price of accessories (Thirty bucks for a control pad? I think I'll just take a trip down to FuncoLand.) Set up a separate division to translate Japanese third party games that sell well in the Japanese market. Stop thinking about how well the game will do here (If you sell it they will come.)
But Sega of America is unable to do these things. They still have their head in the sand after nearly a decade. It is time for SOJ to take over.
Produce games that utilize the language switch that is built into every Saturn. Just make one game, don't translate it two or three or six months later. Use simplified unitary packaging in the US and Japan. One of the interesting things about the US gaming market is that US gamers are actually drawn to Japanese stuff. A few Japanese words on a box will not make the die hard gamer balk, and he'll be overjoyed if it also has a splash of English telling about the game and he has the knowledge that it is also has game text in English. Produce a single console for the joint market. Don't chop the world up into various marketing divisions, keeping the best product from one area of the world from migrating to another country. If there was only one Sega, it wouldn't matter which games were sold where.
We can save the world, we just need to know how.