64X and Saturn 2, what should Sega do with them?

By David D'Auria
dauria@csa.bu.edu

Perhaps many of you have already heard the rumors of these 2 items. Supposedly at any moment Sega will either announce one of them or leave the hardware market entirely. Given the less than spectacular launch of the Saturn means that Sega for one would be more than cautious with the idea of either of these. The big questions are if they should release them and what to do with them if they do?

I think it's rather odd. I've seen many a Usenet post complaining about Sega releasing too many systems and too little support, a sentiment that I agree with. Often you'll see people complain how the 32X competed with the Saturn and reduced its sales. Furthermore, the failure that was the 32X makes one wary of any hardware Sega produces. I say this is somewhat ironic because often you'll get this same post later begging to have a 64X or Saturn 2. Wouldn't this damage Sega's reputation even more? Sega releasing more hardware that may not get support and compete with other Sega products. To be blunt if they handle it wrong it probably will. Given that you've bothered to read this editorial to this point you don't want to hear how either will destroy Sega. You want opinions that would help out the Saturn Situation.

So, let's look at the idea of a 64X. First of all Sega should seriously consider not releasing this. It's a major risk. Although many have implied it, the Playstation and N64 don't make the Saturn look like it's a generation behind in hardware.(They still do 3-d better than the Saturn.) If they do release it don't be surprised if Sony or Nintendo tries to make this point in their ads, basically stating that even Sega admits their system is vastly inferior to their own. For the sake of arguments lets say Sega decides to release it anyway. Here is my opinion of the things they need to do in order to make it a success

1: The price. Suffice it to say this system has to come at the right price. No one wants to pay as much if not more for an add-on than for their entire base system. If you ask me they should aim to sell it for $50-$70 at cost. (Like any other piece of video game hardware they should make no money on it.) If they need to sell it for more they'd better include a good pack-in title. Perhaps they may get ask much as $120-$150 with a VF3 pack-in and a near perfect translation of the game. Basically they'd lose some of the money they could have made on VF3 and the system in exchange for future profit, often a more financially rewarding strategy.(Fortunately since VF3 would be a CD they would take less of a financial hit.)

2: The Design. A theoretical 64X would have to meet certain performance requirements. At the very least it should be somewhat more powerful than the N64.(Ok, I don't think the N64 counts as a generation beyond the Saturn but it does have quite a bit more 3-d muscle.) Hopefully nearly as capable as the model 3 board. This may not be as far fetched as it sounds at first. For one this add-on should have no 2-d or audio support at all. Quite frankly the Saturn's 2-d hardware is more powerful than anything else on the market and people wouldn't notice the improvement anyway. Considering the sound hardware the Saturn already has and CD audio a sound upgrade is also a waste of money. The design should concentrate on just 1 thing, superior 3-d capabilities. Since 3-d is the "big" thing now Sega should take focus on hardware to improve that. Extra ram and new 3-d specific hardware would definitely fit the bill. Considering it'd be the only consideration it may be more than possible to get an exceptable amount of performance from a relatively cheap upgrade. The only other thing I would hope Sega would do is avoid making it kludgey. They should just make it a simple cartridge that plugs into your Saturn. No mixing cables and certainly no AC adapters for it. That just makes it more of a pain for the average person to install. Hell, if they can pull it off just have the thing slide in that little slot above the battery back up. One other design consideration is the release date. I would think a late 97 release date would be the proper time.(Not too early and not to late in this race and would allow Sega to give more bang for the buck than if they released it now.)

3: The scheme. There are a few things that Sega would need to do in order to make this a success. First of all it needs support from Sega and as many 3rd party companies as possible. If that means helping them out or giving incentives then so be it. Most likely designing new development tools would be incentive enough. However there is one thing Sega should definitely do for this machine, release "dual-system" discs. Here's the deal, Sega almost assuredly should not release any 64X specific games. I know that sounds funny but what they should do is release games that work on a plain Saturn and are greatly improved on the 64X. Imagine if you could buy VF3 for a regular Saturn and it looks like VF2 on a regular Saturn. Now you try the very same CD on a 64X enabled system and you get a near perfect translation. Why not do it this way? A CD has more than enough space for both versions of most games and people would tend to buy only one of them anyway. With this simple trick you avoid splitting the market. People would never have to wonder if a given title would run on their Saturn system, it would just look a lot better if they had the upgrade. After some point almost all titles from all manufacturers would be "dual-discs", even 3rd party games. Admittedly it'd be more work for them but if the tools were good enough and the 64X sold well enough it would probably be worth it. Certainly they would never get stuck with 64X specific titles if they do it this way.(Oh, this same idea would apply to multi-disc titles, they would make one set of discs that would run on both systems.) The whole point is to get it into peoples' minds that they're buying Saturn titles, not titles for some add-on. This strategy does exactly that. I would say this is similar to the PC market. I have yet to see a PC game targeted specifically at say the Matrox Millennium market.

As for the Saturn 2 I could not suggest anything better than study the Nintendo 64 strategy. Imagine, the system is the same price as the others, it has less games, they're more expensive, and except for Mario 64 and Wave Race they are not significantly better than anything else on the market. However despite this the thing is selling like crazy. I would suggest to Sega to copy this scenario entirely. For one, announce at the Atlanta E3 that you've got this great new system that is VASTLY more powerful than anything else, including any arcade hardware. Give a release time frame, say fall 99 or 2000. Make sure to show some impressive demos of what it will do and drop some high profile names. I'm sure Lockheed Martin would do. Finally delay it if necessary but don't release it early. You need to get gamers' anticipation going so they'll be in a total frenzy when the it comes out. Funny how 3 years of hype has a tendency to do that to people. Oh, one last thing, 64X and Saturn 2 are pretty bad names. In this respect don't be like Nintendo, try to give them good names:-)