How Sega Failed Saturn - The Downfall of the Sega Saturn

Released in Japan on November 22nd, 1994, in the US on May 11th, 1995, and in Europe on July 8th, 1995, the Sega Saturn had plenty of hype and excitement. But it just wasn’t enough. The system would fail against expected rival Nintendo and would fall short to the rising juggernaut that would be the Sony PlayStation. Sega’s Saturn is today remembered as a system with serious potential, a handful of truly brilliant, and an element of relative tragedy brought on by chaos and hubris.
What exactly happened to the Sega Saturn? Did Sega drop the ball? How much did Sony and Nintendo influence the company abandoning the system after just a couple of strong years for the next big thing, the Dreamcast? Let’s take a closer look and see exactly how the Sega Saturn failed.
00:00 Intro
01:36 A Series of Unfortunate Decisions
03:06 Send in the Add-ons
05:16 The Botched Sega Saturn Release
07:57 The Life and Death of the Saturn
10:54 Celebrating the Saturn
12:50 Outro
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#sega #segasaturn #retrogaming

[@jamesredline1352]

Video games weren’t a huge part of my younger childhood. My dad didn’t like media so they weren’t allowed in the home. But when I visited my aunt in the summers she had a Saturn. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. She let me stay up as late as I wanted drinking Dr Pepper and playing Clockwork Knight and Nights. Dope system.

[@AlexMitchell-sj4sb]

Cool aunt!

[@AnimeBrosAMV]

Sounds like a nice childhood man!

[@pharmcat8484]

This channel is turning into a bit of everything, and I’m totally here for it.

[@dumbstruckempire]

Hell yeah!

[@kellokabana2399]

Growing up in the 90’s, I never met anyone who actually owned a Sega Saturn. Game Gears were pretty rare too. I was the only kid in my class with a Sega game gear. (Everyone had game boys). My parents even bought me the “gear-to-gear” adapter that lets you play multiplayer. It never got used. 😢

[@dumbstruckempire]

I knew exactly two people who had a Sega Saturn, but they were also easy to rent when I was a kid, so that was at least how I got to play it a lot.

[@opaljk4835]

I knew a couple people with Saturns…usually it mean their dad was also into sega stuff. But I had a game gear and some of my friends did too. It wasn’t so uncommon, at least where I grew up

[@accumulator5734]

As a 90’s kid the real reason it failed was because we never saw it on display or for sale at the stores that our families would visit. I have no memory of seeing it at target, walmart, or the mall. And I was a huge sega genesis fan

[@lockdownandmaq2]

Saturn fan here. No matter what ill love this console

[@dumbstruckempire]

Writer here. I hope it's clear that I love the Sega Saturn. It was an awesome console that I was sad to see not get its due.

[@Sly88Frye]

This was a really great video essay about the failure of the Sega Saturn. I mean anybody who just doesn't know anything about video games it's just going to say that it failed because it was a bad console but that's definitely not the reason. I remember seeing some commercials for the Sega Saturn back then but my memory of it is so vague and it could be because they weren't advertising that much because of how much it was failing. What stands out most is that screaming SEGA! At the time. Wow my family did have a Sega Genesis although we also had an SNES, we never had a Sega Saturn. We did have a PS1 and an N64 But even so I had nothing against a Saturn. It's just a system I hardly heard about back then

[@dumbstruckempire]

I remember a pretty strong advertising push for it, but I also read magazines lol

[@domls1317]

Yeah same here. I didnt find out about the Saturn until 2019. I was 16 when the Saturn released. I had a NES,SNES and a 64 growing up. I remember the Genesis and knew people who owned it. But Saturn wasn't heavily advertised in my area at least. As far as I knew I thought the Dreamcast was the successor to the Genesis😅.

[@dumbstruckempire]

​@@domls1317It's so interesting to learn where it was advertised strongly and where it seemingly wasn't

[@ryanmckenzie7149]

I loved my Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Saturn and Dreamcast. The day I had to buy an Xbox I died a little inside. And no I never got a 32X. I knew it was junk.

[@Guilherme36594]

I remember my friends and my cousin playing a Saturn and because of they i played a lot that wonderful console with a short life spam...

[@codezero7981]

I'm ready to see this channel grow up and see more awesome history videos 🎉

[@J.Wick.]

I initially wanted and received a Saturn for my 13th bday in July 1996. I loved it. Such an impressive console at the time. However, It wasnt long after that, it was obvious that this Playstation thing actually had legs. I ended up selling it and replacing it with a PS1 before it got really bad for the Saturn. Such a shame, as it really was a great console that got caught up in alot of Sega politicing.

[@mjdf122]

Nothing went wrong most people just bought a PS1 or N64 or were still playing Genesis and Super Nintendo at the time luckily I’ve seen and have all NTSC consoles from 1980-Now was the only one in NY who had some of the more obscure consoles such as turbo Grafx Neo geo Sega cd 3do nobody had these consoles during those times most likely couldn’t afford them I live a blessed life

[@dumbstruckempire]

I deeply wish I'd had a Neo Geo lol

[@domls1317]

Uh yeah Sega made a couple of mistakes regarding the Saturn. The ill advised early release. Releasing a 32 bit add on before releasing the Saturn led to consumer confidence going down. So yeah alot went wrong

[@dumbstruckempire]

@@domls1317 The consumer confidence element really can't be overstated. I knew a lot of kids and teenagers who just didn't see the point in getting a Sega Saturn after everything Sega had done up to that point

[@craversaints921]

Nothing went wrong LMAOOOO Everything went wrong dummy

[@gc3k]

I know you can't directly insert Genesis carts in the expansion slot, but are there any other technical barriers preventing backwards compatibility? If somebody made an adapter for the expansion slot, could Saturn play Genesis games?

[@opaljk4835]

It’s just not possible even with the 68000 being the sound cpu. It’s just not designed to do it

[@eternalhalloween1]

Even in the SG glory days, I think THE TOWER OF POWER was the first indication that (no pun intended) was about to come crashing down.

[@costasvasilogiannakis7816]

great video love it

[@pharmcat8484]

Why are the last video and random video boxes always blank?

[@CulturedVultures]

hmmm it shows for us! do you maybe have an adblocker/scriptblocker on?

[@arekpt5153]

Greetings from Poland 👌🇵🇱

[@dumbstruckempire]

Greetings from Florida!

[@TheAxeGrinder]

“$299”

[@RetroGamesBoy78]

Sega made bad decisions after bad decision, everything that could go wrong at that time, did go wrong! The whole $299 announcement was also a falsehood, yes the Saturn was $100 more expensive but that price did include software, plus other things like built in memory and a cartridge port for extended Ram, Roms and Memory, so the hardware itself was surely more expensive than Sony's offering and with them being an electronics manufacturer, they made a lot of those chips etc in house, so cheaper still, its a real shame, and all those great IP's Sega forgot about too! although the writing was on the wall for Sega before the Saturn was even released, they were already on their way to financial dire straights with buyback contracts with their previous unsold hardware.

[@tornside3517]

info from me, ea reverse engineering the sega genesis costed sega itself an debtload of money, especially when they got freebie deals like being able to make their carts and outsourced ports for the snes

[@hollowgonzalo4329]

It sounds to me like they just fucked up real bad by trying to extend the genesis's lifespan instead of doing what everyone else was and focusing all their efforts on developing their next gen hardware (and software line-up) instead.

[@RetroGamesBoy78]

@@hollowgonzalo4329 well yes, although not their biggest, definitely high up amongst the numerous mistakes Sega made during the transition from 16 to 32bit hardware, and as much as i think the 32X is a pretty cool bit of hardware, it had to have taken resources away from the Saturn Launch and production of software, and creating a rival for your own premium product really makes no sense whatsoever.

[@nicolasromani3523]

Segata Sanshiro🎶

[@RyuDouro]

PlayStation ruining the console ecosystem since birth

[@markjv24]

Playstation just came out at the right time, at the right price. The 3DO, had similar specs, but came out like 2 years earlier at a much higher price. I doubt that Sony expected the Playstation to sell as well as it did. Sega kind of stepped in dogshit with the 32x add-on for the Genesis launching around the same time as the Sega Saturn. Also, there wasn't as much synchronicity between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, which led to more issues. Also, for whatever reasons, not a lot of third-party publishers supported the Saturn as much as the Playstation.

[@MaximMicheal20]

Can’t blame PlayStation. Sega destroyed themselves and consumer trust.

[@user-mw2hn6zy9y]

Sega was just another coin op chip maker. they couldnt compete with sony and nintendo had to go in a completely different direction too. A company that was making 40 billion dollars a year and liked to lose 2 billion dollars selling televisions to advertise themselves was in an unvearable positi9n financially. So y sells chips and dabbles in consumer and professional electronics

[@iwanttocomplain]

I didn't know the Genesis was designer for fighting games! The more you know...