Why the Sega 32X was a Commercial Disaster

This was an interesting story and an odd reaction to the Jaguar.
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[@zzco]

For add-ons, you need at least a year before you launch your next-gen console. Console extensions are there to buy you time to work on your next-gen hardware, not as a nervous reflex because of a competitor.

[@iwanttocomplain]

Not many addons ever really existed in the console industry. There was the Famicom Disc System which was fairly early on the 8bit’s lifespan. The SNES Satteleview for downloading games. The N64 DD zip disc addon (flopped mid lifespan), NEC’s CD ROM ROM (released just after the base console and did well in Japan) and then it’s ‘arcade card’ which is just a card with ram on it. Then Sega’s maybe the Master System itself as an admittance the SG1000 was basically an admittance that the Colecovison wouldn’t cut it, and it’s FM addon. The Mega CD came out just two years into the MD lifespan. But the 32X was right at the end of the MD lifespan. Which was cut short, from looking at the numbers, the Mega Drive was selling right up to 1998 in good numbers so the addon should have genuinely extended its lifespan but really it’s turning the SMD into a completely new console, kind of like the Mega CD. So add-ons weren’t used to extend lifespans, generally speaking. More to extend the capabilities and pressure the competition. I just think the 32X would have been so cool if it was supported properly.

[@MaxAbramson3]

@@iwanttocomplain Add ons need to cost about the same as a game and be free from additional wires, cables, and attachments. All of the things that the $49.95 SVP Lock On cart (and its already developed Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Star Wars Arcade, and Daytona USA) already had that the 32X didn't. Worse, the 32X was buggy, many games didn't work, and third party developers, gamers, and retailers learned not to trust the Japanese game developer.

[@iwanttocomplain]

@@MaxAbramson3 Addons don’t need to not have wires. What a concept. I never heard of the 32X having bugs. All 40 games do work. The 32X was supposed to enhance the Mega Drive and make it 32bit. Which I guess it does. It pre-sold 1.5mill but there were supply issues. The anticipation and expectations for the 32x were very high and very positive. But. In a crazed flop flop decision, Sega cancelled the 32X _before_ it had a chance to test the market and not after. Spent out on adverts and getting people excited and even sold hundreds of thousands. But had a change of heart and cancelled the thing. So all 40 games are rush jobs - half finished games. That’s one of the most shocking and mad things they ever did.

[@Sinn0100]

Okay, the cost of the 32X at launch was $159.99. It was never priced at $200. While many of the Genesis games that were ported to the 32X featured small upgrades (minus Virtua Racing) it was the original content that blew our collective minds. You have to remember, not even Sega of America knew when the Saturn was coming and for a time it was believed to be releasing in 1996. I grew up during the 16-bit generation so I remember all of this very well and I had/have a 32X. Games like Star Wars Arcade, Doom, and Virtua Racing were incredible despite what AVGN says. Being able to play Doom on my Genesis was like a dream come true and the graphics were unbelievably good for 1994. The stock Sega Genesis could not even come close to running Doom, Star Wars Arcade, Space Harrier Arcade, Virtua Racing (as it was on the 32X), Afterburner, Metal Head, Shadow Squadron, T-Mek, and Virtua Fighter. That's why people bought it before the Saturn hit not for games like Primal Rage.

[@ALM1GHTY.PEANUT]

I was one of the early adopters of 32x. Was my first home Doom experience. Had Doom, star wars and virtua racing, all games I loved!

[@MaxAbramson3]

Did you feel cheated when SEGA abandoned the addon and canceled the games for it?

[@ALM1GHTY.PEANUT]

@@MaxAbramson3 very. Then the price dropped so hard and fast on the unit itself right after I bought it. Nothing I can do about it.

[@MaxAbramson3]

@@ALM1GHTY.PEANUT I bought one for $19.95, but was already done with their antics.

[@BubblegumCrash332]

Great video as always!! My nerd fantasy is somebody making a new 32X CD game that uses all the VDPs and CPUs in all three consoles to the fullest potential. We may ever know what the tower of power was actually capable of.

[@ZygalStudios]

Thank you for your support as always!! Tower of Power, I like it 🤣 But yes, this is true and unfortunate.

[@craigvard1639]

Especially when game use both CD and cart. It helps in working around lack of RAM.

[@BubblegumCrash332]

@@craigvard1639 I think you would be able to run the code off the CD and use the cartridge as more RAM. I'm really interested in the under used ASIC in the Mega CD. I mean that Batman CD game has almost arcade quality sprite scaling.

[@craigvard1639]

@@BubblegumCrash332 It's more about run code from Cart (because this is what stock MD or 32X essentially do) and stream assets from CD. DOOM working this way would be much better. And i agree whit you. SegaCD ASIC looks like natural home fo ports from Sega Super Scaler and System 32 arcades. Yes, they can't run 60 FPS (because the way MD VDP work), but rock solid 30 - why not. But Sega decided otherwise. Heck, on Sega decisions in mid 90's somebody can do research work fo Ph.D.

[@BubblegumCrash332]

@@craigvard1639 do you think its even possible to run all the layers of the Mega Drive, Mega CD and 32X together. It would make a killer 2D game? I know there are 32X cd games but they just run higher quality FMVs.

[@tchitchouan]

Adam Koralik put it best when he said that the 32X is a hanging appendage to keep the genesis on life support.

[@ZygalStudios]

Couldn't have said it any better myself. Perfect summary!

[@tchitchouan]

@@ZygalStudios Yeah adam is an expert on sega stuff

[@joesaiditstrue]

Sega (of Japan) was always making knee-jerk reactionary decisions to gain market share over Nintendo. Nintendo was much more conservative (and still is generally speaking) The Virtual Boy was Nintendos biggest flop (and could be argued was a bigger failure than the 32x), but Sega was constantly trying to add hardware to the aging Genesis to compete with the SNES, but we know now that most people didn't care about graphics in the 16bit era, it was the games that mattered

[@KungKras]

People did care about graphics. But great graphics were possible on both the Megadrive and SNES through writing good software, so Sege didn't need addons to compete.

[@crowth9639]

why do people always deflect blame from SOA

[@maroon9273]

32x destroyed sega financially than the virtual boy did to Nintendo.

[@maroon9273]

The release of the 32x and its clustered hardware really dented any chance of the saturn of succeeding. Also it was not up to 5th gen performance graphically due to being a add-on, small ram, slower clock speed/instruction per seconds, lack of sound chip (pcm, adpcm), limited bus width (ram, cpu, graphics and sound), lack of background display graphics, sprite and polygon acceleteror processor. That's why games only look like minor upgrade genesis similar. They should stick with the sega cd and continue using the svp instead in 1994. I will love see you breakdown the sega cd hardware.

[@ZygalStudios]

I will push that video topic onto the stack! Thanks for the addition and the suggestion!

[@kathleendelcourt8136]

Upgrading the Mega Drive hardware via an add-on was a complicated task. If you go as far as fully replacing the CPU/VPD/Sound chip it will increase the cost drastically and you might as well sell a whole new console instead, and if you keep it limited people will consider the upgrade not worth it. The 32X was kind of middle of the road, it still had to rely on the MD's VPD for scrollings and/or sprites which held it back for 2D games. Maybe they should have gone the NEC CD-ROM² route earlier and sell memory upgrade cartridges (maybe with a SVP chip?) for the Mega CD instead, probably in conjuction with a new MCD revision with the memory upgrade already built-in.

[@maroon9273]

@@kathleendelcourt8136 very true, the md hardware also lacked any expansion support unless it was svp for polygon. You will have to use mixing cable like the 32x for expansion support. It will better if the sega cd hardware was more like the pc engine super cd instead of focusing adding a scaler chip. If any upgrade they could have added high Color count and pallete VDP chip. Also, the same ram as the 32x add-on. You don't have to upgrade with a systems card like NEC did since theres enough ram in the add-on. Or yet a 6th gen handheld console prior to the game body advance with a more powerful cpu.

[@Ehal256]

The 32X does have an audio chip actually, but yeah aside from simplicity, the 32X doesn't have too much going for it. It's much more powerful than the genesis, but has to software render to a relatively slow framebuffer with lots of wait states, which means it can't push tons of sprites like Saturn, and it has trouble keeping up with the base genesis with it's VDP. It is more suited to 3D games, but doing that well requires a lot of work getting around limited RAM and bus contention with the genesis, on top of optimizing for both main CPUs. Doom 32X resurrection shows you what you can do if you put the work in, but it's a lot of work.

[@SamMcDonald83]

Good to see you posting again!

[@ZygalStudios]

Great having you back! :)

[@finaltheorygames1781]

If it used the original Sega Genesis AV cables and didn't need its own proprietary cables coming from the 32X and only acted as like an enhancement chip for the Genesis and didn't need it's own power supply then it would have maybe worked.

[@tangreen7267]

'nuff said !

[@ianfisch7289]

Imagine if 32x doom and Star Wars arcade had been Saturn launch titles instead. Maybe could have made a difference.

[@Videogamelover58]

Nice video man

[@AliAbdullah-oi3wc]

"Jag-you-are"

[@ZygalStudios]

This is becoming a meme 🤣😅

[@hydralisk98]

I agree the Sega 32X is quite a huge mistake but can say the actual biggest marketing error was of Atari's gaming crash (even though similar) as far as according to Ahoy's "CRASH: The Year Video Games Died" is concerned? I mean, the 32X has not destroyed the 16-bit + 32bit industry compared to the obsoleted Atari 2600's garbage.

[@ZygalStudios]

Hmmmm. Fair point, maybe I should do a video on this!

[@craigvard1639]

But it destroyed Sega.

[@devantetoppin7879]

Beginning of the death spiral for Sega Sadly. 32x was the poor decision that lead to the Saturn which was a even worse decision which lead to the Dreamcast which was the fatal mistake. 3 strikes and you're out. The sad part is the Saturn and Dreamcast basically ended up as cult classics. People really loved many of the games that dropped on these systems and in case of the Dreamcast the hardware itself was actually pretty good for the time. The failure almost solely lies with management and their never ending stream of poor decision making and absolute catastrophic timing. With more competent leadership Sega would probably still be a leading force in Hardware today.

[@mxggo9046]

I think killimg it off so early was worse. It caused people like me to never even consider 32x...much less a $400 Saturn...cause..why spend that much and you're just gonna kill it off in a few months? No way. And I didnt. I bought a ps1. Sega damaged their rep with people like me. I eventually did buy 2 or 3 Sega DCs..but never gave Saturn nor 32x a chance.

[@AlphaFox78]

good video. please center your camera and focus lock it.

[@junkmail6992]

I was hoping this would go into how the hardware worked together. What was the deal with those AV pass through cables? How did SEga CD 32x games work? To me it appears this thing was limited by the genesis hardware itself; just like the SVP chip. The colors were never that much higher and the audio was ok. More techy less biz talk plz.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

The colors were a lot higher. The issue was that the 32x just gave you raw cpu power, without important things like hardware sprites and background tiles. As a result, they had to be coded in software, which ate up clock cycles. To keep things running smoothly, many 32x games allowed the Genesis to handle sprites or backgrounds.

[@craigvard1639]

As far as i know, there is no 3d features in 33x VDP. This chip is pretty basic. All it can do - read frame buffer and combine it with MD video signal. Other work is done in software by CPUs. All in all it's like beefed up Spectrum.

[@joesaiditstrue]

Seems like the SVP had better 3D capabilities than anything the 32x could do

[@craigvard1639]

@@joesaiditstrue To be honest, 32X more powerful than SVP (just compare Virtua Racing MD and Virtua Racing deluxe). But on the other hand, SVP still somewhat comparable, cheaper and don't confuse public. I think SVP was the way to go (may be in the form of lock-on cart).

[@Ehal256]

@@joesaiditstrue The SVP doesn't have any 3D capabilities either. It just has a bunch of RAM for a framebuffer, like 32X.

[@iwanttocomplain]

He said right there in the video. The 32X has some 3D acceleration.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@iwanttocomplain He also claims it has hardware shading and sprites. He got it wrong. The lack of all these things as hardware features is why even 2d games suffer frame rate issues, except when you allow the Genesis to handle some things or pull off a Hummingbird sized miracle.

[@hydralisk98]

I love the video but why is it only at 360p atm?

[@ZygalStudios]

Because I'm a moron and forgot to schedule it when the 4K finished processing 🤪 Oh well, you live and learn. Next video I'll have it wait a few hours ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry!

[@hydralisk98]

@@ZygalStudios Fair. Agreed. I like this kind of full blown honesty so ya thank you so much. I love your videos as well as far as retro hardware analysis goes and I aspire to make custom hardware designs of my very own someday.

[@ZygalStudios]

@@hydralisk98 That's something I really try for is full transparency. I make mistakes, I don't know everything, and I just love talking about cool technology that I might be able to provide some color to! Thank you. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to review your custom hardware someday! Good luck!

[@dtester]

Jag I am!

[@iwanttocomplain]

I think they pulled the plug on the 32X prematurely. It pre-sold 1.5mill but couldn’t meet cpu production numbers in time. So you get Metal Head and Cosmic Carnage. I think if the Saturn supported 32X games (should have been very easy to achieve) and they gave it a few years it would have sold gangbusters with a brilliant library. Simply look st Zyrinx’s tech demo. They also made a game, AMOK for it which was moved over to the Saturn. But I think it would have been most impressive in 2D games featuring maybe 3D aspects like Zaxxon Motherbase but more colourful and with better effects and sound. The 2D era was cut short prematurely. Rayman and Oddworld prove that 2D games in this period were still popular and hitting their stride. I saw footage of what was apparently Rayman running on 32X hardware... So it’s infuriating that this console addon was stopped so quickly. I wanted to see a Castlevania game from Konami who clearly enjoyed working on Sega hardware and show what a top company could achieve. But Sega’s heart wasn’t in it. Knuckles Chaotix was a mess and Virtua Racing 32X was underwhelming (I actually prefer the SVP version). So for me, this system had so much potential not just from a hardware perspective but from the goodwill Sega had from developers, who were fond of the company and keen to show support and put their best foot forward in supporting the company.

[@sugaryhull9688]

The nearest modern comparison in terms of diminishing returns for a lot of money is the difference between the last few generations of Intel desktop processors

[@tchitchouan]

yeah there hasn't been any improvement on the node size since skylake

[@jc_dogen]

32X was a huge increase in processing power over the genesis though..

[@ZygalStudios]

@@jc_dogen This is DEFINITELY true. See video for more details ;)

[@watchm4ker]

The biggest problem with the 32X wasn't the price, or its capabilities per se. It was the Saturn. Why waste time working on an already obsolete console, with a higher cost-per-unit thanks to ROM prices?

[@autofox1744]

Frankly, I think the 32X would have made more sense as Sega's "next-gen" console than the Saturn, albeit with some minor tweaks to the design and launch schedule. The thing about Sega in the early-mid '90s is that it did not directly compete with Nintendo, contrary to popular belief. Nintendo's big markets were middle and upper-middle class families, parents with young children and the like. Sega's market tended to be lower-income households, teenagers buying their first system with their own money, college students, that sort of thing. Sega always under-cut Nintendo on price, and that strategy served them well through the 16-bit era. The Saturn is a _fascinating_ system, but its $399 launch price was _far_ beyond what Sega's traditional market would bear, at least here in the US. It was too complex to manufacture cheaply, and too unfamiliar for many developers to grapple with. It was a fantastic system, but it wasn't the _right_ system for the time. 32X may seem like a toy compared to the N64 and PS1, but it could have played to Sega's strengths. The Genesis install base in 1994-95 was _huge,_ a ready-made market. More than that, $159 for the 32X is a lot more palatable for Sega's traditional customers than $299 for the PlayStation. The strategy goes like this. The Saturn gets shelved, at least in North America. In my version of events, Sega of Japan decides to give Sega of America the autonomy they need, but perhaps out of spite, don't let them have the Saturn. Having to work with what they've got, the 32X gets given the lead time it needed from the start. Changes are made to the design; some additional RAM thanks to Moore's Law driving the cost down, the up-clocked SH-2s intended for the Saturn go in, and the design is in general streamlined and better checked out for compatibility with all the various Genesis hardware revisions. The launch of the console is pushed to August 1995, just ahead of PlayStation, giving developers extra time to finish and test their games, ensuring a diverse and interesting launch library. The 32X launch is a dual event. For Genesis owners, the traditional "mushroom" upgrade is available for about $100. At the same time, brand new customers are able to get the all-in-one "Neptune" 32X for $199. There would also be an aesthetically matching revision of the Sega CD available. Though less powerful than the PlayStation and upcoming Nintendo 64, the 32X turns its "modular" nature into a strength; although most 32X games are released on cartridge, the Sega CD allows opportunities for expansion which the other 32-bit consoles lack. For example, cartridge games might be able to load optional extra content from CDs, or use the cartridge slot to host enhancement hardware for CD games, like RAM cartridges and 3D accelerators. One gimmick could be that certain cartridge games would allow players to stream specific tracks from their own music CDs as background music for levels. 32X would compete primarily on cost and versatility. Cheap to buy, but leveraging the "sophistication" of endless adaptability in its games and marketing. I don't think it would have let Sega _win_ the console war, but I definitely think they would be in better shape going into the Dreamcast era.

[@MaxAbramson3]

Alternate history: The 32X as a standalone console (but being able to use the controllers and accessories available in stores already for the Genesis), but with only one SH-2 and 1MB of inexpensive PC RAM and a 1x CD-ROM (like in the Sega CD, but also selling a 4x CD-ROM upgrade and a 4MB RAM cart for some games), plus upgraded Sonic CD and Virtua Fighter CD as pack in titles. For the 98% of the world's population that didn't have the Megadrive/Genesis, this would be a perfectly fine $149 investment. It already had its own sound chip (a great one) and could display 256 out of 32,768 colors at 320x240. The 32X standalone would be finished months earlier because it wouldn't need to mate with the various Genesis nor Sega CD variants. Games would be much easier to develop, be less buggy, and would require that programmers learn 68000 and Z80 code for the Genesis nor figure out how to sync frames with it, so all games could play at 60fps. If Sega had put a 32X-CD standalone console on the market for $149 in Spring of 1994 and given it 18 months to build up a library before releasing Saturn, do you think that this machine would've made it during that window?

[@ashleydortch2445]

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