Description

Following the success of the Mega Drive people assumed Sega would continue to be popular in the fifth generation, at the time Sega had a very popular game called Virtua Fighter which could not be ported to the Mega Drive without an add-on; this made the Saturn very appealing. When the console launched in Japan it managed to outsell the PS1 which launched a few days later. The Saturn began its decline with the international releases, in the USA the release was so sudden that many major chains such as Walmart and Best Buy did not stock it at launch and in the UK the marketing budget was only a fifth of Sony’s this was not helped by the fact that Virtua Fighter wasn’t as popular in the west. Sega planned to turn this around with their most popular franchise, Sonic, with a new game called Sonic extreme. Nintendo was planning Mario’s jump to 3d and Sega did not want to be left behind, Sonic Team was preoccupied with a brand new IP called Nights with its first game Nights Into Dreams being a huge critical success. The game’s development was left to Sega Technical Institute which was based in the USA, the game was meant to release in late 1996 but in March of that year Sega’s Japanese representatives went to America and found the game was unfinished and ran at a very low frame rate. In May a playable demo was made for E3 but it became evident that the game would not be out by Christmas, these delays were caused by two of the game’s lead developers becoming seriously ill with one of them being told he had six months to live; he is still alive today. For Sega to get a Sonic game out by Christmas they ported Sonic 3D Blast, a spin-off game, to the console; the port was criticized for being too similar to the Mega Drive version. In Early 1997 Sega announced the game’s cancellation and the only other Sonic games were a compilation of the Mega Drive games with a bonus 3D environment called Sonic Jam and a racing game called Sonic R. The lack of a mainline Sonic game did immense harm to Sega. Sonic not as popular in Japan and this allowed the console to be a success over there with 62% of units being sold there although it was not as successful as the PS1, this was due to the console having more 2D games since the Japanese market did not adapt as well to the jump to 3D. The Saturn was discontinued in the west in 1998 and Japan in 2000.