How Sega blunder handed game console domination to PlayStation
20 years ago, market leader's bungled upgrade of Saturn console, and Sony's lower price and 3D vision, sealed its fate. Then came Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider; the rest is history
Twenty years ago this month, at the E3 video game conference in LA, the head of Sega of America accidentally killed the company's Saturn video game console.
Tom Kalinske was in a bind. He knew that Sony was readying its new PlayStation machine for an autumn launch in the US (both the Saturn and the PlayStation had already been released in Japan at this point), and the hype was building. The creator of the Walkman, the portable music device that revolutionised the music industry, was coming after games. And it was serious.
Sony had spent 1994 on a global charm offensive. The company's chief system designer, Ken Kutaragi, visited developers all over the world, bringing an impressive set of graphics demos (including the famed dinosaur 3D model) and promising a wealth of cool development tools and favourable production deals. Sega, meanwhile, had been confusing and alienating its audience and development community with a string of add-ons for the hugely successful (but increasingly dated) Mega Drive console, and a wealth of promises about new hardware platforms that never materialised. Sony had one product and one message: PlayStation is the future.
There were also rumours of a rift between Sega of Japan and Sega of America; although it was never quite as simple - or juicy - as that. What the divisions faced was a huge challenge in appeasing two very different markets. The Japanese office was encouraged to head straight into Saturn development after the launch of the Mega Drive because the machine hadn't been a huge success in the domestic market. However, the company had to be much more cautious about the US, where it wanted to protect and enhance the huge market share it had torn away from Nintendo.
