Saturn failed mostly because an extremely out of touch corporate Sega of America did not anticipate consumer trends.
Sega believed that arcade hits at home, some obscure (and frankly AWFUL) Western titles for American audiences, and multimedia capabilities backed by the Sega brand would carry the Saturn through its life span. Like
@International Koala earlier said, Sega of America left an entire wonderful library of Saturn games in Japan because they just didnt anticipate how popular Japanese RPG games would become.
Meanwhile Sony anticipated the death of arcade gaming and the explosive popularity of story and CGI driven gaming experiences like RPGs being the next big thing. And they were 100% right. Final Fantasy VII and Pokemon is what ultimately bushed any shot the Saturn had. No one in 97 or 98 was passing up those franchises to play Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter at home.
Even Nintendo failed to anticipate how big these games would be even though RPGs were a huge part of the SNES appeal over the Genesis. They opted for cartridges in the N64 instead of CD technology, which alienated third parties like Squaresoft and Enix and saw them move development over to the Playstation. One of Nintendo's biggest blunders that forever killed them since. Sony had the right strategy in '95.
By 98 Sega tried desperately to import adventure games from their Japanese library like Shining Force III and Panzer Dragoon saga, but by then it was all too late. Had Sega of America been smart and focused on Japanese imports, especially adventure and RPG titles instead of arcade hits they could've at least come in 2nd place that generation.
And yeah the Nomad was a little too ahead of its time but the concept was sweet. A friend of a friend of mine had one back in the day. He pretty much made my boring church Sundays. I couldnt believe this nikka had a full blown Sega Genesis on the go. We use to sit by an outlet and rock that shyt until it was time to leave. You can even plug a Genesis controller into it and play 2 player. It was a great little piece of hardware I might have to collect some day.
NEC was also pretty innovative with the Turbo Express. The shyt actually played TurboGrafx16 cards eight there. And it was full color.
Just saying its interesting how far superior every other company was with portable gaming in its infancy while Game Boy with its spinach green display bushed all of them over night.
. Tried not to wake up the son but something about Marvel/Capcom games that bring out the FGC in me and I'm shyt in fighting games
Mans know whats real. Sega was so ahead of its time, gamers were legit playing stickball in the streets.
