User blog:Salnax/Ohga Shrugs: Fictional Articles

The following is purely creative writing. Basically, these are the kinds of things websites like IGN and Destructoid would be writing as original content in the Ohga Shrugs timeline. I don't necessarily know how to incorporate this stuff, but hey; it's fun!

How Sega lost the Generation
A blog from November, 2007

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of the Sega Pluto. In the past, the one year anniversary of a Sega console was something to celebrate. After all, look at the Dreamcast! Within months of launch, it had a library of some of the best games to ever grace any platform, from Sonic Adventure and Shenmue to Rayman 2 and Skies of Arcadia.

But not anymore.

In the time leading up to and in the year after the release of the Pluto, Sega has dropped the ball every step of the way. Virtually everything they could do wrong was done wrong, and Nintendo hasn't been shy about taking advantage of every opportunity they can.

Let's look at several of Sega's most egregious failures, shall we?

1. Launch - Launch periods are arguably the most important times in a system's life. After all, that's when you define what a system is capable of doing, why it's worth spending hundreds of dollars on, why you want to spend the next five or six years playing it.

The thing is, launches, or at least the first couple of months of a system's life, tend to have been fairly strong, all things considered. I've already mentioned the Dreamcast's strong early library, but as much of a Sega fan I am, I have to admit that the GameCube, with games like Final Fantasy X, Pikmin, and Super Smash Bros Melee. And the Nitro came into the world with Animal Crossing: Wild World, Super Mario 64 Deluxe, and Mario Kart Nitro.

The Pluto? Came out with another Monkey Ball and Blue Dragon, a decent JRPG.

Not exactly ground-breaking material guys.

Nintendo, However: launched the Revolution with a brand new Zelda game. And sure, it was originally going to be a GameCube title, but considering the impressive graphics and huge world, nobody can deny that it proved the Revolution was worth buying. And even though the rest of Nintendo's early lineup wasn't anything special (Viva Pinata? Seriously), at least it also managed to get some great 3rd party support with Capcom's Dead Rising.

2. Online Play - For a long time, online play has been one of Sega's greatest strengths against Nintendo. Sure, you had to pay a small fortune for SegaNet every year, but what you got was the ability to play against people around the world ala PC games, something that gave Dreamcast games an edge over their GameCube counterparts.

So it's no wonder that Sega decided to continue their SegaNet strategy.

Nintendo, However: offered online support for free. The fact that they announced this so soon before launch hurt Sega, but so long as Sega offered services that Nintendo didn't, this could be compensated for.

The only problem was, Sega did a poor job justifying the high price of SegaNet. Sure, your games were more likely to run smoothly online than Revolution games were. But was this miniscule difference worth the cost of a game or two every year? Especially seeing as how Nintendo has only gotten better this past year at online play, whereas Sega seems content to rest on their laurels.

Speaking of online...

3. Online Stores - Sega and Nintendo both launched their consoles with the ability to download games online. For younger gamers who haven't played the classics, or older ones who want to relive their childhoods, this was a great deal.

And Sega delivered. So far on the Virtual Console, we've gotten such classics as the original Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axe, and Ecco the Dolphin.

A pity we had to wait 8 months for these games to come out!

And original content isn't much better. Alien Hominid HD was nice, but that was also on the Revolution. What exclusive original content has the Pluto had this past year worth naming?

Nintendo, However: hasn't had that much better fortune with original content on their new "eShop," but there's no denying the effort they've put into their Virtual Console. The Revolution had the original Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, F-Zero, Super Mario 64, and half a dozen other classic titles on launch day! And according to a report I read earlier today, by the end of this year, the Virtual Console will have at least 50 NES games, 40 TurboGrafx games, 25 SNES games, and 10 N64 games. That's a total of about one game every three or four days since launch! And sure, lots of these are Nintendo titles, but not all of them are. Hell, none of those TurboGrafx games are from Nintendo. And even if they all were, at least there's both quantity and quality.

Sure, the eShop's retro prices are a bit higher than SegaNet's, but at least Nintendo is putting out a lot of content. Never in the past year has there not been something to play on the Revolution, thanks in large part to its robust Virtual Console.

4. Third Party Support - Traditionally, Sega's greatest Strength over Nintendo has been the support of third parties. Sure, RPG giants Square and Enix may be pro-Nintendo companies, and Resident Evil 4 was a GameCube exclusive, but all in all, 3rd parties made games for the Dreamcast first and the GameCube second.

Now, a lot has changed. Tecmo has shown a new multiplatform future with the release of Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Assassin's Creed, arguably the biggest 3rd party game of the year, was a multiplatform game. The port of last year's PC hit Oblivion was apparently brought over with the Revolution's specs in mind, with the Pluto's version coming last. And virtually every third party game of note came to both the Pluto and Revolution.

What happened? Well, one of the reasons third parties enjoyed making Dreamcast games was because the hardware was so easy to port to and from the arcades with. This was because the basic Dreamcast hardware was finished years before it was launched, so that lots of developers made arcade games on NAOMI hardware first and ported them over to the virtually identical Dreamcast later.

But Sega made a mistake. They stuck with NAOMI technology for years, not creating any new standard system boards until late in the Dreamcast's life. Because of the different natures of consoles and arcade system boards, Sega had little choice but to create two separate systems. And once that happened, the practice of easy porting to and from home consoles ended.

Nintendo, However: Made their hardware relatively easy to program for. The Revolution, despite its name, uses components that have been found in PC's for years. According to some developers, making games for the Revolution is similar to making GameCube games, due to their similar architectures. Although this doesn't necessarily mean the Revolution is more developer-friendly than the Pluto, it does close the gap significantly.

5. Disappointing Games

Perhaps the worst part of the Pluto's life so far have been the games. The big games of 2006 and 2007 sounded impressive at first, but ended up largely being disappointing or even bad.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Blue Dragon were the stars of the launch, and they were merely disappointing. Virtua Tennis 3 was alright, but hardly a great leap forward. Sonic at the Olympic Games was a simple sports minigame collection, and could have been made for the Saturn. Nights: Journey of Dreams was a pleasant little romp, but Sonic 07'' was arguably the worst game in series history.

Out of all of Sega's major releases so far, onlyVirtua Fighter 5 was truly a stand-out title for the Pluto. And it alone can't move a lot of systems.

Nintendo, However: Has hit it out of the park time and time again this past year. Twilight Princess provided enough content to be played for months at a time, and was a great mix of old and new. Viva Pinata and WarioWare were light-hearted but high-quality fun. Super Paper Mario could have been made on the GameCube, but was a great adventure in its own right. Mario Party 8 is more than a match for Sonic's Olympic adventures, and came out months earlier. Metroid Prime 3 has been called the best console FPS in years, and even the best single player FPS since Half-Life 2.

But all other titles aside, the one that bothers me the most is Super Mario Galaxy. I haven't personally played the game yet, but every review and impression I've seen these past few days makes it look like the biggest thing in 3D platforming since, well, Sonic Adventure or Super Mario 64.

To top things off, Nintendo seems to be expanding in new directions never seen before. Interest in the upcoming Revolution Fitness is staggering, even, and especially, among non-gamers. That game alone may end up selling millions.

And I guess that's the problem in a nutshell. Nintendo's games have been bigger and better than Sega's offerings so far, and will likely continue to be so in the future. Unless you honestly believe that Sega Superstars Tennis and Valkyria Chronicles alone can match the might of Mario Kart, Smash Bros, and Revolution Fitness.

Conclusion: Sega has messed up big time. According to the NPD, the Revolution has outsold the Pluto by about 2:1 ever since the year began. With numbers like that, it is tempting to say that Sega, strangely enough, is doomed.

However, despite my trashing of Sega above, I believe they can get their act together. Come back tomorrow for a look on how Sega can come back and beat Nintendo.