Why the Sega Saturn Failed

The Sega Saturn was not a huge hit despite revolutionary games and great graphics. Why you ask? Well for one in the past sega has experianced alot of failures with systems such as the Sega 32x and the Sega CD. People just did not trust Sega anymore due to all of these failures and that contributed to the failure of the Sega Saturn. Also the marketing was not the best out there so it did not really help the Saturn either.

When the Sega Saturn entered the market it's competition was against Sony and its Playstation and the Nintendo 64. Of course though the incredible reputation this system and the company got from the Sega Genisis did give them a pretty good start. Also something that did not help the Saturn was the fact the President of Sega Tom Kalinske announced that "Saturnday" as it was dubbed was a ruse and it was available the very day he announced this. This caught all sorts of retailers off guard like Walmart and some other places(Toys R Us included).

This move shocked retailers and even game developers as they did not know the actual release date of the Saturn they could not finish games in time for the release date. Also on top of that the Saturn was a whopping $399 100 dollars more than the Sony Playstation. Now another reason the system failed was due to its massive rush to market (first is not the best always). It also had 2 chips each one slightly slower than the Playstation and made games hard to program to the saturn. The 2 chips made it stronger than the Playstation but since it had 2 chips and a small user base developers chose the Playstation over the Saturn due to the Playstations huge fan base and easy to program ability.

Of course with the Playstation releasing games so quick it ended up getting the massive attention due to such a huge library of games. Also the Playstation and its huge pockets bought exclusive rights to game titles meaning saturn didnt get any of them and was left without good titles. Sega of Japan and Sega of America also did not communicate like they were supposed to and they did not release alot of good japanese games in the U.S. therefore meaning many good games never saw release. So this meant that the system was already at a disadvantage early on and it stayed that way and then died out and Sony took over the market along with Nintendo