SEGA's Grand Vision For PlaySEGA. Confirmed by UK Retro Gamer Mag Ed.

Really whats the value for the consumer and the strategic advantage for Sega to make people pay for such a device/service?

 

Traditionally, to become a big player or any player for that matter, you must take a chance and be willing to invest billions of dollars if you want to sell consoles. That has been true for Nintendo, Sony and MS as well as Sega, Atari, and every other manufacturer of a failed console. The console history has always been one console dominants alot of the revenue and almost all of the profits, while its competitors scrapped by with limited ability to recoup their investment on the console.

There may not be any chances for a fourth player. There wasn't last gen but MS plans for the Xbox was well in hand before the Dreamcast bowed out of the market. You enter the market and take your chances. But if market history has showed us anything, success in the market can be found as easily by a minor or new player as failure can be found by the dominant player. None of the major are well entrenched in their position and history tells when it comes to gaming noone is above shooting themselves in the foot, which for most markets is more akin to shooting themselves in both feet, losing both arms playing with swords and accidentally gouging out both eyes (I've never seen dominant market leaders in other areas make so many obvious and large missteps that pretty common in the gaming market from a historical perspective).

Furthermore, if its all just plain dumb, wouldn't the smart move just be for everyone to bow out the console manufacturer game and find more reliable and stable forms of businesses?

 

Depends on what the service entails and whats being offered. Just to be able to play Sega games doesn't seem to hold much value but neither did the opportunity to play Nintendo games before the arrival of the Wii for a lot of people.

The chances of Sega's success will revolve around ultimately what the service will offer and at what cost. Given that I don't expect the game market to consist of Nintendo, MS and Sony indifinitely, I suspect the someone else will eventually enter the market and make its mark. Sega with either heavy outside financial backing or a model thats not capital intensive and provides value that can't readily be offered by the current method of revenue and profits seems like the most likely choice.

 

I question if billions was the ante for most of history's players. Did 3DO, CDi, etc. lose billions each? The cost of entry has surely increased as the industry has progressed over the decades from million dollar industry to billions.

Really? I thought GameCube was profitable. I thought SEGA was profitable when playing second fiddle to Nintendo for two generations.

Not sure I'd be willing to enter a market on the hope the previous successful champions would screw up! I'd want some pretty solid projections that there's a market for what I'm producing.

No, because they are chasing clear future revenue streams. Why is MS so profitable? Because it produces low overhead software. If you could get money for shigfting bits down a network line, that'd be the most profitable business possible I think. So whoever gets a cut of every song, film, games etc. over the networks is the victor. That's why MS were willing to spend billions on XB instead of pulling out, because they were creating a beach-head into the living room. Any other company would have given up long before those losses.

this is just leading back to previous "SEGA reentering the hardware market" dscussions though, that we've been over before. Unless there's a sensible market strategy that can be presented for SEGA, to tackle the existing three with their substantial reputations, brands, and network services, there's no point in them trying. Further, as a potential investor in SEGA, would you at this point be looking at their future and thinking 'wow, dropping support for the existing consoles, their only real income source, and creating a competiting platform in this extremely high risk and crowded market, seem like a good horse to back to me!'? If a fourth horse enters, it'll be Google or Apple, someone else with reputation and an eye on lucrative network content.

 

Sega will probably make more buzz in gambling industry than Console/PC gaming industry. Their focus is no longer centered on home gaming...This thread is nothing more than a fanboy's pipe dream.

 

If they want to be independent the way I see it what they can do at the most, is move to an unexploited opportunity independent from console competition.

The online service is all they have got

If they want to offer Sega games on a different device of their own they are doing nothing to differentiate their selves.

Consoles and handhelds already offer that experience unless they come up with something that is different and attractuve like Nintendo.

 

3DO was backed by AT&T, EA, LG, Matsushita, MCA and Time Warner, while CD-i was backed by Phillip. I doubt consoles with $700 dollars price tags and heavy hitters for backers would be try to conquer the gaming market while keeping operating, marketing, R&D and production expense under a nine figure cap.

Hence... "while its competitors scrapped by with limited ability to recoup their investment on the console." But you must recollect something I forgot, because outside the 2 nintendo consoles, I can't find a 2nd tier console that I would readily surmise reached profitability with investments totally recouped that wasnt release during or before the 80s. I can readily name about 6 launched since the 90s that have failed to become profitable and 2 more that is more likely to join them then join the n64 and GC in reaching profitability.

Nevertheless, not one manufacturer has ever wrestled market leadership without major mis-steps of the dominant player. Only MS with its huge reserves of cash and its dominant OS market position can readily invest billions over several generation to establish a major market presence. MS and Nintendo route is hardly going to be achievable by anyone else. Either they are going to lack the capital or the know how (MS has the capital and Nintendo is a publishing behemoth). Hardly advantages most companies can replicate.

There nothing "clear" about future revenue streams. Ask Sony. Chasing potential revenue streams is what everyone is doing regardless if they existing in the current market or trying to establish a presence. The potential you speak of is why it makes sense for Sega to try to reestablish itself as a content platform provider.

Sega as a publisher will have a harder time trying to be the next EA or Activision then it would have trying be the next Wii. The console market aburptly resets itself every five years and that in of itself has always been the major weakness to market leaders. The one thing I consider harder than obtaining market leadership in the console realm is building a publisher with efficiency and prowess of Nintendo. Sega potential is so much bigger as platform provider versus a content provider. Furthermore, with Sega the experience and knowledge is already there. It be illogical for them not to give a go and try again. And given how the Wii has made us all redefine the market and see that everyone is not looking at eye candy and toutings of supercomputer prowess, it makes sense for Sega to try now with an alternative strategy that moves away hardware towards a service oriented product.

Given the outlook that the big three will delay their next gen launches. It may give Sega the opportunity to reenter the market without major headwind until we see new hardware from the big three. There is nothing to say Sega can't reenter the market with a ideal of a subscription based model with little or no upfront cost for the console itself based on tech thats only a small increase of what we have now. Producing a console in 2010 that looks better than what was leading edge for a console in 2005-2006 isn't going to be that costly.

Is there a huge amount of risk involved and the chance of failure great for Sega. Yes it is, but thats an inherent characteristic of any plan (good or bad) when trying to enter a volatile and unstable market such as console gaming. There is no clear cut strategy for reliably entering the market. Every successful foray depended on luck as much as good execution other than MS strategy of patience and 10-15 billion dollars.

 

Wow, SEGA announces a Flash-based gaming service for retro games and suddenly they're re-entering the console market?!

 

Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait

Are you telling me that Sega is seeing such a response from their Wii VC and the $20 for 200 game complilations released (for every piece of hardware out there from the PS3/360 - PSP) - they've just got that many sales that they've said "Hey - we need to release these game for sale on the PC too!" - that's what you're telling me?

It seems like Sega is hitting thier core demographic already on plenty of consoles by reselling their 20-year old games...why would they need another venue?

And why would we need other hardware to run Sega Games ever? The PS3/360 can emulate even the DC games just fine...and newer arcade games are just being released as standalone titles...(like Virtua Fighter)...

This idea makes 0 sense to me...

Jack

 

One question. Can someone who uses PlaySega through his PS3 browser use his controller?

It would be awesome. There you ve got a Sega+Sony console combined

 

Does anyone have any numbers for how many subscribers Sega expects to get out of this? I guess I could see it breaking even....but not much else. I'll give them credit a good effort - and what looks like some good added bonuses in addition to being able to play 15-year old game for $5 a month...I just don't see this being anything significant number/subscriber wise, not when you could own (not lease to play) OWN hundreds of these games for about $50

Jack

 

Wow, someone is wildly optimistic... I loved the Dreamcast, but I have a hard time imagining millions getting this just for Dreamcast and Saturn.

Regards,
SB

 

Especially if you consider free emulators and roms.

But who knows?

What I wonder is what kind of connection you will need in order to play Saturn and DC Quality games through a web browser using flash

 

In your dreams, perhaps.

Frankly, a large proportion of console gamers today were either busy being born, or having their diapers changed when the saturn was around, and too young to have made any kind of connection with the dreamcast (which always was a minority player in the market even at its height, I might add).

Most of the people who did play those machines have moved on now, there's only a finite amount of attraction 15 year old software can exert on people when there's new exciting games launching every week, as well as the omnipresent world of warcrack, and so on. I doubt very many would pay all that much money for ancient software, certainly not millions of people.

 

Pretty impressive. But this games are too simplistic. Probably Saturn games are doable and some arcade DC games.

But I cant imagine Sonic Adventure or Shenmue running as they are on the DC. They will have to change to different games.

But I could be wrong. Can anyone who knows better clarify?