so you all phail as fans....
where was all this sonic love back with the dreamcast? you might have inspired a decent game
The demise of SEGA:
Many people think that Sega's downfall was due to things such as poor 3rd party support, bad marketing, things of this nature...
The downfall of SEGA was brought about by SEGA and only SEGA. No one could have helped them for the hole they dug for themselves.
/Flashback sequence/
A long time ago, a simple game developer was experimenting with ideas. A new company needed a new mascot... Ristar! Nah... not enough attitude to draw a crowd in. I know, How about this super fast blue hedgehog? Awesome.
And SEGA invested a crap ton of money into this hairbrain scheme... but whats this? Hey guys... people actually love this game. Somehow, this scheme of our has actually worked. Its brilliant!
/Fast-Forward/
Okay team, we've got this SEGA Saturn project coming up, and we really need something to knock the socks off our compitition. Any thoughts?
...
...
...
Shenmue? *explains in elaborate detail*
Hmm... well, it sounds crazy enough to work, and the last time we tried something crazy, Sonic came busting out of our doors. Lets go for it.
But what happened from here on out, was the downfall. See, Sega was designing the Saturn AROUND Shenmue. Literally, the two were developed side by side. But as time went on, Shenmue became more demanding, it needed better processing power, more RAM, which allowed for better art design, and better sound quality.
Shenmue couldn't be developed fast enough to keep up with the sudden burst in technology, and neither could the Saturn.
So the time came, Saturn was released, but the Director of Shenmue didn't feel it was finished.
The Saturn bombed, and Shenmue starting working its way towards SEGA's next big project, the Dreamcast.
Shenmue need to be entirely redeveloped from scratch...again...
When it was all over and done with, Shenmue became over a 4 million dollar investment. Unfortunately for SEGA, they went in over their heads. Shenmue wasn't the miraculous success that Sonic was. Sure it was a cool game, but it just didn't draw in audiences.
SEGA was broke... not much left to do, but throw in the towel, and proceed to make simple games that still make them profit (enter crappy Sonic games).
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This is the story of SEGA's downfall. It rests solely on the gamble that Shenmue was going to be some Utopia of gaming... which just couldn't live up to the design.
Nothing more... nothing less.