How much was Sega CD's success limited by the fact that it was a $300 add on?

[RvR]

When SCD launnched you couldnt even consider buying it unless you already had a Genesis/MD, and even then you had to pay a high price. Its kinda surprising SCD had some lukewarm success given those limitations. So I was wondering, what if the SCD launched as a stand-alone console for a slightly lower price like $250? We know from the launch of PS1 that a lot of Nintendo fans were willing to jump ship if given an affordable alternative and especially one that marketed itself as the console for the older cool kids. I was thinking maybe SCD had a chance to be the proto-PS1, but maybe there is some factor Im not considering why this actually would never have happened? Of course they would lose revenue on each indivual console sale but maybe could have made up for it by selling more consoles and more games. Imagine if every Genesis/MD game from 1993 and later was actually released as a SCD game with updated graphics and music.

Additionally the SCD would not have been as obsolete compared to PS1 as the Genesis/MD was, so Sega could have potentially held out the way Nintendo did before putting all their later efforts into the Dreamcast.

Just an interesting scenario to think about. Do youz folks think this would have worked out better or worse for Sega?

[Iced Snowman]

I think I traded in like 10 or more Genesis games and still paid some money to get my Model 2 SCD at Electronics Boutique. It came with Tomcat Alley, a terrible game. I couldn't soley afford the $300 price tag.

More would have bought the Model 1 SCD had it came out at $250.00. Still, the whole system add-on, that wouldn't work without the original system, is a leary prospect. Years later I got rid of my SCD. I can't remember if I traded it in or what I did with it. It was that unremarkable.

[Team Andromeda]

I remember reading that on its launch the Sega CD sold out and was very much in demand. I would say its biggest trouble wasn't the price, but software. The Mega-CD didn't have a steady flow of games each month like the Mega Drive and far too many games made little use of the Extra hardware and space of the CD other than for CDDA music.

The PS3 was able to sell out on launch day in Europe and the USA and its price point was eye watering

[Black_Tiger]

CD players were still expensive in 1992 but you could already get pretty much any music on CD by then.

https://math.illinoisstate.edu/day/c...players92.html


When I bought my CDX at launch it was the same price as a Sony Discman where I lived.

I never regretted buying a Turbo-CD or CDX as early as I could and got to play Sega-CD games at my friends' places in the meantime because several opted for Sega-CD after seeing the potential for CD games.

[Raijin Z]

In my experience, the Sega CD and 3DO were owned primarily by people whose income was sourced through unlicensed urban pharmacology. Legitimately wealthy people skipped directly from cartridges to Saturns and PSXs.

[Team Andromeda]

How well did it sell on launch in the USA in the early days does anyone have some hard data? . In the UK mags like Megatech used to report that the launch of the Sega CD was a near sellout and that in the run-up to Easter 1993, SEGA America was having issues meeting the demand for Sega CD hardware in the USA. In the UK the Mega-CD sold well on launch, it was software and software sales that were disappointing. Just not enough support month and month and Mega CD software sold in low numbers
SEGA Europe handly the Mega-CD terribly IMO and SEGA Japan were crap too. SEGA America to its credit did a wonderful job on the SEGA CD, sad that SOA went far too much for the FMV side compared to using the ASIC and more traditional games



Shame too, because PC CD-ROM which was itself a huge expensive outlay was growing and growing all the time and also getting some quality software from the likes of LucasArts Ect

[Blake00]

Yeah it's a shame it was almost purely marketed around its FMV games. Had they shown off more of the 3D/mode 7 like capabilities of the console (eg Sonic CD special stages, Batman Returns driving stages, Thunderhawk, Soul Star, F1 Beyond the Limit, Adventures of Batman & Robin etc) it might have done better as once all the bad reviews on FMV games playability started pouring in and spread via word of mouth it just killed interest. To this day there's still people out there who think the Sega CD is just a Genesis with a CD drive attachment lol. They had no idea about it's extra capabilities that were barely used.

If people had seen this kind of stuff below on their TVs instead of just the FMV stuff maybe things would have been different, or at least gone a bit better. As even now I still remember the amazing Starfox adverts on TV and everyone talking about how amazing they were. Little did anyone know sega was doing 3D stuff around the time time on the Sega CD that looked more advanced but was not being marketed much at all.
https://youtu.be/FcyIVFQDIl0?t=132
https://youtu.be/fwVuYfr5fw0?t=30

.

[Greg2600]

All systems start out expensive. The key to a successful life span is licensing, and then getting to the point a few years down the line when you can release far less costly revisions of the hardware. Sega CD failed mainly for its library, and waffling support from SEGA. The FMV stuff was often several years old, due to the agreement with Sony, and the newer stuff stunk. The non-FMV games were simply not enough of an upgrade from the 16-bit Genesis games. You could go to the store, and compare screen caps from titles on both systems and not see a difference. Once you got past Sonic CD or Batman Returns, the consensus at the time was, what is the point of this? FMV never caught on, other than some of the titles that spent money on talent, such as Wing Commander III. The 32X at least you could see a definite "upgrade" in the type of game that could appear.

[Team Andromeda]

The FMV stuff was often several years old, due to the agreement with Sony, and the newer stuff stunk. The non-FMV games were simply not enough of an upgrade from the 16-bit Genesis games. You could go to the store, and compare screen caps from titles on both systems and not see a difference..

To be fair mind that was also an issue for a lot of early PC CD ROM titles and PC Engine CD ROM titles give their CD drives were just that and had little or no extra hardware and I think most for the FMV stuff wasn't old stuff from SONY, but quite a lot of new content or basic Laser Disc ports of Arcade games.

It was the games that were a issue and the lack of new quality titles coming out each month that so hurt the Mega CD. It could have been so much better too. If SEGA Japan actually tried and gave a toss on the Mega CD looked to go back to remake Ghost N Ghouls and Strider on the Mega CD with all the Arcade's speech and intro's etc along with Arcade perfect music and had their teams port some of the better SEGA scaling coin ups. Instead of spending millions on FMV, better if OA made more sequels to the likes of Batman Returns and looked to work with various PC developers to port some of their PC games. Rise of the Dragon, Dune showed what could be done and it's a crying shame we never got Mega CD versions of Monkey Island II, Fate Of Atlantis with full CD speech (even if they just used Amiga/St graphics) along with a few FMV games (they weren't all bad)

[RvR]

Yeah it's a shame it was almost purely marketed around its FMV games. Had they shown off more of the 3D/mode 7 like capabilities of the console (eg Sonic CD special stages, Batman Returns driving stages, Thunderhawk, Soul Star, F1 Beyond the Limit, Adventures of Batman & Robin etc) it might have done better as once all the bad reviews on FMV games playability started pouring in and spread via word of mouth it just killed interest. To this day there's still people out there who think the Sega CD is just a Genesis with a CD drive attachment lol. They had no idea about it's extra capabilities that were barely used.

If people had seen this kind of stuff below on their TVs instead of just the FMV stuff maybe things would have been different, or at least gone a bit better. As even now I still remember the amazing Starfox adverts on TV and everyone talking about how amazing they were. Little did anyone know sega was doing 3D stuff around the time time on the Sega CD that looked more advanced but was not being marketed much at all.
https://youtu.be/FcyIVFQDIl0?t=132
https://youtu.be/fwVuYfr5fw0?t=30

.

Good point. It makes me wonder what the system might have been like if that style had been focused on and more games like that were developed.

[goldenband]

$300 certainly ruled the system out for me and my family. Mind you, $250 would still have been out, but less so. But sub-$100 was the magic number for anything.

That said, honestly I didn't drool over the Sega CD much, except Heart of the Alien and maybe Silpheed. Too much of the coverage I saw was grainy FMV screenshots and accompanying commentary. As others have noted, too bad they didn't feature games like Soul Star, Thunderstrike, RDF Global Conflict, etc. more prominently.

(I did however drool over the 3DO, though not enough to deal drugs to get it.)

[Black_Tiger]

$300 certainly ruled the system out for me and my family. Mind you, $250 would still have been out, but less so. But sub-$100 was the magic number for anything.

That said, honestly I didn't drool over the Sega CD much, except Heart of the Alien and maybe Silpheed. Too much of the coverage I saw was grainy FMV screenshots and accompanying commentary. As others have noted, too bad they didn't feature games like Soul Star, Thunderstrike, RDF Global Conflict, etc. more prominently.

(I did however drool over the 3DO, though not enough to deal drugs to get it.)

Also keep in mind that people interested in CD games could buy a Turbo-CD + TG-16 with free games for $200'ish almost a year before the Sega-CD launch and within the SNES launch window.

By the time the Sega-CD launched the Turbo-CD already Ys I & II, Ys III, Cosmic Fantasy 2, Exile, Monster Lair, Valis III and Lords of the Rising Sun.

My Turbo-CD also got a lot of use as a corded discman before the Sega-CD launched. It was still a luxury at the time.

[segagamer]

I waited until the price dropped to $199.99 (June 1993?) before heading over to Toys R Us to purchase the system. Also picked up Batman Returns, Final Fight CD, Jaguar XJ220, After Burner III, Cobra Command, and Prince of Persia.

[profholt82]

All things said, it sold a couple million units, so it's not as if it was a complete failure. And in spite of the add-on's current retrospective reputation as a failure, I truly believe that its very existence helped sell more Genesis units and helped Sega as a brand.

I was about 10 years old when the SCD dropped, and it was a hot topic of conversation at school. The edgy ad campaign, while seemingly kind of silly looking back now, made Sega look cool and hip to young people at the time. There was a reputation that Sega was cool and Nintendo/Super Nintendo was for babies. Hahaha
I know, it sounds silly, but that was the legitimate reaction of kids at the time, and that certainly helped bolster the Genesis sales boom of 93-94 when they were head to head with Super Nintendo. Without Sega CD, I don't know if that would have happened. Its very existence helped bolster Sega's brand because it just seemed cool, and there was the idea that you could possibly add this futuristic technology to your Genesis down the road.

But yeah, had it been $200 from the get-go, it probably would have sold much better. And it's easy for us to say now that they shouldn't have focused so much on FMV, but at the time, FMV looked like it was the future of gaming. We're talking about a small window of gaming history here, and at that time FMV was probably the best way to make the SCD look like an amazing futuristic piece of technology. Someone mentioned how amazing Star Fox looked in commercials, well yeah, but that was over a year later, and it didn't take long for trends to change in those days. So quickly, FMV was old hat and 3d polygons looked like the wave of the future (and they actually were, unlike fmv, haha). Perhaps Sega should have pushed stuff like Batman Returns and Soul Star more than pap like Prize Fighter and Sewer Shark, but retrospect/hindsight, etc, etc. The FMV wave was as good of a gimmick as any to push in 92, I just think the $300 price tag for an add-on was asking too much from the average consumer of the time.

[goldenband]

There was a reputation that Sega was cool and Nintendo/Super Nintendo was for babies. Hahaha
I know, it sounds silly, but that was the legitimate reaction of kids at the time

I was a teenager at the time, and one thing I will say is that Nintendo's censorship policies really pissed me off, particularly with regard to Mortal Kombat. We were a Nintendo house growing up (except for Game Gear), but if Nintendo hadn't relented with MKII I probably would have switched.

It seems quaint and simplistic now, but at the time it felt like one front of a cultural battle that resonated with me a lot. I didn't want any company to act in loco parentis to keep me from the things I wanted to check out -- sex, drugs, violence, rock 'n roll, explicit language, but above all the ability to speak truthfully about things, rather than adopting the sanitized presentation of mainstream culture.

And within a few years I was seeing little kids take headshots and teabag corpses in FPSes, and feeling totally grossed out and disturbed by it. So what do I know?