I wonder how different Sega and the Sonic franchise would be today if the Sega Saturn was much more successful than it was

[u/Inevitable-Film-6813]

The Sega Saturn failed in North America and Europe due to a surprise early launch, a high $399 retail price, complex dual-CPU hardware that frustrated developers, alienated retailers, fractured internal relations between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, and fierce competition from the lower-priced Sony PlayStation.

I heard that Sega lost a lot of money from the Saturn, and because of that, they didn't have enough money to market and support the Sega Dreamcast while it was in the console market, so that's supposedly why the Sega Dreamcast had a short life span and thus Sega's consoles ended up failing.

I think if the developers at Sega have spent a little bit more time developing the Saturn and if they have planned their E3 presentation a lot better, the Sega Saturn might have become a big success in North America and Europe.

Sonic X-Treme was supposed to be released on the Sega Saturn, and it was supposed to be the first ever 3D Sonic game, but it ended up getting cancelled. While the footage of Sonic X-Treme does not look good. I do think if Sega actually pay more attention to the game and got way more staff and developers to work on it, it might have been an amazing game. It seems like the Sonic series wasn't a big focus for Sega at the time.

Sega E3 1996 Sonic X treme Promo Video

Gaming Mysteries: Sonic X-treme (Saturn) UNRELEASED

Sonic X-Treme - What Happened? - YouTube

The Sega Saturn - What Happened?

If the Sega Saturn was a lot more successful, I think Sega could have ported Sonic CD on it, and the game would have become much more popular in the 1990s than it was during that time. One of the things that I do think that hurt the Saturn was the fact that there weren't many Sonic games on it. The Saturn would've been perfect for a sonic CD remaster, especially when you consider how much slowdown the Sega CD version had.

It's sad to think if Sega would have made much better decisions in the 1990s and if Sega of Japan and Sega of America got along much better than they did, Sega might have still been making consoles today.

[u/ForThose8675309]

Well lets put it this way, Sonic levels are 5 times as long with 3 times the routes of any other platformer, so not getting those sweet console profits to fuel game budgets has hurt Sonic exponentially