How Sony Outclassed Sega In The Console Wars

Things started to go wrong for Sega pretty early on as the Saturn’s November 1994 launch in Japan put it in direct sales competition with Sony’s PlayStation, which was set to release the very next month. The excitement for Sony’s first-ever video game console outweighed the interest in Sega’s followup to its Genesis-Sega CD-32X hybrid pretty much everywhere except Japan, too. Sega tried to beat Sony to the punch by changing the US release date to May 1995, about four months before the PlayStation’s launch, but that only made things worse.

The Saturn had a smaller launch library with six games versus the PlayStation’s eight, which was partially due to the release date bump as many of its planned third-party launch titles had to stick with the original release projection. The Saturn’s library was no slouch once it got its footing, with several well-regarded games to its name like the Panzer Dragoon series and Virtua Fighter, but the PlayStation had more. Lots more. Then there’s the matter of cost, which put the Saturn about $100 (roughly about $185 more in 2022 money) higher than the PlayStation. So the choice was, on a surface level, at least, to pay more for less, or to pay less for more.

Then there’s the matter of the hardware itself. Sega wanted the Saturn to be able to compete with the PlayStation’s 3D prowess, but it was originally intended to be a sprite-based 2D machine. The internal tech was changed around a bit to give it more 3D power, but the result was a console that was more difficult to create games for, especially in 3D.