It's time once again to go back to this past. This time, our destination is 1995, the Los Angeles Convention Center for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3.
We are smack in the middle of the bit wars, with Nintendo and Sega's 16-bit consoles, the Super NES and Sega Genesis, are starting to see their powers wane. It was time for the new era of gaming consoles to take shape, with exciting, 32-bit machines on the horizon. This event would see Nintendo showcase the Virtual Boy, and we all know how that turned out. Sega would announce the surprise launch of the Saturn, its long awaited follow-up to the Genesis (or Mega Drive for you Europeans out there). But it was the new kid on the block that would grab the attention.
It's hard envision a time when Sony was a new player in the gaming console market, but here they were ready to introduce their first console, the PlayStation. There's a whole story behind its development, I've already talked a little about it so no need to revisit it now. It's not super relevant to this story, but it is very important to remember that for all its prowess in making other electronics and all the marketing budget they threw at their console, Sony had never done this before.
Then-Sony of America President Steve Race was to introduce the new console, which had seen some success in Japan. He watched as Sega's Tom Kalinske gushed about the new Saturn, how cutting edge it was, how powerful it would be. He announced the Saturn was launching early and that as he spoke it had already arrived in some US stores, retailing for the bargain basement price of $399(just under $700 in today's money). That was a far cry from the $800 people were paying to import them from Japan. It wasn't a bad presentation, but it would pale in comparison to what would come next. I've heard different stories as to why Race did what he did, but it would go down in gaming history. There was no talk of specs, nothing about games or bits or processing power. Race simply walked to the mic, shuffled his papers and calmly uttered one, single number before walking away: "$299."
People in attendance lost it. It was so simple, yet such an effective piece of guerilla marketing (or what at least seemed like guerilla marketing). And for a lot of people, it made their decision for them. $100 less is a huge deal, especially for people that aren't hardcore gamers. Sega fanboys were going to buy the Saturn no matter what, but what about everyone else? And lets also remember, gaming was not the hobby it is today. Nowadays, just about everyone has a gaming console in the house. Some of them may be overpriced Netflix rebroadcasting machines, but they're there. It wasn't like that in the 90's, there was a real rush to get into houses that didn't already have systems. For people like that, price was everything.
So, that leads us to the question: was "$299" really that important to the 5th generation of the console war? I think so, though it wasn't the only reason. Simply put, price is the major deciding factor for the majority of consumers. A relatively serious gamer might care about stuff like frame rate or textures or processing or whatever, but your average consumer that just wants to watch movies and play a few games of Call of Duty or Madden is just going to buy what's the cheapest (I guess in those days it would have been listen to CDs and play a few games of Doom, but you get the point). If you are going based on sales, the highest priced system (at launch) has won one of the last five console wars...and that's misleading, because the PS2 launched almost a full year before the XBox and GameCube and the XBox ended up launching at the same price. Other than that though, our winners:
8th Gen: PS4 ($399 at launch, cheaper than the XBONE but more expensive than Wii U)
7th Gen: Wii ($250 at launch, cheaper than the XBox 360 and about half the cost of a PS3)
6th Gen: PS2 ($299, same as the XBox and $100 more than GameCube or Dreamcast)
5th Gen: PS1 ($299 at launch, Cheaper than the Saturn but more expensive than N64, which came out substantially later and had games that were crazy expensive)
So, while it's not the end all and be all, price is important to a lot of people. And it was even more so in the 90's when brand loyalty wasn't quite as strong for gamers. For all the diehard fans out there Sega only managed to move 9.5 million Saturns. Nintendo fared better, selling just under 33 million Nintendo 64's. The (then) new kids on the block? Almost 103 million. For perspective, if you combined the sales of the Saturn and N64 then doubled them, it still would have been 20 something million units short of the PlayStation. That is absolutely insane.
However, I can't say it was entirely about price. As we've seen, the absolute cheapest console doesn't always sell the most. There was a marketing element to this all too. I can't say for sure if Race was trying to sound "cool" or not, but if he was, he really pulled it off. That press conference fundamentally changed the way gamers of the time looked at these companies, especially Sony and Sega. Throughout the 90's, Sega had assailed Nintendo at every opportunity with barbs about its family friendly nature. We all remember "Sega does what Ninten-don't," right. Instead of dorky plumbers stepping on turtles, they had hedgehogs with attitude and "real" sports games with guys like Joe Montana on the cover. They had the version of Mortal Kombat with blood and all the uncensored fatalities. Simply put, Sega tried to, and largely succeeded in, position themselves as the baddest console on the block. Sony sort of took that crown from them at E3.
We also have to look at the consoles themselves. You know, I always remember having a huge Sega fanboy in my 3rd grade class. He was among the 9.5 million Saturn owners out there and he let everyone know it. We always used to scoff as he tried to convince us his Saturn was the most powerful console, far more powerful than the lowly PlayStation. Here's the thing...he was actually right. I'm not going to say it's better across the board, but generally, the Saturn is a more powerful machine than the PlayStation. I won't get into specs, but they favor the Saturn in most departments. The problem is, the Saturn was also substantially more difficult to develop for. I've done some research as to why and after about an hour of reading, I'm just going to come out and admit that I don't understand the exact reason. If you are interested in diving deeper into a pool of programing language and technical jargon, head on over to Google. It's cool stuff, but for this analysis, the why just isn't that important.
As for the N64, there's definitely no need to get that deep into it. The issue developers had with that console can be summed up in one word: cartridges. The big N was dead set on making their system cartridge based, sticking to tradition while their competitors moved to CD based games. Simply put, that was a massive mistake. For one, they don't have as much memory and can't produce as clear sound. They were incapable of having video or cutscenes, something that would become a huge sticking point for many third party developers. Lets just put it out there, if the Nintendo 64 were a CD based console, some of the PlayStations top titles would have come out for it instead. We would be talking about Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII and others as classic Nintendo 64 games, not PlayStation games. We also have to jump back to price for a second, as cartridges are substantially more expensive than CDs. At the time, PlayStation and Saturn games usually sold for around $50, while N64 carts were between $70 and $80. Yuck.
All of this greatly impacted the game library of each console. I already discussed Nintendo losing some of its flagship 3rd party series', but it went beyond that. There were times where it felt like the N64 had almost no 3rd party support at all, aside from Rare, which is its own ball of wax. The N64 was buoyed by its first party games, and boy did they ever do a good job with those. Super Mario 64, Zelda: Ocarina of time, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64, the list goes on and on. There may not have been as many must have games for the N64, but the ones that were out there were absolute classics.
The Saturn...had no such luck. How do you have a Sega console without a Sonic game? Just how? I mean a real, honest to goodness Sonic game, not Sonic R or Sonic the Fighters or an upscale of Sonic 3D Blast. Look, Virtua Fighter is great. So are Daytona USA and Fighting Vipers and Panzer Dragoon Saga and whatever else they had on the Saturn. But those are the games that keep you hooked. They're the games that the more dedicated gamers want. Your average Joe in 1995 was buying a Sega console for Sonic. A hardcore or serious gamer is going to pick up Nights...Into Dreams and probably have a great time with it once they get the odd controls down. But that other guy is going to pick up that same game, get pissed off that he keeps crashing into stuff and put the controller down while wondering "what kind of drugs were they on when they made this game?"
But the PlayStation's library checked all the boxes. It had 3rd party exclusives out the wazoo, big triple A titles like the ones I already discussed. Looking for a mascot platformer? Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Sports games? You had the EA options as well as Sony's first party games like MLB and NFL Gameday. RPGs? Don't even get me started. The PlayStation's absurd library just couldn't be matched by its competitors in terms of variety, and that was largely because it was just easier to make games for. That made it appeal to a broader range of gamers both hardcore and casual alike. I've never played it, but I'm sure the Saturn port of Street Fighter Alpha runs at a smoother framerate than its PlayStation counterpart. Does the average gamer care? No. And is that worth paying $100 more for? Definitely no.
So, it's back to our original question: was "$299" really that critical in deciding the 5th gen console war? Yeah, it was. Price is, was and always will be the biggest sticking point for the average consumer. That's not to say that the lowest priced item will always win out, but price will almost always be the first thing someone considers when making a purchase of something like a video game console. That was even more true in the mid-90's, where gaming systems were considered little more than expensive toys. That's not to say price is the only thing. Selection and game variety are also important, two areas where the PS1 excelled. I don't think it's as big a factor nowadays, but ease of development also played a major part here. As did the marketing itself, as Sony really carved itself a niche in the gaming industry after its mic drop press conference. But at the end of day, we come back to that number. Price may not be everything, but it was a critical part of why the 5th generation of gaming (and the future of the gaming industry) shook out the way it did.
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