[GreyHorace]

So youtuber I Finished A Video Game did a lengthy retrospective on Sega's Panzer Dragoon series.


Overall, a pretty comprehensive and well researched video as usual from this guy. But I liked that he also goes into detail as to how Panzer Dragoon's failure as a series mirrors that of Sega's fall from grace as a hardware giant. Some facts that surprised me while watching this:

- Though Sega dominated the American market in the 80s with a 3 to 1 market share over Nintendo, they were still a distant 2nd in Japan to their bitter rival. This is what drove the Sega of Japan leadership to create the next gen successor to the Genesis (Mega Drive in Japan), the Saturn.
- The Saturn was originally designed with 2D graphics in mind, but Sega panicked once the market started to move in the direction of 3D graphics. Add to the fact they now faced stiff competition from companies like Atari with it's newly announced Jaguar console; and Sony, who was entering the videogame industry with the Playstation.
- To compensate for the Saturn's lack of graphics power compared to it's competitors, Sega decided to insert a 2nd graphics processor into the hardware. This would bite them in the ass later on as it made the Saturn notoriously difficult to program for plus much more expensive to manufacture.
- The boxart for Panzer Dragoon in Japan was actually done by the acclaimed French artist Jean Giraud aka Moebius, whose graphic novel Arzach was a huge influence on the Panzer Dragoon developers.
- The Saturn needed a hit to attract consumers, particularly a Sonic game. However, Sonic creator Yuji Naka was not interested, as he and his Sonic Team chose to make Nights into Dreams instead.
- In response to Naka's refusal, Sega of America internally developed a Sonic game for the Saturn called Sonic Xtreme. This game used the same engine as Nights into Dreams, which reportedly angered Yuji Naka and he demanded the project be scrapped or else he would resign. All of this rumor of course and Sega has never revealed the real reason why the game was cancelled. This is one of the many events that soured the relationship between the Japan and US branches of Sega.
- The Gamegear handheld which Sega developed in response to Nintendo's Gameboy could never compete with the latter on the handheld market. Aside from it's short battery life and high price point, the Gamegear was considered a kid's product in Japan and taken seriously by gamers.
- By 1996, Sega was supporting SIX game systems. The Genesis, the 32X, the Sega CD, the Saturn, the Gamegear and the Nomad. This led to confusion among Sega development teams as they were unsure of which system they should make games for.
- The development for Panzer Dragoon Saga (called Azel: Panzer Dragoon Rpg in Japan) was a nightmare. Developers Team Andromeda had no idea on what kind of battle system to implement in the game. Fortunately, salvation came in the form of Akihiko Mukayama, a veteran designer on games such as Sakura Wars and Magic Knight Rayearth whom Sega reassigned to help on the project. It was Mukayama who came up with Saga's unique real time battle system. However, this would cause a delay and Saga would miss it's 1997 release by a whole year.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga was also the only rpg at the time to be fully voiced.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga was released in 1998 to huge critical acclaim, but bombed in sales. Sega had hoped to cash in on the rpg boom started by Squaresoft's Final Fantasy 7, which at that point had sold 10 million units. But Saga's delay and release in 1998 meant it couldn't stand out amongst all the rpgs released at the time.
- The Sega Saturn's fate was sealed in America by Sega of America head Bernie Stoller, who flatout stated that the Saturn was not Sega's future. He wanted to focus instead on the Dreamcast, which was still in development and would not see release in 3 years.
- After Sega left the hardware business and focused solely on being a software publisher, they were contracted by Microsoft to make exclusive games for the newly released Xbox console. One of the new internal Sega studios formed during this reorganization was Smilebit, composed of former members of Team Andromeda who made Panzer Dragoon.
- Smilebit would work on Panzer Dragoon Orta for the Xbox, with Akihiko Mukuyama, the man who saved Panzer Dragoon Saga's development, in charge. The gameplay was a seamless blend of the battle systems found in Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Saga. However, Mukuyama only focused on this aspect of the project and not the story, which he admits was weak in comparison to the previous entries.
- Panzer Dragoon Orta released in 2002 to critical acclaim but poor sales. Gamers on the Xbox just didn't respond to this rail shooter in the way that Sega hoped.
- Yukio Futatsugi, who once headed Team Andromeda and the development of the Panzer Dragoon series, would go on to form Grounding Inc. in 2007. He then announced in 2010 they were working on 'Project Dragon' a new game for the Xbox 360 which incorporate it's Kinect sensor. The project would come out in 2013 as Crimson Dragon for the Xbox One, and for all intents and purposes it was a spiritual successor to Panzer Dragoon.
- Crimson Dragon was a critical and commercial failure and failed to generate a sequel like Futatsugi hoped.
- A Panzer Dragoon remake was announced on Nintendo's E3 Direct in 2019 made by MegaPixel games. It released on 2020 to mixed reviews, though word is it's sales exceeded expectations. No news on a remake of the sequel Panzer Dragoon Zwei has been announced.

You all should give a video a watch if you want a history lesson on how Sega fucked up their position as the top dog in the videogame market. As for Panzer Dragoon, I thought the first game was fine but it was Saga that I thought was fantastic title. I'd love to see a remake of it.

 

[BlackDow]

Looks like it will be a great video to watch.
Nintendo did a similar thing. You're welcome PS fans.

 

[GreyHorace]

Looks like it will be a great video to watch.
Nintendo did a similar thing. You're welcome PS fans.

By that you mean the deal Nintendo struck with Sony for a CDRom Drive which led to the creation of the Playstation? Yeah, but from what I read it was Sony who were the bad guys in that scenario. They told them that they'd take all the profit from the CD Drive sales, which of course Nintendo wouldn't agree to.

EDIT: Meant them and not Sony in the last sentence.

 

[BlackDow]

By that you mean the deal Nintendo struck with Sony for a CDRom Drive which led to the creation of the Playstation? Yeah, but from what I read it was Sony who were the bad guys in that scenario. They told Sony that they'd take all the profit from the CD Drive sales, which of course Nintendo wouldn't agree to.

I read it was both. Both couldn't agree for the ashes the Play station. Either way. Way the Philips cd I had some shot Nintendo games

 

[DonDonDonPata]

The malice between SEGA USA and SEGA Japan is the core reason, it all circles back to that. They bickered at the height of their success which resulted in constant missteps for the rest of the hardware line.

I guess in fairness to them it would be impossible to predict how declining Arcade and Playstation's domination would effect them, SEGA wasn't the only company to make that mistake. Atari and NeoGeo were two other arcade companies that suffered even worse than SEGA did against PSOne. Saturn handily outsold the N64 in Japan and did pretty well for the first two years in the USA versus Playstation, it's only a "failure" in the sense that it was a huge decline for SEGA.

Perfect SEGA Timeline would've gone something like this (in my headcanon): SEGA doesn't bother with SEGA-CD or 32x and focuses solely on limping the Genesis along with first party games and Game Gear (and GG hardware revisions) keeping the brand healthy until Saturn. Saturn comes out with a focused development pipeline slowly transitioning from Genesis and GG which still provide some healthy income for SEGA. Yeah Playstation still comes out and probably dominates, and yeah N64 still takes a big chunk of the USA market maybe, but in those early years Saturn could've improved the brand reputation of SEGA as a sort of "defense" against their competitors. By this time maybe the handheld market would've been viable for SEGA in a pre-PSP world, maybe not.

Dreamcast could've then come out before Playstation 2 like it did, maybe with backwards compatibility with a robust worldwide Saturn library. Again, Playstation could've still dominated but it would've been more like Genesis vs SNES or PS3 vs 360, where the worldwide sales and competition (and libraries) were more closely matched.

 

[GreyHorace]

The malice between SEGA USA and SEGA Japan is the core reason, it all circles back to that. They bickered at the height of their success which resulted in constant missteps for the rest of the hardware line.

I guess in fairness to them it would be impossible to predict how declining Arcade and Playstation's domination would effect them, SEGA wasn't the only company to make that mistake. Atari and NeoGeo were two other arcade companies that suffered even worse than SEGA did against PSOne. Saturn handily outsold the N64 in Japan and did pretty well for the first two years in the USA versus Playstation, it's only a "failure" in the sense that it was a huge decline for SEGA.

Perfect SEGA Timeline would've gone something like this (in my headcanon): SEGA doesn't bother with SEGA-CD or 32x and focuses solely on limping the Genesis along with first party games and Game Gear (and GG hardware revisions) keeping the brand healthy until Saturn. Saturn comes out with a focused development pipeline slowly transitioning from Genesis and GG which still provide some healthy income for SEGA. Yeah Playstation still comes out and probably dominates, and yeah N64 still takes a big chunk of the USA market maybe, but in those early years Saturn could've improved the brand reputation of SEGA as a sort of "defense" against their competitors. By this time maybe the handheld market would've been viable for SEGA in a pre-PSP world, maybe not.

Dreamcast could've then come out before Playstation 2 like it did, maybe with backwards compatibility with a robust worldwide Saturn library. Again, Playstation could've still dominated but it would've been more like Genesis vs SNES or PS3 vs 360, where the worldwide sales and competition (and libraries) were more closely matched.

To be honest, I side more with Sega USA than with Japan on this issue. The company at the height of the Genesis had the clear advantage in the US market yet failed to capitalize on it. SEGA Japan instead on focused on dominating the local market which is why the Saturn was designed as it was. And I think the subsequent generations proved that the US Market would become more lucrative for videogames as time went on.

Add to the fact that many of the senior Sega developers were woefully naive and ignorant of the changing tastes in gaming during this period. I've posted this before, but remember when then head of Sega USA Peter Moore told Yuji Naka to fuck off in a meeting?

Why Peter Moore once told Sega's Yuji Naka to "f**k off"

In late February, right in the middle of the Game Developers Conference, it was revealed that EA's chief competition of…

www.gamesindustry.biz

And Naka is not the only one. One only look at the failure of Shenmue 3 to realize how much Yu Suzuki is stuck in the past with his outdated ideas. The only Sega veteran who seems to have kept up with the times is Toshihiro Nagoshi. Sure, his Yakuza (now Like A Dragon) series may be a quirky niche title that is uniquely Japanese, but there's no denying how much of a success it's been outside of Japan.