Okay, what is the deal with Bernie Stolar's hate on RPGs and 2D games in the 1990's?

[AkihitoZero1224]

The guy literally hates those two so much to the point he doesn't want those games in those categories getting a US release on the PS1 and Saturn, why does he hate those two so much? He seems to have a 3D superiority complex or something.

 

[DarkTownStrutters]

 

[moonbits]

because they didn't sell well and wanted the playstation to focus on 3d

 

[FarJyyUir]

Cause he wanted SEGA to stand out amongst the competition?
Really inappropriate joke
Too Soon?

 

[PhaseJump]

2D games were sitting in warehouses, not being ordered by retailers, and heavily associated with 16-bit generation.

3D games were the new cutting edge thing across the entire industry, in the arcades, and on computers.

RPGs were niche and never sold well in the west until Final Fantasy 7 figuratively tricked everybody into buying a copy with it's cinematic cutscenes.

 

[Metroid_Hybrid]

Long-story-short: He was an closed-minded boomer who may have been a shrewd businessman, but otherwise didn't know what the hell he was talking about in terms of what gamers actually wanted..

 

[TruxtonTatsujin TruxtonTatsujin]

An over obsession with new technology, you still see it to this day. Chasing it never ends well yet people in positions of power never learn.

 

[UnDubious]

2D games were sitting in warehouses, not being ordered by retailers, and heavily associated with 16-bit generation.

3D games were the new cutting edge thing across the entire industry, in the arcades, and on computers.

RPGs were niche and never sold well in the west until Final Fantasy 7 figuratively tricked everybody into buying a copy with it's cinematic cutscenes.

Were they actually sitting in warehouses? They rapidly became niche games in general when 3D came out, and gamers are obsessed with the new thing or the next thing, but they still had fanbases that bought them, which is why they were still being made. RPGs were niche in the West but not as niche as people pretend. A lot of 16-bit RPGs received official Western releases, all in all. Final Fantasy 6 (bka 3) actually sold well in the West, too, even if it was 7 that finally made the genre really popular over here.

Mostly it was an image/marketing thing. The PSX needed to be the cool new thing, and it needed to cater to self-conscious teenagers and whatnot. 2D was old, and RPGs weren't cool yet.

 

[dejiko]

simply bad taste nyo...he probably tastes bad himself, nyo!

 

[bjork]

For what it's worth, he stopped doing that altogether.

 

[NotReallyHere]

because they didn't sell well

Yep, this. Or the mentality of it, at least. The Genesis thrived largely on the sales of sports titles in the US, so the prevailing notion was that American gamers wanted more of that with the Saturn.

As someone who owned a Saturn back then - and had no knowledge of / access to the import market - I quite literally didn't know what I was missing. Yes, there were a few Saturn RPGs released in the US (Shining the Holy Ark, Panzer Dragoon Saga) but it wasn't until I got into the import scene in the early 2000s that I realized just how narrow the US release library really was.

But hey! We got World Series Baseball! And Madden '98!! C'mon, Sega...

Still feels weird playing the US version of Panzer Dragoon Saga and collecting "Stolarium" from random chests and loot boxes. Of all the people to give a shout-out to in a 32-Bit RPG...