Sega was retarded not to migrate Sega Channel over to Saturn, and I'm tired of pretending they're not.

>>11839017 (OP)
and what would it have done?
internet speed at the time couldn't have streamed a CD based game, unless you mean allowing genesis games to be played?
but at that point just make the cartridge slow backwards compatible too
there was netlink if that's what you're talking about too, that's just multiplayer though

Did Sega ever make a single smart decision back then? They fucked up more than Atari.

>>11839028
>sega channel
>internet speed
lol
>based game, unless you mean allowing genesis games to be played?
That or distributing smaller games for the system

>>11839017 (OP)
>streaming 32-bit console games with fucking cable or satellite in those days
Good fucking luck with that, it was barely viable with 16-bit.

>>11839047
>>11839028
I fail to see the point in either decision, if people wanted to play Genesis games, they would just play games on the Genesis they most likely already had. Making the Saturn compatible with the Genesis would not do it any favors, it would either hinder and complicate development of newer 32-bit games, or it would make the console more expensive by tacking on 16-bit hardware it didn't actually need. Optionally some sort of built in emulator, but that still costs money to develop and include, and it's just not necessary.

This is like the Powerbase Converter, sounds like a cool accessory on paper (and I actually want one), but if someone wanted to play Master System games, then they most likely already owned a Master System. If you were interested in a Saturn, what are the chances that you didn't already own a Genesis?

Would Sega Channel have saved the Saturn?

>>11839047
Yeah it'd be cool to play games by installing onto a 4mb cart. Lots of Sega arcade games as downloadable content and they could offer ost somgs to play in the start up menu. That'd be so fucking awesome. We all know Sega screwed the pooch hard with the cd042x/Saturn debacle. It's the best "what if" on /vr/. >"What if Sega wasn't retarded?"
>"What if phantasy star V was released on the Saturn?"

>>11839074
>cd042x
CD/32x/Saturn*

>>11839017 (OP)
They should have started with "migrating" good games over to it 1st.

is this accurate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAkrHbpaFEg

>>11839017 (OP)
Too good to go on the Shiturn.

>>11839017 (OP)
It wouldn't be viable, you'd need a way to store and transfer nearly 700mb of data. This is the mid 90s mind you and would be a very expensive affair for all parties involved. Even today shuffling even mere megabytes of data around the internet still adds up quick.

You need to stream that data:
>most folks had slow 28kbps dial-up, downloading anything larger than thumbnails and text was a minutes long affair
>broadband was reserved for businesses and was expensive
>cable internet is spotty (and was ironically spearheaded by needs of the genesis sega channel)

And a way to store it:
>ram is not cheap, workstations of the time were barely pushing past 512mb and were obscenely expensive and unnecessarily fast for CDs
>HDDs were fragile and complicated to integrate and would bloat out the costs

>>11839017 (OP)

The problem would be the storage space. The device would have to at least store 2GB for multi disc games. I guess it would just mount the disc image in a virtual drive.

Sega Channel was ingenious on the Genesis because of the relatively small ROM sizes of each cart combined with broadband bandwidth through cable TV. It was really fast at downloading ROMS and web page information. It was an incredible concept back when it launched in 1994-1995 or whatever.

>>11839017 (OP)
>throwing good money after bad
>using a system that takes 5 minutes to copy 500KB game to a 200-700+MB system.

>>11839047
While it was dumb of them to say internet speed - it was worse than that because the concept of Sega Channel is that it had to cycle through broadcasts for downloads like TeleText etc... basically it just cycles through shit and you pick up bits until you have the whole thing. It's not like a direct-download thing over cable TV. You could consider a form of "network" and what we're really discussing is bandwidth here ultimately, so going dur hur doesn't really address their point - the bandwidth was low.

>>11839129
It wasn't so much an incredible concept - downloading games on a service was a thing since the 1980s even. All that Sega Channel did was copyprotect and do it for consoles... and even that wasn't a new concept. Intellivision's PlayCable (1981-83) The GameLine (1983)
and other's were around Sega Channel as well - The Nintendo Satellaview (1995-2001), Nintendo's RandNet (1999-2001)...

>>11839017 (OP)
Saturn had Net Link. It's the same thing.

>Streaming
>Streaming
>Streaming
>Streaming
>Streaming
It didn't stream you idiots, it would not have been possible to stream even an atari game with internet connections back then, it downloaded the game locally.

It also didn't use dialup, it connected to the coaxial cable from your cable TV provider and used that for internet, not unlike modern cable internet.

That being said it still would not have been possible to do for the Saturn at the time. Even if it wasn't dialup the speed would have still been far far too slow for even CD-based games. Not to mention, just where would you have even stored the downloaded data? We didn't have gigabytes of flashrom back then, and even the smallest CD games would be far too big to fit on the rewritable storage chips we had at the time, they would have had to put a freaking harddrive in the thing, and even then it would barely be able to hold one game with the size of harddrives at the time, unless they only had some very tiny games, with the music removed.

>>11839187
>Saturn had Net Link. It's the same thing.

It's not. Netlink was a 28.8kb modem that could connect to the internet via its' own web browser, and it could link multiplayer games together. Sega Channel is a subscription based download service that has a continually changing selection of games, the device uses a cable modem.

https://youtu.be/mNi-fScecho?t=2


>>11839168
>Intellivision's PlayCable (1981-83) The GameLine (1983)

Sure, I guess the Intellivision PlayCable uses the same type of system, by downloading ROMS through a cable TV line. The GameLine just used a phone line. Intellivision's PlayCable would be the closest to Sega Channel out of all of those listed services. From what I remember of the Sega Channel, it was still a large undertaking for Sega of America and the cable providers to get it up and running.

It would need a hard drive which would make it expensive. It would also fundamentally change the service from what they envisioned. Sega Channel...ie as easy as flipping through channels on tv, jump from one game to the next quickly. 5th gen games were getting big and larger time investments, how long would a Saturn game take to download on that early cable internet? How many games could fit on the hard drive? Would you have to keep deleting games to try new ones? Sega would have to make a pretty complex and ahead of its time UI for all of this functionality.

It seems tech was just a little behind for a true 5th gen on demand video game service. I'm not saying it's impossible but with the Saturn failing in the west there wasn't much incentive to try. Maybe a Japan only sega channel for Saturn might have worked and a good testing ground but I don't know if cable tv was even popular there.

>>11839017 (OP)
They should have hitched with St. Giga for that satellite stuff

>>11839047
you know what i meant nigger

>>11839129
>It was really fast at downloading ROMS and web page information
>really fast
having played it back in the day, not really