Why did Squaresoft snub Sega?

[Umatbru]

Final Fantasy VII was initially meant for the Nintendo 64, but when they ran out of cartridge space, they moved straight to the Sony PlayStation with out consulting Sega and their Saturn. Why?

 

[Flintlock]

How do you know they didn't talk to Sega about it?

 

[Geostigma]

Why not.

Sega didn't sale very many Saturns. Sony sold a shit load of Playstations. Easy choice.

 

[Jason Tandro]

I can think of numerous reasons why they would have gone with Sony over Sega. But I wonder if this didn't have something to do with it:

Bernie Stolar, a former executive at Sony Computer Entertainment of America,[89][96] was named Sega of America's executive vice president in charge of product development and third-party relations.[90][91] Stolar, who had arranged a six-month PlayStation exclusivity deal for Mortal Kombat 3[97] and helped build close relations with Electronic Arts[36] while at Sony, was perceived as a major asset by Sega officials.[91] Finally, Sega of America made plans to expand its PC software business.[90][93] Stolar was not supportive of the Saturn due to his belief that the hardware was poorly designed, and publicly announced at E3 1997 that "The Saturn is not our future."[36] While Stolar had "no interest in lying to people" about the Saturn's prospects, he continued to emphasize quality games for the system,[36] and subsequently reflected that "we tried to wind it down as cleanly as we could for the consumer."[96] At Sony, Stolar opposed the localization of certain Japanese PlayStation titles that he felt would not represent the system well in North America, and he advocated a similar policy for the Saturn during his time at Sega, although he later sought to distance himself from this perception.

 

[Nanaki Skywalker]

Sega shot themselves in the foot when they launched the Saturn 4 months ahead of schedule, and at select retailers at that. Retailers who were excluded from the early launch were none too happy about it, and KB Toys in particular retaliated by pulling Sega products from their shelves entirety. Third parties were also pissed, because their games were being developed on a schedule with the September 2 launch date in mind. Sega's cheap early lead did not stick at all when the PlayStation was launched.

 

[ForceStealer]

A lot of it is self-inflicted, but I often feel bad for Sega's misfortune. They seriously seemed to come up with everything first and only ever bit them in the ass. Sega Channel was a freaking miracle in the 90s, and was like a 90s Playstation Store or XBLA. Their 80s handheld was backlit, something the gameboy didn't do until the freaking 2000s (it also ate D batteries for breakfast, but still). The Dreamcast was the first console with a built-in modem. And so on.

 

[Lex]

^All of this. I was a Sega child so there's some inherent bias there (the Sega vastly outsold Nintendo consoles in the UK for some reason, Nintendo just didn't do much marketing here) but following their history it's amazing how innovative they really were. A lot of their ideas were ahead of their time. For anyone interested in Sega's glory days in general, this is an excellent watch:

He's also making a documentary.

To this day Sega of Japan continue to make terrible business choices, but I'd get so much joy if they were to rise again. I still remember using the internet to download/play Chu Chu Rocket on my Dreamcast. How the fuck they managed to do something like that in 1999 blows my mind.

(Fun fact, the dreamcast swirl, logo and game cases were blue in the UK as opposed to red in North America. No clue why. This included the intro screen. My friend had one of the red ones from the US and as a child we used to argue because I was convinced it must be a knock off due to the fact that I'd never seen a red one and since Sega is blue why would it be red? XD)