May 11th - The First E3

Today in 1995, the first E3 happened. Now, if you are not familiar with E3, it's the time once a year when video game companies show off all their stuff, and people who care about video games get either really happy or angry depending on if they are satisfied with it. That being said, something funny happened at this first one. Okay. So Sega, who was still making video game consoles, were announcing that they were going to sell their then new Sega Saturn in the United States for $399, which is like $700 in 2022 money. Sony decided to be hilarious for their Playstation keynote speech. They had their president of video games come up to the mic, utter "$299", and walk away. The PlayStation ended up selling 93 million more units than the Saturn. [EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m delighted that we’ve got this story for today, but this doesn’t cover just how much of a flop this choice was for Sega. See, the company didn’t just announce the price that day– they decided on the US release date. Not announced, decided. And here’s the thing: they already had a release date, but when Sony announced the US release of the Playstation at the same event, executives decided that the Saturn had to come out now. They had to beat the Playstation to market and catch everyone by surprise by making the Saturn available for purchase immediately. While this may have seemed like a stroke of genius to Sega president Nakayama, it was a bloodbath in practice. A surprise launch means you don’t get a lead-up to drum up hype, and more importantly, you don’t have time to prepare and order stock. So because Sega was desperate to show off and grasp at Sony’s market share, they shot themselves in the foot HARD. PO’d retailers got loads of customers and little to no stock, with only four big box retailer chains in the country carrying the console and launch library. And that’s not even TOUCHING the factor of the Sega 32X confusing the market. God, what a train wreck. Sega never recovered, and their next console would be their last. Some say that those words still haunt Sonic the Hedgehog’s dreams: “$299…”]