Former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri Speaks About the Saturn, the 32X, and Sega of America's Financial Troubles
https://mdshock.com/2023/07/10/irimajiri-speaks-out-about-the-saturn-the-32x-and-soas-financial-troubles/Finally we get the Japanese side of things. Turns out: Sega of America wanted to push for the 32X in America, because they thought people couldn't afford a brand new console. Doesn't sound like Sega of America forced the 32X, on Sega of Japan, since Sega of Japan always had the final say, but convinced them with some delusional scenario.
Tom Kalinske was asked to resign for not restructuring the company. Sega of America weren't making as much money, because of the toys stores returning huge amounts of inventory of the Genesis, resulting in a loss.
>A possible solution was to add a GPU, a graphics chip, that could specialize in handling the heavy graphics calculations. However, it was far too late to begin development on something like that, so it was decided to use a second Hitachi SH-2 CPU in place of a GPU. The architecture of the Saturn was revised to include two SH-2s, and that’s how the Saturn was released. So, in Japan, the 3D capabilities of the Saturn were boosted.That decision also destroyed the Saturn, because 3rd party developers hated working with two CPUs.
>link
Fascinating business decisions.
>because 3rd party developers hated working with two CPUs.
Parallel processing is still today a bitch and overloading the guys writing the code is not fair.