SoldierMWS
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2020–2026
0:51 · 1.2M views · Feb 20, 2013
A one-minute clip of Sony's keynote at E3 1995, where Steve Race takes the stage, announces the PlayStation's $299 price and leaves. It followed Sega's Saturn announcement at a higher price.
Cited as shorthand for one of the most effective moments in console marketing and for how a price announcement can sink a rival.
5 comments from Hacker News
SEGA's history with their previous console and console add-on completely burned consumers. There was the 32x addon for the Genesis and the SegaCD which SEGA did not support very well. This burnt consumers. There was also a lot of fighting between SEGA of Japan and SEGA of North America at this point. They then did a surprise launch for the $400 Saturn months earlier than expected. Retailers were not prepare, developers were not prepared and consumer were not prepared. Due to the shortage of available units SEGA only allocated unit to big box retailers. K.B. Toys was so angry that they vowed never to sell the Saturn and really never sold it. Developers did not have their games ready for the surprise launch and were pissed off about it. SEGA handles the launch so badly that at E3 that year for the Playstation keynote on the upcoming launch Sony just went up on stage and said "$299" and left the stage after. Here is the clip this video The Saturn was horrible to develop for due to its complex and cobbled together design and SEGA's development tools were lacking and developer had to make their own tools. Sony on the other hand made sure developers got everything they need to take advantage of the system. SEGA then prematurely announced the death of the Saturn before the Dreamcast was even officially announced.This was a fuck you to developers once more who still had games under development for the system. The Saturn did not even get an original Sonic game....likely really SEGA later
This mostly. Although our view on this might be biased, the were reportedly severe tensions between Sega of Japan and the West (mostly America). As the story goes, the Japanese HQ wanted to assert dominance over the imperitent westerners, since after all the American video game market crashed while Japan succeed. When SGI first contacted Sega of America with their 3D hardware they were thrilled and tossed it to HQ, which shot it down since the Saturn was supposed to bring the arcade experience into the living room and didn't need 3D. SGI then showed their stuff to Nintendo... Then when Sega saw that Sony and Nintendo did 3D, they panicked and bolted on some 3D capabilities last minute resulting in an architecture that makes the PS3 look easy to code for. Then at E3 1995, they suddenly announced an earlier release date for the console than what was communicated to all the developers pissing those off, with a release price of 399. This lead to Sony's legendary press conference for the PS1 directly after Sega's: this video
Meanwhile I guarantee sitting on a university campus I’m going to see a sea of these colours sitting on desks and tables by people putting in some serious work. In this age of price hikes on components and hardware, this is Apple’s “price heard around the world” like they were on stage at E3 in 1995.[1] Ironically they pulled it off with Sony’s worst price at an announcement… five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars . [1] this video
My favorite “console wars” story that I came across a while back, and is relevant to pricing advantage, is when Sony more-or-less immediately killed the Sega Saturn before it’s US release. Right after Sega’s E3 presentation announcing the Saturn, US release date, and it’s $399 price tag, it was Sony’s turn. The guy from Sony walked up to the mic, said “$299”, and walked off stage. [1] [1] this video
It's just below "$299" < this video > among the greatest moments of console marketing. (The single greatest moment isn't one moment, but turning an obscure technical description into "blast processing". < [LINK] >)