News Sega Wanted Phantasy Star IV To Flop In The West, Hence The Sky-High $100 Price

The claim that Sega wanted Phantasy Star IV to flop in the West due to its high price of $100 is not supported by evidence. In fact, the high price was likely due to several factors related to production costs and market conditions at the time:

1. Large cartridge size: Phantasy Star IV was a 24-megabit (3MB) game, which was considered large for its time. This required more expensive memory chips.

2. Battery backup: The game included a battery for saving progress, adding to the production costs.

3. Development costs: As a complex RPG, the game likely had high development costs that needed to be recouped.

4. Market positioning: RPGs were often priced higher than other genres due to their length and perceived value.

5. Component costs: In the mid-1990s, memory chips were significantly more expensive than they are today.

It's worth noting that while $99.99 was indeed the official retail price in the United States, this wasn't unique to Phantasy Star IV. Other games of the era, such as Virtua Racing, also had similar price points due to special hardware or large cartridge sizes.

Speaking on the Retro Hangover podcast, Ireland reveals that Sega of America was initially going to pass on publishing Phantasy Star IV in the US until he showed an interest:

The reason Phantasy Star IV came out the US from Sega was because of me.
It wasn't supposed to come out. They had rejected it. And I found out about it because I was dealing with Sega Japan a lot. I said, 'oh my god, I will absolutely license it. We'll do a cartridge.' I don't want to do cartridges because they're very expensive up front, but I know that this will sell a lot of games.
Then Sega Japan went to Sega US because they had an adversarial relationship, let's be honest. And they were like, 'well, look, if this is so bad, why is Working Designs all hot to get this game and bring it out to the US?'

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Sega US was like, look, okay, we will take this game, we're going to price it so high that nobody will buy it so we can be proved right in the end when the sales suck.

The PR was like, 'oh, it's because it's a big ROM, blah, blah, blah.' It had nothing to do with that. If we had done it, it would have been a $69 game, no problem. And they could have done it at $69, too. But they priced it at a hundred bucks because they didn't want it to sell.

They wanted the sales to be low so that Sega Japan was like, oh, Sega US was right. Well, surprise, they sold out. It was very popular, even at a hundred bucks... and I made some enemies at Sega US.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

The high price was more likely a result of Sega trying to recover costs and position the game as a premium product rather than an attempt to make it fail. In fact, Phantasy Star was a well-regarded series, and it would have been counterintuitive for Sega to intentionally sabotage one of their flagship RPG franchises.

It's also important to consider that game prices varied significantly during this period. While $99.99 was high, it wasn't unheard of for new releases, especially for games with larger cartridges or special features.

In conclusion, while the high price may have impacted sales, there's no evidence to suggest that Sega intentionally priced Phantasy Star IV at $100 to make it flop in the Western market. The price was more likely a reflection of production costs and market factors of the time.

Sega Wanted Phantasy Star IV To Flop In The West, Hence The Sky-High $100 Price

So says Working Designs' Victor Ireland

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