Also taking the San Francisco podium was Sega of America Inc president Tom Kalinske, who told the gathering that the company expects continued strong demand for its 16-bit Genesis video game system and forecast that it would continue to outpace the emerging 32-bit machines – he reckons that the new games players from the likes of 3DO Co are too expensive for the average consumer – Sega of America has outsold the 3DO player by some 50 to one, he claims, suggesting that consumers continue to support the Genesis system because of its relatively low price tag of under $200 against $700 initially and $500 now for the 3DO Multiplayer; Sega also plans to spend more than $3.25m on marketing next year in the US to support its home video game system, Kalinske added, noting that Sega expects to publish 10 to 12 software titles this year that will sell more than a million copies each; Sega is of course working on its next generation game system, the Saturn, but Kalinske recalled that it won’t be released in Japan until next year and in the US only sometime after that; on the on-line tack, Sega is expecting more than 1m subscribers by the end of this year for the new Sega Channel, which is to be offered US-wide in the next few months – Kalinske said cable companies have been eager to offer the new channel because it does not require too much transmission spectrum and so displaces fewer other channels; the cable channel will enable users to play some 50 different games a month on the Genesis system for a monthly fee.
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