Following the all-around disaster of the Sega Saturn which had released in 1994 in Japan and 1995 in the West. The Saturn had sold poorly in the West, especially compared to the success of the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in North America), being relegated to a distant third place behind the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. The Sega Saturn was effectively killed off in the West by 1998, notably with Bernie Stolar's "Saturn is not our future" statement. In Japan, the Saturn fared a little better, holding its own against the PlayStation until the release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997, it however had beaten the Nintendo 64 for the second place position in the Japanese console market. Sega quickly moved to design a successor console.