Reddit mentions of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation

I read about Sega and Nintendo in the book The Console Wars. The book does a good job of telling how Sega of America (SoA) did the impossible job of taking the console fight to Nintendo, and through some genius marketing was able to take majority market share with the Genesis. However, according to the book, the Genesis never really took off in Japan like it did in the US because the Japanese executives did not want to follow SoA's sales strategies. The book really makes it seem like Sega of Japan (SoJ) really held a grudge against the American office and started to actively fight against their ideas. IMO, the biggest mistake Sega made was when the SoA President found a company making an incredible next gen processor that he wanted to use in the Saturn. For petty reasons, SoJ didn't want to use it. Feeling guilty for getting the processor company's hopes up, the SoA President had them call up a friend of his at Nintendo. That processor became the technology in the Nintendo 64. Had that processor actually been used in the Saturn, I bet Sega would still be around.

The horrible launch of the Saturn was just one of many missteps caused by the friction between SoA and SoJ. It seems to me that the inability for the two offices to work together was the real reason Sega failed at the console market.

TL:DR: IMO, Sega failed at consoles because Sega of Japan office didn't want to listen to any advice or work together with Sega of America.

I'd recommend two sources that cover the reception with relation to the competition: Jeff Ryan's "How Nintendo Conquered America" and Blake Harris's more recent "Console Wars."

One of the things that Ryan focused on is Mario 64's innovation (indeed, Nintendo's promotional materials focused on this too) -- it' was one of the first games where you could control the camera in all directions. Mario 64 was one of the few games available at the console's launch, and it showcased the new console hardware and possibilities that weren't available on the Playstation or Saturn. I can't speak to the greatness it immediately received, but a lot of the early reviews certainly focused on its innovative features and newness that otherwise wasn't available on other consoles or, for that matter, Mario Games (while Mario RPG was 3d, this allowed complete control over his moves and attacks)

It was the Genesis which allowed that though. If you exclude the Japanese market, where Sega was downright abysmal in the 16-bit generation, the sales numbers of the Genesis vs the SNES were actually fairly competitive. And up until the mid 1990s, Sega even overtook Nintendo in terms of sales figures at certain points.

But one thing to take into consideration is that compared to either Sony or Microsoft of the PS3/360 era, Sega was at a massive disadvantage starting out. During the mid 1980s through early 1990s, it was Nintendo or nothing. Nobody owned a Master System or even Genesis when it was released. Nintendo was becoming synonymous with video games. At one point, according to the book Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation, Nintendo accounted for 10% of Walmart's profits. Think about that for a second. That a company had such power, that they could impose their will on Walmart of where to place their items, and how much to sell their items for.

For Sega to come back and be even nearly as competitive as they were was nothing short of amazing. And they solved it the exact way as you stated the PS3 & 360 of doing, of creating demographics. Nintendo, or even video games in general, were for kids. Sure, arcades in the 70s and early 80s had teenagers in them, but you played your video games, and you moved on with your life. Sega targeted those children becoming teenagers, who grew up with video games, but now kept with video games. I'm part of that generation. I don't know many people, even just half a decade older than me, who play video games, but I know tons of people younger than me who do. That's not to say none do, rather, it's just far more uncommon.

And when I was in high school, more people I knew owned Genesis's than SNES's. It's sort of like the PSX vs N64. In terms of sales figures, the N64 was a massive disappointment and could be considered a failure. If you look at reddit threads though, the N64 is talked about with great reverence though while the PSX has moved into obscurity. In my opinion, a huge part is because things like the Genesis and PSX targeted the older generations who already grew up with video games. It wasn't their first love, thus didn't create many lasting memories or leave a huge impression on people. So, we forget about the true impact it actually did have.

Nintendo did intentionally create shortages, though. The book Console Wars describes it
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700
IIRC it was because the video game bubble of the early 80s was caused by an oversupply and they didn't want that to happen again

To anyone interested in the history of that battle, I'd recommend Console Wars.

Furðulega fáir sem vita að það má þakka þessum íslending fyrir Playstation. Samkvæmt þessari bók átti hann líka stóran hlut í að koma leikjum eins og Wipeout á framfæri.

Read this book. It's all about why Sega was great for a time. Plus it's a really good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

Anyone who grew up in this era should read Console Wars by Blake Harris

It really depends on what kind of subject matter and presentation you're looking for. For my money, the gold standard of all video game history books remains David Sheff's ["Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World"] (https://www.amazon.com/Game-Over-Nintendo-Conquered-World/dp/0679736220/) which, despite the ominous title, is a phenomenally well-researched and compellingly written account of how Nintendo came out of nowhere in the early 80s to resurrect and dominate the home gaming industry worldwide.

The more recent Console Wars is also a good one, covering in great detail the 90's era 16-bit rivalry between Nintendo and Sega in the US.

These are both fairly well known books; my favorite "off the beaten path" books are all 3 volumes of the "Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" series, which are giant tomes full of lengthy, staggeringly in-depth interviews with dozens and dozens of largely unknown developers behind very well known Japanese classics of the 80s and 90s. Pure treasure for anyone particularly interested in Japan's golden age output.

My Shield K1 tablet had to be RMA'd for a screen issue, so I'm without a gaming tablet for the next week or two. So instead of actually gaming, I've been reading some history on it instead, via Console Wars by Blake J. Harris.

It's a good read and I'm enjoying it a lot, though I'd prefer a more "pure" history and less of the embellishment and/or "simulated" conversations.

Also, not retro, but I managed to (somehow) finish Hitman: Absolution this week. I don't know what's wrong with me. I love stealth games in concept, but I'm so bad at them, and never really get better. It's been this way pretty much since the first Tenchu. Oddly though, I don't have this issue in 2D; Mark of the Ninja was a blast to play through.

I urge everyone who was alive during this period, or just in general has an interest in gaming history to read Console Wars. It's a fantastic book from the perspective Sega during their 90s rivalry with Nintendo. It chronicles the creation of Sonic to just about up to the dreamcast. It's a really engaging and fun read. READ IT.

You should read Console Wars by Blake J. Harris (the audio book version is also really good):
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

A great background can be found in book Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation.

It covers the strategy of each of the big 80s and 90s video console creators, their partnerships or lack thereof, and the choices made in technology. Basically everything in the comments but with depth and color!

There's a book and a movie coming out starring seth rogen:

http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450203413&sr=8-1&keywords=console+wars

Fwiw. This was a really good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

Life is Strange Complete Season (Episodes 1-5)

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My favorite book? That is a hard question since I myself own a good bit of books and have a large amount of books which I own but I would have to say that it would be Console Wars since is a good read about the old Nintendo-SEGA rivalry

Until 1994 Sega had 54 percent market share. Nintendo didn't catch up until 1995. This Play it Loud campaign emerged the same year. PlayStation also emerged the same year and Nintendo didn't have a 5th gen console to put up for another year.

The book Console Wars details Nintendo's thought process in creating more aggressive marketing, and how Sega's aggressive marketing helped to propel them to first place.

Buy a copy.

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

You might enjoy the book Console Wars ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062276700/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_rWkzxbGJ69PT3 ). It covers the 16-bit fight between Nintendo and Sega, but it gives an inside look at the relationships between the Japanese and American branches of both companies.

I know this is no filter because it wasn't taken using Snapchat.

This should be under $15 CDN and its super awesome.

Merry Fridaymas! This weekend is going to be more of the same - job apps, gym, and trying not to disappoint my mother which is getting more difficult by the day. Bleh. I guess an exciting thing I may do is heat up that dairy free- gluten free almost paleo frozen pizza I bought on a whim last night. xD

/u/beautifullystrange89 Have I told you lately that you're strangely beautiful? ;)

This question really piqued my curiosity, because it reminded me not to take the things I know for granted. Being born in the early 80s, and having been introduced to videogames by older siblings and my parents in that decade, and then being involved with videogames either in the industry or as an avid enthusiast, the obscure (and most times useless) history of the medium is something I've taken for granted.

Recently, as older millennials and younger Gen X'ers have reached maturity (or middle age), there have been a surge in books, documentaries, and other materials about videogames... As they're seminal in many of our lives and so now we're looking back and writing these nostalgic retrospectives. Many are trash, even some of the best are still trash, but I'd recommend a few of them... The following are either entertaining, informative, or some balance of both:

• Blake Harris' Console Wars Amazon, a book released in 2014 that details the rise and fall of Sega of America. I think the writing is rough, at least, it tries to Aaron Sorkinize too much of the history and comes off insufferably cheesy at times, enough so that I just had to put the book down and shake my head with douche shivers, but because Harris' has one on one interviews and access to Kalinske, the head of SoA at the time, you get a lot of first hand details that just aren't available anywhere else.
  
• David Kushner's Masters of Doom Amazon, written in 2004 was one of the first contemporary books to get into the details of the videogame industry. This was mostly an untapped medium when Kushner was writing the book, as writing about a videogame company was just not in fashion in 2002 or 2003. Like Console Wars, the conversations are fictionalized but most match up to the actual events detailed in the book. It follows the origins and rise of id software, one of the most influential western developers who more or less invented the first-person shooter (even if they weren't truly the first, they certainly popularized the genre and most of what we take for granted in the first-person genre, id pioneered and introduced). id's fingerprints are on thousands of modern games, and the two founders of the company -- John Carmack and John Romero -- are often considered father's of modern action games, they also have a tumultuous relationship with one another, at the time often likened to John Lenon and Paul McCartney, and so the story of id software is also the story of their personal relationship.
  
• Gaming Historian YouTube Channel (google it, it should come up). Many of these videos are dry and some border on clickbait, but the majority are well researched and provide a good nugget of history into videogames.
  
• The King of Kong Documentary. It's not completely factual and it takes artistic license to make a better story, but it's probably the best videogame-focused movie ever made, even despite those inaccuracies. Why you should watch it? It's a great introduction into competitive gaming in the 1980s and how videogames worked. There are other materials that have informed this movie and you can start with the movie and just google questions, and because the movie was so popular there's a lot of interesting research that goes into the mechanics of it.
  
• NoClip, a Youtube Channel. NoClip has only been around for a year or a little more, but they're well funded and produced videogame documentaries... Most focus on some new aspect of gaming, but still walk back into the influences of the developers, which aren't cheesy... they're well informed and well made. Particularly, the interview with the developers of CD Projekt and how being under the heel of communism influenced how they built games and ultimately what makes a game like The Witcher so compelling.
  
• SuperBunnyHop YouTube Channel. Guy who does breakdowns of videogames and his informative retrospectives are some of my favorites. He introduced the concept of, "But what do they eat?" to me, which goes into a wider theory about creating realistic or believable game worlds. If you're in any game world, walking around, and there are creatures living there, if the game subtly answers the simple question "But what do they eat?" it makes the game world so much more believable because it's an indication that the developers/designers have really put more thought into the believability of their world. Most great games answer this central question or punt on it in a convincing way.
  
• Joseph Anderson YouTube Channel. His video breakdowns of games are just so good. He's probably most recently gotten notoriety by being critical of Super Mario Odyssey, at least, critical enough to say "the game isn't perfect..." And after playing Odyssey and feeling kinda meh on it after a while, I watched his video and it just felt so apt for me. He also does great analysis of mostly recent games, but most of those are informed by previous games, and goes into the mechanics of balance, pacing, mechanics, and the simple systems that inform most good game.
  
• RetroGame Mechanics Explained YouTubeChannel. These are typically technical breakdowns of how concepts in retrogaming worked, and are usually pretty involved. Not always light watching but informative.
  
• Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube Channel. Breakdowns of videogame theories/concepts, largely.
  
  This is by no way supposed to be an exhaustive list, just a list of stuff that I enjoyed and others might too... Part of these videos/movies/books is video game theory, part is history, part is just sheer entertainment value, but I think anybody who is into videogames enough to talk on 'True Gaming,' would probably enjoy most of those.

Have you read Console Wars?

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700


SEGA was struggling even before the SNES, they never stood a chance.