The 16-Bit Console Wars - Why Sega Were Equal To Nintendo

[Spark Of Spirit]

Europe has always been Sega-Land until Sony came around and stole their crown after the Saturn blunder.

Japan though, I think the TG16 put a pretty big dent in any lead either might have gotten. Though, I do think Sega Of Japan's management fumbled the ball a lot and Hudson took some of their stock away. The SNES won, but it was probably the only time in Japan where two consoles (three if you consider the TG16) actually had competition. Japan tends to pick a side at the beginning of a generation and that's that.

Here it was evenly split, but it wasn't as one-sided as Europe nor as chaotic as it was in Japan. Honestly, I wish it would go back to two companies instead. Keeping track of three is way too messy as Japan showed here.

[Avaitor]

Wait, does Europe hate Nintendo or something?

[Lord Dalek]

If you want some perspective about how Sega actually had a fairly strong hand, Nintendo only beat it by a mere 9,000,000 units. That's the closest margin of ANY console generation (by comparison the PS2 outsold its nearest rival by over 4x in its lifetime).

[Lord Dalek]

Wait, does Europe hate Nintendo or something?

Yup. Europe (and Brazil) is the only region where the Sega Master System actually outsold the NES by a large margin.

[Spark Of Spirit]

If you want some perspective about how Sega actually had a fairly strong hand, Nintendo only beat it by a mere 9,000,000 units. That's the closest margin of ANY console generation (by comparison the PS2 outsold its nearest rival by over 4x in its lifetime).

IIRC most of those came by the tail end of the generation with Nintendo pushing the pre-rendered Killer Instinct/DKC and pseudo-3D FX-chip graphics as revolutionary. The lead they had was very close at any other time in the generation.

When people claim the SNES was a disappointment sales-wise compared to the NES (or N64 which doesn't make a lot of sense considering) they don't tend to remember that Sega took a huge chunk out of that userbase at the time. The NES will always be one of the highest selling systems world-wide because it only had competition in like two places in the entire world. Nobody has had that advantage before or since.

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Wait, does Europe hate Nintendo or something?

NoE was under some heavy mismanagement in the 80s and 90s I believe. A lot of games weren't localized due to having to translate into at least 4 different languages.