SNES Street Fighter 2

[Sut]

The Genesis had a 2 year head start. Think of that; two years. Not only were there more SNES consoles sold, there were more SNES games sold. That's an incredible statistic with a console that was on the market for TWO YEARS less than the Genesis.

In comparison to today's consoles yes two years is a big headstart. But that doesn't tell the full story of the Genesis / SNES war.

Nintendo had a 95% market share and an iron grip on third party developers. For the Genesis to even get a foothold in that market place was an achievement but to at one point have a 55% market share was nothing short of a miracle. So I think you overstate Sega's advantage the pure fact they could go toe to toe with Nintendo with both the hugely popular NES and newer SNES was down to brilliant marketing and brilliant games.

I do agree that Donkey Kong Country was the tipping point for Nintendo to finally wrestle back their superiority. But I would conclude it was a combination of Donkey Kong's brilliance and Sega's own misfires for moving onto the 32x and cannibalising their own market. That led to Nintendo pulling away on the home straight of the generation (not dis similar to the PS3 and 360).

[jon]

Whatever. We can debate whether the exclusivity deal is fair or not but I don't care. And again, these super duper, unfathomably amazing RPG's. It's like, the best thing since sliced bread. Well, I can't get sales numbers on them and the ones I can are mixed with Japan, but they were inconsequential as far as who took the lead in America. Fanboyism aside, it's clear that SF2 was basically when you look back at it an SNES exclusive, at least it was viewed that way by the general public. Even the Turbo Edition, similar to Sega's Championship Edition, was released a month before.

[JWK]

Jon, your ignorance of RPGs notwithstanding, you're taking a single piece of the puzzle and saying it's the whole picture. Yes, Nintendo's exclusivity deal with Capcom on SF was a big help when the SNES was getting off the ground. But to say that's what made the SNES sell 10 million more units than the Genesis makes no sense, even if you assume that every one of those 6 million sales of the first SF2 also represented a new SNES sold-- which it didn't. And again, the more impressive statistic is that the SNES sold more GAMES overall than the Genny, when Sega had a 2 year head start. Nintendo's generation end lead wasn't due to one game. It was due to all the games.

@sut - I agree with you in part. Sega had a middling 8 bit console but they got serious with the their marketing when they went 16 bit. And to get the market share in NA like they did (55 percent wasn't worldwide, mind you) was an impressive statistic no matter how you slice it. But for the first two years, it was the Genesis vs. the aging NES. It wasn't difficult to see the difference in horse power and one was quite old while the other was brand new. It's impressive regardless. But I don't know a single kid that was simply waiting for two years to see Nintendo's 16 bit response. If someone wanted to upgrade to the next gen console, they had done so with the Genesis. I think Nintendo's comeback with the SNES was almost as impressive as Sega dethroning Nintendo in the first place. And you're certainly right about Sega's add-on woes. I think the Saturn's problems stemmed directly from losing consumer faith that Sega would stick with a platform and not abandon it within a few months like they did with the 32X.

[scotland]

In comparison to today's consoles yes two years is a big headstart. But that doesn't tell the full story of the Genesis / SNES war...That led to Nintendo pulling away on the home straight of the generation (not dis similar to the PS3 and 360).

Great post Sut.

It makes me want to go read Console Wars. I began but had a technical difficulty.

If I recall, Sega was so focused on tomorrow as well as being a company divided that it failed to leverage the Genesis to its full on that generations home stretch. The flip side is we have seen other companies fail to look to tomorrow enough when they had that bird in hand - the Atari 2600 first off.

Oddly, we now see Nintendo looking past its current console, in the generations mid game and long before a home stretch, looking to tomorrow.

[ptdebate]

the Genesis was known as for mature gamers

If that truly was the perception, Sega certainly had nothing to do with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCzhwVCH6g

Notice that you don't see adults playing games in any videogame ads from the 90s. That's because barely any adults purchased these systems with the intention of playing it themselves. Games were, for the most part, still perceived as children's fare. They still are by many.

[Sut]

these super duper, unfathomably amazing RPG's. It's like, the best thing since sliced bread. Well, I can't get sales numbers on them and the ones I can are mixed with Japan, but they were inconsequential

Jon does make a interesting point in there. It would be interesting to see sales figures for both systems broken down by genre.
It is widely accepted the SNES had the upper hand with RPG's but conversely Sega's system was viewed as better for sports and shooter titles.
RPG's are remembered more fondly than sports titles and are always more collectible but no one can underestimate the importance of having a good selection of sports titles as they are often big sellers and bring gamers together.

[jon]

By mature gamers, I meant someone of any age who liked games geared at a more mature audience and not just 5 year olds. If you take just one game out of the mix, SF2, the SNES lacked games that appealed to that audience. Throw in sports games too, the Genesis was great at sports games, and the SNES was in my opinion, below average in that respect. Without that advantage, and again, SF2 was basically an exclusive, it really could have had an image problem as being for kids. Games like Super Mario Kart and the Donkey Kong Series were a turn off for me, in much the same way as a lot of N64 games. At that time, there was a shift to more darker, hardcore games. The Genesis, Neo Geo, 3do, Jaguar, etc. all were catering to that audience. Also were the arcades and Computers. Really, you could make the argument the SNES skated through those years without an image problem because of that game.

[JWK]

The irony is that those "games catering to five year olds" have aged better than most (if not all) of those Genesis sports games. I think "it has better sports games!" and "it has blood in Mortal Kombat!" were good arguments in the Genesis' favor vs the SNES at the time. But not so much today.