Re:Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Bea...
by bitwize on Monday July 27, 2015 @01:35PM
(#9956676)
Sega handed Nintendo its ass during the early 90s in the USA by positioning themselves as the modern video game company for the 90s, full of rebelliousness and attitude. This was reflected in their positioning of characters like Sonic and their admittance of games with blood and other violent content like Mortal Kombat.
The only problem is 'tude only gets you so far, and without a cohesive technology strategy to see them through into the next generations, Sega faltered big time, stretching themselves too thin and spending resources on wacky go-nowhere strategies like the 32X. The Saturn had weak 3D capability but more memory, allowing for impressive sprite-based games the PlayStation wasn't capable of; yet such a system was difficult to position in the American market and Sega never recovered from that.
Also Nintendo realized that gamers were getting older and starting in the late SNES era, loosened some of its content restrictions, negating Sega's edginess advantage.
Still, I think more Gennys were sold to Americans than SNESes, so Sega may have been able to say in some sense that they "won" the fourth console generation in that market. The true pain for them would come from trying to stand against Sony in the fifth and sixth generation eras.
The only problem is 'tude only gets you so far, and without a cohesive technology strategy to see them through into the next generations, Sega faltered big time, stretching themselves too thin and spending resources on wacky go-nowhere strategies like the 32X. The Saturn had weak 3D capability but more memory, allowing for impressive sprite-based games the PlayStation wasn't capable of; yet such a system was difficult to position in the American market and Sega never recovered from that.
Also Nintendo realized that gamers were getting older and starting in the late SNES era, loosened some of its content restrictions, negating Sega's edginess advantage.
Still, I think more Gennys were sold to Americans than SNESes, so Sega may have been able to say in some sense that they "won" the fourth console generation in that market. The true pain for them would come from trying to stand against Sony in the fifth and sixth generation eras.