sega vs nintendo shouldn't even have been a debate

[Another Iori]

actually, over in hong kong it looks like sega's trying to revitalise it a bit! theyve recently put out this rhythm game called maimai and my classmates with no experience in any games, sega or not have been crunching in quarters to get a try at it. this is during a time when all the arcades in my area are just full of slot machines where old people try to win money, its especially loud both visually and auditory wise, just like the old days lol. and lets not forget the recent initial d games that sega is still putting out, years after daytonas heyday

and also yeah part of why the dreamcast was a failure was possibly because sega loved arcade games more than profits lol, so many arcade ports.

but a story that kind of gets me in the feels is how not really out of obligation sega saved snk and kof from fading away after jumping back from bankruptcy by giving them the atomiswave which was similar enough to neo geo hardware for snk to make neowave and 2003(at least from what i heard)

but ironically sega themselves probably had a hand in ending the arcade market after they put out the soul calibur port,,,

Post automatically merged: Apr 13, 2025

i never really thought about the third party games part, that actually makes a lot more sense than them being scared of sega lol

Kawasaki Eikichi was the father of SNK and things went quite well from the 70s to the mid-90s; however, towards the end of the century a series of mistakes were made, which eventually triggered the self-destruction of the entire company.

First they weakened themselves with the consecutive releases of the NEOGEO CD, the CDZ, the HYPER NEOGEO 64, the NEOGEO POCKET and the POCKET COLOR, the NEOGEO WORLD amusement park and then the coup de grâce came with the end of the fighting game craze, the general contraction of the arcade market and the final nail in the coffin: the scam by the company Aruze, which today calls itself Universal Entertainment (it has nothing to do with that other North American company).

I speak of a 'scam' because when SNK was short on cash, they asked this gambling company for help, but what they ultimately got was only stinginess, false promises and being suddenly shut down just to then see SNK's own characters used for slot machines, for which they were not initially paid

At this point, we are already in the 2000s and SNK has gone bankrupt; Capcom with President Tsujimoto and producer Okamoto, has the opportunity to buy SNK for 0 Yen.

However, once Okamoto Yoshiki spoke with Nishiyama Takashi (the current president of Dimps and a former SNK developer who made the company even greater during the nineties), he decided to show honor and respect toward Kawasaki and in the end, Capcom made no offer, leaving the path clear for Kawasaki to regain ownership of his SNK (even if during the 2001-2003 period he was forced to use 'placebo companies' like Playmore, BrezzaSoft, SNK NEOGEO and Sun Amusement to avoid inheriting the accumulated debts of that time).

During this period the quality of new releases also dropped due to brain drain and a lack of available funds, along with the outsourcing to rookie companies like Yuki Enterprise or foreign ones like the South Korean Eolith and Mega Enterprise or the Mexican Evoga (even though it was still surviving Japanese developers like Noise Factory who reprogrammed the final product).

Anyway despite this, in the end in Japan the NEOGEO titles still remained the most profitable games in the nation according to the benchmark of the time, which was the magazine 'Arcadia' of Enterbrain, furthermore, Kawasaki Eikichi was awarded nearly 60 million dollars from Aruze through his victory in court, but there was still one problem: piracy.

Therefore SNK decided to move into the 'fence' of Sammy (which only later merged with Sega), because Sam had just launched the then-new AtomisWave onto the market, which was a modified Dreamcast also featuring an internet connection that was made possible even in arcade halls and at that particular historical moment, it represented a secure machine (as it had not been emulated by any PC of those years).

In conclusion, Sega did not perform any resurrection spell on SNK, but they just exploited each other (as they had already been doing since the Sega Saturn era).

And anyway even Sega at that time was about to go bankrupt: due to the combined sequence of the 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast, but the wealthy president of the era Okawa Isao, took pity and dropped nearly 700 million dollars from his own pocket to keep the boat from sinking, however, he died in 2001 at the age of 74.

 

[Pearly]

There is this guy in YT call Ahoy. Is kind of hard to understand him without subs because talks in a very strange english. But for what I understand in one of his videos the Nintendo vs Sega thing was an America thing because the Atari blow-up because E.T. and americans only played in consoles or something like that. Meanwhile in Europa and Japan people played in PCs and Arcades. So Videogames didn't die, Atari consoles died and then Nintendo and Sega put their own consoles. I mean, what about Arcades? That was Capcom vs SNK, and like Best Girl said Sega vs Namco. And Dataeast making la rebaina of cool arcades that blow your mind. The Nintendo vs Sega paradigm was just uniformed normies gaslighting, we had videogames war everywhere!

This is very true. In the US there was the video game crash that happened, but this did not happen anywhere else, video games were still a thing in most countries that already had them.

Example, Nintendo was struggling to break into the UK and Ireland market, their console wasn't catching on, so a member of the marketing side of the UK distribution team mentioned packing a teenage mutant ninja turtles game with it, it was met with massive backlash from the Nintendo side of things, especially in Japan, but after some convincing, they agreed and they suddenly couldn't keep the Nintendo entertainment system in stock that Christmas. So it was the ninja turtles that made Nintendo a household name in the UK/Ireland and not any of their own franchises, those would become more popular with the SNES generation.

Also the console war stuff in general is just peoples penchant for tribal identity and this makes people be kinda mean for no reason. Though I would think the PC exclusive fascists are probably the rudest, calling people peasants.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Blame marketing

 

[Sumea]

This is very true. In the US there was the video game crash that happened, but this did not happen anywhere else, video games were still a thing in most countries that already had them.

Example, Nintendo was struggling to break into the UK and Ireland market, ...

...calling people peasants.

Aye. Heck, as I understand, Arcades were doing fine in US "During the crash" and the small home computer gaming market, Commodore, Atari 8bit, IBM PC's still young gaming markets were all doing fine, or, relatively fine given their numbers were not big anyhow.
"The Gaming Crash" is really just Atari Crash and some resentment that left behind it. And Atari was not such a big name in other parts of the world. Home consoles would be a novelty and not a big deal in Japan even if even Atari was imported in Japan. Not until something called a Family Computer happened from some guys who apparently also brought Donkey Kong Arcade cabinets into the market. Watch out those guys they might be onto something.
Commodore, Amiga, etc. were very popular if not number 1 in European region countries, changes a bit from country to country. Cheaper was always more popular. Games on cassette were just a few pounds in UK and same deal in other parts as were C64's etc. It seems SEGA was much more popular in many European countries than Nintendo, and it likely was because their stuff was cheaper. Maybe marginally cheaper, but cheaper still at that time won in this market.

I grew up with a NES because it was 199X. You can guess what made us end up with one in the 90's and how skewed my image of gaming history became for my early life. Apparently we had a Dendy first but no memories of that.

 

[PhaseJump]

Also the console war stuff in general is just peoples penchant for tribal identity and this makes people be kinda mean for no reason. Though I would think the PC exclusive fascists are probably the rudest, calling people peasants.

Mean for purchase validation, and confirmation bias at the behest of marketing departments.

PC Master Race & peasants is literally just a self deprecating joke about elitism by reviewer Yahtzee that turned into an internet meme. Nobody gaming on PC is a fascist for it. Most don't even give a shit about exclusives in general, other than to mock people who do while fighting each other over which locked down, technically inferior console platform is superior.

 

[Princess Viola]

This is very true. In the US there was the video game crash that happened, but this did not happen anywhere else, video games were still a thing in most countries that already had them.

Example, Nintendo was struggling to break into the UK and Ireland market, their console wasn't catching on, so a member of the marketing side of the UK distribution team mentioned packing a teenage mutant ninja turtles game with it, it was met with massive backlash from the Nintendo side of things, especially in Japan, but after some convincing, they agreed and they suddenly couldn't keep the Nintendo entertainment system in stock that Christmas. So it was the ninja turtles that made Nintendo a household name in the UK/Ireland and not any of their own franchises, those would become more popular with the SNES generation.

Also the console war stuff in general is just peoples penchant for tribal identity and this makes people be kinda mean for no reason. Though I would think the PC exclusive fascists are probably the rudest, calling people peasants.

What really doesn't help is that, for the longest time, basically everything you could easily find about the history of video games was written from a console-centric and Americentric perspective.

The 1983 crash wasn't 'a crash just in the US and Canada that predominantly affected the home console market but still had knock-on effects on the home computer and arcade markets in those countries', no it was 'OMG all video games were all but DEAD worldwide until Nintendo came along and released the NES in 1985 and SAVED video games'.

Anything else? Completely ignored.

Honestly even nowadays where we thankfully have people from other regions talking about the history of video games in their countries, you still often see people who have that old mindset and it's why you'll see shit like people being legitimately shocked that the devs of Clair Obscur didn't grow up playing Nintendo games, for example.

 

[Sumea]

Honestly even nowadays where we thankfully have people from other regions talking about the history of video games in their countries, you still often see people who have that old mindset and it's why you'll see shit like people being legitimately shocked that the devs of Clair Obscur didn't grow up playing Nintendo games, for example.

Yeah. Few things that also are not as focused on in this hyper focus and embellishment of recent history, is the fact how nintendo more or less created home console market in Japan. That there, they were that important, there was no market to speak of for home games in Japan before NES happened. Sega challenged nintendo on the same launch day with an outright advertisement to nintendo's console, that is how weak SG-1000 looks like next to NES even if it did have Black Onyx. Sega would mostly fail in homes of Japan while collecting W's in other markets, US, EU and even Brazil. On other hand, tons of challengers came for the king-by-default NES and while lot of them are foot notes even in Japanese history, there was dedicated scenes for games now all around and NEC creating PC engine. Very successful in Japan while hardly anything outside of it. And more importantly, likely, without such companies like NEC challenging Nintendo there would not been that careful confidence Ken Kutaragi and his few backers in Sony to launch Playstation 1 and cause worldwide change in the markets.

Really, with the context how Atari was along few others the American originators of the commercially successful video games, it really did become Japan's game which makes one appreciate Microsoft kicking and choking from lack of oxygen on dry land they are on. Microsoft being part of the current console trio is nice in quaint way. That somehow they could bring back the American video game.

So yeah... Even Japanese history is simplified if not entirely ignored and misunderstood for nuances that backed up Sony into the market. Nor are British tech wizardry that brought many amazing cheap computers to masses talked about much even when that same wizardry is behind many big hits Nintendo had from them; Star Fox, Donkey Kong Country.

 

[DanCalibur]

People think stuff was always like it is today but, in those times, the real money and the bleeding edge tech was in the arcades, for companies like Sega, consoles were a secondary market. In the end, Sega was loosing two wars, the decline of arcade revenues crippled its main business while the PSX made it much harder to compete in the home market.

 

[UnDubious]

That graphs matches what I actually saw - arcades were still significant in the mid '90s, and only really became more niche by the end of the decade. This is largely because by the end, they no longer had this crazy tech advance over home hardware that they used to have. This myth of the arcades only mattering in the days of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong has always annoyed me.

 

[Sumea]

That graphs matches what I actually saw - arcades were still significant in the mid '90s, and only really became more niche by the end of the decade. This is largely because by the end, they no longer had this crazy tech advance over home hardware that they used to have. This myth of the arcades only mattering in the days of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong has always annoyed me.

Yeah. There was also this convergence in technologies big money buys versus what you can get in home. Playstation was just insane tech for 1995. A lot of arcade platforms already started to reduce costs for operators to entice more business from them, Neo Geo being a big popular one for it's interchangeable multi game system. Other companies actually had similar offerings but they are not as famous and some like capcom's CP systems were still single game for single cabinet deal. A lot of companies actually took Playstation 1 and used it as basis they customized for their arcade offerings. But over all, it was clear trying to RnD your own high end cutting edge stuff in this age of 3D was much more risky than taking something from the shelf and maybe tweak it for your own needs. And maybe focus on something arcade environment uniquely can offer (Light Gun games, etc.). The smarter players in arcade business saw where things were and were going to. Others gambled like SNK on their own 3D 64bit successor to Neo Geo that by the time of it's release was already outdated tech that failed to look substantially better next to PS1 based boards. At this point throwing expensive hardware into your device just did not make the same difference against home consoles and PC's as they used to.

Sega's move was about as smart as it could be at that moment in time. Have essentially same hardware for both arcade and home, arcade one having bit more oomph under it and make it also easy to develop for so both arcade and home devs are attracted to it, as well as make it easy to port games from arcade to home. Which to be honest, worked. Capcom was on board with many others. Even Nintendo. It was clear that arcades needed to find their purpose or be lost. There is wild amount of arcade platforms that are "just based on available console". Like Sega Chihiro (xbox), numerous Konami system boards that are PS1 or PS2 systems.

Indeed, the history of dwindling arcades in west and weirder new era in Japan is hosted by mostly PC based arcade hardware. Namco has some PS3 based hardware. Konami had few PS2 based machines that ran DDR. And vast majority was now purpose built PC's and that is to this day still the deal with arcade machines. In west tail end of arcades was still about pre-internet gaming mingle, playing some Marvel vs Capcom 2 with your new homie, etc. In Japan, Arcades are to this day still slightly a thing due to cultural quirk of older people having far less time in their home, and living far more of it outside their home. Your friends could be living in three different directions from the train station so it made just more sense to hang out in the town and go home from there, and the town had you covered with karaoke restaurants arcades and everything else. Of course, home consoles had their place too, though this is also why handhelds especially PSP and Vita did so much better in Japan. And these days arcades are starting to die in Japan, and major favorites are stuff like rhythm games and other games with unique gimmicks you cannot get at home.

TL;DR: During 90's the gap between arcade and home systems outright jumped into same ball park. By 2000's the cutting edge was being released to homes first by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Technology just flipped a wild ride for latter half of 90's and first half of 2000's. Never ever have we had such an insane speed in technological advancement.

 

[Pearly]

Aye. Heck, as I understand, Arcades were doing fine in US "During the crash" and the small home computer gaming market, Commodore, Atari 8bit, IBM PC's still young gaming markets were all doing fine, or, relatively fine given their numbers were not big anyhow.
"The Gaming Crash" is really just Atari Crash and some resentment that left behind it. And Atari was not such a big name in other parts of the world. Home consoles would be a novelty and not a big deal in Japan even if even Atari was imported in Japan. Not until something called a Family Computer happened from some guys who apparently also brought Donkey Kong Arcade cabinets into the market. Watch out those guys they might be onto something.
Commodore, Amiga, etc. were very popular if not number 1 in European region countries, changes a bit from country to country. Cheaper was always more popular. Games on cassette were just a few pounds in UK and same deal in other parts as were C64's etc. It seems SEGA was much more popular in many European countries than Nintendo, and it likely was because their stuff was cheaper. Maybe marginally cheaper, but cheaper still at that time won in this market.

I grew up with a NES because it was 199X. You can guess what made us end up with one in the 90's and how skewed my image of gaming history became for my early life. Apparently we had a Dendy first but no memories of that.

As far as I was told my brother about back then, too young to even notice the prices of anything, Sega was noticeably cheaper than Nintendo. You could get sega mega drive with 6 games for cheaper than a SNES with no games, was pretty much how it was for some time.

And as you said, cheaper did better, the xbox 360 dominated that generation for that same reason, cheaper.

 

[Fietto!]

Nope, but it was good publicity.

 

[Sumea]

As far as I was told my brother about back then, too young to even notice the prices of anything, Sega was noticeably cheaper than Nintendo. You could get sega mega drive with 6 games for cheaper than a SNES with no games, was pretty much how it was for some time.

And as you said, cheaper did better, the xbox 360 dominated that generation for that same reason, cheaper.

Yeah. I get this picture from what I seen given out in recycling centers etc. It just seems sega stuff is in such plenty it did not have huge collector's pricing or evaluation like PAL Nintendo does.

No wonder Sony did such a domination tour even in Europe. Though, europe loved it's piracy, and there was very large culture of installing modchips and someone for nominal fee burning you copied games and such. It was enough that only European versions of some games have additional anti piracy measures (like Ape Escape), and it seems the very familiar bootup screen in playstation games about PIRACY HARMS was only in PAL/EUR games. On the long run though, that made a lot of playstation fans that were ready to pay more with PS2 and grow up into young adult keeping the playstation in mind. Some even crazy enough to get PS3 instead of 360 on the launch year.

 

[Deleted member 913503]

Sega vs. Nintendo pushed games to be better. We need that back.