An Observation on the Late '80s/Early '90s

During this time frame, the console wars were beginning full swing. What do you feel the companies did right with their new consoles and what do you believe they did wrong?

During the late 80’s and early 90’s there were numerous consoles released for the public to purchase. Some of them, like the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis were awesome. Others, such as the 3DO, or the New Geo did not do well. Nintendo and Sega did several things very right with their systems. They both advertised well, although Nintendo being the bigger company had a lot more advertising power. The other ones did not get pushed nearly as hard by their companies and pretty much fell off the face of a cliff.

They both had very nice libraries of games for the consumer to play. They also had several first party games that were awesome. Nintendo had Super Mario Brothers and Sega had Sonic the Hedgehog. The exclusive games and company mascots helped Nintendo and Sega set their respective consoles apart from the others. The other consoles did not have nearly as many games, nor did they have their own mascots to try and bring people over to their systems.

Nintendo spent most of their time advertising their consoles as more child friendly. They even had quality control standards to make sure that the games were not too adult oriented. Games were not allowed to be overly violent or suggestive. Sega on the other hand, tried to target the older audience, the teenagers and college students. Sega marketed their system as more adult and something more like what older people would be interested in. They did not have any restrictions on what content that was forbidden, giving developers freedom to do what they wanted. Other console makers did not advertise their systems nearly as well, therefor not as many consumers knew about the other systems.

A final reason why Sega and Nintendo did so well where others failed was pricing. Nintendo and Sega had systems that were affordable. The Neo Geo, for example, was $650.

So, in all honesty, Sega and Nintendo won out in the race due to their advertising, their pricing, and their game libraries. If other consoles could have emulated the combination that the other two did, then this article may have a bit of a different tone to it.

Sources:

Kent, S. (2001). The ultimate history of video games. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.