| Soundwave said: I've always found the claim that Sega sold 40 million Genesis/MD systems to be a bit ... odd. Granted I'm going off memory, but I strongly recall the number Sega gave at the end of the Genesis/SNES generation was that Genesis sold 30-33 million or so total. Somehow that turned into 40 million over the years. Well this cites shipment figures directly from Sega (and Nintendo) per Famitsu magazine and one other source:
So Sega was at 28.5 million at the end of March 1996. Nintendo was at 42.30 million. I find it it implausible that the Genesis sold another 12+ million between March 1996-1998 or whatever. No way. The SNES only shipped another 6 million or so after and the Genesis was even older and losing momentum quicker. 33 milllion always sounded correct to me, not sure what Sega is using today to claim 40 mill (classic system re-releases?). |
I remember thinking about this recently and coming across this old post on: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-9132.html
Wikipedia's 29 million is wrong.
Genesis: 19 million
European Mega Drive: 9 million
Japanese Mega Drive: 3.58 million
Majesco's sales: 2 million
Nomad: 1 million
Brazil: 2 million
That's 36.58 million. But what's missing?
Australia (Ozisoft handled it)
South Korea (Samsung handled it)
India
Other Asia
So if we assume they sold 1 million in each of those regions, we have 40.58 million units sold.
This is Wikipedia's sole source for the 29 million number.
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multimedia/2007/05/gallery_game_history?slide=21
It's not exactly sturdy.
We can give them a better source, with better, more accurate numbers.
