Sega nomad was Nintendo Switch in the 90's

[Stuart23]

Salnax said:

I get what you're saying. The fact that the Nomad flopped whereas the Switch most certainly succeeded can probably be spun into a number of narratives.

Did the Nomad fail because

• Sega had already moved on from the Genesis? (Absolutely)
• A general lack of 16-bit game development? (Probably, since the Nomad was awkwardly stuck between the 32+ bit future and the 8 bit handheld markets)
• The price was too high? (I doubt it, since the Nomad only cost $180, which is less than the Switch was in 2017 even adjusted for inflation)
• The technology wasn't there yet? (Based on that 30 minutes per battery performance, yeah.)
• The Game Boy renaissance brought by Pokemon? (Probably didn't help)
• It was an American exclusive? (Why was it never brought to other countries with strong Genesis fandoms?)

Battery and availability were two big factors, yeah. In a age people had to spend money weekly on batteries for their portable devices, how long was a very big deal. And to keep to release from very important markets for Sega like Japan and South America was dumb.

But if you ask me, the biggest reason of why it flopped was mostly the excessive amount of hardware Sega was releasing. One year before they released the 32X, the same year they released the Saturn, recently they also made the Sega CD and the Game Gear and Genesis were still getting some support, and that is not counting the accesories each of these hardwares were getting. It was way, way too much for cosumers to keep up and just alienated the fans, besides being a nightmare to invest on marketing on all of these at once.

Last edited by Stuart23 - on 17 March 2021