Which competitor is more responsible for the demise of Sega?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Illusion said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Yeah, I agree that Sega was only real competition for Nintendo for one generation.  I've never played a 3D Sonic game, but it's obvious that they weren't received nearly as well as their 2D counterparts.  However, the main point I was making is that, in terms of first party output, Sonic was the closest competitor that Nintendo ever had.  The Sonic games were the best games of the 16-bit generation, but I do think the SNES had more S-tier and A-tier games than the Genesis did.  This is mostly because I think the SNES had better third party support.  I mean, what does Phantasy Star 4 get compared to?  Final Fantasy 6.  I personally think Final Fantasy 6 is a better game, but Nintendo wasn't making RPGs that were as good as either one.  If you strip away all games made by third party companies (including things like Super Mario RPG), then I think Sega and Nintendo are really close in the 16-bit era.  They both made their share of great games, and sometimes I would give the win to Sega (e.g. Sonic, Shining Force) and sometimes I would give the win to Nintendo (e.g. Zelda), and there are other games that don't have a good first party counterpart on the other system (e.g. Metroid, Punch Out, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, etc...).

You know, I really think that Sony prematurely disrupted the contest between Sega and Nintendo.  I am not certain that the Dreamcast would have been beaten so easily by Nintendo if Sony was not in the picture.  I think that Nintendo would have won, but the Gamecube would have lost market share compared to previous generations and Sega would have still been in the race.

Nintendo was so weak in the latter N64 and Gamecube eras.  Really, from about 1999 to 2006, Nintendo's home console market was facing the darkest period since the NES other than the Wii U era.  Honestly, in a lot of ways the Gamecube painted an even darker picture for Nintendo's home console market than the Wii U because the Wii U basically only failed because of poor hardware, the Nintendo brand was still strong and popular.  That said, during the Gamecube era, Nintendo had great hardware and games but gamers were rejecting the brand.  Millennial gamer kids were growing up and were looking for something more mature than what Nintendo could offer and third parties were just done with Nintendo.  Sega has always been a bit edgier than Nintendo and western third parties definitely had a better relationship with Sega back then compared to Nintendo.  Also, while the GCN had decent RPG's, some of the best ones were from Sega (Skies of Arcadia, Phantasy Star Online).  I am sure that if was the GCN vs. Dreamcast, the DC would have been the RPG console and likely would have rocked the market with its versions of GTA3, Grand Tourismo 3, Final Fantasy X while the GCN would have still been struggling with it's "kiddie" image.

Maybe this should be it's own thread, but in my opinion if Sony was not in the picture, the 6th generation would have looked something like:

- Gamecube: 50 million

- Dreamcast: 40 million

-XBox: 70 million

What would have happened if Sony had never entered the market?  Not sure, so I'll come back to this in a minute.  However, I do think if the Dreamcast had a normal lifespan for a console (i.e. Sega had handled their financials better), then the Dreamcast would have ended up ahead of both the Gamecube and the XBox by a little.  (And of course the PS2 would still have clobbered them all.)  The Dreamcast had a strong start and sold around 13m in 2 years.  That 2-year game library looks pretty good to me too.  I think it could have outdone both the Gamecube and XBox, since neither of them sold too well either.

What about if Sony had never entered the market?  At that point it would have been up to the third party companies to play kingmaker.  I'm not sure how that would have gone down.  Nintendo was staying with cartridges, but Sega screwed up the launch of the Saturn pretty badly.  Who would third parties have chosen?  I'm not sure, but my guess is that some would have gone with Sega and some with Nintendo (kind of like the 16-bit era).  In a situation like this I think the N64 beats the Saturn, but the Dreamcast beats the Gamecube.  However, if most third parties had backed one system, then that system would have ended up the winner.