Favorite Console War?

[Jumpin]

JackHandy said:

curl-6 said:

I'm with SanAndreasX, if Sega gets the benefit of a head start, then its only fair that Nintendo gets to make up the time later.
Nintendo very much earned their ultimate victory over the Megadrive, through pushing amazing games like Donkey Kong Country, A Link to the Past, Mario World, Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island, Starfox, F-Zero, etc.
It's not their fault Sega bet the house on shit like 32X and Sega CD and lost.

But they quit the 16-bit war while they were ahead, curl. lol. So how does it make sense to credit Nintendo? I mean, Sega was kicking Nintendo's ass in the US up until SOJ foolishly decided to divert resources toward the upcoming Saturn. SOA knew this, and they tried to convince SOJ, but SOJ told them to get stuffed and it was only then that the SNES overtook them.

Also, I'm not really talking about total unit sales. I'm talking head-to-head, launch-aligned sales. The Genesis ended up beating the SNES annually... until 1994... which just so happens to be the year Saturn launched and the parent company was like, "See ya". 

Late response, but I wanted to talk about this:

I wouldn't say the Saturn is the whole story, or even close to the major reason. The Mega Drive support was still quite strong in the last few years of the 16-bit era. In fact, Sega published more games for the Mega Drive in 1994 than any other year. 37 on the base unit, 18 more on the Sega CD and 32X add-ons - and these included Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic and Knuckles, Streets of Rage 3, Shining Force II and Shining Force CD (Sega CD), Ecco: The Tides of Time, and Virtua Racing. Sega (much like Nintendo with companies like Square and Rare) had tight relations with third parties (like BlueSky who brought games like Shadowrun and Vectorman) and published numerous titles from them.

I would say SNES's victory has more to do with the incredibly strong software SNES brought to the table in 1993-1996 starting with Secret of Mana - but in 1994 things really got hot with what was probably the single most hyped game of the generation - Donkey Kong Country hype was kicked off with Nintendo's first treehouse video, and these would be a precursor to modern video marketing campaigns (particularly Nintendo Spaceworld and E3 video reels, and later the Nintendo Directs).

The original Treehouse video and the game where Nintendo's Treehouse takes its namesake - Donkey Kong Country:

Donkey Kong Country would go on to become the highest selling non-predominantly bundled game of the generation at 9.3 million and best selling game of the generation that wasn't a Super Mario Bros platformer - the trilogy would go on to sell 18 million units on the SNES. It's games like this that would go on to help Nintendo dominate the last part of the generation, and it would also dominate the first couple of years of the PSX and Saturn.