VGChartz lists Sega Genesis as:                                              Americas              Japan                  Europe

I always found the Americas number to be low but never had any proof.

However I recently stumbled on to this article -

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/14/business/international-business-sega-enterprises-pulls-its-saturn-video-console-us-market.html?pagewanted=1

"After the company sold some 20 million 16-bit Genesis consoles in the United States alone in the early 1990's, its 32-bit Saturn flopped..."

Now if US sold 20 million alone, we can safely add another 2 million in Canada and Mexico no?

Also Brazil kept selling the Genesis well in to 2000s with the Gensis 3 model and there are reports of 2 million Genesis consoles sold in Brazil alone.

This logic puts Genesis around the 36 million mark instead of 29 million.

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Furthermore, here is another interesting document - http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/grant/docs/11Videogames.pdf

Scroll down to "Table 11.1 US retail sales of hardware and software by console type, 1990-2001 ($, millions)"

Snes
1991   560
1992 1,733
1993 1,890
1994 1,471
1995   823
1996   514
1997   243
1998   137
1999    20

Total - 7,391

Genesis
1990   280
1991   586
1992 1,090
1993 1,706
1994 1,490
1995   719
1996   294
1997   180

Total - 6,345

This indicates that Snes generated around 1 billion more in revenue for software and hardware. However Snes was always the more expensive unit. Snes console cost 50 dollars more for most of that gen and new Snes games cost more... 20 million Snes consoles sold for  50 dollars more covers that revenue gap 100%.

This would lead us to conclude that Genesis and Snes are pretty much neck and neck in software and hardware sales in US.

Thoughs? Opinions?

I would say tht the snes was deffo ahead by a few million just by the way people mention them. and how many more people talk about the snes then genesis on the forums. But i dont live in America so i wouldnt know.

That been said i know loads of peopel in England who had a megadrive, but alot of them also had a snes aswell

Snes sold more because of Japan where it outsold the genesis at over 3:1. Also it sold more because Sega stupidly cut the plug on the genesis in 1996 to concentrate on the Saturn where Snes was sold until 1999.

Europe had Genesis(megadrive) selling more than Snes by a couple million units and Americas should be pretty much neck and neck...which is what I am trying to debate. :)

looking into it, it almost seems as if they (the higher numbers) counted the liscensed products (like the Genesis 3 by Majesco and such) as Sega Genesis systems.

The Genesis was discontinued in 95, and sales in 1994 were 13m in NA (source: Business Week, May 23, 1994, Number 3373.). I found sales dated as reaching 19m sometime in 1999 (source: Newsweek, September 6, 1999, Volume 134, Number 10.), 4 years after the Genesis was discontinued.

I don't know how VGC counts it, but I could see ioi having VGC sales as only being the Sega Genesis, not the liscensed product, but then again I am guessing and would have to ask him.

i was supprised that Sonic 2 was only at 6mil units, compared to Super Mario Bros 15mil units sold. it does make you think that perhaps Sega was never really that popular, because the software they've sold in comparasion to Nintendo at that time was much less then i orignally thought.

Sonic 2 in NA sold 5m. The only game that really trounced that in NA was Mario Bros 3. But I have a feeling that in a few seconds someone will post saying that Mario Bros. 3 was bundled (I don't really remember what was for the NES)

So, if that doesn't count, then we have to drop down to Mario Bros 2 which sold 5.4m.

The real difference between Sonic 2 and the to selling NES games is the lack of Japanese sales (highest selling GEN game in Japan only sold 0.31m according to VGC)

When Genesis was discontinued (such a bonehead move), they still had stock left to sell in stores. They just stopped making them...so that could add to total sales of the console.

But you could be right...all those JVC Xeye, Sega CDX, Turpographix/Genesis console as well as gensis 3 by Majesco are probably not counted here.

However it still doesn't explain the second chart which shows the total revenue. Did Genesis really sell as much if not more software than the Snes? There are hardly any million sellers for the genesis (listed here).

Well, yea, of course they had extra stock, but extra stock of 5m or so? Like I said, I really don't know and there isn't a lot of solid evidence (like financial reports) to look at.

As for software, I believe that the Genesis outsold the SNES for all sports games, like Madden, and we have no record of madden sales for the Genesis.