I think, and correct me if I'm wrong sega were manufacturing the master system, mega drive and Saturn all at the same time and also brought out the 32x and mega cd on the mega drive.

while i do agree with the lot of you and would love to see ninty and sega team up for some ass kicking, id be concerned with what happens with some of segas ips. dont they have some mature games, and ninty aint into that kind of games... what to do with them? but what worries me the most is actually the total war series... which is only released on pc. what would nintendo do with that one?!

I see their support to older hardwares as a great thing, in the same manner I love the similar approach from Sony. The problem with Sega was when they started to do the opposite and abandon hardwares just to release a new one. The released Sega CD and after a year or so, they released 32X and made everyone that got a CD feel like idiots. And one more year later, Saturn. Everyone that bought Mega Drive expansions where cheated, since Sega sold expansions almost as expensive as other console just to drop it and release a full console. Dreamcaat was released too soon, killing Saturn too, marking the third time that Sega dropped a hardware quickly. That really destroys the consumer confidence on a brand.

About Saturn, I see it as the reason of Sega's demise. In a pure point of view of the hardware, it was made to fail. Complex architecture made it hard to develop for and it was underpowered when compared with the competition. It was launched at a high price point. They tryed to get an edge by releasing early (Saturnday), but the announcement of the PS1 price at the same time combined with the limited availability of Sega's console killed sales and infuriated the stores that were excluded of the launch, like Wallmart (actually PS1 surpassed its sales in a week or so after launch, even with Saturn on sale for 4 months).

Despite that, Saturn's complex architeture , with two processors and several high customized auxiliar processors for other tasks, made it hard to consolidate components and cut costs. While PS1 and N64 were getting even cheaper, Sega couldn't keep the race because of their console's complexity (instead, they even bundled 3 games in EU, and that just drove software sales down). To end this giant post, Saturn killed Sega. They made other mistakes, but that was a giant one and actually people on the US and EU simply forgot that Saturn existed, it was Sony and Nintendo and nothing more. That was the mistake that put them out of the race. Dreamcast was a fantastic device, but it had to fight against the massive losses of Saturn and, at the same time, try to put Seha back in a race that they were out since N64 launch in 1996.

Yeah that was another thing switching back and forth between cartridge and cd.

Simple: keep the "Sega" brand for such games. Mind you, Nintendo isn't averse to mature games - they published Ninja Gaiden 3 Wii U, they're funding Bayonetta 2, and they co-own Fatal Frame. They just don't tend to focus on them. Which is why having the Sega brand would be beneficial. Indeed, they could probably even give Sega some level of independence, with the obvious limitations being oversight of quality and only releasing on Nintendo platforms (and maybe PC).

As for what to do with Total War... how about releasing it on the Wii U, with touch controls?

As a kid owning the mega drive It wasn't like now, gaming news wasn't as accessible unless you bought your gaming magazines often, I didn't even know the Saturn existed when I had my mega drive, and Everyone around me started buying ps1's so I followed what everyone else was doing as this was the new thing to have, wish I had bought a dreamcast though

Nope, the ones that helped to save the PS3 in Japan.

I'm not surprised by this. I saw your PS2 and GC lists.

It's not going to happen.

Anyways, it's for the best. Gamers spend far too much energy picking on two systems and can only handle picking on Sega once in a while.