Not at all. That would be like the Switch being able to play WiiU discs. The Nomad was a portable Megadrive/Genesis. Not its own system.

I've been saying this since forever. Portable console. Connects to the TV. Had controller ports on the system for 2 players. 1995.

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?)

And Sega Channel, roughly a quarter century before GamePass.

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.

I own a SEGA Dreameye. You're speaking to the choir.

I didn't know that the Nomad could connect to the tv. Interesting...

I have one of these, but I only bought it within the past few years as a collector. Neat piece of gaming history.

The Sega Nomad wasn't the Switch in 1995. There are some concepts that are similar (being able to play on the TV) it was a previous generation system in its entirety. The Genesis had already been established and it's hardware old. Suggesting that this makes it like the Switch is like saying the PSOne with the LCD screen attachment was also the Switch in the early 2000's.

The Switch isn't a home console that was converted for portable play, nor is it a portable console that was converted to the big screen. The Switch is it's own system in it's entirety.

Nintendo had Satiliview as well. Xband allowed Genesis and SNES to play online. Some games supported it like Street Fighter II. N64 and Dreamcast had DLC for games like Mario Artist and SEGA's Skies of Arcadia.  Famicom was online. Every Nintendo home console has had the ability to connect online. While not from SEGA themselves. The first dual analog controller came out in 1989 for the SEGA Genesis. https://segaretro.org/XE-1_AP

There are hundreds of examples of hardware or services in gaming well before their time.