Yamauchi ruled with an iron fist, didn´t he?

LOL, I was also thinking of the NES game of Monopoly as well. Just because Sony and Microsoft will leave the business doesn't mean other people won't join in in the console business. I hope for our sakes that there will always be competition in this industry so that we all can get the very best.

No, because both MS and Sony's games divisions posted profits last quarter. Neither is going bankrupt. Even if they were still losing money, they'd just get a little help from some other division of the parent company like they did when they were losing tons of money on R&D.

I strongly believe SNES wasn't as powerful as it should have been for launching 2 years after the genesis but that really didn't contribute much to their loss of monopoly with 3rd party support.

Also, don't forget that while they did lose some 3rd party support, snes still got more 3rd party support than genny after it was launched. (especially japan)

For every fighting game that capcom made for snes and not for genesis (final fight, knights of the round, Street fighter 2) Sega had to make one of their own to compete (golden axe, streets of rage, eternal champions).

Every RPG nintendo got from square had a Sega made rpg to compete with...etc.

So I personally think it was pure marketting that led Sega to the top spot on US until 1995... Hell I bought a genesis and I never wanted to touch the snes until I saw Donkey Kong and said "screw it that looks too cool to pass up".

PS. Before giant electronic and software corporations started entering the market and losing millions of dollars on their systems...bundling the kitchen sink with the unit....the industry was all about games and gameplay. Thats why I also think 16 bit was the golden age of gaming.

Yup.

Long life to the President.

I don't think it's ever going to happen again anytime soon for any company.

I hope Nintendo gets market dominance, but not a monopoly, still have to have some competition.

Snes wasn't technically strong as should be for one motive ? Yamauchi wanted all fancy effects like Mode7, great soud chip but want to be a profitable platform fron the get go. So Uemura scapped the backward compatibility and inserted a weak CPU. The architetture was base on supporting PPUs.

Yeah Nintendo had the japanese spport because Sega failed hard there but don't forget that western publisher like EA was behind Sega ( EA missed the Nes train ... ).

We all see now with Xbox 360 how precious is a 1 year headstart. Nintendo gave 2 years ...

Yeah SoA marketing was great and the intuition that teens was an underserved ( by Nintendo ) market ( the Nes children ) was a stroke of genius, copied by Sony a couple of years later ... 

PS: 16 bit was great also because 2D graphic was maxed out so only gameplay could differentiate your product from the others.

To be fair, the bitterness in that war was started by Sega's attack ads against Nintendo.  "Sega Does What Nintendon't" and the like.  Negative advertising actually hurt them where the Game Gear was concerned.  But, in the end, the 16-bit war was pretty much the golden age of console gaming.  Both Nintendo and Sega were churning out high-quality 1st and 2nd party efforts, and third party cross-platform games also delivered substantial quality and innovation.  It was the last time the arcades were actually still booming and the last time arcade ports really mattered.  With the advent of the 32/64-bit generation, the death spiral for arcades had begun.

Sega and Nintendo both tarnished their working relationships with third party companies in their own ways.  Nintendo's strict control during the 80's on the NES offended several companies who were eager to seek profits elsewhere when able.  Sega repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with poor business practices where hardware was concerned.  The Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn all added another layer of tarnish to Sega's reputation.  Where once they were applauded for granting developers more creative freedom than Nintendo (less censorship), they were lauded for pushing out the SegaCD, then the 32X, then turning around and releasing the Saturn less than a year later--and then the last straw was announcing the Dreamcast only about 2 years into the life of the Saturn causing devs to either drop support of Sega's consoles, or to ignore the Saturn altogether in favor of the upcoming Dreamcast.

When Sony came in, they bought up as many small companies as they could (just like Microsoft as they readied the Xbox), and they gave developers all the freedom they could want.  After the headaches that came with dealing with Nintendo's strict control and censorship (and ego), and the headaches of dealing with too much hardware in such short periods of time with Sega (and the ego), third party publishers were happy to jump ship to a well-made, effecient console with promised freedom from Sony.

The 16-bit generation, as a whole, was one of--if not the--best era ever in gaming when you get down to the consoles and the games themselves.  It paved the way for the future of gaming and set up new standards and "rules."  The problems dealing with third party companies had been cooking for ages prior to the 16-bit years--and some are still not fully resolved today.

No. Nintendo will win this gen handily, but it won't be anything like the NES era. They wouldn't be able to get away with those business tactics anymore.