The war between SEGA and Nintendo was a long one but in the end, there

was one clear winner. Nintendo’s early smash success with the NES allowed them to

overpower SEGA in total sales, profit, market share, and advertising.

April 28th in the year 1980 was the release of Nintendo’s game and watch, a

four-bit handheld device that featured the game Game and watch ball. In 1980,

about 43 million units were sold worldwide(Kelion). After the release of the 8-bit

handheld annual sales started to increase then decrease as years went on. Nintendo

stopped the production of the Game and Watch in 1990. About three years later in

July, Sega, a rivaling company, released the SG-1000 In 1983. This console failed with

only 160,000 sales in the US alone. This annually went down in sales by year. Here

there wasn’t much of a competition, SEGA and Nintendo consoles were three years

apart and two different types of consoles. After doing so well in arcade games, they

decided to boost their business by moving into consoles. But only alluded to the

downfall of SEGA as a company.

In 1986 the ever so popular NES (Nintendo entertainment system) or the

Famicom, was made and released on April 15th. The NES featured titles such as The

Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda and sold from $89.99 to $99.99. With the

NES’s sales going through the roof the profit can be estimated to around 40 billion

dollars (Wallach). While the Nintendo NES is a smash hit SEGA chose to retaliate the

NES with another home console. Introducing the SEGA Master System, this system

was an 8-bit just like its opponent. The console did sell well, it wasn’t enough to truly

compete with the NES. The system sold from $100.00 to $158.99. With higher prices

than the NES but fewer quality games, the Master system only sold about 11 million

consoles, or units, worldwide. The profit for this console is estimated to be less than a
billion dollars. SEGA always sold their consoles at a higher price than Nintendo’s

products but never did as well in sales.

Market share is a term used to describe the general size of a company and

being able to compare it to its competitors. In the Nintendo v. SEGA war, Nintendo

had a 37% market share (Wu). This means that Nintendo had a good voice in

promotion and advertisement and was popular. The rivaling company, SEGA, had a

market share of 15%(Sega.com), but was still very successful with certain consoles like

the Dreamcast. The SEGA Dreamcast was the one to achieve that 15%, with Sonic’s

debut sales, which started to go up due to his unique design and game. But.

eventually, Nintendo sales and pricing went up and by the 90s they were able to

have a 90-90% market share.

When it comes to advertising, SEGA bought up more air time on tv. Rather

than bettering their consoles, SEGA thought they could increase their sales with

more advertisements. They had slogans like “The challenge will always be there” in

1987, “Genesis does what Nintendon’t.” in 1989-1991”, and more. They often made

advertisements that brought other competitors in the game industry down in order

to boost their own. Most of Nintendo’s advertisements were more mellowed down

like “Now you're playing with power” in 1986 or “Play it loud!”. It is clear to say that

SEGA had more flashy and stylish advertisements than Nintendo yet still could not

compete with them sales-wise.

Soon after the release of the SEGA Dreamcast, SEGA as a company was put out of

business by Nintendo. While SEGA put up a good fight in the console war, Nintendo

had them beat when it came to total sales, profit, market share, and advertising.
SEGA most definitely had an impact on the gaming industry and the lives of many

people but unfortunately could not compete with the rivaling industry.