Sega and Nintendo went into the home console business on the same day. On 15 July 1983 Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan, and Sega released the SG-1000. For a few months Sega looked like the winner: it had planned to sell 50,000 SG-1000s and sold more than three times that by the end of the year, and in 1984 Nintendo had to recall Famicoms with a faulty chip. Then the Famicom took over Japan, and for the next eighteen years the two companies fought over every market in the world, with very different results in each. The fight ended in January 2001, when Sega announced that it would stop making consoles and publish its games on other companies’ machines, Nintendo’s among them.
Fast facts
- Began: 15 July 1983, with the Famicom and the SG-1000 launched in Japan on the same day.
- Ended: 31 January 2001, when Sega confirmed that it was leaving the hardware business.
- Japan: Nintendo led throughout; the Nikkei put its share of the market at 75 per cent in 1994.
- North America: the Genesis brought Sega level with Nintendo in the early 1990s; the console wars entry tells that story.
- Britain and Europe: the Master System outsold the NES in most territories, and the Mega Drive passed a million British sales by the end of 1992.
Japan
In Japan the rivalry was one-sided almost from the start. The SG-1000’s good first year did not last, and Sega’s next console, the Mark III, sold the Master System name abroad but lost heavily to the Famicom at home. The 16-bit Mega Drive sold out its first batch in Japan in 1988, but Retro Gamer estimated that only about a tenth of its 30 to 35 million sales worldwide were Japanese. The Nikkei newspaper estimated that Nintendo still held 75 per cent of the Japanese market in 1994, against Sega’s 12 per cent. Sega came closest with the Saturn: by the Nikkei’s figures its share rose to 32 per cent in 1995, while Nintendo’s fell to 33, though by then both were fighting Sony.
America
In North America the NES had almost the whole market by the end of the 1980s, and the Master System never took more than 5 per cent of it. The Genesis, launched in 1989, changed that. Sega attacked Nintendo by name with “Genesis does what Nintendon’t”, cut the price to $149 with Sonic the Hedgehog in the box, and won sports fans with Electronic Arts’ games. Sega’s president there, Tom Kalinske, said that by 1993 the two companies were equal; Nintendo’s sales chief, Peter Main, described “two strong guys splitting the market 55/45 or something like that”. The console wars entry follows the advertising, the disputed sales figures and the Mortal Kombat blood, and the Blast Processing entry explains Sega’s most famous and least meaningful slogan.
Britain and Europe
Europe ran the other way. Nintendo arrived late and half-heartedly, and the compendium of Sega’s 8-bit console puts it bluntly: “SEGA’s popularity among European arcade gamers – aided by Nintendo’s curious indifference to the market – meant that the Master System outsold the NES in most territories.” In Britain both machines went on sale in 1987, through distributors best known for other things. Mattel sold the NES at £129.99 and soon cut it to £99.99. Mastertronic, a budget games label, sold the Master System at £99.95 with a light gun and two games in the box. Sega’s machine came with home versions of its own arcade games, such as Out Run, Space Harrier and After Burner, at a time when British players knew them mainly from conversions for the Spectrum and Commodore 64. By the compendium’s figures the Master System had sold 6.25 million in Europe by 1993, about 1.5 million of them in Britain over its life. Sega bought its European distributor in 1991 and renamed it Sega Europe.
Nintendo pushed harder from 1991. That July ACE reported “BOOM time for Nintendo in Europe”, with Bandai appointed as distributor and “the NES heading for the bigtime”. The 16-bit round in Britain began with Sega well ahead. Virgin Mastertronic launched the Mega Drive in the autumn of 1990 at £189.99. Nintendo’s 16-bit machine reached Britain first as a grey import in 1991, and the official Super Nintendo did not arrive until April 1992, at £149.99. Edge judged later that the Mega Drive’s first British Christmas had not been a success, and that its sales took off only in 1992, when the Super Nintendo arrived and the rivalry filled shop shelves and television screens. By Edge’s count Sega had shipped more than a million Mega Drives in Britain by the end of that year.
The magazines divided along the same line. EMAP launched Mean Machines in October 1990 to cover Sega and Nintendo machines together; two years later it split the magazine in two, Mean Machines Sega and the official Nintendo Magazine System. GamesMaster said of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that Christmas that it was “supposed to make Sega tops again in the console wars”.
Mascots and machines
The rivalry was fought through characters as much as hardware. Nintendo had Mario from the early 1980s. Sega tried Alex Kidd on the Master System and found its answer in Sonic in 1991; Sega boasted that in a market-research test “seven out of ten kids preferred ‘Sonic’ to ‘Super Mario World’”. The hardware comparisons were less clear-cut than the advertising. The Super Nintendo had Mode 7, a real graphics mode that could rotate and scale a background layer, and a larger palette; the Mega Drive had a faster main processor clock and a separate Z80 for sound. “Blast Processing” was a slogan, not a feature in Sega’s documentation.
Sega and Nintendo were not the first console makers to attack each other in public. In 1982 Mattel’s Intellivision advertisements, fronted by the writer George Plimpton, claimed that “88% preferred Intellivision” and “2% preferred Atari”.
After the war
Sony’s PlayStation overtook both companies in the second half of the 1990s. The Saturn could not hold off Sony, the Dreamcast followed in 1998, and on 31 January 2001 Sega confirmed that it was leaving the hardware business. Sonic Team was already working on games for Nintendo’s machines. In March 2007 the two companies announced the first game to feature both mascots, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, published by Sega in Europe and North America and by Nintendo in Japan.
Sources
- Steve Jarratt and Damien McFerran, SEGA Master System: a visual compendium (Bitmap Books, 2019), pp. 2 and 6: the same-day launch, the SG-1000’s first-year sales and the Famicom recall; the Master System outselling the NES in most territories and Nintendo’s “curious indifference” to Europe. The Sega Master System entry cites the same book for the European sales figures, Virgin Mastertronic and Sega Europe.
- Wireframe issue 42, August 2020, p. 104: the SG-1000 and Famicom launched on the same day.
- Computer and Video Games, September 1987: Master System advertisement (£99.95, distributed by Mastertronic). CRASH issue 42, July 1987: the NES launched by Mattel, cut from £129.99 to £99.99. As cited in the Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System entries.
- ACE issue 46, July 1991, p. 18: industry status report (“BOOM time for Nintendo in Europe”; Bandai as distributor).
- ACE issue 35, August 1990: the Mega Drive’s UK price. Computer and Video Games issue 126, May 1992: the Super Nintendo’s UK launch at £149.99. Edge Essential Hardware Guide (1996): the Mega Drive’s first British Christmas and over a million UK sales by the end of 1992. As cited in the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo entries.
- Mean Machines and Nintendo Magazine System entries and their sources: the launch in October 1990 and the split in October 1992.
- GamesMaster issue 1, January 1993, p. 53: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and “the console wars”.
- Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 8, October 1982, p. 54: Intellivision advertisement (“88% Preferred Intellivision … 2% Preferred Atari”; George Plimpton).
- David Sheff, Game Over (1993; 1999 edition): the Master System’s 5 percent of the American market, “Genesis does what Nintendon’t”, the $149 Genesis with Sonic, the “seven out of ten kids” test, and Peter Main’s “55/45”, as cited in the console wars entry.
- Retro Gamer issue 27, 2006, pp. 46–47: the Mega Drive’s 30 to 35 million worldwide sales. Retro Gamer issue 117, August 2013, pp. 90–95: Tom Kalinske, “by 1993 we actually were equal”. Edge issue 32, May 1996, pp. 6–8: the Nikkei’s Japanese market shares for 1994 and 1995. As cited in the console wars entry.
- Edge issue 95, March 2001, pp. 8–9: Sega’s announcements of 24 and 31 January 2001 and Sonic Team’s work for Nintendo. As cited in the Sega entry.
- Nintendo UK, “Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games”, 28 March 2007 (web): the first game with both characters and the publishing split, as cited in the Sega entry. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2007/Mario-Sonic-at-the-Olympic-Games-249801.html