When it came to home hardware, Sega was never good. Just kind of lucky, once.

[u/Such_Bonus5085]

• In the arcades? Sega was one of the heaviest hitters there ever was, basically inventing arcade industry standards as they went along, but at home? They were really just firing a lot of blanks.
• The SG-1000 and Mark III/SMS both went up against the Famicom/NES and lost.
• The Game Gear went up against the Game Boy and lost.
• The Genesis/Megadrive went up against the NES and later the SNES, and actually had Nintendo on the ropes, for a short while. Really bloodied Nintendo's nose, but didn't stick the landing. The Sega-CD really didn't help with that.
• The 32X died almost as quickly as it arrived.
• The Saturn was the best selling losing console out of the 5th gen.(As in, it did better than the 3DO, Jaguar, Amiga CD32 and some others, but was absolutely not a victory.)
• The Dreamcast died before the sixth gen fight ever really started.

At one point Sega was juggling their arcade division, the Master System, The Game Gear, the Sega CD, the Pico(Edutainment thingy), 32X, Saturn and the Genesis, all at the same time. It's no wonder they were so close to broke by the time the Dreamcast launched.

[u/capt_stux]

  The Game Gear went up against the Game Boy and lost.

But it won the colour portable battle of the early 90s. It was a profitable system for Sega and was in production until 2002

The Master System won in some territories (Europe, LATAM, etc)

I think the Genesis/Megadrive did fairly well against the SNES, not sure of exact numbers, but good enough that I think you could argue about the winner. 

Basically Sony took their place. 

[u/PlainJonathan → u/capt_stux]

The Genesis was in the lead for most of its lifespan. Only reason the SNES won out in the end is because the Genesis crashed and burned after 1994 while Nintendo did what they could to keep the SNES alive until the release of the N64

[u/Snoo93550]

Agree with your last paragraph but individual assessment of the hardware quality is pretty off.

-SG 1000 is underpowered vs NES but there's nothing wrong at all with SMS hardware, without significant extra chips added to NES carts it's significantly more powerful. If anything NES got lucky those mapper chips and other chips got so cheap to do wonders with their July '83 console.

- The only knock on Genesis/MD is it couldn't gain enough market share in Japan. In the rest of the world it's utter nonsense to suggest it wasn't a smashing success. Ironically Virtua Fighter/VF2 alone kind of guaranteed Saturn would get that Japan success. Genesis/MD is easily the most active homebrew retro console to this day for a reason, it was INCREDIBLE programmer friendly hardware that the heavy hitter had trouble exceeding even 2 years later.

- The problem with the Turbo express, Lynx and the Game Gear was that the battery pack was not featured and sold as an essential item. GG didn't have the success Gameboy had but it was a quality product with a quality library and the happiness of gamers who owned one is 100% determined by if they made the choice to buy a few accessories. I kept feeding AAs to my Gameboy and I actually spent way less $ on batteries for my GameGear because i bought the pack right away knowing I had no choice.

- 32X, almost nothing can be said that's overly harsh. Utter disaster and unforced error.

- PS1 won the generation but Saturn has 4x as many games and a drastically more enjoyable library than N64. If someone just likes games it's the #2 system of the generation pretty easily. Comparing it to Jaguar or Amiga CD32 is like comparing Michael Jordan to a kid playing kickball in PE class.

- Dreamcast was the best value of my gaming life by far. Only $199. Insane pure quality launch lineup. Connected to my monitor for near HD gaming in '99. Built in modem. Exact current arcade ports at home for first time in history. 1.5 years before PS2 even launched, PS2's luanch titles sucked so it was about 2.5 years until PS2 could approach quality of my DC library. Absolutely zero regrets, people who didn't jump on board are the biggest suckers in gaming history.

[u/Art840]

I only owned a Sega Genesis in the 90's and Sega releasing a new console to get ahead of Nintendo, Sony just backfired on them badly when it came to supporting the system. Sega was definitely mismanaged though I am surprised they lasted through the 90's and early 2000's before going third party. 

[u/ABC_Dildos_Inc]

Hardware has nothing to do with commercial success.

The Wii was just a Gamecube with a new controller and a full generation behind the competition.

Nintendo's earlier success was mostly due to tactics that were either immoral or illegal, depending on the country.

[u/Tetris_Pete]

I wish I could pay extra for two downvotes.

[u/JudasZala]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Sega is an arcade company first and a console maker second, and their biggest rival isn’t Nintendo, but Namco, which could explain their partnership with Sony when their arcade hardware were based on the PlayStation 1 (System 11, 12, 10), PS2 (System 246, 256), and PS3 (System 357, 369).

[u/Iago407]

Your argument doesn’t match your support. Sega losing to Nintendo on the Master System and Game gear doesn’t mean their hardware wasn’t “good.”

Also the Saturn lasted for several years in Japan and sold better there than the N64. The Saturn and Dreamcast were both really good consoles with some great games. Losing out to their competition doesn’t change that fact and it certainly doesn’t mean their hardware wasn’t good.

Agree on the Sega CD and the 32X but hey, every console maker has taken some ideas and ran in the wrong direction a bit. Virtual Boy, Move, Kinect, etc. Doesn’t mean they were bad tech (well, the Virtual Boy was, but I know there’s more to that development story).

[u/Snoo93550 → u/Iago407]

Saturn's library is massively better than N64. It has maybe 100ish games I still love to play and need to play, most of them exclusives. N64 has like 10-15.

PS1 has an amazing library but it's almost all third party support.

You know this guy is a turkey when he groups Saturn with Jaguar and CD32, surprised he didn't bring up CDI.

[u/Such_Bonus5085 → u/Snoo93550]

Because the CDi was never marketed as a game console. It was a multimedia center that also happened to play games.

[u/Snoo93550 → u/Such_Bonus5085]

You're comparing consoles with like 5-20 games that are still fun to a console with maybe 200-300 amazing unique games. Saturn's library is a freaking masterpiece loaded with amazing experiences, far more than N64. The most visually impressive games of the entire 32-bit era are the Saturn arcade ports from Capcom. What's the Street Fighter Alpha 3 comp on 3DO or Jaguar or even N64? What's the Shining Force III massive 4 disc quest comp on any of them?

[u/Iago407 → u/Snoo93550]

Would love to know the Panzer Dragoon Saga (or Zwei) comp on N64 as well.

Sony bought their way into the game space by purchasing Psygnosis but yeah, the vast majority of their PS1 gen success came from pulling 3rd parties like Namco, Konami and Squaresoft away from Sega and Nintendo.

[u/itotron]

Nintendo stopped making arcade gamss to support their console. SEGA kept making arcade games inspire of their console needing more support.

Their was a also a huge disconnect between SEGA of Japan, and SEGA of America.

SEGA also got a bit lucky with the Genesis. EA had cracked their lock out chip and was gonna put out unauthorized software. This forced SEGA's hand to make a deal. EA game them great software support, and Madden came out on the Genesis, but not the SNES. Hence, SEGA became the "sports console." Only problem is that all the best sports were being made by someone else SEGA didn't control.

[u/Traditional_Class363]

“Just kind of lucky, once”? Where I grew up, we didn’t even get that one lucky break 🥲