Genesis vs. SNES: By the Numbers - IGN (original) (raw)

Console wars are decided by sales figures.

Every hardware generation has a winner. Sometimes that winner is globally recognized, such as the PlayStation 2, which crushed the competition like a steamroller with a nuclear-powered engine. Older gamers, though, remember previous generations where the hardware wars were truly epic -- Hatfield versus McCoy epic. The struggle for domination between the SEGA Genesis and the Super Nintendo is doubtlessly the most knock-down fight for supremacy in the history of gaming. Playgrounds were bitterly divided over which system was the best. The Sonic crowd and the Mario loyalists often came to blows, cracking skulls when the coolness of a beloved mascot was questioned.
Actually, there were no cracked skulls. But exaggeration is the hallmark of good storytelling, you know.

While everybody that survived the 16-bit struggle certainly has a personal preference, hardware wars are ultimately decided by numbers. The tale of the Genesis and Super NES battle has a few twists and turns, what with SEGA surging early and Nintendo's then-revolutionary Donkey Kong Country upsetting the apple cart, but it comes down to cold, hard figures. And in the case of the 16-bit battle, the winner is indisputable: Super NES.

Nintendo moved 49.1 million Super NES consoles over the course of the generation and beyond, far surpassing the Genesis, which sold a still impressive 29 million units. Why is being 20 million behind Nintendo impressive? Because this was the last generation before videogames went mainstream thanks to the marketing prowess of Sony. It's also impressive because in the previous generation, SEGA was decimated by Nintendo. The Master System sold an anemic 13 million to the NES count of 62 million.

We all laugh now, but this game blew minds in 1989.

The Genesis made its biggest gains in the Americas, which together represent over half of the Genesis' sales. The Genesis also did well in Europe, where it is known as the Mega Drive, building on the surprise success of the Master System in that territory. However, it failed to gain traction in Japan in spite of SEGA's reputation as an arcade giant.

SEGA did well in America on the strength of a number of factors. Timing is everything, and the 1989 launch of the Genesis put it in direct competition with the NES, which still had wonderful games, but was looking creaky. The first wave of Genesis titles soared over the NES offerings (production value-wise) and made the generational gap easy to see. That obvious leap resulted in good early sales. SEGA also rolled out some aggressive marketing, calling out Nintendo by name in the famous "What Nintendon't" campaign. SEGA made the Genesis the "cool" platform, while the NES -- and, to a degree, the Super NES -- were toys. Nintendo did not help that conventional wisdom when it forbade Midway from using red blood in Mortal Kombat while the Genesis version was just soaked in it.

But the most obvious factor in the performance of the Genesis is the appearance of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991, which really gave SEGA a much-needed face. The Genesis had a real mascot that was synonymous with the company, just like Mario. The first Sonic game sold over four million units. The 1992 sequel outpaced it with six million units.

Donkey Kong Country Six million cartridges sounds like a huge achievement. Selling six million copies of a game is something most publishers today would give up their firstborn to do. But that is still two million shy of the best-selling non-pack-in game for the Super NES: Donkey Kong Country. Rare's 1994 platformer lapped the original Sonic. Donkey Kong Country sold over six million copies alone within that holiday season.

The Super NES featured far more bestsellers than the Genesis. After Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the next top seller was Aladdin, which also moved about four million units. The Super NES featured several games that sold over four million copies, such as Super Mario Kart (8 million), Street Fighter II (6 million), Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past (4.7 million), and Star Fox (4 million). And in Japan, Square was selling millions of Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy VI, which moved over 2.5 million cartridges.

By 1994, SEGA had lost substantial ground to Nintendo in America. The two had been fairly close going into 1992, with Nintendo making strong gains against SEGA, thanks in no small part to the fact that every Super NES came with a copy of the acclaimed Super Mario World. According to market data, SEGA had a 55-percent share. But when SEGA started fracturing its audience with add-ons like the SEGA CD and 32X and Nintendo kept on producing triple-A games for its loyal fans, the battle was won. Nintendo pushed ahead of SEGA, which spent all of its 16-bit good will on the ill-fated Saturn.

Had SEGA not abandoned the contest so eagerly to pursue the Saturn's early release, perhaps the war would have ended on a different note. SEGA definitely had many things going for it in the beginning, like a laser-focused marketing campaign, good price point, and a strong generational difference. But Nintendo pushed ahead with a plan to squeeze as much value out of its single machine for the entirety of the generation, delivering great updates to its franchises and releasing cartridges like Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country that produced games you would not expect on a 16-bit machine without need of any upgrade or add-on. And with its continued success in its home territory of Japan despite the strong performance of the PC Engine, the Super NES claimed its place at the top of the generation.

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