The Retro Console War

Today we are exposed to so many heated debates on which console are the best. No matter who wins among the current generation of consoles, the debate will still go on. This is a competition between the corporate world and most of the time, the corporate tend to go for constructive marketing or promotion or even join hands for any gaming related research or business. Competition is necessary as this will definitely help the competing companies in developing and getting bigger. Much of the negative arguments come from gamers. In the internet there are people who seem to have joined a guild or an alliance to protect their beloved console from getting bashed while carry out their own sets of negative propaganda against other consoles. This negative promotion is not present in corporate level of gaming industry. It is actually imminent in Cable industries and phone industries. However if we go back 20-25 years back, we can find a history of two companies who battled furiously among each other, where one company actually focused primary on negative promotion against the other company. Yes I am talking about one of the most heated console war in retro gaming era: Nintendo vs Sega.

 

 

Source: giantbomb.com

 

During the mid and early 90s, Nintendo had dominated the market with its NES. Sega on the other hand had its own Sega Master System that had a fairly better graphics but lacked in libraries that Nintendo boasted a lot. When the Genesis got launched, Sega of America took a surprising step of bringing Nintendo down publicly. Sega Genesis had introduced 16 bit graphics and their patented “Blast Processing”, which was a plus point for the company. Since Nintendo was a market leader and Sega had to make its way to penetrate the market, they launched a massive negative marketing campaign for their new product Genesis. Their sole motto was “Genesis does, What Nintendon’t!” Almost all the TV ads made by Sega, included some negative comments about Nintendo. Even when Super Nintendo came out, which was considered the best console of its time, Sega even tried to bring Super Nintendo down by bragging so much about Blast Processing. Here are some ad themes that Sega adopted:

 

1.  If you want to be popular in school then stop playing Nintendo and play Sega

 

2. Why pay so much in games for Super Nintendo where you have Sega Genesis at even lower price?

 

3. A TV with a Genesis game is attached in a Drag Racing Car, because the game is fast mainly due to Blast processing, while a TV with a Super Mario Kart game is attached in a very slow boring car.

 

4. When someone bought a different console other than Sega, condolences goes to them.

 

5. The infamous Genesis does, What Nintendon’t.

 

To attract even more gamers, Sega even contracted so many celebrities in their ads and in their games: Pat Riley, Arnold Palmer, James ‘Buster’ Douglas, Joe Montana and even Michael Jackson. The whole negative campaign actually did pay off, especially in America. Sega had enjoyed improved sales (I think Genesis is considered as the most successful Sega console), but somehow they could not make Nintendo step down as market leader. Maybe there is a reason. Sega had bad record during their Master System era, whereas Nintendo was credited largely due to their initiative of reviving the gaming industry from the video game crash in 1983 and at that time Nintendo was an established console manufacturer. Even when Genesis was launched it was largely ignored in Japan. So Sega had to find a way to gain attention and also annoy Nintendo a lot. Nintendo was pretty calm about marketing. They were not adventurous when it came to marketing the game. Even when SNES was launched, Nintendo didn’t have to do the same negative marketing like what Sega did. SNES turned out be Genesis killer. Sega, realizing the power that SNES had, launched Sega Saturn quickly in response to SNES. It however enjoyed quick sales but Sega and Nintendo were unaware that a new company was entering to the gaming industry (Sony). Sega was pretty unlucky when it comes to time. Sega Genesis enjoyed dominance for only a year and same goes to Sega Saturn. I think even their last console Dreamcast had enjoyed dominance for only a year. Sega tried desperately hard and very aggressively just to be the market leader. It’s a shame that all the adventurous campaigns and negative marketing that Sega pursued did not pay off as Sega expected although it did create an impact in the market and Sega managed to book its place in the history. Imagine if Sega ever comes back to build another new console, will they ever follow negative marketing campaign. If they do, what will be their motto? Hmm…….”Sega FTW!!! Wii, 360 PS3 WTF!!!” (Sorry for my language but I couldn’t find anything better.)  

 

Note: I just opened 10 new threads in the Retro forum section. Enjoy!!!