The Art of Launch Day
The defining moment of a first-party video game company is when their brand new system hits the shelves. Years of research go into developing a vessel of the hottest technology; a platform to drive half a decade or more of revenue.
It’s easy to look at a piece of hardware like the Sega Genesis and judge it as a sum of it’s parts, but far more decides the console’s validity in the market. This system in particular had a complete plan of attack devised by Sega to knock the incumbent game baron Nintendo out of the top spot. It had a two-pronged marketing strategy, obtain licenses with popular sports personalities and break down Nintendo in a slash campaign, painting the Genesis as the mature gaming system.
Morality comes into play when you look at Sega here, was it right for them to take such an aggressive position? There was some truth in Sega’s ‘mature’ platform, since Nintendo’s review process at the time really cracked down hard on mature content. However, big name sports licenses do not ensure good games. In fact, in recent years expensive licenses have been a detractor. This helped grow an audience for the system, but I question if the ends justified the means. The trend of celebrity-endorsed video games could be attributed to this moment and I don’t know if it is a good thing.
Thereafter the Genesis enjoyed a slow boom, and it is in no small part to negligence on the part of Nintendo. They never really took the Genesis seriously, and allowed Sega the room to correct another mistake they made with the system, create a killer app and a mascot that fans will love. In 1991 Sega released a game, and a personality, named Sonic the Hedgehog. To that point, Genesis’s stable of games had amounted to experimental titles, endorsed sports games and a select few arcade ports. But with that release, the Genesis had a face and a reason to buy the system.
The same year, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System hit the market with Super Mario World as a pack-in. So then did the brutal battle truly begin between Nintendo and Sega, but this is a battle that may never have been fought. Nintendo gave them a head start on the 16-bit market, and this afforded Sega a great many things. Genesis had a two-year head start, a 50-dollar difference in price, and a killer app that was still fresh from a release earlier that year by the time SNES saw light on store shelves. Objectively, I’m glad Nintendo dropped the ball, because it created a spirit of competition that birthed great games.