
Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation (2014) [video] - bane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDlhclXHZF0
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icefox
Fun talk and really great book. Telling the story from Sega NA's perspective
changes it from a history book filled with facts to a underdog story where you
can watch as Sega rises to overcome the giant only to come crashing back down.
Out of the books I read in the last three years it was in my list of top five
and I hope the film comes out just as good.

The movie is in post-production so I was hoping that there would be some
questions and discussions about that in the talk, but alas there was not.

The comment about the console wars being similar to Game of Thrones was
interesting. Nintendo the reigning king that gets to write the rules however
they want and meanwhile you have Sega and Sony both trying to get leftover
scraps while at the same time when the stars aligned they each were happy to
try to dethrone the king.

~~~
jsnell
Console Wars is a very polarizing book. I basically despise it, it was
profoundly disappointing especially since a pre-release excerpt I read was
pretty good but totally non-representative.

The book has several problems that made it fail for me. First, it's mostly
written as a series of dramatized scenes with dialogue that's both phony and
cheesy. Second, it's mainly a book about marketing rather than any of the many
things of that period that I'd find interesting. That's just glossed over.
Sure, there's a few great stories you can tell about that. (The stunt they
pulled to get Sega into Walmart was hilarious). But then it's padded with
chapter upon chapter of marketing campaigns or sales junkets that were not
interesting or important in any way. Or human interest stories of people who
aren't all that relevant to the story.

That leads us to the third problem; the book is just way too long for what it
is, due to the writing style and the bad choice of material. Finally, it's a a
completely one sided story. The heroes are the dashing and brilliant Sega
America marketing people and salesmen, who are undermined by the Japanese
bureaucrats and engineers and by the unfair competition from Nintendo. It's as
if the only sources for the book were from Sega America.

So buyer beware.

~~~
brandnewlow
I enjoyed the book and think there's a subversive thread in it that your
comments allude to. If you accept the story as an underdog success tale you
might be frustrated. If on the other hand you read it as a cautionary tale
about what happens when all you have is buzz and marketing runs your company,
I think you might enjoy it more.

The book purports to tell the story of how the Sega Genesis came out of
nowhere to win massive market share in the gaming industry, but as you said
the actual story consists of a long string of marketing junkets related
anecdotally by the marketers in attendance.

Discussion of software engineering and hardware design is scant. Meanwhile
there's an entire chapter dedicated to play-by-play of a weekend retreat Sega
hosted for video game distributors.

There's a few takeaways from this:

1\. Distribution (marketing, sales, partnerships) is sometimes the whole
story.

The Genesis story basically boiled down to "they made a fun game with a cute
mascot and then hired the right ad agency to flog it nationwide at massive
cost". As "makers" hanging out on HN that's an offensive reading of history
but the author talked to the principals and that's the story they told.

2\. If all you have is distribution, any gains you find will be unsustainable.

I found the last chapters of the book a downer. The Sega America folks were
tasked with marketing a confusing lineup of products, couldn't get consumers
excited about them, so they all jumped ship one by one. At the end of the day
they were just a bunch of marketers and that could only take them so far.

While the book's decision to tell the story of the Genesis through its
marketing seems to belittle the work of the actual product people back in
Japan, it's gentle telling of Sega America's collapse post-Genesis shows the
limitations of a marketing-only approach.

3\. While the book appears to lionize the "underdog" Sega America team, in the
end it's the Nintendo folks who come across most impressively. The chapters
where the authors cuts back to what Nintendo was up to at the time show a
company with actual substance, identity, and a point of view. While the
"heroes" of the book run around from marketing strategy to marketing strategy,
the "villains" quietly and confidently go about the business of making great
products, manipulating distribution in a heavy handed yet open way, and
marketing their products in simple, relatable marketing.

In the end, though the book appears to promote a "marketing is all that
matters" approach to business it really argues that lasting success come from
companies that are product driven.

~~~
jsnell
That's an interesting and much more palatable reading! I don't think it's the
one the author intended though :-) If the actual thesis is that just marketing
is insufficient, the imbalance in what the book covers (90% marketing, 10%
product) is even harder to swallow. If these marketing stunts don't matter,
why are they being covered almost exclusively in favor of the stuff that does
matter?

~~~
brandnewlow
You're probably right about the authors intent, but that's a reason I liked
the book. It was well enough reported to support more than one interpretation!

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flippyhead
I found [http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-
Generati...](http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-
Generation/dp/0062276700) to be a pretty interesting read about this entire
history.

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dec0dedab0de
James Rolfe/AVGN has an entertaining take on this. Possibly NSFW.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_MOqHyCUEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_MOqHyCUEc)

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digi_owl
From this video i get the impression that Genesis and Playstation was an
American product, while the SNES was a Japanese product. This in terms of who
handled the marketing etc.

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PhoenixWright
This is an interesting subject matter but he's a poor speaker. If his book is
anything like this speech I'm sure it's long-winded and boring.

