Did the MD do as good as the SMS in Europe

[grolt]

I know the SMS had a long shelf life in Europe, I know the SMS flopped in America and I know the Genesis had a long run in America. But what about the Mega Drive in Europe. Was its success comparable to the SMS? Did it do better than the SNES? I know the MD didn't do all that well in Japan, but I haven't a clue about Europe. Let me know, squires!

[playgeneration]

Megadrive was very popular in Europe, UK especially, it outsold Snes here. I think its the launch of Megadrive that really helped boost sales of SMS, megadrive really helped increase the awareness of Sega, and the SMS was in many ways sold as the budget megadrive. As it shares a lot of titles, Sonic, Castle of Illusion, Streets of Rage etc, and they aren't inferior versions but great games in their own right. Having The sms Game Gear and Megadrive all sold at the same time was really a winning formula.

Megadrive had similar success here to the US, we got new games into 1997 like Jurassic Park Lost World, Fifa98 etc. We didn't get crappy card boxes either, our games stayed in plastic ones.

[rupert]

Just moving on from that how well did the Saturn do in the US compared with Europe?

I went from SMS to Phillips CD-I to Playstation (Only got my Playstation in 98)... then wii so totally missed out MD, SNES, Saturn and N64

[grolt]

Saturn bombed here. The surprise launch totally took all the wind from its sales, turning its building hype into an overpriced thud with only a few games for many months before the official streeting. That and all the ill will from retailers about the 32X and Sega CD debacles made many major locations refuse to stock Saturns after Sega excluded them from their surprise launch.

It's a shame because it was a great system with a ton of standout first party games. It did decent for its first year with all the big arcade ports, and NiGHTS was its last gasp at mainstream acceptance, but with that and the launch of the N64, the system was basically dead.

[chuckltd]

Saturn had only a few year life here. In fact Genesis outlived it. I bought a new Saturn in very early 98 for $199.99 and the 3 game pack for $.01 and systems and all games/accessories were gone from retail before year's end.
A good lesson to you all:
If I bought it when new, it'll fail in the market within a year"
case in point= systems i bought new, not given
atari jaguar
atari lynx
3do
saturn
dreamcast

[krooper13]

The Megadrive was huge in the UK and France as well, I can remember going to France and still seeing MD games for sale as late as 2000, the Saturn however bombed, I only ever knew one person who had one, vs about 50 with PS1s and 20 odd with N64s.

[Totoro]

I chose the SMS over the NES and the SNES over the Megadrive. I'm pretty sure both were the right choices.

[wesker]

The Sega Saturn only did good in Japan, with more than 6 million consoles solely sold over there (it would have been way more for sure if SEGA wouldn't have stopped production), becoming the best selling SEGA console in its own homeland, and achieving a Japanese library of more than 1000 releases. I envy the success the console had over there, as it's one of my favourite systems and it severely flopped here in Europe (in a pretty similar way it did in USA).

Both the Master System and the Mega Drive sold very well in most European countries, outselling both the NES and the SNES and being the only region where this situation was given. I myself knew a lot of people with Master System and/or Mega Drive consoles over here, much more than ones with equivalent NES and/or SNES.

[anagrama]

Jul 22, 2008 0:08:20 GMT wesker said:

Both the Master System and the Mega Drive sold very well in most European countries, outselling both the NES and the SNES and being the only region where this situation was given.

That's the oft-repeated tale, but it's not really true - Sega certainly ruled the roost in the UK, but even there the MD/SNES was a fairly even contest - Sega had the early lead (not hard with an 18-month headstart) but Nintendo had largely pulled that back by '95 or so.
In other parts of Europe (particularly Germany & Scandanavia) Nintendo won out in both contests, largely thanks to better support & promotion from the local distributors.

Looking at Europe as a whole, it's pretty hard to pick a clear winner at either 8-bit or 16-bit.

[grolt]

Jul 22, 2008 0:08:20 GMT wesker said:

The Sega Saturn only did good in Japan, with more than 6 million consoles solely sold over there (it would have been way more for sure if SEGA wouldn't have stopped production), becoming the best selling SEGA console in its own homeland, and achieving a Japanese library of more than 1000 releases. I envy the success the console had over there, as it's one of my favourite systems and it severely flopped here in Europe (in a pretty similar way it did in USA).

It is really sad what happened with the Saturn in Japan. Sega rushed the Dreamcast when they never needed to (look at the Shenmue test footage from the Saturn! Amazing!) and it was a mistake that ultimately bankrupt them. The DC had a great launch, but even then Sega was still massively in dept from all the hardware costs of manufacturing all those systems. Had they road out the Saturn longer (in all territories) it would have no doubt brought them a little closer to the black. I still remember when the last slate of games (Panzer Dragoon Saga, House of the Dead, Shining Force III) came out - it was huge news! Instead of making that the death gasp of the Saturn, it could have surely been the start of a second wind for the system. Ahh, it still gets me every time. Poor little planet.

[ninjabearhug]

The Mega Drive did great in Europe, but so did the SNES. I think they kind of kept each other alive personally, armies of fans for both systems who hated each other with a vengeance. Sonic killing Mario pictures and vice versa being sent in to gaming mags around the world. Golden era of video gaming for me .

[rupert]

Jul 22, 2008 18:33:15 GMT ninjabearhug said:

The Mega Drive did great in Europe, but so did the SNES. I think they kind of kept each other alive personally, armies of fans for both systems who hated each other with a vengeance. Sonic killing Mario pictures and vice versa being sent in to gaming mags around the world. Golden era of video gaming for me .

yeah I loved all that, brings back the good old memorys of gold Coca Cola yoyo's and swapping football stickers in the playground

[thund3r]

Jul 23, 2008 19:17:02 GMT rupert said:

Jul 22, 2008 18:33:15 GMT ninjabearhug said:

The Mega Drive did great in Europe, but so did the SNES. I think they kind of kept each other alive personally, armies of fans for both systems who hated each other with a vengeance. Sonic killing Mario pictures and vice versa being sent in to gaming mags around the world. Golden era of video gaming for me .

yeah I loved all that, brings back the good old memorys of gold Coca Cola yoyo's and swapping football stickers in the playground

And any other playground craze's at the time, like those Sega LCD games, Watches that played tetris, POGS, GOGOs, Premier League football stickers.. what i would give to go back to those days!

[ShadowAngel]

Jul 22, 2008 0:40:45 GMT anagrama said:

That's the oft-repeated tale, but it's not really true - Sega certainly ruled the roost in the UK, but even there the MD/SNES was a fairly even contest - Sega had the early lead (not hard with an 18-month headstart) but Nintendo had largely pulled that back by '95 or so.
In other parts of Europe (particularly Germany & Scandanavia) Nintendo won out in both contests, largely thanks to better support & promotion from the local distributors.

Sega tried everything in Germany. I even remember a whole lot of TV Ads, even for the Master System.
But Nintendo was one step ahead. It got even so far, that for most of the people Nintendo was the word for Video Games, you didn't play video games, you played Nintendo and every console under the sun was Nintendo, Nintendo created every game and so on. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Well, the Mega Drive was a success, it didn't sold that bad and with Sonic it finally got a mascot that could rival Mario. We even had a german version of the Sonic Comic.

The Saturn was Dead on Arrival. First there was the Playstation and then came Nintendo. In Germany the Virtual Boy was more or less unknown, so the N64 was the next thing and altough the System is more or less a piece of faeces, it was a success and outsold the Saturn in every possible Way while the Playstation even outsold both by far. That was were the transition began. Video Games were now Playstation. Everything was Playstation.

You could see how dead Sega was with a short look to Newsstands. From 1996 to 2000 there were one Sega magazines . In the same period of time, there were at least five Nintendo magazines and around 15 Playstation magazines.

Then came the Dreamcast. Sega did it again and ridiculed themself with one of the most stupid Ad Campaigns known to Mankind (in germany at least)
The other main problem was the lack of support from Electronic Arts.
Yes, EA is the Antichrist, we all know that, but they're are vital for the success of a system. No Fifa, no NHl, no NBA, no Madden equals failure.

[grolt]

Aug 8, 2008 17:59:07 GMT ShadowAngel said:

The other main problem was the lack of support from Electronic Arts.
Yes, EA is the Antichrist, we all know that, but they're are vital for the success of a system. No Fifa, no NHl, no NBA, no Madden equals failure.

I know this gets quoted all the time, but other than demonstrate a wavering support for the Dreamcast, I can't see how it really harmed it. SEGA stepped up because of the lack of EA support, and all their sports titles were praised by critics and huge sellers with audiences. In North America NFL 2K1 outsold the PlayStation Madden equivalent by a large margin. SEGA's 2K line-up was a real force to be reckoned with, and it was one of the things that really prevailed when SEGA gave up the console business and focussed on games.

So really, it wasn't EA that boned SEGA, it was just the PS2 storm clouds that loomed over SEGA's every move. It was an over hyped juggernaut that really could not be rivaled. Thankfully now the PS3 is facing a similar fate.