SEGA, a great start, a sad ending - Videogame History #109
SEGA is one of the companies with Nintendo's most remembered permission of all time, we can now see it as a simple video game developer, but its origins show that it was not always like this, this company has had a trajectory over time. few imagine, being its history in the world of video games older than Atari itself, suggesting that it is a developer and creator of video game consoles with more than 50 years in the market.
SourceAutomatically when thinking about the name, SEGA comes to us with a country in mind, Japan, thinking that its origin comes from that country, however, this is completely false, its roots come from the United States as a result of the merger of two big businessmen , one of them named Martin Bromley was a professional creating electronic entertainment machines for military bases, clearly his main objective was to offer this audience a "relaxing" experience with different mechanical games, David Rosen would be the second partner and one of the most relevant by actions that we will see later, he was an expert making photo booth machines, having great success in Japan, where he lived in the early 50s after the war between the country of the rising sun and Korea; this would result in the creation of a company called Service Games abbreviated and known as SEGA.
With his great knowledge they made machines like Jukebox, Pinball among others, being the main distributors in the United States, Rosen having some experience in Japan decides to take this market to that country being one of his best decisions in his long journey as an entrepreneur, converting SEGA in the main base to create a recreational hall in the late 60's in the country mentioned above, this would give the beginning of a new era where many companies wanted to take a part of the cake.
Sega caught the attention of a company called Gulf + Western who wanted to buy it for the great profits he had in the United States and Japan, a goal he achieved in 1969, however, he would leave David Rosen as chief executive, it is worth noting that all these events happened before the recognized Atari appeared in the market, from now on with a large investor in between SEGA wanted to expand its world of entertainment, so he decided to buy a developer studio of Arcades called Gremlin (creator of games like Safari, Super Bowl , Astro Fighter or Monaco GP) operating from the United States, creating recreational machines to be imported into Japan.
The success that Sega had in the 70s was simply impressive, having more than 200 million dollars in sales became a great power in arcade machines, however it would not be saved from the crash of video games in 1983, despite That Gulf + Western had excellent profits the great decline that videogames had at that time motivated this great investor to sell the company, David Rosen was very interested in recovering it, however the figures they requested were quite alarming for him, a company called Bally, who at that time was a machine manufacturer of Pimball buys the company, we will remember it very well since it would be renamed as Midway, distributor of Arcades as Pacman or Space invader.
SourceJapan was not affected by the crash of video games that the United States suffered in 83, in that place they still maintained good sales of their recreations, it is here when Rosen decides to recover this part of the company which had sold more than 38 million dollars. dollars, but to do that he had to partner with two big investors, Hayao Nakayama and Robert Deith, both were distributors of very recognized Arcades machines from Japan and Europe respectively, from that moment SEGA Entrerprises was born, a name we would know until 2000, the company would be led by its three founders in different parts of the world, in Japan by Nakayama, Los Angeles United States by Rosen and Europe by Deith, it is worth noting that in this last place it was a complete success because Europe was not familiar with the Arcade world.
From that moment SEGA Entretprise began the development of a new Japanese root console, launched on the market in 1983 with the name of SG-1000, however, at that precise moment, another console from one of the most recognized companies would also come out, it was the Famicon, this would represent a big problem for SEGA because this console would be its main competition fully seizing the market, by not succeeding with the DG-1000 decide to get a new entertainment system tilting the balance towards computers, that's how the SG-1100 was born, however it could not compete against the great Commodore 64 and the MSX.
Seeing that their two main entertainment systems for homes failed they opted for a third console, this would be like a merger of their two previous consoles, forming the Sega Mark III, this system would be the definitive answer by SEGA to compete against the Famicom , taking out a gallery of games quite attractive for the public, one of those videojuegos would give the birth of the first emblematic mascot for the company, Alex Kidd.
In comparison to its previous consoles, the SEGA Mark III obtained very good sales in Japan, convincing investors to take it out in the West under the name of Sega Master System, however, sales in the United States were really poor, offering more losses than profits. , but in other parts of the world such as Europe and Brazil they were totally outstanding, being this last country where they most acclaimed this videoconsola.
SEGA could not achieve the crushing figures that Nintendo achieved with its Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System, so they chose to develop a console that doubled the power of its competitor, offering users a totally new experience, it was the Sega Genesis or also known as Mega Drive, from this moment SEGA would live to compete exclusively against Nintendo, this is considered the great mistake of this company, as it would unfortunately cause a kind of obsession worrying more about its rival than for themselves.
From that moment on, any console or accessory that was released to the SEGA market was practically to compete with any existing Nintendo, being the most "successful" of all of them the SEGA Genesis, over time this company was falling in sales decline, having quite significant losses in each of their systems, one of the consoles that most helped this disaster was the SEGA Saturn because at that time would enter a new rival that completely crushed all console developers, the PlayStation.
The company was already on the verge of extinction in 1996, however, an attempt was made to make a final move by launching one of the most innovative consoles of 1998, the Dreamcast, its production represented an investment of 800 million dollars due to the different marketing and franchises that took to this console could be successful, unfortunately this was not so, his new rival SONY with his PlayStation 2 was responsible for completely exterminate any attempt to SEGA, this had no choice but to declare bankruptcy in the year 2001 for not having more budget to continue with the production of the Dreamcast, becoming a third party company for the development of video games in different platforms.
From that moment, SEGA only dedicated itself to the development of video games for its main rivals and also for new companies like Microsoft, (many say that it was inspired by the architecture of Dreamcast for the creation of its console) many people think that SEGA is a company that is almost dead due to its sales in the world of video games, but most of its profits come from the trade of machines called Pachinko, which are very famous in Japan.
It is surprising how a company with a promising future will fall in the market for obsessing overcoming another, practically living in the shadow of its competitor, however, there are gamers who started with this great company, which they consider was a technological leap with each console released to the market, this is totally true, but his bad decisions unfortunately led to a course that nobody would have imagined.
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Your post made me remember all of the good times I had playing SEGA video games they are a good company that has its place in the history of video games and the hearts of gamers.
It's a shame that they weren't able to provide us with more consoles, but they are still bringing us games that make us remember when the company was a giant of business. Thank you for posting, I enjoyed it.
I am glad that this post is to your liking, is one of the intentions that I intend with my publications, to bring to the present those moments that retro players had years ago, apart from publicizing the story that new generation players do not know.
It's a pity that the Dreamcast failed. It's considered to be one of the greatest consoles of all time (and rightfully so, I might add).
One thing that might caused its failure was, that it was probably ahead of its time.
You're absolutely right, it was a very outstanding console for its time, but I think the gamers were not prepared to receive it as it deserved, now you all want a Dreamncast 2 but I think that will not happen.
No, unfortunately it is pretty impossible that something like this will happen.
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Thank you very much for your support!!