While Nintendo would be the eventual victor, numerous companies battled valiantly. It’s a rich story with plenty of jaw-dropping moments. To be fairly honest, I don’t really feel like diving all that deep into the whole history of The Console War. If you weren’t there when it was going down, that’s okay, there are plenty of opportunities for you to learn. Books, documentaries, and even a big budget movie keep the war’s rich history relevant and alive. Recently these events have resurfaced and people are beginning to remember again.

Shame on you.īut if you are like me, and you remember the school bus and playground battles over Sonic vs Mario, then you understand the importance of this very specific and most epic hardware battle. Yet you sit on your couch everyday playing your PlayStation 4s and Xbox Ones without a single care for the countless war heroes who fought for the future of video gaming. Families lost their mothers and fathers to extended hours, marketing wars, and overtime labor. The sad part is that your grade school history books failed to educate you on this ever-public yet widely forgotten bloody battle.

market by 2 million units.Whether you do or do not remember the Great Console War of the early 1990s is irrelevant. However, according to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on revised NPD sales data, the SNES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. According to a 2004 study of NPD sales data, the Genesis maintained its lead over the Super NES in the American 16-bit console market. 16-bit market dipping down from 60% at the end of 1992 to 37% at the end of 1993, Sega claiming 55% of all 16-bit hardware sales during 1994, and Donkey Kong Country helping the SNES to outsell the Genesis from 1995 through 1997. Due to these tactics, it was difficult to ascertain a clear leader in market share for several years at a time, with Nintendo's dollar share of the U.S. install base at the end of 1992 was only just more than 4 million units. With the Genesis often outselling the SNES at a ratio of 2:1, Nintendo and Sega focused heavily on impression management of the market, even going to the point of deception Nintendo claimed it had sold more consoles in 1991 than it actually had, and forecasted it would sell 6 million consoles by the end of 1992, while its actual U.S.

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