4 ms·

Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation (2014) [video]

34 points by bane 11y ago

icefox 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
flippyhead 11y ago
I found http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700 http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generati... to be a pretty interesting read about this entire history.
digi_owl 11y ago
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.
PhoenixWright 11y ago
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.
dec0dedab0de 11y ago
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

34 points by bane 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago

flippyhead 11y ago

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

digi_owl 11y ago

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.

PhoenixWright 11y ago

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.

dec0dedab0de 11y ago

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