> In North America, the Genesis was actually more popular than the SNES until near the tail end of the 16-bit era I've heard this but IME "everyone" had an SNE

> In North America, the Genesis was actually more popular than the SNES until near the tail end of the 16-bit era I've heard this but IME "everyone" had an SNES while only a few people had a Sega Genesis -- and many of them also had an SNES. Maybe it was just folks I knew, but I went to college in a different state and SNES was much more popular among them. So I know what I've read but it's so far off from my (pretty broad) experience that I wonder if the stats are misleading. > The late arrival of the N64 did little to hurt the Playstation, so you can't pin Sega's failure on Nintendo's delays. I think Sega got caught in the middle between Sony and Nintendo (they're completely different markets now) and many folks who would have bought a Saturn instead held out for Tomorrow Tomorrow on the N64, which was what I anecdotally saw with the Genesis vs SNES. > And, as a nit: the Saturn wasn't backwards compatible. The NA Saturn could play Genesis games. I didn't own one so I couldn't test if it played Master System games. > The Genesis was, but no one outside of Europe and Brazil cared about the Master System. I feel personally attacked. ;) I don't remember why I got the Sega Master System over an NES, but it may have been for Phantasy Star. To the original post, I agree the Sony Playstation hurt Sega significantly, but I think Sega was in trouble before the PS hit the shelves (in part because of the issues w/ the SegaCD and 32x, as you said).