How Sega broke Nintendo’s monopoly on video games
Chances are, if you’ve ever played a video game in your life, you’ve heard of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario, or both.
Before they started appearing in video games together, though, their parent companies were a whole lot less friendly, sparking what is now widely known as the “console wars.”
In the early ’90s, Nintendo was a video game giant, holding 90 percent of the market. Sega, meanwhile, was fighting other companies for the other 10 percent.
“And they got absolutely whooped,” says Blake Harris, author of the book “Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation“. “Things weren’t going well until [then-CEO of Sega] Tom Kalinske* took over, and a certain blue hedgehog began to change their fortunes.”
That certain blue hedgehog was part of Sega’s strategy to knock Nintendo down a peg or two.
“To take down Nintendo, they really wanted to create a Mario-killer,” Harris said. “So they held an internal mascot contest, and the selection that won was this hedgehog that was called Mr. Needlemouse originally.”
And, for a few years, it worked. Sega went from holding just five percent of the domestic video game market to 55 percent at one point. Mr. Needlemouse, later rechristened as Sonic the Hedgehog, is still as pervasive as ever. Sega, on the other hand, not so much.
“As much as we remember Sega as successful on this big battle against Nintendo in America, Sega in Japan never surpassed 25 percent,” he said. “I think there was enmity, jealousy, and spite at times, which led to Sega cutting off the nose to spite the face. And that spite really led to Sega’s downfall.”
*CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, Tom Kalinske’s last name was misspelled. The text has been corrected
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
