Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The 16-bit revolution

Sega Genesis proved to be the first main competitor to Nintendo's stranglehold on the market. While Nintendo still was focused almost primarily on keeping their NES developers on board, Sega Genesis took the chance to upgrade the market's expectations.

NES was a rather good 8-bit system, but the Genesis boasted 16-bit technology as well as a staggering 7.2 MHz processing power. In 1989 they launched, and quickly gobbled up Nintendo's former market share wresting Nintendo's 7-year dominance over the video game console market.

Here's a very in-depth article about the rise of the Sega Genesis:

http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=ConsoleMuseum.Detail&id=36&game=11

Nintendo finally answered the 16-bit demand with their release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in late 1991, almost two years after Sega Genesis's emergence. The SNES was slow to gather developers of games for their new system, and Sega continued its dominance in the 16-bit realm for another 2 years.  In 1993, Nintendo finally closed the gap in regards to developers for their system, but not soon enough to weaken Sega's hold on the market.

Through 1994-97, there was a huge battle between both video game superpowers over dominance, with Sega retaining the upper-hand for the greater portion of the Genesis's almost eight year existence.


Other resources found during research:

http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Super_NES

1 comment:

  1. SEGA is definitely good game company in the world. Also I think the best small game player is PSP or Nintendo don't you?

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