Segas descent

Summary

1995 became a fateful year for Sega. Within just a few months, the Group made a number of unfortunate decisions, setting the course for its descent from the global competitor into relative insignificance.

The fact that Sega had granted the American arm of the company extensive freedom of action a few years earlier had led the company to become a serious competitor of Nintendo, but made it difficult at that time to define a uniform strategy: while Sega of America continued to build on Genesis and its new 32X expansion, the parent company relied entirely on Saturn.

This led to customers ignoring the 32X, because in an increasingly globalized world, people in the West were aware that Saturn’s premiere was imminent even outside Japan. After Sega had hastily brought this launch forward and had produced a second flop directly after the 32X, the company was in financial crisis.