Sega
Sega spent the early 1990s as the only company to seriously threaten Nintendo's dominance of home consoles, and it did so with marketing as much as hardware — an aggressive, explicitly oppositional campaign aimed at older children, built around a mascot designed from the outset to be everything Mario was not. The company left the hardware business after the Dreamcast in 2001 and became a software publisher, which turned out to suit its catalogue well.
About Sega
Sega spent the early 1990s as the only company to seriously threaten Nintendo's dominance of home consoles, and it did so with marketing as much as hardware — an aggressive, explicitly oppositional campaign aimed at older children, built around a mascot designed from the outset to be everything Mario was not. The company left the hardware business after the Dreamcast in 2001 and became a software publisher, which turned out to suit its catalogue well. Sonic remains one of the most valuable character licences in games.
The name is a contraction of Service Games, reflecting the company's origins supplying coin-operated machines.
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Key eras
| Era | Years | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Arcade | 1960s–1980s | Coin-operated machines, initially for American military bases in Japan. |
| Console war | 1989–1998 | Mega Drive and Saturn compete directly with Nintendo. |
| Third-party | 2001– | Exits hardware after the Dreamcast and publishes across all platforms. |