The Evolution of SEGA Consoles

                               Evolution of SEGA consoles

 

Hello everyone with another article on another Gaming console producer SEGA.
SEGA is video game developer, hardware developer and publisher based in Tokyo and offices around the world. SEGA is considered one of the old or trend setter gaming console developer.
Lets have a look at all important gaming consoles released by SEGA from 80's to till date.

SG-1000
                     The first gaming console released by SEGA on July 15, 1983 in Japan and on different countries on different dates around the world. It is also knows as the SEGA Computer Video Game SG-1000. This cartridge base video gaming console was released on the same day when Nintendo released its gaming console  "Famicom"

 Its processor was an 8 bit processor powered at 3.58 MHz. Its GPU was designed by Texas Instruments. It was SEGA's first attempt in gaming console industry and it competed with Nintendo's Famicom and other gaming consoles but id didn't did it very well in market. 
The upgraded version of this console was released by SG-1000 II was released on July 31, 1984.

 
The development of the gaming console was created on advice Hayao Nayakama, President of SEGA Enterprise Ltd shortly after the SEGA Enterprises was sold to CSK Corporation.
Both SG-1000 and SG-1000 II both were commercially unsuccessful, and there sales were discontinued in July 1984 and October 1985 respectively.






MASTER SYSTEM:

   The successor of  SG-1000 "Master System" was released by SEGA on October 20,1985. It was released in Japan as the name of SEGA Mark III  and with the name of Master System all over the world. This console was also cartridge based video gaming console, these cartridges were officially called "Mega Cartridges".  Master system was also released with featured accessories like 3D glasses and light gun which worked with differently coded games. 
                      Master system was released in direct competition with Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Master System did very well in market compared to its predecessor. Between 10 - 13 million units were sold of this console all over the world, Brazil sales are not included in these stats. In Brazil alone total of 8 million consoles were sold. Master System has the honor of longest-lived gaming console 30 years and continuing, because of its popularity in Brazil.

SEGA GENESIS:
                      
SEGA Genesis or Mega Drive , successor of Master System was released on October 29, 1988 in Japan and on different dates on different location all over the world. This console was distributed by different distributors in different countries, by Virgin Mastertonic in Europe, by Ozisoft in Australia & Asia, and by Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea Samsung distributed this console as name of Super Gameboy and later Super Aladdin Boy.
 
The Sega Genesis is the third generation gaming console, a 16 bit gaming console. Unlike its predecessors it supported library of more than 900 games. Gaming hits like Sonic hedgehog, Mortal combat, Night trap help build a name for this console. Controversy of violence in some of these games were the reason behind the creation of  "Video Game Rating Council".
It consists of two processors, Primary processor was Motorola 68000  and secondary processor was Zilog Z80. It didn't did very well against its main competitors in Japan but did very well in other regions. Its total sales from all of the distributors were almost 40 million units. It sales were discontinued in 1999 worldwide.

SEGA SATURN:
          Although, SEGA is one of the oldest console producer but it never picked up that pace, but this time SEGA released the successor of The Genesis, "SEGA Saturn". This 32-bit fifth generation gaming console was released on November 20, 1994. Saturn didn't did very well in market because at this time it was not only competing with Nintendo but another tech giant SONY has also released its Play Station. But performance wise it did a lot of improvement, having dual-CPU architecture and eight cores. 

It had processor designed by Japanese company Hitachi to compete with Play Station. It did well in starting in market of Japan but it fail to settle a high score in US and other markets. After the release of Nintendo 64 it lost market very rapidly, selling only 9.2 million units. Sony's failure in releasing the next Sonic the hedgehog game called Sonic X-treme was considered a huge factor in poor performance of console in market. Console's complicated hardware design , bad management and bad decision making were also included in the factors of its failure. Its sales were discontinued in 1999 in European market.

 DREAM CAST:
 
 On November 27, 1998 Sega released the successor of Sega Saturn in Japan and on different dates on different locations worldwide called "DreamCast". With this release Sega tried to recover the loss which happened in Saturn.
DreamCast had CPU again designed by Hitachi called Hitachi SH-4 and GPU designed by NEC called PowerVR2.
Sega's DreamCast did very well in beginning in US markets because of a very well did commercial campaign and low price of console but its demand had a very bad fall because SONY created a hype in the market before the release of PS2. However, Sega managed to sell 9 million units worldwide. Cause of the failure of DreamCast Sega faced serious financial loss and after this loss Sega withdrew it self from the console market and to be only remain as third-party supplier.


So friends i mentioned all the main gaming consoles by Sega in this article. Back in my childhood i liked the Sega console very much. If you guys want article on anything specific or you like just comment below, share this article. See you with another article till then.

HASTA LA VISTA..!