[Consoles AH] - Who was better in the 1990s: Atari or Sega?

See above. I'm generally curious about this part of gaming history as Atari was on the way down following the video crash of 84 and the general bad management of guys like Jack Tramiel, but Sega systems have had their own issues like with the 32x and stuff. On a pure qualitative comparison who had the better systems and games?
 
Could you... go into a bit more detail?

For Atari, the 7800 was on its way out by 1990 and then came the Jaguar, which was an utter disaster.

Sega, on the other hand, were at their absolute peak in the 1990s. While the 32X was a failure, it didn't really taint Sega's reputation the way the Jaguar tainted Atari.
 
In the 1990s Sega had the Genesis/Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast.

Atari had the dud Jaguar.

Sega was in the same class as Nintendo, not Atari.

Even in the 1980s, while Atari dominated at the beginning of that decade, Sega was superior by the end with the Master System which was popular in Japan, South America and Europe.
 
The 7800 was pretty much as good as dead by 1990, and besides, Atari IMO would have been better off making a new console than dusting off the 7800 (especially considering it was originally intended to be released in 1984, but was cancelled/delayed because of the 1983-84 video game crash). And the Jaguar, for all the hype around it whipped up by Atari, really wasn't anything near impressive, and even its best games weren't too different from what you could play on the Genesis or the 32X.

So undoubtedly Sega was better than Atari all the way in the 1980s and 90s.
 
It is no contest. Atari released a console, among many in the 1990s, that did not even matter. Unless you were really into it, prior to the internet 10 years after the fact, did most of you even know there was any console in the 90s besides Nintendo and Sega? Sega made serious mistakes. Chief among them was saturating the market with consoles at bad points in terms of console technology and consumer interest. The 32X and Sega CD were failures precisely because Sega needed to have patience and focus on the upcoming generation, especially when those products would therefore become meaningless very shortly, therefore becoming a totally wasted investment for the company and its production, and damaging the brand by looking like an ignorant cash grab. Sega also had the problem of releasing consoles to get ahead of the curb after the Genesis, while only being outdated and inferior as a result. Console generations are long games of roughly half a decade at least which Sega failed to take into account. And that is where it failed. But there is no comparison between it an Atari, which barely a console off the ground, which crashed into failure anyway.
 
Sega, and it's not even close.

Sega opened the 1990's with the Genesis/MegaDrive gaining steam before going through the roof with the release of Sonic in 1991, along with some other great titles that actually helped them gain an edge on Nintendo for a while. The Sega Saturn was a mixed bag, and DreamCast came too little, too late, but was a pretty good system, none the less.

Contrast that with Atari, the company that both started it all, and then became the best point of reference for what NOT to do if you ran a video game company.

Atari had a chance to get back into the fight in spring of 1984 with the 7800 Pro System, actually, after the utter catastrophe that the 5200 Super System had been. Problem was, while Warner had planned a mega launch for the Pro System (the sort of launch the Super System should have gotten), they were negotiating the sale of the company to Jack Tramiel at that point, so everything got put on hold...and then, after the sale was completed in early July of that year, the Pro System remained in limbo (and titles in development remained in a holding pattern) while Tramiel and Warner argued over who was going to pay the independent contractor that designed the Pro System for Atari. Tramiel insisted that his purchase of Atari covered the payment, but Warner, it seems, stiffed the developer, then tried to hang Tramiel with the bill for the Pro System.

It would be nearly TWO YEARS before the matter was settled, and even then, Tramiel would find a way to completely screw the whole thing up:

Smart Jack: Rolls out the 7800 Pro System in May of 1986 (a full FOUR months before Sega's NA Master System launch, and Nintendo's full U.S. release of the NES in September of that year), with an $80 price tag- $120 cheaper than either the NES or Master System at launch. (And $170 cheaper than the deluxe release of the NES that included the utterly useless ROB peripheral.)

Jack Ass: Spends more money promoting (and continuing to develop software for) his $50, outdated, 2600, severely undercutting his brand new machine THAT COULD PLAY 2600 GAMES WITHOUT ANY NEED FOR A PERIPHERAL ADAPTER, THUS RENDERING THE 2600 COMPLETELY OBSOLETE in the first place.

That, and he treated retailers like they were competition, rather than the people he needed to sell his product to the public. (Always bad for business.)

Jack Ass: Okay, so, he gets his ass handed to him by both Nintendo and Sega in '86, even with all of those advantages going in:

SERIOUSLY lower retail price than his competitors. (For a better machine than it's given credit for being...mainly because so few developers were given any incentive to develop software for the Pro System, hence nobody really opened up the new machine, pressing the envelope of the tech to it's outer most capabilities.)

The 2600 Legacy: Millions of people with large libraries of 2600 games that would run on the new machine, hence, a massive market of ready-made customers who, not wanting to literally throw away all that money they sank into their 2600 cartridge libraries, would gladly buy a brand new machine that could run that library, so long as new and more advanced games were delivered going forward.

HOWEVER...

Jack's still got something neither Nintendo, nor Sega has the capability of doing in 1987: Releasing a 16 bit console.

Atari had the ST chipset, and, contrary to what a lot of people think, the ST actually sold fairly well in the early going, especially among the creative market. (The built-in Midi was a big selling point for musicians, and it's desktop publishing software, at the time, was better than anything available for Mac or even PC. It sold for a price that wouldn't bust out aspiring game creators, and could have been one arm in a reciprocating cash machine; ST's spike in sales for aspiring developers, more third party support for the ST derived console, driving sales of the console, which, in turn, drives sales of the ST. Trust me, if I actually diagramed out how this actually would have worked, you'd be asleep in under two minutes.)

It would have been the simplest thing in the world for Atari to put the ST tech into a game box, promote it as 'The Future', shift ALL development and marketing resources to the new console (while still supporting the ST, but slowly moving away from the home computer market, with a target of total withdrawal by the end of the decade), and having a very good chance at regaining market share.

INSTEAD...

Jack Ass: Takes antiquated Atari 8-bit home computer line and launches yet another 8-bit console, only this one had ZERO compatibility with the 2600 (although it had...um, dodgy compatibility with Atari 8-bit computer software, and required the purchase of a $200 disk drive to run the full 8-bit computer line of games...well, the ones that would run on the crap box...), ZERO compatibility with the 7800 (not that it mattered, as so little was done with the machine...), and sold about as well as you would expect: It was DOA.

Not one to learn from past mistakes...

Jack Ass: Rather than spending 1988 developing a 16-bit console- his LAST, BEST CHANCE to bring Atari back from the Abyss -Atari wastes it's capital expanding it's computer line into markets it couldn't even hope to penetrate, let alone compete in, and, for video games (the thing Atari was built on), developing a poorly supported handheld console for release in 1989.

Lather, rinse, repeat...

Jack Ass: Splits resources between two separate console projects (both of which would have been pushed as 32 bit consoles, despite not actually being 32 bit consoles), then goes forward with the more expensive and complex system, over the cheaper of the two...because the developers he contracted to develop the Jaguar told him they were further ahead in their development than they actually were...and he believed them), and, by the time Atari is ready to launch the overly complex, more expensive (and, as many would see it, a blatant case of false advertising), Sega and Nintendo have had their own 16 bit systems on the market (and succeeding) for four and two years respectively.

And THAT is how a company goes from industry watershed to death.

Warner Communications poor handling of the evolving market in 1982/83 inflicted the first life threatening (and ultimately fatal) wounds in the company, but that's another story...
 
Very interesting stuff. I've been examining both Atari and Sega trying to figure out which one was the better bet going forward into the 1990s and 2000s. I learned that Atari was making ridiculous money prior to 1984 for Warner Communications, but that Nintendo and Sega's jumps into the American market effectively saw the war be all about them with Atari as a distant third.

It had me wondering if the right time to sell Atari off would have been as Warner had or if a comeback of any sort could have accomplished. In your opinion, if Atari had not split focus with home computers along with the consoles (or acquired Amiga instead of Commodore for that purpose), and released the 7800 in 1984 as you suggested, could Atari have seriously leveraged it's leading position to remain a player against both Nintendo and Sega? Even just looking at their OTL library it doesn't exactly inspire confidence...
 
Was Jaguar a technicially superior system with crappy games though. Its "64 bit."

A friend of mine who is HUGE techie explained the Jagoff like this:

"Technically superior? "Yes..." with an enormous "BUT...", "No...", with a whole lot of "If, however..."."

(Ten minutes into his explanation of the "Yes..." portion, I was staring blankly into his eyes, and when he paused, my only expressed thought was: "The what now?" We ended there, and proceeded to play some X-Box.)

They claimed Jagoff was '64-bit', but that was a sham based on it's twin 32-bit graphics processors.

"32+32=64! DO THE MATH!!!", Atari screamed in their commercials.

The general purpose CPU was a 16-bit CPU, as was it's sound hardware...and not even the most tech-illiterate person on the planet was buying the idea that having two 32-bit graphics processors, controlled by a 16-bit CPU made a system even remotely 64-bit.

Very interesting stuff. I've been examining both Atari and Sega trying to figure out which one was the better bet going forward into the 1990s and 2000s. I learned that Atari was making ridiculous money prior to 1984 for Warner Communications, but that Nintendo and Sega's jumps into the American market effectively saw the war be all about them with Atari as a distant third.

It had me wondering if the right time to sell Atari off would have been as Warner had or if a comeback of any sort could have accomplished. In your opinion, if Atari had not split focus with home computers along with the consoles (or acquired Amiga instead of Commodore for that purpose), and released the 7800 in 1984 as you suggested, could Atari have seriously leveraged it's leading position to remain a player against both Nintendo and Sega? Even just looking at their OTL library it doesn't exactly inspire confidence...

Atari didn't have to end up the way it did, and there's plenty of great PODs that could have saved them:

Warner, rather than selling Atari to Tramiel in 1984 (after hemorrhaging money for two years at that point), could have held onto Atari, launched the 7800 Pro System in June of '84, (with the planned 13 title launch, with more titles to follow for the big Christmas '84 push), and completely regained their footing. Unlike the Super System, the 7800 could run 2600 carts without a special adapter, which, logically, would be preceded by a total discontinuation of the 2600, as 2600 owners wouldn't even need a 2600 to play their 2600 libraries anymore. On top of that, Warner, having learned from the Super System fiasco, and would have shifted total focus to the new system, rather than continuing to sell 2600s. In which case, the 7800 carts all would have come equipped with their POKEY/GUMBY sound chips, and, in time, further enhancement chips, upto and including an expansion module equipped with an FM sound chip, additional RAM, and the FREDDIE memory management chip, for bank-switching applications that would have allowed for much larger games to be written for it.

I think Warner would have made sure they acquired the Amiga chipset, but I'm not certain they would have built a home computer with it. There's a chance they could have; the Amiga chipset was originally intended for use in a Motorola 68000 CPU driven, 16 bit console, that, per agreement, Atari could then, after one year, use the chipset to produce a 16 bit home computer. (1850XLD, although, considering the ground shift that took place in 1983, I think Atari would have still replaced the 1200XL with the 800XL as their 8-bit home computer, while cancelling the rest of the XL concepts, which may have freed up the more logical 1600XLD as the designation for the 16 bit home computer.)

After the market crashed completely in '83, I think, had Warner held onto Atari, they would have gone with the 7800 to get back into the game as quickly as possible (summer 1984), while waiting on the Amiga chipset, which wasn't finished at the time. If the Pro System turns into the same market winner the 2600 was, they could wait until Nintendo and Sega put market pressure on them to release a 16-bit machine by the late 80's.

OTL's offerings for the 7800 are a reflection of the total shit show Atari turned into after Warner sold it to Tramiel, who...just made one bad mistake after another.
 

Cool stuff to know. Do you think that the Atari computer line was worth it, in the end? It seems to me that that was sort of a distraction from their main revenue streams that didn't pan out very well for them or most of their competitors.
 
Last edited:
You needed the 8 bit line to have had Jay Miner and his team working on computer hardware

After disagreements with the Warner Suits on many things, from the 2600/5200/7800 progression to computers,
they ordered him to stop working on his planned 68000 based 16 bit console, and focus on the existing 6502 based, and ignored his advice to drop the 2600
So he left in 1980, and eventually got Amiga going a few years later.
 
Was SG-1000 or Atari 7200 the better console? I know they were developed around the same period and that the SG-1000 was based on the powerful Colecovision system, but that's about it.
 
You needed the 8 bit line to have had Jay Miner and his team working on computer hardware

After disagreements with the Warner Suits on many things, from the 2600/5200/7800 progression to computers,
they ordered him to stop working on his planned 68000 based 16 bit console, and focus on the existing 6502 based, and ignored his advice to drop the 2600
So he left in 1980, and eventually got Amiga going a few years later.

thank god for that
the Amiga changed my life and made me love computers. Shame they couldn't capitalize on it more then they did.
They should have had a CDTV style device ( make it cart based or what ever ) but in a CDTV style box available for the gamer types... the 1000/2000 for us video / computer people

I know the A500 was the machine that sold the most but it still took up a fair amount of real estate.

ahh the days when you had Atari, Apple, Amiga, Windows/DOS, ACORN, UNIX ..
 
Top