The Sega Saturn Flops

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Sega Saturn sells just over nine million units compared to the Genesis, which sold 30 million units. Sega of Japan is kind of running the ship now at this point in time. They decide after a couple of years to give up on the Saturn and launch another new internally developed console, the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast actually had some real innovations to it. It was the first true online console that shipped with Internet connectivity built in.

Sega and the Genesis was THE underdog story of the early 90’s. In a single console generation, Sega went from ~zero to 50% US market share and dethroned Nintendo’s seemingly invincible global monopoly. But — somehow — it all then died. Two console generations later Sega was out of the hardware game entirely, and the company was sold off for pieces to a pachinko manufacturer. How on earth did this happen??

Today we’re launching Acquired Shorts in order to tell this story and others like it: side tales from the “Acquired Cinematic Universe” that are too brief for a full episode, but too good to leave in the vault. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the format (and this episode). Please send us your feedback in Slack, email or Twitter!

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