Console Wars

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I’m not even a huge gamer but it was fascinating to read about the rise and fall of Sega from a business and marketing perspective.

There's two important points to make about this book:.

1. Harris is a good writer. His research and narrative work effortlessly guide you through six or so years of epic change.
2. Consoles just have no soul. Harris and his principal sources seem to never question how ultimately the console industry boils down to marketing brinksmanship and how hollow that makes the entire endeavour.

Maybe this isn't really Harris' fault, but the world of 80's-90's consoles (and probably still today) is so hopelessly full of corporate hagiography that we're led to believe everyone previously fabulously rich executive is a genius in this emerging world of video games. Tom Kalinske, Sega of America's president and Harris' messiah in a suit, is treated like a trailblazer for what–thirty years later–really just amounts to edgelord marketing. It's a weird lens on the industry that seems to gloss over how commodified and exploitative these same suits made their arena.

There are no creatives here. This isn't Masters of Doom or any other history of the creative rise of video games, but rather the celebration of corporate gaming. Even Sega's rise is ultimately depressing in that context. Console Wars is a great history... it's just that it's a documentation of the most banal process of extracting wealth from games rather than any form of creativity beyond ad-wizardry.

I remember getting a Nintendo for Christmas in the late 80s and it shaping my entire childhood. Later on I'd go onto to get a Super Nintendo, a Genesis and a Playstation before heading to college and eventually buying any system I wanted. The systems that truely shaped my gaming experience were, without a doubt NES, SNES and PSX.

Console Wars goes into the history of Nintendo, Sega and Sony with the rise of the console industry in America. Having been a kid at the time, I did't know show much of an underdog Sega was at the time – and how badly managed Sega was in Japan. Nintendo had it's problems as well. The story behind the creation of Donkey Kong Country was amazing and made me surprised the game even got made – better yet that it was (possibly) the best game for that system.