A review by rembrandt1881
Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris

4.0

Console Wars barely gets to a 4 for me because there were a couple of things I wanted to read about for it to really be the 'wars' of the 90s that i remembered. There was just a cursory view given of how Sony really stepped in and shook things up near the end and I would have preferred to have read more about that. There was also a passage where a skit that Nintendo did at an early E3 that could have been paraphrased and space there used to give some kind of overview of the situation that caused Atari to jump back in the ring and also the situation at 3DO, maybe just a chapter that kind of recapped what they were doing and then a few follow ups as they flailed later.

Instead what I got was the story of Sega, with the main villain Nintendo also present. The relationships between thew two companies was great to see and the contrast in styles and Sega created the image of Nintendo that we have today. It was also interesting to see how quickly things failed because of cultural differences and ego just as the company reached the top. If you are into the insider tales of business success and marketing you can learn a lot through this book.