--- product_id: 15052769 title: "Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation" price: "121 zł" currency: PLN in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.pl/products/15052769-console-wars-sega-nintendo-and-the-battle-that-defined-generation store_origin: PL region: Poland --- # Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation **Price:** 121 zł **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation - **How much does it cost?** 121 zł with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pl](https://www.desertcart.pl/products/15052769-console-wars-sega-nintendo-and-the-battle-that-defined-generation) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Now a documentary on CBS All Access. Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars —a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry. In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David-and-Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo. The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan. Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader. It’s the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a $60 billion dollar industry. A best book of the year: NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Goodreads Review: Missing history of an entire industry - Loved it. Absolutely loved it. But then again, I was a diehard Sega kid growing up. If you didn't play video games in the 90s this might not have much for you. But, if you did, this is the story of how all that business came together. The book covers a massive amount of content in a very easy-going, novel-narrative style. It covers Nintendo's entrance into the long-dead video game market, then Sega's weak early attempts to compete, and then chronicles the entire business of video games developing into the modern era. The scandals that took them to senate hearings- and the ratings system that they had to create- are huge parts of the story. Sega is the main character of the book- or rather, Sega of America President Tom Kalinske, who is given the difficult job in the first chapter and leaves it in the last. Kalinske was clearly the biggest influence on the research, because it's primarily from his point of view. Nintendo isn't a villain, mind you- plenty of the story is dedicated to the massive work they put into creating an industry that had ceased to exist after the Atari crash. Their on/off relationship with Sony and the creation of the Playstation also play a large role. In the end the villain is Sega of Japan, who seem to grow more and more resentful of Sega of America's eclipsing success while they struggled at home. The book paints a picture of a jealous, even bigoted Sega of Japan that undermines SOA at every step. How much is hard truth and how much is Kalinske's own memoirs of it is impossible to say. Even with a grain of salt for that it's a fantastic read. The stretch of time from 1985 to 1995 was chaos for video games, and this book takes that history and spins it, Mad Men or Moneyball-style, as the trials and tribulations of a small group of marketing and designing underdogs. In the course of the story Sega goes from a struggling upstart with 5% control of the games market to a powerhouse with 55%... only to lose it all just as quickly. If you ever wondered why Sega went from being on top of it all to last place, the answers are here. The fictionalized dialog can get a little awkward at times, but it doesn't detract from the whole. This is a detailed and far-reaching look at how video games went from a failed toy in the 70's to dominant media in 2000, and how influential just a handful of people were to it. Review: Fascinating information and absolutely worth reading; however, the authorial presence is far too strong - Console Wars largely chronicles the period between 1989 and 1995, when Sega battled Nintendo for dominance in the home console market, ending as Sony displaces Sega in the 32-bit era as Nintendo's main competitor. In a sense, it does serve as a sort of sequel to David Sheff's gold-standard account in "Game Over" of the rise of Nintendo in the 80's, which left off at the point where Sega's Genesis had just started to get a serious foothold in the market. However, the styles in which the two authors approach their subjects are very different, and it's interesting to compare them. Sheff's Game Over contained very little conversational dialogue. He wrote his book like a reporter: documenting scenes and incidents by describing the people and particulars involved, the content of what they said, and the effect of their interactions. His book was full of individual quotes, but the large majority of them were presented matter-of-factly as accounts made by the subject either directly to the author in interview, or to another source of record which Sheff was citing. In-scene "dialogue" was used sparingly, and mostly limited to short lines that reflected exactly what was known by the subject or other observers to have been said, or something very close to it. This gave Sheff's book a journalistic crackle, keeping the pace moving, the flow of information constant, and the level of authorial distance removed enough that the reader always maintained a panoramic view of the bigger picture, and didn't get bogged down in superfluous, artificial detail. In contrast, Harris's book is written like a screenplay, with full "scenes" that progress via elaborate, lengthy dialogues between "characters", while novel-esque, detailed stage directions record their precise movements and interior thoughts, all of which can only have been manufactured by the author (as he himself loosely admits in his author's note) based on the factual framework of an interaction that did occur. Where Game Over was a documentary, this book is much more a historical re-enactment. It's obvious that Harris already had a film in mind when he was writing, and the cinematically styled sharp, pithy dialogue (or at least, attempts at such), and conversational set-ups and payoffs were designed to translate easily to the eventual film. This may make the book more engaging than Sheff's reserved style for some, but I found it distracting and a little gratuitous. Irrelevant detail often gets in the way of what's interesting and entertaining about the information. That said, the information and voluminous research this book does contain is incredibly valuable, and makes for a truly rewarding read. The saga of the Sega and Nintendo battle in the US is as fascinating and provoking as any story the business world has to offer, and there's more than a little tragedy in seeing how Tom Kalinske and Sega of America were able to achieve a brilliant and improbable success, only to be cut off at their knees, in the end, by Sega of Japan. The often clumsily overwritten "reconstructed" dialogue by Harris makes me doubt I'd be interested in any fiction of his, but this particular subject matter is rich enough that my issue with his authorial indulgences is just a quibble. This is by all means a book worth reading. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #58,619 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #23 in Entertainment Industry #54 in Company Business Profiles (Books) #101 in Systems & Planning | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 3,816 Reviews | ## Images ![Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71tCIRPfQPL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Missing history of an entire industry *by M***R on September 9, 2015* Loved it. Absolutely loved it. But then again, I was a diehard Sega kid growing up. If you didn't play video games in the 90s this might not have much for you. But, if you did, this is the story of how all that business came together. The book covers a massive amount of content in a very easy-going, novel-narrative style. It covers Nintendo's entrance into the long-dead video game market, then Sega's weak early attempts to compete, and then chronicles the entire business of video games developing into the modern era. The scandals that took them to senate hearings- and the ratings system that they had to create- are huge parts of the story. Sega is the main character of the book- or rather, Sega of America President Tom Kalinske, who is given the difficult job in the first chapter and leaves it in the last. Kalinske was clearly the biggest influence on the research, because it's primarily from his point of view. Nintendo isn't a villain, mind you- plenty of the story is dedicated to the massive work they put into creating an industry that had ceased to exist after the Atari crash. Their on/off relationship with Sony and the creation of the Playstation also play a large role. In the end the villain is Sega of Japan, who seem to grow more and more resentful of Sega of America's eclipsing success while they struggled at home. The book paints a picture of a jealous, even bigoted Sega of Japan that undermines SOA at every step. How much is hard truth and how much is Kalinske's own memoirs of it is impossible to say. Even with a grain of salt for that it's a fantastic read. The stretch of time from 1985 to 1995 was chaos for video games, and this book takes that history and spins it, Mad Men or Moneyball-style, as the trials and tribulations of a small group of marketing and designing underdogs. In the course of the story Sega goes from a struggling upstart with 5% control of the games market to a powerhouse with 55%... only to lose it all just as quickly. If you ever wondered why Sega went from being on top of it all to last place, the answers are here. The fictionalized dialog can get a little awkward at times, but it doesn't detract from the whole. This is a detailed and far-reaching look at how video games went from a failed toy in the 70's to dominant media in 2000, and how influential just a handful of people were to it. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fascinating information and absolutely worth reading; however, the authorial presence is far too strong *by Y***I on May 19, 2014* Console Wars largely chronicles the period between 1989 and 1995, when Sega battled Nintendo for dominance in the home console market, ending as Sony displaces Sega in the 32-bit era as Nintendo's main competitor. In a sense, it does serve as a sort of sequel to David Sheff's gold-standard account in "Game Over" of the rise of Nintendo in the 80's, which left off at the point where Sega's Genesis had just started to get a serious foothold in the market. However, the styles in which the two authors approach their subjects are very different, and it's interesting to compare them. Sheff's Game Over contained very little conversational dialogue. He wrote his book like a reporter: documenting scenes and incidents by describing the people and particulars involved, the content of what they said, and the effect of their interactions. His book was full of individual quotes, but the large majority of them were presented matter-of-factly as accounts made by the subject either directly to the author in interview, or to another source of record which Sheff was citing. In-scene "dialogue" was used sparingly, and mostly limited to short lines that reflected exactly what was known by the subject or other observers to have been said, or something very close to it. This gave Sheff's book a journalistic crackle, keeping the pace moving, the flow of information constant, and the level of authorial distance removed enough that the reader always maintained a panoramic view of the bigger picture, and didn't get bogged down in superfluous, artificial detail. In contrast, Harris's book is written like a screenplay, with full "scenes" that progress via elaborate, lengthy dialogues between "characters", while novel-esque, detailed stage directions record their precise movements and interior thoughts, all of which can only have been manufactured by the author (as he himself loosely admits in his author's note) based on the factual framework of an interaction that did occur. Where Game Over was a documentary, this book is much more a historical re-enactment. It's obvious that Harris already had a film in mind when he was writing, and the cinematically styled sharp, pithy dialogue (or at least, attempts at such), and conversational set-ups and payoffs were designed to translate easily to the eventual film. This may make the book more engaging than Sheff's reserved style for some, but I found it distracting and a little gratuitous. Irrelevant detail often gets in the way of what's interesting and entertaining about the information. That said, the information and voluminous research this book does contain is incredibly valuable, and makes for a truly rewarding read. The saga of the Sega and Nintendo battle in the US is as fascinating and provoking as any story the business world has to offer, and there's more than a little tragedy in seeing how Tom Kalinske and Sega of America were able to achieve a brilliant and improbable success, only to be cut off at their knees, in the end, by Sega of Japan. The often clumsily overwritten "reconstructed" dialogue by Harris makes me doubt I'd be interested in any fiction of his, but this particular subject matter is rich enough that my issue with his authorial indulgences is just a quibble. This is by all means a book worth reading. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A must read for anyone that was a console gaming fan in the early 90's, or interested in console gaming history. *by A***N on September 22, 2014* A great account of the Nintendo/Sega wars of the early nineties. Though the actual story of what happened between Nintendo and Sega doesn't take that long to tell, the author provides the history of both companies and the video game industry itself. Some analysis of the video game crash of the early 80's is also provided. This gives some necessary perspective on the business and industry mindsets going into the new generation of gaming kicked off by the NES that continues to this day (including the continued sales of those games in Nintendo's Virtual Console and the Playstation Store). I will note out that the story really follows the story of Tom Kalinske, so when he leaves Sega, the story is pretty much over. This was around the time the Sega Saturn came out, so don't expect this to get into N64 and Dreamcast territory, though I'm sure the interesting industry stories don't end with Kalinske. Some of it is from Nintendo and Sony's point-of-view as well, but this is really the story of how Sega America made the Genesis and Sonic a hit, and turned Sega into a household name. What I wasn't expecting was the story of the people involved, and what a small world the industry was at the time. The author interviewed most of the original people in the book, which lends stories a lot of us were already aware of (like Nintendo being the unintentional catalyst for the Sony Playstation) a lot more depth and detail. Some of the themes of the book are still very relevant and visible today, like the cultural gulf between Japan and the US. One of the best examples was the shocking peek into what the original Japanese concept for Sonic the Hedgehog would have been without the intervention of Sega America. Also, we get a peek into some of the first attempts to use DRM-like technical controls to exercise control over a market. Then, of course, we see the first attempts to break or get around DRM. I'm really looking forward to the documentary and dramatized movie, as the one thing you really crave while reading this book are some images and video to go along with the descriptions. It would be great for someone to put together a YouTube playlist of the old commercials and footage of the gameplay mentioned in the book - at least, until the documentary comes out, which I'm sure will scratch this particular itch. A must read for any console gamers like myself that feverishly read Nintendo Power and Electronic Gaming Monthly cover-to-cover back in the late 80's and early 90's. Perhaps they are out there and I'm just not aware of them, but I'd really love to see more of these books. I'm sure there's at least a book of this size in telling Atari's story; Nintendo's constant battle for market share with much larger & well funded foes (Sony and eventually Microsoft); how the Dreamcast came to be the end of Sega's console business; how Resident Evil 4 killed the Gamecube and flooded the market with $30 used consoles; Microsoft's decision to jump into the market; How Nintendo reshaped the market again by reinventing the game controller; how the Indie market and smartphones impacted the gaming markets; and so on. So many stories to tell... --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pl/products/15052769-console-wars-sega-nintendo-and-the-battle-that-defined-generation](https://www.desertcart.pl/products/15052769-console-wars-sega-nintendo-and-the-battle-that-defined-generation) --- *Product available on Desertcart Poland* *Store origin: PL* *Last updated: 2026-06-05*