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Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

4.4 out of 5 stars 3,768 ratings

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 all that would change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a former Mattel executive who knew nothing about video games and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat, and bold ideas of his renegade employees, completely transformed Sega and led to a ruthless, David-and-Goliath showdown with Nintendo. Little did he realize that Sega's success would create many new enemies and, most important, make Nintendo stronger than ever.

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 school yards 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 United States against Japan.

Based on more than 200 interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the tale of how Tom Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punch line into a market leader. Blake J. Harris brings into focus the warriors, the strategies, and the battles and explores how they transformed popular culture forever. Ultimately, Console Wars is 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, give birth to a $60 billion industry.

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Product details

Listening Length 20 hours and 41 minutes
Author Blake J. Harris
Narrator Fred Berman
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date May 13, 2014
Publisher HarperAudio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B00K0M8TR4
Best Sellers Rank

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
3,768 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find this book to be a must-read for video game enthusiasts, providing a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the console wars era with extensive research that goes beyond other books on the subject. The narrative maintains a lively pace and is fast-paced, making it an extremely enjoyable read. While some customers praise the writing style, others find it hokey.

317 customers mention "Readability"304 positive13 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a must-read for video game enthusiasts with great stories and anecdotes.

"Great read for anyone who owned one or both console systems or is interested in the history of video games in general covering the late 80s and..." Read more

"...It's a great read and I found myself slowing down and taking days off to prevent myself from hitting the end too soon...." Read more

"Great book that reads like a work of fiction but is based on more than 2000 interviews with the people that partook in the events of the story...." Read more

"...Definitely a great book and one of the most enjoyable I have read in a while." Read more

100 customers mention "History"87 positive13 negative

Customers praise this book as a great piece of video game history, providing an excellent recount of the console wars era, with one customer noting how it marries nostalgia with business insights.

"Well written. A fascinating history of video games that reads like fiction. Very well done." Read more

"Some interesting history, but I grew very tired of the writing style. Creating fake dialogue to tell a non-fiction story doesn't sound right...." Read more

"...I loved the history of what happened to the two giants of the industry...." Read more

"...A great book about a great piece of video game history. Highly recommended." Read more

98 customers mention "Insight"86 positive12 negative

Customers appreciate the book's insights, finding it informative without being boring and providing a deeper analysis than other books in the genre.

"...this is immensely entertaining and informative." Read more

"An interesting, fun and informative read that took me back to my childhood in the 80s...." Read more

"This was a very informative and entertaining book about the console wars that me and my older brother grew up with in the early 90's...." Read more

"...I gave this 5 stars based on the sheer amount of information and how enjoyable the reading experience was, but i don't mean to suggest it is flawless..." Read more

33 customers mention "Look"28 positive5 negative

Customers appreciate the book's behind-the-scenes look at the console wars, describing it as a fascinating and colorful journey.

"...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..." Read more

"...When the book arrived I noticed the great printing job, nicely designed dust jacket and the soft touch coating that gave the cover that nice, “suedey..." Read more

"This book provides a very detailed background of the Sega/Nintendo console wars of the late '80s and early '90s...." Read more

"...that the only redeeming quality this book has to offer is the behind the scenes look of how this industry operated back then...." Read more

29 customers mention "Pacing"21 positive8 negative

Customers appreciate the book's pacing, describing it as lively and fast, with one customer noting that 600 pages went quickly.

"...This gave Sheff's book a journalistic crackle, keeping the pace moving, the flow of information constant, and the level of authorial distance..." Read more

"...While the first two thirds are well paced and fascinating, the last third is by far the weakest feeling drown out by its constant use of full length..." Read more

"Good read, interesting but a bit slow. Spent too much time on Sega and not Nintendo...." Read more

"...The industry seemed simple and fast paced. Smaller and easier to make games for and this is told subtly through the book...." Read more

27 customers mention "Enjoyment"27 positive0 negative

Customers find the book extremely enjoyable and engaging.

"...the usual textbook, dry, boring way of most non-fiction, this one was engaging and exciting...." Read more

"...The introduction by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg was witty and enjoyable. And the book itself started off promising...." Read more

"Wow! I really enjoyed reading this book!..." Read more

"...Good times, good read." Read more

35 customers mention "Narrative quality"0 positive35 negative

Customers find the narrative quality of the book disappointing, describing it as an exciting story that is incredibly boring and heavy on story content.

"Meh, somehow this author makes an exciting story incredibly boring." Read more

"...which feel like double flashbacks, jumping around time, segwaying into personal scenes, focusing on scenes unrelated to the theme, and shifting POVs..." Read more

"...So in a nutshell, this book is a huge mess...." Read more

"...Several of the story lines never fully develop and just sort of peter out...." Read more

Excellent book. Recommended!
5 out of 5 stars
Excellent book. Recommended!
I truly enjoy reding each page not just because it brings me back to the days of the consoles war (i was crazy about me Sega Megadrive), but also this book amazingly describes marketing use cases in big enterprises. Excellent writing! I wish there was also books about Sega and Nintendo of Japan
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2014
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    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...
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2014
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    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.
    86 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Armando Guerrero Ramos
    5.0 out of 5 stars Buena calidad
    Reviewed in Mexico on January 29, 2020
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Me llego sin ningún rasguño o golpe, me gusta que esta en inglés así que me ayudara a reforzar mi inglés. No pensé que fuera de tantas paginas pero eso no me molesta, así que si te gustan los videojuegos amaras un libro de videojuegos.
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  • Gardus
    5.0 out of 5 stars Lettura molto interessante
    Reviewed in Italy on March 4, 2017
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Ho vissuto da ragazzino la lotta Nintendo / Sega, proseguendo poi in adolescenza con l'arrivo di Sony.

    La lettura è veramente interessante e resa divertente da aneddoti divertenti e personaggi accattivanti.

    E' anche uno spaccato su marketing e brand management negli anni 90.

    Consigliato!
  • Oliver Kitzing
    5.0 out of 5 stars Spannend für Insider
    Reviewed in Germany on September 15, 2014
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Ich fand das Buch EXTREM spannend (wenn man sich für die Thematik interessiert).

    Auch wenn das mehr eine "Mockumentary" ist, deren Wahrheitsgehalt und Blickwinkel man immer hinterfragen sollte, wurde das Ziel meines Erachtens nach erreicht: eine kurzweilige, spannende Retrospektive des Sega/Nintendo "Krieges" zu bieten, mit Details, die man so noch nicht wusste...

    Hochinteressant mit welchen "Dirty Tricks" da gearbeitet wurde im Marketing.. ich hab mir auf Youtube die passenden SEGA Werbespots herausgesucht nachdem ich über sie im Buch gelesen hatte, mit dem HIntergrund der Entstehung war das extrem unterhaltsam...

    Z.B. der Spot mit dem Dragster (im Buch irrtümlich "Formula 1 car" genannt) und dem beworbenen "Blast Processing Feature" des MegaDrive. Aus der Not geboren als Nintendo mit dem "Mode 7" reüssierte suchten die Marketing Leute von SEGA verzweifelt nach einem MegaDrive Feature, was das Super Nintendo nicht hatte.. und fanden in den Hardware-Specs die Mögichkeit eines vorübergehend zu aktivierenden "Turbo-Modus" der MegaDrive Hardware... nannten es kreativ "Blast Processing" und brachten es mit Sonic in Verbindung. In Wirklichkeit spielte dieser Modus kaum eine Rolle wenn überhaupt...

    Aber das Marketing war glücklich.. :P

    Es sollte aber im Hinterkopf behalten werden, dass das ganze Buch hauptsächlich den US-Markt zu dieser Zeit wiedergibt, Europa wird seltenst erwähnt.. maximal wenn Entwickler eine Rolle spielen, aber kaum als Absatzmarkt.
  • Daniel Moertl
    5.0 out of 5 stars Simply awesome
    Reviewed in Brazil on July 12, 2014
    This is a must read even for people who never really lived that golden era of videogame rivalry. The book is leaned more towards Kalinske's days at Sega, but covers pretty much everything, from the early Nintendo days in America to the saddest moments of Sega during the mid-nineties. It makes you wonder how the things would've turned upside down if Sega and Sony partnered for the PSX, or if Nintendo had never approached Silicon Graphics when looking for partner for a next generation console after de Snes.
    We know some stuff may seen weird - the author never says a word about the Saturn being first conceived as a cartridge based console, and even ignores almost completely the existence of the Virtual Boy and the Nomad, but the tension during the dialogues and all those amazing and intriguing stories have already made this book my favorite so far this year.
  • 9447914010301202202112022021030104197449
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very long but worth reading
    Reviewed in Japan on December 3, 2016
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    1. Offers insights into differences in management styles between Japan and the US

    It was very interesting to witness firsthand how two companies (a US subsidiary and a Japanese parent) which supposedly have the common goal in mind act differently. It applies to both Sega and Nintendo.

    Instead of harnessing the opportunities offered by having people from diverse backgrounds on the team, they practically killed each other in silence.

    2. Offers insights into the difficulties that a latecomer faces in the market

    Sega came in late and Sony came later than Sega. However, at the end of the day, only Sega seems to have left behind. You would get the idea why this happened by reading this book and how to overcome it.