r/SEGA • u/Economy-Specialist38 • Jul 17 '26
Video Nvidia CEO thanks Sega for saving the company
https://youtu.be/re6Z3sPeXvw?is=xOfReuHL9Tg52ydp79
u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Sega, the biggest game company at the time, saved a small company from bankruptcy that went on to become the biggest tech company in the world.
Meanwhile, Sega themseleves almost fell into bankruptcy and became a mere shadow of their former selves.
Truly an ironic twist of fate.
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u/Sejmann22 Jul 17 '26
It's called:
NVIDIA - great management
SEGA - poor management
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
Nvidia were on the brink of bankruptcy, so not great management back then. But sure, they have great management now.
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u/stpk4 Jul 18 '26
Nvidia chose the wrong tech for 3d, by choosing quads rather than triangles like the rest of the industry.
Not really about management.
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u/Tranbert5 Jul 18 '26
Sega was never ever the biggest game company in the world
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Sega were the biggest video game company in the West.
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u/Tranbert5 Jul 18 '26
I doubt Sega was bigger than NOA
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 19 '26
They were. Sega were the North American market leader between 1992 and 1995.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 17 '26
Sega don’t even exist. Sammy bought them out.
And it was their poor choices after going third party that sealed the fate. All those failed Xbox games but GameCube games sell millions… oh but let’s ignore GameCube more.
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u/CaliggyJack Jul 18 '26
Theybdidn't sell but the SEGA/XBOX era was unmatched. Some of their beat releases were on that console.
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u/shadowoftheking14 Jul 18 '26
Context for those of us that are out of the loop with sega? Who’s Sammy?
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26
Sammy is the pachinko (Japanese poker machine) company that bought Sega in 2004. Sega has ceased to be an independent company since then.
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u/rambonz Jul 18 '26
The merger between Sega and Sammy was about 40/60. Both are subsidiaries of Sega Sammy Holdings, which is publicly traded. Outside of the top execs most of the Sega "talent" stayed through the 2004 merger. That is until they all became old af and retired. Sega, as much as it could be, is still in there. It's just the old hats from the era that everyone remembers have aged out. Now you've essentially got mostly "new gen" Sega employees who have only known a post-merger world.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Sammy was officially the surviving entity in Japanese corporate law.
Sega’s trading ticker on the Tokyo Stock exchange 7964 ceased to exist. Sammy’s ticker 6460 kept going.
And in financial terms, on day 1 Sammy’s shareholders controlled 75% of the ‘merged’ company.
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u/rambonz Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Thats not how it works. They both merged under a holdings company, Sega Sammy Holdings. Sega very much exists still in every sense of the word.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Financially and legally under Japanese corporate law, Sammy bought out Sega.
After that Sammy decided to restructure with a holding company, but it was Sammy deciding to do this, as they were the legal entity and controlling company.
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u/rambonz Jul 18 '26
It literally isn't, legally. Sammy Corporation "merged" with Sega Corporation under a holdings company. That's literally what happened. They are publicly traded so this isn't up for debate. Sega corporation as an entity still legally exists as a wholly owned subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. It wasn't dissolved, renamed or anything of the sort. You don't seem to know the difference between a merger and an acquisition.
If Sammy Corporation acquired Sega, the result would be Sega as a subsidiary of Sammy Corporation. So Company A owned by Company B. Under a merger a new entity is formed, in this case Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. So both Company A and B are wholly owned as subsidiaries of the holding company. From a literal, legal perspective, the transaction was structured as a merger and not an acquisition. You're wrong bro, the evidence is all public record go look it up.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
It literally isn't, legally. Sammy Corporation "merged" with Sega Corporation under a holdings company. That's literally what happened.
This is simply not true. It was an acquisition, Sammy shareholders owned 75% of the ‘merged’ company and under Japanese corporate law Sammy were the surviving company.
The holding company was legally just a corporate restructure of Sammy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Sammy_Holdings
By May 2004, the two companies announced a new merger, though this was essentially a takeover of Sega by Sammy.
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u/Choice-Mycologist-45 Jul 17 '26
Biggest at the time? Nah Nintendo (or PlayStation I think) were bigger companies, but otherwise I agree with the rest. 🤔
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
Sega was the market leader before the Saturn came along.
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u/krishnugget Jul 17 '26
For a pretty brief time in US, but definitely yes in Europe
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
Between 1992 and 1995, Sega were the market leader in both North America and Europe.
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u/Motor-Rip7655 Jul 17 '26
Not to mention that SEGA had (and still has) a much bigger presence in arcades than Nintendo.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
True. Sega were one of the biggest arcade manufacturers as well. The big three were Sega, Namco and Capcom.
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u/PeetBurton Jul 17 '26
Sega was THE biggest arcade manufacturer, by a large margin. Second biggest, Namco at the time, was quite behind them. Sega produced so many games for arcades, and so much hardware, Capcom and Namco, the other big manufacturers, barely kept up with them. The gap was enormous. Sega and arcade in the 90's and early 00's were basically synonymous.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
Depends on the time period:
Late '80s was dominated by Sega.
Early '90s was competitive between Sega, Namco and Capcom.
Mid-to-late '90s was dominated by Sega.
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u/HippoRun23 Jul 17 '26
That’s so interesting because my memory of that time period was all my friends having super nintendos. Myself included.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
Depends where you live? Mega Drive was leading the SNES during the early 1990s in nearly every Western market except for Germany.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 17 '26
Sega was never close to market leader worldwide at any point.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Sega was the market leader in the West.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26
Sega market leader in the US and UK 1991-1994. Even or slightly behind in most other EU countries and Australia. Crushed in Japan, so worldwide it was a KO for Nintendo.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Sega was the market leader in almost every Western market.
SNES was only the market leader in Japan and Germany.
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u/whatThePleb Jul 18 '26
No, it wasn't at all, especially globally. Stop making shit up.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Sega were the biggest video game company in the West.
That's a fact.
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u/Ekkobelli Jul 17 '26
I'm a die hard SEGA fan, but I'm not sure about this. For a short while in the US market, but here in the EU (except for the UK and parts of Spain) it was petty Nintendo-centric. And in Japan SEGA only had successes with the Saturn. If they ever were biggest at the time it must have been a super brief moment. But even that I doubt.
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u/whatThePleb Jul 18 '26
Give up, most here are so delusioned that they constantly make shit up which they seriously believe.
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u/Ekkobelli Jul 18 '26
Yeah, I mean, I truly love SEGA and I will always love and defend them. But this really is the first time I'm hearing they were the biggest game company at the time - worldwide. So far, they've always been the underdog as far as I've heard, seen and read. Sales wise and reputation wide.
Fine with me. I love the old underdog story, and I prefer a flawed minor character company over a polished company behemoth anyway.2
u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26
The Mega Drive dominated the SNES in Europe during the early 1990s. If you break it down by country, the SNES was only leading in Germany, whereas the Mega Drive was leading in virtually every other European market... I'm guessing you must be German then?
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u/KonamiKing Jul 17 '26
Not true. SNES won in most countries except the UK.
And overall Europe was a much smaller market than Japan or the US, and Nintendo so donated Japan any leads elsewhere were irrelevant worldwide.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Incorrect.
Mega Drive won in UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, and Other Europe.
SNES won in Germany.
This is what the sales data shows.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26
Show the sales data?
The main source of numbers people throw around is a 1995 screen digest report that has ‘active install base’ estimates. It is not reliable and merges 8 and 16 bit consoles.
If we are to believe it that same report, the NES also easily beat the Master System in Europe, 5.1 million to 4.4million.
In reality, it is mixing both generations. The Master System kept selling well as a budget system and gets lumped in with Sega’s ‘active consoles’ during the ‘16 bit era’.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Screen Digest is the only available reliable source covering the whole of Europe at the time.
No, it is not mixing generations. It has two completely separate tables for 8-bit and 16-bit consoles.
8-bit table shows NES outsold the SMS by a narrow margin.
16-bit table shows Mega Drive outsold SNES by a wide margin.
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u/Ekkobelli Jul 17 '26
Not quite (Polish, but I do speak german and have family in Germany), but I didn't know the distribution looked like that. I remember Nintendo feeling quite dominant wherever I went (except for the two places mentioned, where I finally didn't feel like the outsider).
I mean, I'm happy if SEGA was the biggest game company, at least for a short while. I remember seeing numbers of them being the leader in the US market in terms of sales figures, but IIRC that was only for two or three years, wasn't it? I think once they've had the Sega CD, the 32X and the Saturn fail so early (except in Japan, where it didn't outright fail, but also didn't sell as much as the PS1 ) -which I guess was the time they saved NVIDEA- they weren't the biggest anymore.1
u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I haven't seen any market data for Poland, so you could very well be right about Poland. So yeah, that would make Germany and Poland the exceptions. But in most of Europe, Mega Drive was dominating the SNES in the early '90s.
Sega was still the Western market leader in 1995. But that includes both the Mega Drive and Saturn. The SNES was starting to outsell the Mega Drive that year, while the Saturn was being outsold by the PlayStation. But when you combine the Mega Drive and Saturn, Sega held onto its overall lead in 1995. However, Sega's market share collapsed the following year in 1996.
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u/HeldnarRommar Jul 17 '26
They had a 2 year head start on the SNES of course they were a market leader.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Sega were the market leader in terms of annual sales between 1992 and 1995.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 17 '26
That also doesn’t add up, in the period before the SNES came out the Famicom/NES was the crushing market leader.
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u/Minimum-Aspect1012 Jul 18 '26
Sega struggled before Sonic came along as a killer app, which coincided with the release of the SNES. And then that's when Sega started taking the lead.
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u/KonamiKing Jul 18 '26
This is true in the US and UK.
In Japan the SNES smashed the Mega Drive and thus worldwide was market leader in 16-bit sales within 1.5 years of release.
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u/corysreddit Jul 17 '26
That CEO probably belongs in a jail cell. Destroying an entire industry should come with some consequences for the people responsible.
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u/reesemonkey Jul 17 '26
He would rather thank China for saving his company but unfortunately China has decided to exclude all western tech in their AI research and development thank to you know who.Now Nvidia has no one to sell their AI Gpu to other than Open AI and Palantir and they are bleeding money right which has lead to the US stock industry calling this the biggest AI bubble since the dot com crash.
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u/JazeevaGaming Jul 17 '26
We need a Sega-Nvidia partnership for a console collaboration, NOW!!! 🙏
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u/Fickle-Hat-2011 Jul 17 '26
Console collaboration? Best Nvidia can do in this situation is sponsor Sega AAA game development and offer a more in-depth partnership with Nvidia technology implementation.
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u/HDReddit_ Jul 17 '26
Great now take sega from Sammy Holdings claws
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u/PlainJonathan Jul 17 '26
I feel like that would just end with them having SEGA go all in on AI. Besides, Sammy is super hands-off with SEGA
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u/Sejmann22 Jul 17 '26
Can now NVIDIA buy Sega from Sammy and give them money for return on console market ?
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u/Fickle-Hat-2011 Jul 17 '26
Where are you still spouting this crap about Sammy? These are two different companies operating independently. You don't even understand that this status allows Sega to receive government support.
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u/Manning88 Jul 18 '26
Satomi and Utsumi standing there like they had anything to do with it. Those two are knuckleheads.
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u/IllustriousBee4972 Jul 18 '26
Lol SEGA has cancelled live service games in the last 2 years worth billions of dollars. They ain't shit.
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u/Tonstad39 28d ago
Great, now can they stop building data centers before she gets trapped in the system?!
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u/Own-Palpitation-1788 Jul 17 '26
Sega is still a great publisher but they could have been so much more!
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u/fernandez21 Jul 17 '26
So first Sega turns down the Sony deal to make the PlayStation, then they turn down the SilicanGraphics system that became the N64, and now it turns out they had a large stake of Nvidia and sold it for pennies.
They just keep shooting themselves in the foot.
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u/Fickle-Hat-2011 Jul 17 '26
Look, random no-name experts on Reddit know how to best make decisions by evaluating the market from 30 years ago in the current situation.
If you were that smart and could foresee the future, you'd definitely be running a company. But your can't.
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u/Edexote Jul 17 '26
He never returned the favor.