/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9496158
Japan cared more about Square / Enix, and way less so about arcade action, so SFC dominated there. But in the West, they cared way more about action, sports and mascot platformers, so one of Nintendo's biggest advantages meant very little there.
Also note that almost all of the best-selling SFC games in Japan were exclusives (save for a few like Street Fighter 2 or Puyo Puyo). But in the West, again due to popularity of the sports and cartoon games, a lot of the biggest sellers were multiplats. Mortal Kombat, NFL / NBA Jam, Aladdin, Lion King etc. came out on both platforms. So again, the gap narrowed hard. Genesis getting a lot of Western developer titles also didn't help.
And yes, Sega's marketing and Ninty's kiddy image in the West could've hurt too, but it's hard to say how much.
Regardless, data may vary, but according to NPD, Genesis was often beating SNES (albeit not by much) until late '94. It took DKC for Nintendo to truly give an answer to Sega. (see https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?26110-January-December-1994-NPD-sales-data! ).