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The Rise and Fall of Sega
jayintune writes "2old2play has a look into Sega's past, examining where they went wrong in the console wars. What did they do to lose their competitive edge, and how did they fall victim to the PS2 and Xbox?" From the article: "Sega started as a small business from which spawned a gaming giant. As with all great Empires, they eventually rot, crumble, and fall from their own ever-grasping hand. After the Genesis they tried to go in too many directions at once and spread their resources too thin. They knew they would have major competition from other game developers, but I bet when they started, they never imagined they would be their own worst enemy."
By the way, just a little FYI on a kind of similar matter. The Playstation experiment (PSX) was originally designed to be a 32-bit CD-ROM system (I think an addon like SEGA CD for the SNES) for Nintendo. Same for Colecovision or whatever it was called if I remember correctly. But, my point is, Nintendo messed up with their own bad decision-making and now is dangerously close to a precipice near SEGA's. They've held on a little better and aren't at their fingertips (let's see if Wii does even half of what they claim, else they may be down to the fingers if it fails) but, thanks to their own similar bad decision-making, Sony is now a HUGE dominator in the market they practically owned.
Moral of the story? If you're in a big competitive environment, for your own sake, use your head and think carefully before commiting huge resources on such things!