List of Sonic Team games
In addition to the "Sonic" series, the company has developed other games for Sega, such as "Nights into Dreams" (1996) and "Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg" (2003). The 1991 release of "Sonic the Hedgehog" is considered significant in video game history, as it increased the Sega Genesis's sales and Sega displaced Nintendo as the leading video game company. Some of Sonic Team's games, such as the Genesis-era "Sonic" games and "Nights", are considered by critics to be among the greatest video games ever released.
History of Sega
In spite of the launch of the PlayStation and the Saturn, sales of 16-bit hardware/software continued to account for 64% of the video game market in 1995. Sega underestimated the continued popularity of the Genesis, and did not have the inventory to meet demand for the product. Sega was able to capture 43% of the dollar share of the U.S. video game market and sell more than 2 million Genesis units in 1995, but Kalinske estimated that "we could have sold another 300,000 Genesis systems in the November/December timeframe." Nakayama's decision to focus on the Saturn over the Genesis, based on the systems' relative performance in Japan, has been cited as the major contributing factor in this miscalculation. According to Sega Technical Institute head Roger Hector, after Sony's release of the PlayStation, the atmosphere at Sega became political, with "lots of finger-pointing".