For the most part of the 21st century, Sega has been synonymous with a blue, attitude-filled hedgehog, but there was a time when the company wasn't just a game publisher. It was a titanic brand, going toe-to-toe with Nintendo during the '80s and the '90s, and even outpacing them (for a while, at least).

For a whole generation of kids back before the turn of the century, Sega's consoles were the definition of cool, edgy, and fast, and sure, the Nintendo systems had great arcade games, but the genre flourished best on Sega consoles. As fast as they rose, however, Sega tumbled just as spectacularly, and here's why they bowed out of the console wars for good.

Sega peaked with the Genesis, but it was also their curse

They botched their 16-bit head start

When we talk about Sega consoles, their Genesis console is inarguably what put them on the global map, and made them a household name. This console had Sonic, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, and a whole library of arcade-quality titles, and for once, they managed to put Nintendo on the back foot. Plus, it also came with 16-bit hardware a whole two years before Nintendo's SNES did, which gave them a two-year head start on the competition. Nintendo didn't sell the 16-bit Super Nintendo until 1991, since the NES' sales were so good.

Now, here's the problem with hitting your peak — you might start believing you can't miss, and that's what Sega did. The Genesis may have given Sega some rightly-earned confidence, but it also made them just a tiny bit complacent, and instead of preparing for the next big generational leap, they doubled down on short-term wins. So, rather than focusing on a true successor to the Genesis, they instead started going hard on strange hardware add-ons.

The Genesis' hardware add-ons eroded customer trust

Sega muddles its identity with ridiculously expensive add-ons

When Sega should have been preparing internally to build and develop a 32-bit successor to their Genesis console, they instead launched the Sega CD instead. This was in 1992, a year after the Super Nintendo came to the market. Cool in concept? Yes. Strange in execution? Definitely. The Sega CD acted as an add-on for the Genesis, and it could play FMV-heavy CD titles, but they've aged terribly, and the worst part? It cost $300, while the Genesis console itself retailed at $189.

The 32X was no better, looking like a weird B-movie prop slapped on top of the Genesis to give it more power. This confused gamers, sure, but it also confused developers, who didn't know where the hell to put their resources between the base Genesis, the 32X, and the Saturn. What this did was erode developer trust in Sega and their mishandling of titles, and this is where you can point out that the downfall began, because developers bore this in their minds when they moved over to making games for Sony's PlayStation consoles.

Then, there was Night Trap, a game released in 1992 that caught the attention of the masses, and not in the good way. With the 32X, it included full-motion videos and their campiness landed Sega in U.S. congressional hearings over violence against women in video games. At the time, of course, the major buyers of the Genesis were parents, and they panicked. Politicians pounced, and suddenly, Sega's edginess became reckless, sowing mistrust that lingered into later consoles.

An internal struggle at Sega doomed the Saturn from day one

It really never stood a chance

It's really the Saturn fiasco that sums up Sega's downfall. On paper, this 32-bit console should have been the killer to the PlayStation from Sega, but it was terribly sabotaged before it even had the chance to touch store shelves. Sega of Japan and Sega of America were locked in a cold war of sorts, constantly wanting to go in different directions with their hardware. While Japan insisted that they needed to push the Saturn out early in order to beat Sony's upcoming PlayStation, America begged for more time to polish the console, build up third-party support, and allow the 32X hardware boost for the Genesis to grow some more. With all of that involved, the Saturn came out to one of the messiest launches in gaming history.

At E3 1995, Sega stunned everyone by announcing the Saturn would be immediately available. The problem was that even the retailers were surprised, and they weren't ready. Furious, KB Toys, a major retailer at the time, simply refused to ever sell the Saturn and its games, which was a major blow to the new console's sales at launch itself. Developers weren't ready, either, and the console came out with just six launch titles.

This internal tug-of-war between the Segas of America and Japan wasted the brand's goodwill, left the company fractured, and made sure that the Saturn would be all but dead on arrival. The final blow? Sony capitalized perfectly on each one of Sega's missteps, blowing them out of the water.

Sony swooped in and capitalized on every Sega mistake

The PlayStation was everything the Saturn wasn't being

At E3 1995, when Sega jumped the gun with the Saturn's surprise early launch announcement with just six games and a $399 price, Sony, with perfect comedic timing, simply walked on stage and said, "$299". The room erupted; It became one of the biggest, most popular moments in gaming history, and Sega never truly recovered.

This wasn't all, either. The Saturn may have been the stronger console going by hardware, but it was terribly difficult to develop for and utilize fully. The PlayStation, on the other hand, became a developer's dream, with straightforward architecture for all their third-party developers, while offering them better royalties and open support. The result? Everyone from Square Enix to Namco and Capcom jumped aboard, flooding the PS1 with legendary titles.

By the late '90s, the PS1 was the console to build for and to buy. It had cheaper hardware, smarter marketing, and unrivaled third-party backing. Everywhere Sega had faltered, Sony had capitalized, turning Sega's mistakes into its golden ticket.

Sony, along with burnt developers and customers buried the Dreamcast

Despite it being a good console, nobody could bring themselves to care about the Dreamcast

By the time the Sega Dreamcast arrived in '99, Sega was carrying a ton of baggage. Years of half-baked add-ons — the botched 32X and Sega CD — and the terrible Saturn launch, along with internal chaos, shredded consumer trust almost completely. Yes, the Dreamcast was innovative with its internet connectivity and a few killer titles, but it was simply too late.

The PlayStation had become an unstoppable force, and it dominated the market with a massive library and mainstream appeal that Sega had lost. The online features of the Dreamcast were something customers just didn't care about, since the infrastructure wasn't there, and online play wouldn't truly matter until Xbox Live, years later.

What people did care about, though, was the PlayStation 2 on the horizon, with its promise of an even better PlayStation experience, and DVD playback. Even when games on the PS2 were originally rather difficult to build, developers realized that Sony were the 1000-pound gorilla in the room, and that was where they needed to sell their games. Sega just couldn't escape Sony's shadow by then, no matter how hard it tried. In all honesty, the Dreamcast wasn't a bad console, but it was just too much, too early, and it got completely overlooked in the wake of the PS2 juggernaut.

Sega's biggest enemy was itself

One bad decision after another led to Sega's console-making downfall

At the end of the day, Sega had proven to be its own worst enemy by the time the Dreamcast was in the middle of its lifecycle. Years of financial mismanagement, rushed and half-baked hardware, and confusing product strategies left the company hemorrhaging money. Worse still was the fact that consumers no longer trusted Sega, and why would they? If you bought into the Sega CD, the 32X, or the Saturn, only to see them become wildly confusing products and subsequently abandoned, why would you gamble again on the Dreamcast?

Sega had burned through all the goodwill they had, at a time when trust mattered most. By the time 2001 rolled around, the writing was really on the wall. Sega officially pulled out of the console race, shifting to software only, and while that was a heartbreaking moment for fans and players who had grown up on their machines, it was unsurprising.

A series of unfortunate decisions

Sega's fall from grace (and glory) wasn't a single bad decision. It was a series of them, compounded by Sony's meteoric rise, and a loss of trust among the customer base. Their legacy lives on, no doubt, but they did lose the console race entirely, and had no option but to bow out.

Now, this once-great console maker is now busy with its Sonic movies and being a third-party developer for all major gaming platforms. Virtua Fighter 6 can not come soon enough.