January-July 1994 Sales Charts...Genesis reigns supreme! [Archive]

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Aarzak

01-22-2011, 12:40 AM

I stumbled upon this wonderful nugget of info from a link j factor posted on the SFII thread on the SCD board. The convos in the link appear to be old in and of themselves, and it hasn't been verified if the info's legit, but I'll be damned if it doesn't look legit. It's charts like this that are the only indicators as to how well Genesis games sold.

The link:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107477

And some sample charts:

January 1994:

Code:
1 GEN Mortal Kombat $55 Acclaim 94,144
2 GEN Eternal Champions $60 Sega 63,494
3 GEN John Madden NFL 94 $55 EA 63,118
4 GEN Sonic Spinball $44 Sega 59,714
5 GEN Aladdin $48 Capcom 58,324
6 GEN Street Fighter II: Special Champion Ed $62 Capcom 49,269
7 GEN Joe Montana NFL Football 94 $55 Sega 49,143
8 SNES Mortal Kombat $57 Acclaim 43,697
9 GEN NHL(PA) 94 $55 EA 39,734 / NEW
10 SNES Aladdin $60 Capcom 38,914
11 SNES Super Mario All-Stars $55 Nintendo 29,872
12 SNES Super Mario Kart $47 Nintendo 26,888
13 SNES John Madden NFL 94 $56 EA 25,191
14 GEN Lethal Enforcers $62 Konami 24,258 / NEW
15 SNES Street Fighter II Turbo $66 Capcom 23,862
16 GEN Tecmo Super NBA Basketball $60 Tecmo 22,187
17 NES Tetris 2 $38 Nintendo 22,065
18 SNES Mega Man X $64 Capcom 20,739 / NEW
19 SNES TMNT: Tournament Fighters $58 Konami 20,679
20 SNES Secret of Mana $66 Squaresoft 20,579
21 GEN Jurassic Park $47 Sega 20,449
22 SNES Tecmo Super Bowl $61 Tecmo 19,687
23 SNES NHL Stanley Cup $48 Nintendo 19,550
24 GEN X-Men $49 Sega 19,205
25 GEN WWF Royal Rumble $55 Acclaim 17,611 / NEW
26 GEN Tecmo Super Bowl $58 Tecmo 17,282
27 SNES Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past $47 Nintendo 15,842
28 SNES NBA Showdown $62 EA 15,509
29 GEN Bulls vs. Blazers and The NBA Playoffs $34 EA 15,095
30 SNES NHL 94 $55 EA 14,905 / NEW
31 SNES Mario Paint $56 Nintendo 14,621
32 GEN PGA Tour Golf II $57 EA 13,969
33 SNES Jurassic Park $55 Infogrames 13,936
34 SNES Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts $20 Capcom 13,664
35 GEN Ecco The Dolphin $45 Sega 13,441
36 GEN Ren & Stimpy $49 Sega 13,357
37 GEN Ms. Pac-man $22 Midway 13,078
38 GEN Toe Jam & Earl 2 $52 Sega 12,647
39 NES Kirby's Adventure $38 Nintendo 11,771
40 NES TMNT III: The Manhattan Project $22 Konami 11,631

Sega Genesis $107 261,463
Super NES $116 163,907
NES $51 32,769
Atari Jaguar $250 1,904
3DO Multiplayer $700 634
Neo*Geo $414 4

August 1994:
U.S. Figures Only

Code:
1 SNES Super Street Fighter II $67 Capcom 49,994 / 182,040
2 GEN Super Street Fighter II $68 Capcom 34,268 / 98,379
3 GEN NBA JAM $55 Acclaim 28,647 / 1,122,319
4 SNES Ken Griffey Jr. Presents MLB $47 Nintendo 28,243 / 290,567
5 SNES Stunt Racer FX $57 Nintendo 26,962 / 51,409
6 GEN World Series Baseball $56 Sega 25,869 / 324,080
7 SNES Breath of Fire $67 Squaresoft 23,101 / NEW
8 SNES NBA JAM $63 Acclaim 20,544 / 658,650
9 GEN Mortal Kombat $47 Acclaim 18,807
10 GEN Ms. Pac-man $21 Midway 17,546
11 SNES Super Metroid $57 Nintendo 17,323 / 245,428
12 GEN NHL(PA) 94 $31 EA 17,068 / 203,288
13 GEN The Jungle Book $61 Viacom 16,044 / NEW
14 GEN John Madden NFL 94 $31 EA 15,609
15 SNES The Jungle Book $61 Viacom 15,160 / NEW
16 GEN Sonic The Hedgehog 3 $59 Sega 14,852 / 572,541
17 GEN The Incredible Hulk $61 Eidos 13,805 / NEW
18 GEN Batman Returns $20 Sega 13,682
19 SNES Tetris 2 $50 Nintendo 12,963 / NEW
20 GEN FIFA International Soccer $57 EA 12,341
21 SNES Mortal Kombat $49 Acclaim 11,497
22 GEN Mario Andretti Racing $55 EA 10,743 / 31,248
23 GEN Aladdin $52 Sega 10,680
24 GEN Streets of Rage 3 $65 Sega 10,487 / 21,496
25 SNES Super Mario Kart $49 Nintendo 10,476
26 GEN NBA Showdown 94 $48 EA 10,180 / 166,747
27 SNES Super Mario All-Stars $55 Nintendo 9,381
28 SNES Secret of Mana $69 Squaresoft 9,233
29 SNES Aladdin $51 Capcom 9,230
30 GEN Bill Walsh College Football $62 EA 9,053
31 SNES Mario Paint $55 Nintendo 8,892
32 SNES FIFA International Soccer $57 EA 8,452 / 46,581
33 GEN Star Wars: Rebel Assault $51 JVC 8,280 / 35,767
34 GEN PGA Tour Golf II $53 EA 7,965
35 GEN Street Fighter II: Special Champion Ed $49 Capcom 7,514
36 GEN Eternal Champions $48 Sega 7,423
37 GEN Hardball 94 $64 Infogrames 7,360 / 18,268
38 GEN Evander Holyfield's 'Real Deal' Boxing $21 Sega 7,343
39 SNES Mega Man X $43 Capcom 7,236 / 107,500
40 GEN Caesar's Palace $57 Viacom 6,813 / 48,603
/ Est. LTDs
Super NES $111 120,401 / 10.05m
Sega Genesis $122 117,675 / 12.25m
NES $58 21,035 / 26.89m
3DO Multiplayer $469>$399 2,869 / 28k
Atari Jaguar $250 1,058 / 34k

Looks like MK, SFII, NBA Jam and Aladdin (all listed amongst the best-selling Genesis games on VGC) sold well (especially MK and Jam), but I'm surprised to see that Eternal Champions sold so well.......I thought that game bombed!

Now I also know why there's forever a truckload of Sega and EA Sports games on the Genesis second-hand market..........because, like the present day they sold like gangbusters and were then dumped like yesterday's garbage when the newest version came out.

Chris

01-22-2011, 01:54 AM

Thanks for posting this, I like reading stuff like this.

cowboyscowboys

01-22-2011, 02:02 AM

What month did the SNES start to dominate the ratings war? It would be cool to see the those numbers.

TrekkiesUnite118

01-22-2011, 02:05 AM

kool kitty89

01-22-2011, 07:11 AM

It's kinda funny that some of these games that were supposedly so awful on the Genesis actually sold better than their SNES counterparts. For example NBA Jam gets a lot of crap from SNES fanboys yet these numbers indicate that the Genesis version outsold the SNES version almost 2 to 1 assuming I am reading them correctly (Genesis 1.12 million to SNES's 650,000).

Mortal Kombat II also sold significantly more on the Genesis. (though it's a lot closer than MKI Gen vs SNES)

Edit:
Sorry, typo, I meant more on the Genesis, not SNES, fixed. ;)

Aarzak

01-22-2011, 01:58 PM

cowboyscowboys

01-22-2011, 02:40 PM

Christuserloeser

01-22-2011, 02:48 PM

By the time SSF2 came out people probably considered SNES to be the system to buy SF's for if they had both consoles, also the SNES version of SSF2 is better

Seems to me they're pretty much identical aside of the music and I prefer the FM rendition of the game's music over the typical SNES sound.

BLAST PROCESSOR

01-22-2011, 02:52 PM

Interesting numbers there. I thought the Genesis sales peaked earlier. Good to see it was still dominating in '94.

gamegenie

01-22-2011, 03:03 PM

well these are all before Donkey Kong Country came out.

kool kitty89

01-22-2011, 03:45 PM

MK1 obviously sold more on Genesis because it retained the blood and Fatalities (via DULLARD), otherwise the SNES port provided a much better audiovisual presentation. I don't think the casuals noticed or cared about the gameplay differences (i.e Genesis version has tighter gameplay closer to the arcade). Once Nintendo realized the error of their ways and let MKII retain the blood and guts, it outsold the Genesis version (which in itself sold well too; both broke the 1 million mark).

The Street Fighters for some reason sold WAY better on SNES than on Genesis; most of Genesis SCE and SSFII sales came from the U.S.

Sports games of course sold way better on the Genesis than on SNES.

No, the Genesis version of MKII sold more, I made a typo before, it's a common misconception that the SNES version was more popular. (the 32x version was less popular, but that's a separate issue :lol: )
Pimpuigi would have a fit. ;)

Seems to me they're pretty much identical aside of the music and I prefer the FM rendition of the game's music over the typical SNES sound.
SCE on the Genesis plays better and not just the controller, but there's something about the general control (the difficulty rage settings seem to be more flexible too, but they are higher than the SNES per the defaults -Chun Li's fireball is pretty much impossible to pull off with default settings ;))

I actually noticed a bit more slowdown on the Genesis version than in SNES Turbo (not WW, mind you), though it depended on the circumstances. Still contrary to the common claims. (but occurring on the common projectile on-screen trigger) I wonder how much the slowdown (in either case) is DMA related vs CPU related... if it's missing in PAL that would imply it's purely DMA related. (more vblank time in 50 Hz)

There's a pretty dramatic difference in voice quality from the arcade too in both cases, though for the layman (ie someone who doesn't know what it's supposed to sound like) the SNES version's samples sound better... they are less distorted (due to capcom's crappy Genesis sample playback engine) but actually seem lower quality than the Genesis (seems like similar sample rate but compressed, interpolated, and heavily filtered), and more importantly the SNES versions' samples are heavily hacked up and edited to crap with oddly short or rearranged voice sounds (often using reverb/pitch shift effects in place of full length samples -often cutting some to less than 1/4 of the original length). In spite of the crappy sample engine used by Capcom on the MD, the arcade length samples are reasonably intact. (albeit only 4 kHz... but much worse sounding than they should be due to the engine/code used and possibly poorer preprocessing for optimal 8-bit SNR)

The PCE version sounds great, the samples seem slightly high pitched compared to the arcade, but otherwise very even and clear (for 7 kHz 5-bit samples especially), though they had the benefit of using 7 kHz hardware interrupts and thus being fool proof to sloppy code (other than eating more CPU time)... though it is pretty sloppy the way they did it. (eating 2 channels for playback with the 7.16 kHz timer int rather than using the scanline interrupt for interleaved playback at 7.85 kHz on one channel and I think it also eats more CPU time than it should)

Olls

01-22-2011, 06:19 PM

4 GEN Sonic Spinball $44 Sega 59,714

What is this doing here?

SpaceFlea

01-22-2011, 06:39 PM

What is this doing here?

Well, I got it in January of '94. So perhaps it's my fault... :p

I remember going to Target, pulling it off the shelf, my dad opening it and tearing the barcode off of the case insert, then giving the freshly torn-off barcode to the clerk so we could get 10% off the just released Sonic 3 as well. I, at 10, was petrified that my new game was deflowered in such a fashion right in front of my eyes. :daze:

Ah memories...

I am proud to be part of Sega's dominance at the time, no matter what game I was buying to do so.

Obviously

01-22-2011, 06:58 PM

Spinball was a big seller, shouldn't be that surprising. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

Interesting charts. So many people around the net seem to forget how much of a knock-down drag-out fight the 16-bit era was.

cowboyscowboys

01-22-2011, 07:20 PM

It aint fun seeing half the story I want to see just how one sided the SNES was able to make it post DK.

How well did Vectorman sell? That's the last Genesis game I remember with a big push. I still remember it on display at Toys R'us when I was a kid SNES has Killer Instinct and DK 1 or 2 available to play. I thought Killer Instinct sucked... DK was amazing and Vectorman I was indifferent about.

kool kitty89

01-23-2011, 04:56 AM

Seems to me they're pretty much identical aside of the music and I prefer the FM rendition of the game's music over the typical SNES sound.
Not so much typical SNES sound (other than the fairly common use of relatively short/truncated samples and the interpolated+heavily filtered nature of the sound system as Nintendo configured it), it's really more a Capcom thing though they're sample set is a bit generic sounding (the Disney games tend to use a different set, or at least heavily push for different instruments in the standard set -very heavy FM sample use for most of those).

It's a distinctive signature sound for Capcom, like last weekend when over at a gaming meet-up someone popped in UN Squadron (which I wasn't sure of being a capcom game) and as soon as the music kicked in on the SNES, I was 99% sure it was Capcom. (it has that distinctive Mega Man/SFII SNES sound to it ;)).
A few other developers/sound engines are like that, like Konami on the NES in many cases, or codemasters for probably every NES game they made. (very European home computer stylized music)

havok666

01-23-2011, 07:47 PM

I like how the NEO GEO only sold 4 consoles in the entire US during January 1994.

JDB

01-23-2011, 07:50 PM

well these are all before Donkey Kong Country came out.

am jus gonna leave dis here

Obviously

01-23-2011, 07:54 PM

I like how the NEO GEO only sold 4 consoles in the entire US during January 1994.

I lol'd.

Thenewguy

01-23-2011, 08:39 PM

whoah, there's a lot of information here, pity he doesn't seem to cite sources?

I'm sure Pimpuigi would love some of this, I searched for other posts by the same user and ran into this -

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106330&page=2

-------1994-1995-1996--1997-1998-1999-2000

NES - 0.36m 0.14m 0.05m
GEN - 3.42m 2.06m 1.27m 0.41m 0.58m 0.32m 0.04m
SNES - 2.75m 2.32m 1.25m 0.83m 0.88m 0.29m 0.01m
JAG - 0.04m 0.02m
3DO - 0.07m 0.08m 0.05m
SAT - 0.29m 0.80m 0.24m 0.05m
PSX - 0.60m 1.99m 5.05m 7.13m 5.84m 3.22m
N64 - 1.97m 4.49m 4.14m 3.54m 2.53m
DC - 1.48m 1.28m

Hmmmm, there's sources backing up the Genesis sales for 1995, 1996, and 1997 (except the sources I've seen point to 1996 being .17 less, the other two were rounded down to 2 million, and 400,000) seems that at least this post looks pretty accurate.

This backs up the 1995 figure -

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_Jan_10/ai_18001580/?tag=content;col1

This closely resembles the 1996 figure (difference of .17) -

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Jan_13/ai_19014339/?tag=content;col1

This backs up the 1997 figure -

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3169/is_n9_v38/ai_20456851/?tag=content;col1

and his post there led me to this, which does cite sources, and it cites NPD :) -

http://www.netinst.org/Clements_Ohashi.pdf

Though there seems to be some contradictions in sales number mentioned in the thread, so I'll have to check it further I guess.

ItellYaHuat

01-23-2011, 10:54 PM

I find it interesting that the article about sales in '95 says that the Nomad actually sold well.

Thenewguy

01-24-2011, 12:02 AM

So all of Square2005's figure's seem to be from NPD, though are estimated up, based on other information he has (he even gets banned multiple times for giving out NPD data, but carries on anyway), they actually end March of 1995.

there's a lot of interesting stuff, the sales chart seems to show The Mega Drive version of the Lion King trashing the SNES version, but when you look on wikipedia you see the SNES version make the "top selling video games" list but not the Mega Drive version (no citable sources I guess) also, it backs up the fact that Ms Pacman and Power Rangers were big sellers in the US (these games do make the wikipedia list, but always surprised me)

The data also backs up that MKII Genesis outsold the SNES version.

PimpUigi

01-27-2011, 05:30 AM

You can get banned for giving out NPD data?

Thenewguy

01-27-2011, 11:45 AM

You can get banned for giving out NPD data?
The moderators there believe that NPD's data is copyright, being that they provide a pay-for service, they think that quoting numbers here or there is alright, and falls under the general rules for quoting facts, but that re-creating an entire year's worth of figures is too much, as it undermines NPD's service.

I don't know whether its true or not, but its what they seem to believe.

PimpUigi

01-27-2011, 06:45 PM

Well, if the NPD data is purchasable, why don't we purchase it?

Thenewguy

01-27-2011, 07:44 PM

Well, if the NPD data is purchasable, why don't we purchase it?
I'm not sure whether he got his raw data directly from the website years ago, or from press reports or something, but this post indicates that NPD no longer hold the information he's using

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5318103&postcount=49

It says -

I remember reading someone saying that NPD doesn't care about non-recent data when the "deal" was made w/ NPD.

I also asked them: they don't have pre-96 data anymore so why would they care about decade old data being posted?

EDIT: Although this post in the January 1995 thread throws up the possibility that in the prior comment he may be talking about the original figures published during those years, and that there's a possibility they may still carry adjusted figures for those years.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4463623&postcount=32

It says -

No. I can't post it raw, the NPD S.S. will come after me. They are roughly equal to later revised figures from the NPD (they hav revised their figures since then).

TrekkiesUnite118

01-28-2011, 10:11 PM

PimpUigi

01-29-2011, 02:04 PM

tenchibr

01-29-2011, 02:22 PM

All I can say is from a business perspective, in America, Nintendo beat the crap out of SEGA.

But in other parts of the world...

TrekkiesUnite118

01-29-2011, 02:25 PM

Because by numbers it's 49.10 million to an at best over 40.8 million.

That means the SNES won period.
However it does seem the SNES only won in Japan, and possibly Canada/Mexico...but according to some newspaper articles I was reading recently, they also had good success in Argentina and other South American countries, contributing over a million of the 23.35 million Nintendo claims for "Americas"

So the Genesis clearly won North America too counting the Nomad and Genesis 3 sales.

If we Eliminate Japan though we get numbers that look more like this after rounding:

SNES - 32 Million
Genesis - 37 Million

I don't really consider that totally winning just because 1 Region pulled it over the top. The better answer is SNES won for Japan, Genesis won for the rest of the world. Now if SNES's 49 million sales were more evenly distributed so it outsold and beat the Genesis in more regions than Japan, then yes I'd consider that SNES winning the console war.

PimpUigi

01-29-2011, 02:32 PM

Even if we used the low 37.3 million estimate we get 33.72 to 31.93 million.
And according to the NPD - http://www.netinst.org/Clements_Ohashi.pdf - Genesis raped teh US. Not Nintendo.

First view page 12 to see that Sega was winning the war in the US according to either sales data source, by about a couple and a half million.
Then see Table 1, % console units sold, and % software variety. Nintendo only wins one of the years, and it's the year Genesis was discontinued in the US (1997) before Majesco took over and made things strong again.

QuickSciFi

01-29-2011, 06:22 PM

Two things surprise me most:

1. MK1 being sold for so much and being so high up the charts so late into the game (1994). I actually bought MK2 later that year (for less, mind you).

2. Eternal Champions being sold for so much. (Sega was giving it away free that year as a rebate when you'd buy the model 2. I got mine for 3.99 SnH :confused:)

PimpUigi

01-29-2011, 06:26 PM

Yeah and MK1 actually did sell more copies than MK2.

6-7 million for MK1
5 million for MK2

I think it counts portable copies though.

kool kitty89

01-29-2011, 09:58 PM

If we Eliminate Japan though we get numbers that look more like this after rounding:

SNES - 32 Million
Genesis - 37 Million

I don't really consider that totally winning just because 1 Region pulled it over the top. The better answer is SNES won for Japan, Genesis won for the rest of the world. Now if SNES's 49 million sales were more evenly distributed so it outsold and beat the Genesis in more regions than Japan, then yes I'd consider that SNES winning the console war.
And the main reason Nintendo won in Japan was Square and their pre-existing dominance in the market with strong ties to some top developers and related interest from sheer market share. NEC managed to break through that, but Sega did surprisingly well in Japan with the MD, all things considered.

OTOH, one of the major reasons the MD/Genesis was so successful in the west was that Sega had weaker competition while they got things right (at least after Katz came on board). Nintendo was holding strong but continued to grasp tightly to their exclusive and limiting licensing; you could argue milking the NES longer hurt but I'd argue the opposite. (it would have been stupid for them not to milk the NES as such, but being less stubborn about the licensing -which they still are to this day to some extent, especially with the DS- was a much bigger issue: and on the SNES's side, the delay wasn't so bad as the product from such a delay: for a 3+ year edge over the PCE and 2+ for the MD, the SNES is a bit disappointing in hardware terms of capability and cost effectiveness: if it performed about the same as it does but was as cheap or cheaper than the MD, it would have made more sense, or if it had cost the same but been significantly more advanced and optimized and/or included backwards compatibility, that also would have made more sense)

But even more than Nintendo, was NEC's horrible screw-up in the west that allowed Sega to take on the market full-force.
NEC could have been the Sony of the 4th generation to some extent: they had cheaper hardware that was reasonably capable (with trade-offs), a head start on the Japanese side (with strongly growing 2nd/3rd party support), vertical integration on top of the lower cost hardware, and massive resources of a megacorp (especially in the heat of their yet-to-decline computer market in Japan).
Had they built things up like Sega did in the 4th gen and (more so) Sony did in the 5th gen with western regional management/marketing/software development (and relationships with 3rd party developers), let alone pushin loop-holes through Nintendo's licensing deals (like making deals to publish various 3rd party software under the NEC label), etc, etc. (follow up with the CD/Duo at below cost prices and intense marketing -more so if they'd made the SGX into an add-on and folded that into the Super CD standard as well as integrating it with all Duo systems) A system with 2 to 5 controller ports from the start also could have been significant.

NEC could have been massively successful in the highly advertising-sensitive US, but probably a bit less so in Europe. (they could afford to spend much less on advertising in Europe and more on other areas though -a modification of the viral marketing strategies employed in Japan might have worked too, but a greater emphasis on lower prices and catering to EU-specific software in certain areas)
Saturation marketing is what usually works in the US, even if you've got a weaker product, you can convince people otherwise with enough advertising. ;) (the weaker/more problematic, the tougher to do, but the PCE was only weaker in some areas and not all that hard to push through with smart marketing backed up by tons of cash)

Hell, with the huge gashes put into Nintendo and Sega's western markets (on top of the good chunk of Japan), NEC might very well have ended up #1 in the 4th gen by a good margin. :p

Thenewguy

01-29-2011, 10:21 PM

And according to the NPD - http://www.netinst.org/Clements_Ohashi.pdf - Genesis raped teh US. Not Nintendo.Bear in mind that most of the people on Neogaf (as well as NPD themselves) are in agreement that the old NPD figures used in that article are undertracked for both SNES and Genesis, apparently moreso for SNES.

NPD revised figures (apparently), Square2005, and Man!ac magazine all have the SNES overtaking in US sales at the end of 1994, and Neogaf's figures seem to indicate that in total the SNES outsold the Genesis in the US, mainly because their estimations for Majesco seem to be closer to 1 million than 2 million (I'm not sure if there are many rock solid sources for Majesco out there).

We can see from the sales data for 1994 that the Genesis was pretty much trashing the SNES in games sales, but we don't know whether this is reflective of the entire competition, (some of the newspaper articles we ran into stated that Sega were pulling ahead in popularity later on in 1993 through until late in 1994)

TrekkiesUnite118

01-29-2011, 10:23 PM

I wonder why Sega has never released official numbers for the Genesis?

kool kitty89

01-29-2011, 11:30 PM

I wonder why Sega has never released official numbers for the Genesis?

Or any console for that matter. ;)

16bitter

01-31-2011, 05:22 AM

There is one issue that always irritates me with the sales of the SNES and Genesis. People always say SNES won the war because it sold more units, but if we eliminate Japan from the Equation we see that the Genesis outsold it in all the other regions combined and in some regions like the US they were almost tied. How can people say the SNES won the war when it only really won in Japan?

That's a rather provincial argument. Why it's any more compelling or reasonable than, assumptively, taking away the United States' numbers is a mystery.

Japan was the second largest market for game consoles in the world; if Sega couldn't or wouldn't take advantage of that, it's a mark against them. They went to extremes, which can work against worldwide market penetration -- knowing either how to make software universally appealing, or what software to focus on and through in which market.

Not to be too remedial, but as a serious statement you seem to be inverting your own argument -- that is, that Japan isn't a part of the world video game market.

What the numbers may more appropriately show -- even assuming that Sega held all other major markets, which I certainly don't -- is that Sega didn't provide appeal that was balanced between East and West (though, calling Japan Eastern always seems either jaundiced or outmoded, I'll go with it for brevity's sake). Nintendo's best stuff would typically do respectable, if not dominating, business whether it was Kyoto, Japan or Bumfuck, Arkansas.

If we look at Sega's fall, we can see them reversing this trend...to their own demise. They finally appealed to Japan with Saturn, but lost focus on the first and third biggest markets in the world through that bargain. Which points to them not quite creating a brand that was Global, at least for all the major markets, at the same time.

While Genesis was a great success, that's its own point. Not only for Saturn but unto itself. There's no reason to handicap its numbers, as it's ridiculously reductive and insulting to what Sega accomplished as a first-rate hardware corp. during this era.

TrekkiesUnite118

01-31-2011, 03:08 PM

I am well aware that Japan is an important market. However it is not the only one that matters either. Just because the SNES dominated enough in Japan to pick up the slack of it's international performance does not mean it completely dominated or won the console wars as most Nintendo Fanboys would try to have you believe. When we remove Japan we find that the Genesis outsold the SNES in the rest of the world. That's pretty significant.

That isn't dominating, nor is it really winning in my book. That's simply doing well in one region. If doing exceptionally well in one region is winning the console war and completely dominating then I guess the PC Engine completely dominated the Genesis too since it did exceptionally well in Japan. Oh wait it didn't since it failed in all the other regions. For a system to win the console war and completely dominate it has to do well in all regions if you ask me. Few systems have actually done this, like the PS1 and PS2. The NES didn't even do this since the Master System beat it in Europe and Brazil.

For a console war like the one between the SNES and Genesis I wouldn't consider it a complete win for the SNES. I'd consider it a tie really. SNES beat the Genesis in the home market, the Genesis beat the SNES in the international market.

JCU

01-31-2011, 05:33 PM

For a console war like the one between the SNES and Genesis I wouldn't consider it a complete win for the SNES. I'd consider it a tie really. SNES beat the Genesis in the home market, the Genesis beat the SNES in the international market.

With those comments I'll make my first post.

Determining which console won the 16-bit war is a never-ending circular debate that can be skewed to fit whatever console a particular person favors. Do we base it on overall sales, American sales, software sold, how long the console(s) was sold, etc..,?

The clear cut winner during the late 80's through mid 90's was the gamer and I believe anyone who was old enough at the time and experienced these systems would agree. Both systems were incredible and I wouldn't want to choose between either.

kool kitty89

01-31-2011, 09:36 PM

That's a rather provincial argument. Why it's any more compelling or reasonable than, assumptively, taking away the United States' numbers is a mystery.

Japan was the second largest market for game consoles in the world; if Sega couldn't or wouldn't take advantage of that, it's a mark against them. They went to extremes, which can work against worldwide market penetration -- knowing either how to make software universally appealing, or what software to focus on and through in which market.
Hardly, Japan was a shoe-in for Nintendo with their monopolistic position far more solidified than in the US, and on top of that there was NEC pushing hard in Japan with strong support where they'd totally failed in the west.

Sega did damn freakin' good in Japan all things considered, and they probably couldn't have done any better under the circumstances even with the best marketing and management in the world.

What Sega did most definitely screw up happened years earlier with the weak SG-1000, Mk.III that came too late to correct that (yet not quite full next-gen either), and got them stuck in a niche market up until the Mega Drive. (which wasn't hugely popular, but at least on the map)

However, with the internal problems and change in ownership/management that was going on in '82 (Rosen/Nakayma/Okawa/CSK yet to take the company back among other things), it's fairly understandable that there were some hickups at the time. (a shame they didn't manage to push something competitive out in 1984 rather than just the Mk.II, not SMS quality per-se, but at least something competitive with the NES and perhaps superior in some areas)

So it most definitely is worth looking at on a per-region basis.
Of course, Sega sales figures are less than solid since they never released official final sales figures and it's thus hard to tell for sure. (they easily could hold the world market outside of Japan with a notable lead in Europe and North America -let alone 2ndary markets like mainland Asia, Austrailia, South America, etc, but OTOH there's nothign solid to fully back that up -the most solid info we've got is US revenue figures for Nintendo and Sega, but that's only 1 market and doesn't account for actual sales numbers)

And of course, hardware sales alone are one issue, software is another. (and then you could also go by who was more profitable, but that's obviously Nintendo ;))

That isn't dominating, nor is it really winning in my book. That's simply doing well in one region. If doing exceptionally well in one region is winning the console war and completely dominating then I guess the PC Engine completely dominated the Genesis too since it did exceptionally well in Japan. Oh wait it didn't since it failed in all the other regions. For a system to win the console war and completely dominate it has to do well in all regions if you ask me. Few systems have actually done this, like the PS1 and PS2. The NES didn't even do this since the Master System beat it in Europe and Brazil.

Actually the NES was technically never released in Brazil, but there were tons of clones all over South America (probably the main reason Nintendo never entered the market -and rather surprising Sega didn't suffer similarly), and if you go by that, things are rather different: let alone if you include the Famiclones in Easter Europe on top of the NES sales.

But South America and other 2ndary markets are a bit separate, especially shsoe that are in economic/developmental stages that put them years behind other countries.

TrekkiesUnite118

01-31-2011, 11:37 PM

I said nothing about clones. I was simply naming Markets that Nintendo didn't win. Even if Brazil doesn't count, Nintendo still didn't win Europe with the NES.

RedAngel

02-01-2011, 07:43 AM

Thenewguy

02-01-2011, 02:36 PM

What Sega did most definitely screw up happened years earlier with the weak SG-1000, Mk.III that came too late to correct thatI don't think Sega screwed anything up with the SG-1000, they just released a standard system with similar specs to what everyone else was releasing, nintendo simply moved the goalposts on Sega, they were able to do this mainly due to their foresight in regards to how the industry could work, and conviction (Nintendo wholeheartedly jumped in with both feet), they took a whole mass or risks, and did a load of research and development, had the NES not been as huge a success they would've had serious financial problems.

I'd imagine Sega were tentatively entering the home console market, saw what was going on in the market (with the MSX in Japan, and the Colecovision in the US), and decided to go with the proven, and cheap standard.

I don't see that there was really any way that Sega would envision that Nintendo were planning to release a console with the power of a high end PC, make what was considered a suicidal 3 million chip order over a 2 year period with Ricoh to lower manufacturing costs, and then sell the machine for no profit (with Yamauchi explaining that he felt they could make the money off of the games), the Famicom launched in Japan at a price much cheaper than most of its inferior competitors (from what I've seen it was in the 1983 Intellivision style bracket at the equivalent of ~$130)

kool kitty89

02-02-2011, 02:10 AM

Snes dominated Japan but Genesis sold more in the rest of the world. There wasn´t a clear winner in the 16 bit generation. On the one hand Sega became the number 1 for some years and they broke the monopoly Nintendo had, but at the same time they bury themselves with wrong decisions: 32x instead of chips on cartridge, kill the Genesis too early, release the Saturn too soon and the most important one, their main goal was marketshare, units sold... but not profits.
There's a clear worldwide/international winner, if there could ever be a "winner" as such since hardware sales is only one facet of the "war" so to speak. (software sales and profitability -not to mention the positive/negative position the company was left in towards the end of the systems' life)

Sega ended up crippling the Genesis late in its life, so its true potential for a full run mainstream console was never realized. (the SNES most definitely was)
Of course, that's not a reason to make things more blurred, on the contrary, it's a critical mistake that hurt Sega and weakened the final outcome of the Genesis/MD relative to the SNES. ;)

I don't think Sega screwed anything up with the SG-1000, they just released a standard system with similar specs to what everyone else was releasing, nintendo simply moved the goalposts on Sega, they were able to do this mainly due to their foresight in regards to how the industry could work, and conviction (Nintendo wholeheartedly jumped in with both feet), they took a whole mass or risks, and did a load of research and development, had the NES not been as huge a success they would've had serious financial problems.
Not really: the SG-1000 was released with ~4 year old off the shelf hardware without remotely taking advantage of in-house hardware and using weaker sound than the MSX.

Being more MSX compatible and having the better sound would have been a step in the right direction, but hardly proactive.

The Colecovision itself was a relatively sloppy design compared to what a machine of similar cost in 1982 could have been with reasonable in-house R&D. It was generally weaker in sound and graphics capabilities compared to the just as old A8 chipset, let alone the C64 or Famicom. (or 7800 being developed in 1983 by a small "garage" engineering/software company)

But Sega had more problems with internal management shifts and such as well, of course.

Sega was big in the arcade, and with their hardware engineering resources, the SG-1000 was a joke while the Master System was just about right (other than the weak audio) but too late or too early depending how you look at it. (for Japan at least -for the US and Europe it was pretty much perfect other than the sound capabilities, but Sega screwed up marketing it in the US in spite of a competitive marketing budget to Nintendo -albeit they hadn't been trying to enter the market for ~3 years like Nintendo either)

In Japan, there was really no competition to compare things to prior to the SG-1000 and Famicom aside from some really primitive (sub 2600) consoles and expensive home computers with limited graphics and sound. There was the west to look towards of course and more so, the arcades, and Nintendo took the initiative to look at what was at home and in the arcade and push for a very well balanced new machine expanding on those features at cost practical for a home console. (the most costly feature being the dual bus cartridge design -high pin count and at least 2 ROM chips for every game)
It was new and advanced for the time, but not a massive leap ahead and reasonably low cost. (in many ways it's a good balance between the resolution, indexed color character/sprite graphics, large color palette, sprite capabilities, sound hardware, and hardware scrolling of many preceding designs, but all rolled together in a new design with some compromises -the hardware DPCM channel and use of dual bus carts were the only features not need before on home consoles, everything else simply hadn't been combined in such a fashion before -and it of course was minimalistic with only 1 video mode, no bitmap modes, no other color depths, no other resolutions, and various other compromises that made for a very capable but still reasonably conservative design)

OTOH, most of Sega's arcade hardware up to that point seems to have been relative simple and possibly focusing on bitmap designs largely driven by CPU, so maybe they didn't have the hardware prowess that they later gained. (though just because they hadn't pushed that sort of hardware before doesn't mean their existing staff of engineers wasn't capable of it -it wasn't any different for Atari Inc or some small start-up/garage companies even -again, there's GCC with the 7800 ;) -and they had tons of inspiration for where to start from all the existing consoles and computers on the market)

If nothing else, they possibly could have hacked the TMS9928 VDP for some critically needed features. (albeit that would require reverse engineering or licensing of the design if they could even do the latter -they, and Yamaha, must have done one of the 2 later on with the VDP in the SMS and Yamaha's V9938 in the MSX2)
If they were able to hack the VDP (short of developing their own VDP from the ground up), the minimum features needed were more sprites (especially 3-color, but even more mono sprites short of that would work OK) and hardware scrolling (at least horizontal since V-scroll is much easier in software), plus using a YM2149 (or AY, but the Yamaha chip should have been cheaper and more easily obtained) for I/O and sound. (not to mention closer MSX compatibility :p) Maybe add scanline/raster interrupts as well.

Even with all the color limitations the same, and if all they improved was hardware scrolling for the playfield and doubling the sprite logic (8 16x16 mono sprites per line, 64 hardware multiplexed per screen), and switched to the YM2149 (which, again, should provide all the I/O for the controllers and then some -should have 4 lines left over for other things), that should have been enough to make it reasonably competitive with the FC in 1983 so long as the software and marketing was competitive. (especially if they retained the advantage over Nintendo's early reliability problems with the FC)

From what I understand, the Japanese console market was still getting established in 1984 and Nintendo hadn't fully dug-in yet, so even then Sega had a chance to correct the hardware problems and any marketing/management/software support deficiencies the SG-1000 suffered from. (not quite quality, but much closer to the NES with some advantages: maybe something like supporting an indexed palette of 15 colors+transparent from 6-bit RGB rather than the fixed YCbCr palette while keeping the character modes the same but adding hardware scrolling, double sprite logic with 8/line+64 multiplexed on-screen and bump sprites to 3 colors with at least 4 distinct 3 color palettes, bump CPU work RAM to 8 kB, and possibly double the PSG -especially with different clock rates for a wider pitch range like in some arcade boards)

With something like that with good marketing and gaining 3rd party support in Japan (which shouldn't have been strongly locked up with Nintendo until '85), they not only would have had a better chance in japan (with a longer life for the system -possibly transcending the SMS in that respect), but by way of the Japanese support and increased influence on the market, they'd also have a better shot at the US market. (marketing still would have been the critical issue, but with Nintendo less/not dominant in Japan, they wouldn't have had the same advantages across the board as they did -it would also depend on how soon they tried to enter the US market, and with Nintendo less dominant in Japan and less influential, Atari Corp would have been less limited as well -one of the problems was being all but totally locked out of Japanese arcade licenses)

I'd imagine Sega were tentatively entering the home console market, saw what was going on in the market (with the MSX in Japan, and the Colecovision in the US), and decided to go with the proven, and cheap standard.
If they were basing things on the MSX, they were getting in too late and rushing out the door rather than coming out with a well-thought out machine. (ie if they started development any later than late 1982)
And if they did start late, delaying the design would be much better than rushing a kludged piece of off the shelf hardware out the door. (the Colecovision was a bit of a hack too, and if Atari had not had horrible management problems, it probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as far as it did either -neither would the Intellivision -otoh, those systems only performed well compared to the 5200, which still held neck and neck against the 2 in spite of the problems, but otherwise the VCS's market share was never broken, or at least not by another console until the NES)

And it wasn't really cheap, and definitely not cost effective: it was off the shelf (and thus more overhead than in-house IP, in the long run), less consolidated, and old/outdated tech not optimized for video games and with a fair amount of silicon wasted on unnecessary features and lacking in others. (mode 1 and 2 were all that were needed, scrolling was needed, better sprites as well, it was a 1979 chipset with a minor update in '81 -addition of mode 2 which was rarely used in-game, but useful for splash screens- and it was limited by the 1979 design date, with much more possible by '82/83 at similar cost)

The Colecovision was boarderline (tech and cost/performance wise) for a new console in 1982, the same hardware being launched in 1983 was even worse unless there was no competition to speak of. (not proactive, but if you know there's nothing better coming out, it's not a bad move to push)
The very fact that Atari had never tried to push into the Japanese market (directly or licensed) also left it almost completely open, and of course the 1983 2800 release was absolutely ridiculous. (1980, or even '81 could have been very significant due to the lack of competition and strong library of games for the system)

Again, the Famicom ended up being rather like the VCS for Japan, and paralleling even more to that you've got several weak competitors that screwed up in entering the market against Atari from the Channel F to the RCA Studio 2 to the Astrocade (all but the Astrocade being pushed by large corporations with the advantage of deep pockets and vertical integration and being more primitive if not cheaper). One big difference is that none of Atari's competition was strong in the arcade or with comparable in-house software prowess.
But a huge part of it was the hardware too: low cost, yet still very capable, deftly trading programmability for raw performance and low cost. (something that paid off big time, though wouldn't always be the case -the in-house support and marketing were also critical, of course)

I don't see that there was really any way that Sega would envision that Nintendo were planning to release a console with the power of a high end PC
Hardly, unless you'd call the C64 a high-end PC. :p (that was an extremely razor edge cost-cut design, a shame they didn't make it into a game console -though the Max Machine was pretty close to that, but in Japan only)
Actual PCs (IBM compatibles) were shit for games back then anyway, including NEC's 9801 line.

For 1983 it was just about right, they could have cut cost (and limited the design) a fair bit more by scrapping the dual bus design in favor of a shared bus with contention (ie CPU halted when PPU needs to grab the bus, or possibly interleaved for shared accesses -maybe drop the CPU to 1/2 speed for such and the pop back to full speed when it has full bus access -the same sort of trade-offs that the VCS/A8/7800 made -another option being keeping dual buses with internal video RAM, but that adds cost significantly as well -much cheaper for games compared to dual cart buses though).

make what was considered a suicidal 3 million chip order over a 2 year period with Ricoh to lower manufacturing costs, and then sell the machine for no profit (with Yamauchi explaining that he felt they could make the money off of the games), the Famicom launched in Japan at a price much cheaper than most of its inferior competitors (from what I've seen it was in the 1983 Intellivision style bracket at the equivalent of ~$130)
I wouldn't be surprised if it was cheaper in some respects than the Intellivision (which was not a very cost effective design either). If it was approaching the VCS's price point, I'd be more dubious. (or the consoles after the crash)
I highly doubt the FC (with similar volumes) would have been more expensive to manufacture than the SG-1000, though the initial R&D costs would have been greater.

Selling at cost is hardly revolutionary or unbelievable, even back then. It wasn't a big step from the razor and blade market in the US selling consoles at razor thin profits -if any had been able to establish a lockout scheme to facilitate 3rd party licensing/royalties and content control, they could have more easily sold at or just below cost, but none had that until the 7800.

The surprising thing was that Nintendo was taking a huge risk compared to larger, better funded companies. (and had the initial reliability/recall problems been much worse, it could have killed them)
Sega was a fair bit ahead of them though, more prominent in the arcade among other things though also troubled with management conflicts and the lead up to the Rosen/Nakayma/Okawa/CSK buyout.

Thenewguy

02-02-2011, 08:53 PM

Not really: the SG-1000 was released with ~4 year old off the shelf hardwareComputers were around for years by that stage and had always been priced massively out of everyday people's price ranges, consoles are effectively entertainment toys, the most important element to take into account is hardware price, not specifications, and these Japanese companies had no reason to think they could build a super computer toy and have it sell anyway, most video game companies in Japan were struggling to sell more than 30,000 systems before the NES.

4 years before the SG-1000 its hardware was being sold for $1,150 in the United states, taking into account inflation that's well over $2000, do you think they could have released a successful console when it was in date?

The TI-99/4a was launched in 1981 at a price of $525 (over $1000 in todays money) even as a computer, which people could justify buying as a tool of the future thats still pretty expensive, for a game console there's just no way that price range could be justified.

That hardware wasn't even remotely useable in a mainstream consumer product until some time in 1982 at the earliest

Selling at cost is hardly revolutionary or unbelievable, even back then. It wasn't a big step from the razor and blade market in the US selling consoles at razor thin profits.Nobody did that with consoles in the US until well after the Famicom's release, the 2600 wasn't sold for anywhere near cost in the US, Nolan Bushnell argued with executives to sell the 2600 for cost, thinking that they could make more money off the software and nobody supported the idea, and we know how much the TI-994A hardware cost to manufacture because of the articles on the price war, it was $130 to manufacture in 1983, the Colecovision was selling for ~$170 in that time frame

Selling for cost in the US started in 1983 with the price war, but was limited to the computer market at that stage, it didn't move to the consoles until the crash was in full swing, and even then it wasn't as though companies made a concious decision to sell for cost, it was forced on them.

In fact, wait a minute, didn't Tom Kalinske say that Sega were still against selling the Genesis for cost in 1991 anyway?

He said that SoJ were against selling the console for $149 (knocked down from $189.99) because at that price they would be making hardly any money on the hardware.

using weaker sound than the MSX.The SG-1000 was a console, it had to be cheaper than the MSX, all using the AY would've done is needlessly increase their hardware prices further, sound wasn't important in 1983 anyway, all it was used for was sound effects and for that the SN is more than sufficient, in fact, as far as I'm concerned it was still sufficient for music in the Master System years later too.

I'm sure Sega could've built their equivalent of the Neo Geo in 1983 if they'd wanted to, they didn't because they were wary of their machine being out of people's price ranges, and hadn't caught onto the fact that they could sell the hardware for cost, (or a loss) and make the money back on software, that alone makes a decent amount of difference as you can spend all the money allocated to profit on souping up the hardware, they didn't have vertical integration like Commodore (allowing cheaper manufacturing costs), and I doubt they were willing to gamble their entire company on their new console like Nintendo did with Ricoh (allowing cheaper manufacturing costs)

Just taking into account those points I think its doubtful that Sega were going to come out with anything even close to the C64, and that technology was already a little too expensive to compete with the Famicom in a console in Japan.

The Colecovision itself was a relatively sloppy design compared to what a machine of similar cost in 1982 could have been with reasonable in-house R&D. It was generally weaker in sound and graphics capabilities compared to the just as old A8 chipset, let alone the C64 or Famicom.Atari had a headstart on everybody, and had some of the most talented people in the business, the US in general also had more access to the emerging technology on a stage by stage basis, people wouldn't have been making anything in a garage in Japan because access was too limited at that stage.

The C64 in the US is also not comparable to the Famicom, it was selling in 1983 at its cheapest point for $200 (base system only), this was due to vertical integration allowing cheaper manufacturing costs (which Nintendo did not have), retailers not making any profit on hardware (Nintendo did have this), and Commodore making extremely low profits themselves (same with Nintendo), at this price the C64 pushed all its competition out of the market and everybody had trouble competing with it, you yourself had stated that you felt Commodore were overstepping boundaries, yet the NES was sold for far cheaper from the get go.

The Famicom launched for $70 cheaper than the C64 had been after a years worth of price wars, and (correct me if I'm wrong) was generally superior hardware to boot.

OTOH, most of Sega's arcade hardware up to that point seems to have been relative simple and possibly focusing on bitmap designs largely driven by CPU, so maybe they didn't have the hardware prowess that they later gained. (though just because they hadn't pushed that sort of hardware before doesn't mean their existing staff of engineers wasn't capable of itThe arcades were a proven, and older standard in Japan, whilst the home console business was new ground, I simply think that they were less inclined to jump in with both feet into an emerging market, as I said earlier.

And yeah, the fact that we don't know what kind of hardware developement teams Sega had at the time could also be an important factor, Game Over certainly mentions that prior to the Famicom, with the pong machines Nintendo had been in no position to design their own hardware at all, it was only in the preceding years to the Famicom release did they start to hire the personel and gain the know how.

Sega was a fair bit ahead of them though, more prominent in the arcade among other thingsDude, I really don't think that's correct, if I were to guess I would personally have thought that Donkey Kong was a bigger hit than literally all of Sega's pre 1983 arcade games put together, then you've got DK Jr and Popeye being fairly successful in 1982 too, Sega had successful machines sure (Zaxxon, Pengo, Buck Rodgers) but I don't think they were sensational hits.

There's also the uber popular in Japan Game and Watch series to think about, which started out in 1980, and their pong machines, one of which was a million seller in Japan by that stage.

In Japan, there was really no competition to compare things to prior to the SG-1000 and Famicom aside from some really primitive (sub 2600) consoles and expensive home computers with limited graphics and sound.According to Game Over, when the Famicom/SG-1000 were released the competition in Japan was the Atari 2600 (officially launched in 1983, but available previously from Epoch), Bandai's version of the Intellivision (July 1982), and the Cassette Vision (1981 which looks kind of like a 2600, but worse).

However apparently the most popular still seems to be Nintendo's pong machines, the TV Game's, by the looks of things the others systems mentioned above were generally considered too expensive, they were being sold for the equivalent of $200-$350 (as always thats a lot more in todays money) according to Game Over, Yamauchi decided that these prices were too high, and aimed to make the Famicom under the $100 bracket (which he didn't manage).

Also worth noting is that the successor to the Cassette Vision, the Super Cassette Vision, was released the year after the SG-1000 in 1984, and looks pretty comparable to it.

From what I understand, the Japanese console market was still getting established in 1984 and Nintendo hadn't fully dug-in yet, so even then Sega had a chance to correct the hardware problemsI would say that whilst their sales were nowhere near what they would later achieve, they were already dug in by 1984, apparently they sold 500,000 in two months, a very strong start which would've already put them ahead of all but the lifetime sales of some of the pong machines at that stage. The recall hurt them, but I think they well and trully had the momentum by that stage.

Hardly, unless you'd call the C64 a high-end PCDude, everybody called the C64 a high end PC in 1982, at that time the best selling computers in the US were the VIC-20 and TS-1000

When the C64 was launched at $600 in 1982 most journalists seem to have been pretty stunned, thinking it was shockingly cheap for the state of the art features it supplied.

The Colecovision was boarderline (tech and cost/performance wise) for a new console in 1982, the same hardware being launched in 1983 was even worse unless there was no competition to speak of.I've read enough US magazines to know that the Colecovision was extremely well respected hardware even in 1983, its often referred to as the "best console available", a "luxury console", the system that can provide "arcade perfect ports", they talk about how "impressive" its graphics are, etc

If nothing else, they possibly could have hacked the TMS9928 VDP for some critically needed features.Yeah, they could've done that, but they thought they were competing with the 2600, the Intellivision, the MSX, the Cassette Vision, and... pong Machines :lol:

apart from that, had they looked to the US early on in 1983 they would've seen the Colecovision as the fastest growing system in popularity, another sign that the SG-1000 would be a sure bet.

Then there's also the fact that they could easily port existing software from the Colecovision, or MSX, which could've been another deciding factor in their decision.

Look at it this way, had the NES not been released (on the same day no less :bang:) they would've had a product selling for $70 to $230 less than all the competition, more expensive only in comparison to pong machines, with far greater specifications than anything else available (Except MSX, but I would imagine the MSX is the one responsible for the high end of the estimate)

Also, had they been a few months earlier they could've built up a good sized following before the NES was released, or had they been set to release later they would've seen how outspecked they were and returned to the drawing board, but no, they released on the same bloody day.

With something like that with good marketing and gaining 3rd party support in Japan (which shouldn't have been strongly locked up with Nintendo until '85), they not only would have had a better chance in japan (with a longer life for the system -possibly transcending the SMS in that respect), but by way of the Japanese support and increased influence on the market, they'd also have a better shot at the US market.From what I've heard, Nintendo didn't even allow 3rd party support at all until well into 1984, they didn't want to lose any profits, but in the end Nintendo could not make games fast enough to fill the shelves, and retailers were complaining that they had to turn customers away, not only that but there were fears that other companies might step in with their own systems whilst Nintendo were having product shortages.

The first two licencees were Namco and Hudson, who's games seemed to start arriving in 1984, then came Capcom, Konami, Taito, and Bandai, who's games start arriving in 1985, after those 6 companies signed on, the licence agreement was revised to be much harsher and more restrictive, all of the other companies signed up with the new licence agreement.

scrolling was neededNot necesarily in 1983 it wasn't, virtually everything on the Famicom which sold well in the first two years was single screen, most of the hit arcade games up to that point were also single screen. You're getting into hindsight area now, we don't know how obvious it was to people at the time that scrolling was the future, remember that Sega made a mess of foreseeing the future of 3D gaming in the mid 90s too. scrolling games didn't start appearing on Famicom in any numbers until 1985, the SG-1000 could also do vertical scrolling decently so something like 1982's popular Xevious (one of the only popular scrolling arcade games of that period in Japan) would've been alright.

And it wasn't really cheap, and definitely not cost effective: it was off the shelf (and thus more overhead than in-house IP, in the long run), less consolidated, and old/outdated tech not optimized for video games and with a fair amount of silicon wasted on unnecessary features and lacking in others.I'm not convinced, I get what you're saying in respects to the TI-99 hardware probably not being as efficient for videogames as it could've been, but still, it'd been in production for years by that stage, they must've gotten production to a pretty cheap and efficient level, and the NES hardware must've had some much more expensive to manufacture stuff in it regardless of their carefull designing. If the TI99 hardware was as in-efficient cost wise as you make out, then I don't see why it was so ridiculously popular with different manufacturers of the time, I mean honestly, varients of that general design must've been the most prevalent of that entire period, from 1982-1983 it ended up in the Sord M5 (1982), the Colecovision (1982), the Spectravideo (1983), the SG-1000 (1983), the MSX machines (1983), Tomy Tutor/Pyuta (1983), Memotech MTX (1983), and even as late as 1984 the Tatung Einstein.

roundwars

02-03-2011, 01:03 AM

The Famicom launched for $70 cheaper than the C64 had been after a years worth of price wars, and (correct me if I'm wrong) was generally superior hardware to boot.

It had more advanced graphics, sure, but only a fraction the amount of RAM. That's got to be a major factor in cost.

kool kitty89

02-03-2011, 04:19 AM

It had more advanced graphics, sure, but only a fraction the amount of RAM. That's got to be a major factor in cost.
And a fraction of the board space, and a higher degree of consolidation, etc. (it did use SRAM rather than DRAM, so more expensive for any given quantity, but SRAM also means removing the cost and space of DRAM refresh/control/interface logic, and they used a very small amount of RAM at that -like the 7800 which was similarly more advanced compared to the C64, albeit with trade-offs pushing for even lower cost and VCS compatibility)
That's the same thing the VIC-20 did, except it used a fair bit more SRAM (and was considerably less consolidated).
I wouldn't be surprised if the Famicom was cheaper to produce than the VIC-20 as it was in 1983. (albeit certainly not if the VIC was cut-down to a minimalistic console form factor)

And more advanced capabilities have no direct correlation to cost . . . especially if they're in one specific area.

The NES was a console, plain and simple, not a computer, it was also newer: and that's always a factor. (newer hardware pushed at a similar cost orientation -let alone more specialized hardware- can be more powerful without being more expensive)
That's exactly what re-using old chipsets was a very inefficient route for consoles. (especially chipsets not even exclusively geared towards video games and stripped of most computer functionality)

And again, the Famicom made lots of trade-offs: the graphics were more advanced in several areas, but lacked some of the flexibility more necessary for a computer (and otherwise in some other respect too), the sound hardware was much more minimalistic with the exception of the hardware Delta Modulation channel (DMC or "DPCM"). It was "good enough" in several areas and well balanced. (in the sound side of things, it's sort of like if you stripped out a lot of the SID's functionality, but increased the number of channels)

And even so, the C64 still probably could have been cheaper than the NES if faced back to back in a similar configuration: 2-4k onboard RAM, motherboard 1/2 the size or less, removal of all unnecessary I/O chips, removal of the BASIC/OS ROMs, removal of all DRAM and related interface logic, etc. (and if it wasn't, that's only because it wasn't consolidated enough -the chips were also rather power hungry and weren't universally 5V powered either -but I'll bet it could have been cheaper even as the chipset was in 1982/83, so basically a MAX machine with a combact motehrboard and form factor with all computer-specific features cut-out)

The C64 compares more favorably than others for sure though since it's newer and pretty minimalistic in several areas as well opposed to say the TI99/4 (or CV/MSX/etc) chipset, or the A8's for that matter. (the A8's was certainly better in many respects and more game-oritented, but it was also much more feature rich than the C64 chipset with a lot of embedded features though also limited by 1979 tech and lack of redesign -the consolidation that id did have was great, but actually would be a detriment in some respects to cutting it down to a dedicated console like with POKEY's pin count and die size inflated by the keyboard I/O and SIO port/logic: however, if you could take that same chipset, merge GTIA+ANTIC to signal die on new/smaller chip process -ie like CGIA-, remove PIA, and strip out all the key/SIO logic from POKEY as well as shrinking the die leaving it in a 24-pin skinny DIP, and removing all DRAM+logic in favor of 2-8 kB SRAM -8k would be better than 4k since it would be only 1 28-pin chip rather than 2 24-pin ones, 2k would be cheapest- and put all expansion support on the cart slot alone with an otherwise minimalistic PCB and then you've got a pretty competitive/cost-effective chipset; note that POKEY and GTIA would be handling all I/O via GTIA's 4 trigger lines and 4 select lines alogn with POKEY's 8 POT lines -which could also be configured as digital I/O ports, or hardwired as such if you didn't care about analog; in which case it would be better to also strip out all ADC/polling logic from POKEY as well -or quite possible merge POKEY with the CPU as well, if you're talking NES-like consolidation)

The NES was extremely consolidated and thus cost effective. The CPU integrated all the serial I/O logic (controller ports) as well as the audio hardware, so you had just 2 main custom chips in the system. (the CPU ASIC and PPU) Beyond that, there's just a few discrete logic chips, voltage regulator, RF modulator, and external connectors.
They even cut-out the cost of using full-sized controller ports by using small internal connectors and hardwiring the controllers externally. (albeit they added the DA-15 expansion port)
And you also don't have to worry about RF shielding of any sort. (other than the modulator which needs it to have a decent RF signal)

I mean really, just look at the NES's PCB, the only other consoles/computers that were that consolidated/sparsely populated would be the 2600 (specifically the "Vader") and the super low-end Sinclair/Timex ZX80/81 derivatives. (the ZX81/Timex1000 boards were probably smaller but the Vader's was definitely larger, albeit sparsely populated -the 2600 Jr's board was actually slightly larger iirc, but also cleaner -much more so for the ASIC models with single-chip CPU+RIOT+TIA)

kool kitty89

02-03-2011, 07:39 AM

Computers were around for years by that stage and had always been priced massively out of everyday people's price ranges, consoles are effectively entertainment toys
Yep, and there's several reasons for that: totally different business model:
consoles are sold at very low profits with the money coming from software sales (something that was established fairly soon after the VCS came online -vs previous dedicated consoles that had to be sold for profit as they WERE the games).

In the US, if you wanted it to be a consumer/TV oriented product (like the 400), you also needed heavy RF shielding per the FCC. (that had a huge impact on the 400 and 800's fairly bulky designs and multi-board internals with VERY thick cast aluminum RF shields)

The other reasons are that consoles (the good ones) are fully optimized for their intended role with not extras for doing computer-type tasks. That means fewer/more restricted video modes (with an emphasis on game-type tasks), a cheap CPU, very limited and cheaply configured RAM, reasonably capable sound hardware, etc, and all as consolidated as physically possible with limited expansion capabilities.

That's exactly why the TMS chipset was poorly suited for its role, especially using the same unconsolidated configuration from 1979. (take the same hardware, rework it for 1983 class chip processes, chuck out all but video modes 1 and 2 -1 being the most critical-, and then merge the PSG and possibly I/O logic into the VDP, and maybe you've got something that's reasonably cost competitive for 1983 tech)
The DRAM for video is a trade-off for having more expensive hardware vs more expensive cartridges, or lower performance of a shared bus. (the C64, and Atari consoles/computers all used shared buses with slower CPUs or DMA contention, the TMS VDP had dedicated onboard RAM making it more costly but not impacting the cost of games, while the FC used dual buses as well but with the video bus on the cart slot and only a tiny amount of RAM onboard for tilemaps with the tile data all in ROM)

The Odyssey 2's off the shelf hardware was also likely fairly inefficient unless they got a good deal from Intel. (the large form factor and keyboard certainly wouldn't have helped things though)

4 years before the SG-1000 its hardware was being sold for $1,150 in the United states, taking into account inflation that's well over $2000, do you think they could have released a successful console when it was in date?
If it was sold at cost, it wouldn't have been that expensive, but the point is, that hardware was NOT good console maternal, otherwise it COULD have been at console prices back in '81. (and high-end console prices back in '79 more in line with the Intellivision's $300 1979 price)
Less features, less RAM, cheap CPU, etc. (a shared bus helps a lot in cost savings too)

That hardware wasn't even remotely useable in a mainstream consumer product until some time in 1982 at the earliest
Again, totally different context from computer to console: look at the VCS design in 1977. the Famicom was the 2nd mass market console in the world to push that same sort of cost/performance ratio with highly specialized/low-cost emphasized hardware (with many trade-offs and various compromises). Though, again, the dual bus design was the sole element of the design pushing towards the more expensive side.

A new console in '79-81 with that same sort of cost/pwerformance could have been possible, with BETTER gaming capabilities than the TI99/4 by a good margin (and a sub $200 launch price -2600 ranged from ~160-200 at retail in '77, $170 seems pretty common), but it would need to be an all-new custom design, or a heavily cut-down version of existing hardware. (the Intellivision was not anywhere near that, the A8 chipset was closer, but still less consolidated and more expensive -miles better cost/performance than the IV for sure though)

Nobody did that with consoles in the US until well after the Famicom's release, the 2600 wasn't sold for anywhere near cost in the US, Nolan Bushnell argued with executives to sell the 2600 for cost, thinking that they could make more money off the software and nobody supported the idea, and we know how much the TI-994A hardware cost to manufacture because of the articles on the price war, it was $130 to manufacture in 1983, the Colecovision was selling for ~$170 in that time frame
Not at cost, I said razor thin price margins, and don't take Nolan's word for anything. :p (there's so much shit to dig out before you get to a hint of truth, it's not remotely funny)

I'll see what Curt and Marty have to say on the subject, but I got the strong impression that by the beginning of the '80s, the consoles were being sold at very slim profit margins. (at very least compared to computers -aside from price war induced exceptions)

In fact, wait a minute, didn't Tom Kalinske say that Sega were still against selling the Genesis for cost in 1991 anyway?
1st, some companies never learn. (and Sega definitely didn't understand how to market their products in the US)
But in any case, what he claimed was that they were concerned about losing profits, not whether that would have put the hardware at cost, below cost, or further below cost. (and that's assuming we can take ti word for word anyway -by 1991, the Genesis was overdue for a price reduction, albeit they'd already had rebates dropping it to $160 in fall of 1990, and additional pack-in bundles for multiple free games)

The SG-1000 was a console, it had to be cheaper than the MSX, all using the AY would've done is needlessly increase their hardware prices further, sound wasn't important in 1983 anyway, all it was used for was sound effects and for that the SN is more than sufficient, in fact, as far as I'm concerned it was still sufficient for music in the Master System years later too.
Sound is always important. ;) That was one of the impressive things about the Intellivison, Colecovision, and 5200: the kick-ass sound effects (and occasional music).

And, again, keep things in context: the AY integrated 16 I/O ports (very much like RIOT in the VCS), and as such, could have SAVED cost by the removal of other dedicated I/O logic. (since the chipset didn't have embedded I/O logic)

Hell, that's why it would have made more sense in the Colevcovision as well, no separate I/O for the controllers/switches/etc. (and if MARIA -from the 7800- was to be configured in a cost-optimized system using off the shelf support chips, an AY/YM sound/IO chip would have been extremely attractive along with a 6502 and some shared SRAM)

I'm sure Sega could've built their equivalent of the Neo Geo in 1983 if they'd wanted to
No, what they needed to do was build an custom, cost effective in-house design that was FULLY optimized at being a game console. (a sizable investment in the short run, but critical in the long run) The Master System is that sort of hardware other than a bit of hindrance from backwards compatibility.

Atari had a headstart on everybody, and had some of the most talented people in the business, the US in general also had more access to the emerging technology on a stage by stage basis, people wouldn't have been making anything in a garage in Japan because access was too limited at that stage.
They were also the only ones with the right sort of hardware at the time, just like Nintendo. (powerful, but at very low cost for said performance -albeit more extreme than the FC, but it had to be since Tech was proportionally more expensive in the late 80s even compared to the early 80s)

Sega and Nintendo both had that sort of talent, all they needed was the right hardware and the right marketing to back it up, just like Atari/Warner had. (without Warner, it might not have gotten anywhere, not just because of their money, but because of the stability and much needed business sense they brought to a company that Bushnell was constantly on the verge of running into the ground with bad investments and inconsistent management)

The C64 in the US is also not comparable to the Famicom, it was selling in 1983 at its cheapest point for $200 (base system only), this was due to vertical integration allowing cheaper manufacturing costs (which Nintendo did not have)
1, the deal with Ricoh would have pushed cost down considerably and, 2 the C64 could have been about 1/2 the price it was if made into a game console. (especially if also removing all FCC and related restrictions tied to the US market)
Again, as above: no extra I/O, no onboard ROM (other than a small BIOS, or not even that), no DRAM+logic, a very small amount of SRAM, PCB less than 1/2 the size, etc, etc. (the RAM, added logic, external interface ports, larger PCB necessary for all that, and keyboard all added considerably to manufacturing costs)

The Famicom launched for $70 cheaper than the C64 had been after a years worth of price wars, and (correct me if I'm wrong) was generally superior hardware to boot.
Already addressed this above as well: "superior" is relative: for games: certainly, as a computer: not a chance.
And for games other than expensive ROM carts: not a chance.

Compare it to the price of the MAX Machine in 1983, and then shave off a good chunk more of that.

The arcades were a proven, and older standard in Japan, whilst the home console business was new ground, I simply think that they were less inclined to jump in with both feet into an emerging market, as I said earlier.
There had been cart based consoles in Japan since the late 70s, but none had really taken off. (like the Bandai Super Vision 8000 and Epoch Cassette Vision)
Though, it's also important to note that, like Atari, Nintendo had been a leading player in the dedicated home game consoles (their TV Game systems), and also had the Game & Watch line, so 2 lines of major products in the consumer market. (so valuable experience Sega lacked -the arcade market was not directly comparable to the home market)

And yeah, the fact that we don't know what kind of hardware developement teams Sega had at the time could also be an important factor, Game Over certainly mentions that prior to the Famicom, with the pong machines Nintendo had been in no position to design their own hardware at all, it was only in the preceding years to the Famicom release did they start to hire the personel and gain the know how.
You don't need a large team, just a handful of people with the right skills: they may very well have had such people already. (they just might have needed the training: like with GCC, a small group of semi-formally educated engineers/programmers who started off doing hacks of arcade games, then a couple of them took some classes on LSI design in '82 and came back to -more or less- tutor the rest of the group on the topic and toss some ideas around on designing their own computer system -those ideas became reality after they saw the release of the 5200 with obvious flaws and they started work on MARIA based on the ideas for the computer system, brought the project to Warner's attention -who they'd had a partnership with as a result of a lawsuit over a Missle Command speed-up kit, and Warner gave it the green light: that eventually became the 7800 and reached production in mid 1984 -early summer- ;))

It's all a matter of circumstance though. (it certainly wouldn't have hurt for Nintendo to go through existing staff searching for those interested in hardware design -in addition to looking for new staff) As it was, Nintendo's existing game designers had to deal with hardware too, albeit mainly arcade hardware and not LSI stuff. (discrete logic -but that's what LSI is all about, cramming discrete logic into a single IC)
It's not like they couldn't start prototyping with TTL stuff any way and keep that work going in parallel while they obtained the staff needed to bring that over to LSI chips. (as it was, Nintendo had just gotten the first run of LSI chips in April of 1983 -one of the Snags with the Atari negotiations was Atari management wanting to see the LSI chips, but Nintendo only having the TTL wirewrap prototype to demonstrate at the time)
Such hardware development is extremely fast pace and in parallel though, so that's hardly surprising. (and also why they'd at least want to start doing the LSI design close to the time the TTL stuff was being put together, to work in parallel -at least all the core logic doccuments, on paper)

With Atari Inc's beginnings, you had the opposite to some extent: all the original staff was hardware, the game designers designed the hardware or were directly partnered with engineers doing such: all was discrete logic too. (LSI stuff didn't start until the single chip PONG ICs in the mid 70s)

Albeit, it must have been fairly similar for Atari and Sega (Sega also had the electro-mechanical stuff -Atari had been involved with pinball machines early on as well), the only difference would be the timing in transition to the home market and LSI stuff.

Dude, I really don't think that's correct, if I were to guess I would personally have thought that Donkey Kong was a bigger hit than literally all of Sega's pre 1983 arcade games put together, then you've got DK Jr and Popeye being fairly successful in 1982 too, Sega had successful machines sure (Zaxxon, Pengo, Buck Rodgers) but I don't think they were sensational hits.
In Japan, or the west? Nintendo also had Mario Bros in 1983, that one was pretty big in the US.

Sega had also been a major player in the Arcade for FAR longer: remember all the NON video/vector based stuff. (ie mechanical/electro-mechanical coin-op games)
They'd been in that since the 50s (or 40s if you include the original Service Games), and they had many, many arcade games out by '83. (albeit no single game may have had the recognition of DK, but I'm not sure of that)

None of those were on the level of Space Invaders or Pac Man, of course. (quite possibly lesser than most of Atari's own Arcade games for that matter -or others like Williams -albeit those would have been a different matter in the Japanese market)

There's also the uber popular in Japan Game and Watch series to think about, which started out in 1980, and their pong machines, one of which was a million seller in Japan by that stage.
Yes, which would have given them a critical advantage in the consumer market: Sega was getting in late, rushing things, and very much playing catch-up. (did Sega even have ANY Pong clones/dedicated systems or handhelds? -even LED based)

According to Game Over, when the Famicom/SG-1000 were released the competition in Japan was the Atari 2600 (officially launched in 1983, but available previously from Epoch), Bandai's version of the Intellivision (July 1982), and the Cassette Vision (1981 which looks kind of like a 2600, but worse).
There was also the Bandai Super Vision 8000 in '79, prior to the Intellivision.
Again, the VCS's marketing seems to have been late and rather weak in Japan.

However apparently the most popular still seems to be Nintendo's pong machines, the TV Game's, by the looks of things the others systems mentioned above were generally considered too expensive, they were being sold for the equivalent of $200-$350 (as always thats a lot more in todays money) according to Game Over, Yamauchi decided that these prices were too high, and aimed to make the Famicom under the $100 bracket (which he didn't manage).
If that's the case, than the VCS was WAY overpriced in Japan. It was $200 (or less, often $170 or lower) when it launched with a game pack-in. By the early 80s, let alone with a machine cost-cut for the Japanese Market (namely lack of RF shielding) and hardware manufactured in the region, it should have been in the $100 range easily in the early 80s, as it was in the US.

Also worth noting is that the successor to the Cassette Vision, the Super Cassette Vision, was released the year after the SG-1000 in 1984, and looks pretty comparable to it.
The Super Casette Vision is far simpler/cheaper/more limited than the SG-1000, more on the level of the Odyssey 2 in some respects. (probably more cost effective -the graphics hardware seems closer to the TMS9918 in some areas, probably a good bit more restricted and cost-effective for sure though, more integrated and with a small fraction of the RAM in the SG-1000 -no CPU memory beyond the MCU's on-chip 128 bytes -like the VCS- and 2kB internal+4 kB external video memory -not sure if it's actual character memory or pattern table+palette data only, probably the latter and using ROM for graphics)

That actually sounds like a much more cost effective system than the CV/SG-1000, possibly designed ground-up as a console. (the sound hardware is also interesting: seems like it has 1 simple noise/square wave channel and 1 tone channel that sounds like it might be FM or a PCE/FDS-type wave-synth channel)

Something like that could/should have been released back in '82 though, or as a lower-end system in '83. (might have tied up the lower-end pretty well relative to the Famicom, if similarly marketed and supported)

Dude, everybody called the C64 a high end PC in 1982, at that time the best selling computers in the US were the VIC-20 and TS-1000
Maybe in Europe, but every impression I've had is that the C64 was a "little" cheap computer for the time, the IBMs were the "big boys" as such. Ataris, Commodores, etc were the mass market stuff, especially by '83 with the massive price drops into the $200 range. (the main reason Atari didn't keep up was marketing -good advertising is the #1 factor in the US marker, and Commodore had that for sure)

And Again, the C64 almost certainly could have been in the FC price range if made into a console. (at very least, 1/2 the price the C64 was selling for at the time)

When the C64 was launched at $600 in 1982 most journalists seem to have been pretty stunned, thinking it was shockingly cheap for the state of the art features it supplied.
Yes it was cheap, very low-cost optimized for sure, and also cheaply made with a high failure rate early on. ;)

The main feature was the RAM, a 64k computer at that price is what seemed crazy given the closest competition was pushing closer to $1000, in part due to the profit margins being pushed. (Apple was a non-issue as they never pushed for low-cost and tight price points and Atari was the only company with anything really close to what the C64 could pull off -superior to the C64 in several areas, weaker in others technically and nomnally, Atari had every chance to compete directly nonetheless, but screwed it up, mainly due to marketing and failure to release the 600 in '82 on top of the problems with the 1200)
What's odd is the price of the 400 in '82 prior to discontinuation and the fact that the 1200 should have been cheaper to manufacture (other than RAM), and with the 16k 400 dropping below the $300 price point in '82, a 64k machine really shouldn't have been more than $100 more than that. (with the going price for DRAM, component costs should have been more like $30-40 more, the rest would be inflation from retail if they kept profit margins similar)

I've read enough US magazines to know that the Colecovision was extremely well respected hardware even in 1983, its often referred to as the "best console available", a "luxury console", the system that can provide "arcade perfect ports", they talk about how "impressive" its graphics are, etc
And??? There was nothing better, the market was stagnating and innovation was weak (the 7800 was the first game console in the US since the VCS to push anywhere near the same sort of cost/performance).
And of course, Coleco marketed the CV extremely well, and that has a huge impact on market perception. (the 5200 was nominally superior in almost every respect by comparison, and even had the potential to be significantly lower cost had it been pushed as such)

Atari almost had such a system in the high performance/cost bracket back in '80/81 with the 3200, but concerns on development time and mounting competition (ie cutting into their near monopoly) led to that getting scrapped for the "quick fix" 5200. (not that either mattered as much as Atari's management problems, mind you ;))

Yeah, they could've done that, but they thought they were competing with the 2600, the Intellivision, the MSX, the Cassette Vision, and... pong Machines :lol:
Reactive rather than proactive you mean, or lazy. :p (and rushing into a market without experience)

apart from that, had they looked to the US early on in 1983 they would've seen the Colecovision as the fastest growing system in popularity, another sign that the SG-1000 would be a sure bet.
And that is, of course, assuming that the CV's hardware was the prime reason for popularity rather than the software and marketing. ;) (the exclusive and pack-in Donkey Kong was also significant of course -or not exclusive, but Coleco made sure the VCS and other versions of DK were mediocre -aside from the Atarisoft computer versions ;))

It doesn't change the fact that the VCS still held over 70% of the market share, or that the CV only did well because of the lack of good competition in general. (ie that Coleco could have done much better at similar cost with hardware actually aimed at being a console exclusively, or they wouldn't have had a chance if the competition had had marketing to match and a superior/efficient product to counter the CV)

Then there's also the fact that they could easily port existing software from the Colecovision, or MSX, which could've been another deciding factor in their decision.
True, but you're assuming 3rd party support was key at the time, and for all markets that was not the case. (no lockout or successful 3rd party licensing schemes implemented -and usually hardware companies trying hard to block/control 3rd party publishers)

"ports" didn't work that way back then though, unless it was the same company/developer pushing the game, or you had a very specific licensing agreement with access to the source code, that wasn't going to happen. (and source code was almost never involved: thus almost 100% of "ports" were actually by-hand remakes on the individual platforms even if the architectures were similar)

OTOH, Sega may have been thinking more of a dual market since they were also pushing the SC-3000 computer. ;) (and that's one plus to Coleco's choice as well since they'd promised and planned a computer version/add-on from the beginning, though Sega pulled it off FAR better than Coleco -if the Adam had been offered in a more SC-3000/VIC/C64/A8-like form factor, it very well may have caught on -especially if they did away with that proprietary tape format in favor of normal cassettes, carts, and disks only -with the professional model emphasizing disks)

Look at it this way, had the NES not been released (on the same day no less :bang:) they would've had a product selling for $70 to $230 less than all the competition, more expensive only in comparison to pong machines, with far greater specifications than anything else available (Except MSX, but I would imagine the MSX is the one responsible for the high end of the estimate)

The MSX was the lowest-end computer on the Japanese market as such. (the PC8801 was the market leader and in more the mid-range business category with the new 9801 in the high-end -you also had the X-1 and FM7 cutting in on the 8801's market somewhat -but NES had a near monopoly)

If sold at similar profit margins, the 8k MSX models should have been very close to the SC-3000's price point and more in the range of the 600XL or such in the US. (profit margins would be key though, but under $200 easily)

Any idea what the bone stock 8k (or "20k") Sord M5 cost in 1983? (that was basically identical to the 8k models of the MSX as well -cheaper sound chips, but also the added I/O logic that the AY/YM PSG integrates ;) -the SC-3000 in its mimimalistic form should have been cheaper though -base models had no more RAM than the SG-1000)

Also, had they been a few months earlier they could've built up a good sized following before the NES was released, or had they been set to release later they would've seen how outspecked they were and returned to the drawing board, but no, they released on the same bloody day.
If the Japanese market worked anything like the US, they'd have needed to push it in '82 to get onto the market by the previous fall/holiday season).

Any idea when the Famicom's development became public knowledge (or at least strong indications of Nintendo's entering the market -as with Coleco back in '81).

If that was the case, rushing off the shelf hardware out to get a head start might have been more to the point, though they also seemed pretty interested in getting a computer out. (in that sense, it's more of a shame they couldn't/didn't push in as an actual MSX manufacturer with a console derived from that directly from the lowest-end models -either directly compatible like the SC-3000, or incompatible to keep the markets separate)
Then again, unless they actually made an MSX clone, I think there was a significant licensing fee to get past.

From what I understand, the SC-3000 was much more popular than the SG-1000, so they at least got things right in that regard. (iirc the Famicom keyboard/BASIC add-on didn't fare particularly well)

From what I've heard, Nintendo didn't even allow 3rd party support at all until well into 1984, they didn't want to lose any profits, but in the end Nintendo could not make games fast enough to fill the shelves, and retailers were complaining that they had to turn customers away, not only that but there were fears that other companies might step in with their own systems whilst Nintendo were having product shortages.
That makes perfect sense since NO console manufacturer had wanted 3rd party development ever prior to that, at least in the US. (there was no way to license it out for money, so why would they want such unwelcomed competition?)
It wasn't until the 7800 that a satisfactory (and superior to most contemporaries, even into the 4th generation) lock-out mechanism was brought to the market.

No one "let" 3rd parties develop for their consoles, 3rd parties found ways to do so without consent of the hardware companies. (be it leaked documentation, reverse engineering, programmers formerly working for the hardware company, etc)

Activision's winning against Atari in court spurred 3rd party developers to emerge like crazy.

Not necesarily in 1983 it wasn't, virtually everything on the Famicom which sold well in the first two years was single screen, most of the hit arcade games up to that point were also single screen. You're getting into hindsight area now, we don't know how obvious it was to people at the time that scrolling was the future, remember that Sega made a mess of foreseeing the future of 3D gaming in the mid 90s too. scrolling games didn't start appearing on Famicom in any numbers until 1985, the SG-1000 could also do vertical scrolling decently so something like 1982's popular Xevious (one of the only popular scrolling arcade games of that period in Japan) would've been alright.
Atari had included V/H hardware scrolling on their computers since 1979, the C64 also included scroll registers as such.
I'm going to leave that Saturn comment alone since I'll just go onto an off topic rant. (but I disagree to say the least -I agree more on the scrolling thing being less obvious, but not on the 3D thing for sure, or that that was on the top of the list of the Saturn's problems)

And Zaxxon needed V/H scrolling as it was totally diagonal, and the way the CV did it was 8x8 cell movement, but sped up the pacing compared to the arcade to make it less choppy. (opposed to the MSX version)
You could do software scrolling via tile rendering and updaging character sets (some overhead over direct bitmap rendering, but more than mitigated by the use of char scroll as well as limited rendering -like dynamic tiling on later consoles, though I'm not sure when programmers actually took advantage of such possibilities ;) -the limited work RAM would hurt things though)

I'm not convinced, I get what you're saying in respects to the TI-99 hardware probably not being as efficient for videogames as it could've been, but still, it'd been in production for years by that stage, they must've gotten production to a pretty cheap and efficient level, and the NES hardware must've had some much more expensive to manufacture stuff in it regardless of their carefull designing.
R&D costs would be the main issue, and since Nintendo owned the IP, that would have cut manufacturing costs significantly. (it takes a TON of economies of scale to circumvent owning the IP for a design of similar, let alone lower cost -an advantage Atari had with their computers as did TI of course, and TI also had vertical integration -but without the same marketing push as CBM and a rather expensive CPU -high pin count, more silicon, more powerful, etc; the Z80 really cut things back in that regard -if TI had opted for that, let alone licensed the Z80, and offered that in the lower end, they could have cut in against CBM much more -let alone if they'd treated it like a computer and opened 3rd party development)

And the custom LSI chips and CPU (also custom in this case) are onl part of the cost: RAM is often a huge chunk of the cost and the NES opted for just 2 2k SRAM chips (like the 7800, but separated into video and CPU buses -and dual ROM buses as well), so no DRAM (cheaper by density, but the TI VDP had a lot of it), no refresh/control logic (albeit the TI integrated that into the VDP) and more critically the motherboard was tiny, again smaller than the VCS and approaching ZX-81 territory, and PCB size is a huge part of cost (one of the main reasons the 5200 wasn't cheaper than the Colecovision).

Of course, that also passed on cost to the games due to the large connector needed and dual ROM design. (more traces on the PCB and at least 2 8-bit ROM chips for every single game)
So Sega could have potentially taken advantage of that with cheaper game prices, or sold the hardware below cost and taken advantage of the higher profit margins on games. (the latter would have been radical for the time, but is of course what Sony did a decade later ;))

OTOH, maybe Sega could have tweaked it to allow a lower-cost configuration for the console, actually they might have been able to undercut Nintendo without a loss: not as good as an in-house design for sure, but maybe if they'd cut back video DRAM to 4 kB (ie 2 2k 4-bit chips -should still take up less space than a single 2kx8-bit SRAM and be much cheaper) and the same 2k SRAM for the CPU, but allow direct access to ROM for video like the FC, they could have kept cost and board space down, though inflate the cost of games. (or some sort of bus/bank select mechanism to allow shared/concurrent access to ROM, maybe only allowing CPU access in vblank and otherwise working in RAM, but that means you have to have most code in RAM and any in ROM would be limited to vblank access -still better than full contention like the A8/7800 where the CPU is halted when video needs bus access -as there's only 1 bus in the whole system -apple II and C64 do that too except the CPUs are slow enough to interleave DMA for a 50/50 split -same for the CoCo)

Still that's an interesting possibility, and something that also could have significantly cut the cost of the Colecovision.

If the TI99 hardware was as in-efficient cost wise as you make out, then I don't see why it was so ridiculously popular with different manufacturers of the time, I mean honestly, varients of that general design must've been the most prevalent of that entire period, from 1982-1983 it ended up in the Sord M5 (1982), the Colecovision (1982), the Spectravideo (1983), the SG-1000 (1983), the MSX machines (1983), Tomy Tutor/Pyuta (1983), Memotech MTX (1983), and even as late as 1984 the Tatung Einstein.
It was pretty good for a computer chipset (better for many things than the motorola set the CoCo used for example -though significantly more expensive) and was one of only a handful of off the shelf chipsets available at the time. (especially after the TI99 was discontinued and TI didn't have conflicts of interest with selling to 3rd parties anymore)

Thenewguy

02-03-2011, 06:23 PM

I don't really have the time to get into a long winded discussion with you at the moment, you think the SG-1000 was a screw up, I think it was a standard console for the time and Sega just got unlucky, with no way to know that Nintendo were going the extra mile for their console and upping the ante.

I think from the standpoint of 1982/early 1983, Sega were well within their rights to think that the SG-1000 hardware would be more than sufficient, being that they thought they were competing with Atari 2600 level machines, and knew that they could undercut them on hardware price.

I've read enough US magazines from the time to know that perception of the SG-1000/Colecovision hardware was still very positive in 1983 (as in was considered to be one of the most impressive consoles available), and enough to know that the C64 was considered incredibly impressive at $600 in 1982 (to say it was thought of as being cheap and cheerful is ridiculously off base)

There's also a ton of hype for that hardware going on, with ASCII, and Microsoft convincing a hell of a lot of companies that the MSX hardware is going to be the future, a unified standard for computing, Sony, Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, Yamaha, Samsung, Phillips, all of these huge companies were backing the MSX in 1983, If Sega were even slightly taken in by the MSX hype, thinking that it would be a possibility that the MSX could become a worldwide standard, they may have thought it would be wise to create a fairly compatible machine and jump on the bandwagon early.

Sound is always important. That was one of the impressive things about the Intellivison, Colecovision, and 5200: the kick-ass sound effects (and occasional music).Dude, sound wasn't even important during the late 80s, nobody ever even held the sound chip against the Master System in regards to the NES at the time at all, I very much doubt that using the SN in the SMS even lost them a minute percentage of sales, mainstreamers only cared about graphics, games, and advertising (so long as the sound was at least fairly decent, which the SN was), SN was more than adequate for 1983 blips and bleeps.

If the AY was more efficient at handling other stuff, and cheaper in the long run then fair enough, but don't overestimate the importance of sound to mainstreamers.

Sega had also been a major player in the Arcade for FAR longer: remember all the NON video/vector based stuff. (ie mechanical/electro-mechanical coin-op games)The stuff from the long past is redundant, Nintendo were the up and coming company in video games which would've put them in the public eye more, both companies had a long history in games and toys outside the videogame business, Nintendo had been the premier playing card manufacturer for like a hundred years by that stage, and they'd had a chain of light gun alleys that were popular during the 70s, not to mention the hugely popular Game & Watches

albeit no single game may have had the recognition of DK, but I'm not sure of thatBelieve me when I say there is zero chance that anything released by Sega prior to 1983 sold anything like Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong was one of the top 5 most popular arcade games of the entire 80s.

The MSX was the lowest-end computer on the Japanese market as such. (the PC8801 was the market leader and in more the mid-range business category with the new 9801 in the high-end -you also had the X-1 and FM7 cutting in on the 8801's market somewhat -but NES had a near monopoly)From what I've heard the MSX was the only computer sold for gaming and work, the others were sold for work/business, but ended up having games written for them.

This doesn't really matter as none of the computers would've been directly competing with the SG-1000 anyway, apparently the Japanese mainstreamers hated playing video games on home computers even worse than Americans, for them computers were for work, consoles were for games.

That makes perfect sense since NO console manufacturer had wanted 3rd party development ever prior to that, at least in the US. (there was no way to license it out for money, so why would they want such unwelcomed competition?)Yes, I was simply explaining to you that your time frame of Nintendo locking out 3rd parties by 1985 was wrong, as they didn't even start until late 1985 anyway.

Enternal

02-03-2011, 07:09 PM

This thread just got epic and my low attention span caused by videogames is preventing me from reading the last half of C64 and SG-1000 history in Japan... Although I do appreciate the time being put into the posts.

Back on topic with the sales charts. Id like to point out that pretty much the top 10 games in both charts with the exception of maybe BOF, were games, value wise that are low in today's market. Of course a good bit of that means those games are common. But also these are the games that people are seeking out for a fun experience like the megaman games or rpgs.

Also as a kid with both consoles I went with the snes ports over the gen with MK and SF series because they looked better. I played several tournies in arcades and didn't like either consoles music or effects for SF in comparision

kool kitty89

02-03-2011, 10:45 PM

I'll probably go back through for a proper reply, but I'll start with one thing I didn't state very clearly and overlooked a bit:

The computer oriented feature set is not nearly as important as the age of the chipset: a 1983 design using 1983 level chip processes could cram a hell of a lot more onto a single chip of the same size as the TMS9918. Using older, large-die, unconsolidated chips was bad. (the 9918/28 was large and inefficent enough to require a heat sink -albeit the VIC-2 did as well, but that crams in a lot more-)

If the old TI chipset had been reengineered into a single chip ASIC, that would have been another story: or maybe Sega was considering the potential of that as well. (but started off the shelf to accelerate things -especially since they got into the game rather late and rushed)

And again, the Colecovsion got lucky in the US, as would have Sega if the SG-1000 had been the best thing out there for the price since it was an old, inefficient design that wasn't even custom tailored in configuration to be particularly low cost. (with the exception of switching to a Z80, the critical move which made the Colecovision reasonably cost effective if still relatively weak)

Coleco got lucky because everyone else (incuding Atari) screwed up with newer systems, and not only configured older/off the shelf parts for the systems, but often in quite inefficient manners. (5200 is a prime example of where the system could have been significantly cheaper in spite of the inefficent/unconsolidated chip set: they already chose to remove PIA, but everything else was a mess: the board was huge when it should have been possible to strip it down to sub 600XL size -probably close to the size of the A400's main board, they used 4 controller ports when the A8s were dropping to 2, used a full 16k of DRAM without switching to 8k RAM chips to save space/cost -could be preferable to SRAM in the long run, especially with DRAM logic consolidated-, the cartridge PCBs and cases were large, the case had a huge amount of excess plastic/bulk/weight -on top of the internals adding up to be significantly heavier than the 400 with the old multi-board design and heavy aluminum castings, and that weight and bulk would exacerbate distribution costs and shelf space -they could have taken advantage of the lack of backwards compatibility and stripped down nature compared to the full computers, but no, every decision made for cost savings saw 2 others that ruined it :p -and then there's the controllers which are also a mixed bag of cut corners and added cost)

And just as I'm confident Atari could have easily undercut the CV's price point with a cost-optimized derivative of the 5200, I'm confident that the C64 chipset in a similar configuration and profit margin could have undercut the 5200. (unless perhaps they introduced CGIA)
Again, that is to say the C64 chipset stripped down to just the CPU+VIC-II+RAM (possibly a 4k SRAM or leave it as 16k DRAM -2 8kB 4-bit chips- with the trade-off of added logic onboard -you only need the more RAM case if you want to decompress graphics or do framebuffer rendering hacks) with only 1 CIA, or drop the CIA in favor of a cheaper VIA, PIA, or RIOT (PIA lacks any timer, so probably not that, VIA should be cheaper if more than 1 timer is needed, but RIOT for sure if 1 timer and 16 I/O ports were good enough -maybe RRIOT if you needed a BIOS ROM and could pare it down to 1kB), and stripped of all expansion features save a few lines on cart (perhaps facilitating on-cart RAM -R/W and phi 2- and audio input).

The fact that the A8 and C64 chipsets were unified single bus designs would also have been a critical edge over the NES or TI chipsets. (it would also limit them -as it did the 7800- due to bus sharing and corresponding DMA contention or forced slower CPUs with interleaved bus accesses -as with the C64's 1 MHz CPU while the A8 manages to usually get ~1.2 MHz performance after DMA contention but often less for the 7800 and I think MARIA can saturate the bus if pushed, so that could leave CPU time only in vblank -down to ~.5 MHz in NTSC or ~.7 MHz PAL -due to much larger vblank in PAL- though MARIA can also do a lot of things that ANTIC+GTIA and VIC II can't do -much more color flexibility, extremely flexible sprite engine, full 256 color GTIA Palette available in all modes, etc)

The MAX Machine is already about 1/2 way there:
http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cmax.html (just remove the CIAs, add a VIA or RIOT/RRIOT -or maybe PIA, cut out expansion ports, and cut other unnecessary logic and slim down the resulting board)

Yes, I was simply explaining to you that your time frame of Nintendo locking out 3rd parties by 1985 was wrong, as they didn't even start until late 1985 anyway.
Not according to a direct interview with Michael Katz where he stated that all the major Japanese arcade licenses were tied up in mid 1985. (during the lead up to the 7800 launch he was heading up)
That's when he opted to push for licenses of home computer games instead. (he also noted it as the first indication that Nintendo was going to be a problem in the US market, but they were still looked at as a small fish up until spring of 1996: the 1985 test market was considered a failure and they were seen as nothing special at the January 1986 CES, but by the time of the June Summer CES, all that had changed: Nintendo had expanded their test market considerably, had launched SBM and made it pack-in, and was offering the bare bones "control deck" bundle with just SMB and 2 controllers vs the Deluxe Set offered previously -actually forced by retailers who wouldn't accept the NES without the extra gimmicks)

Thenewguy

02-04-2011, 11:43 AM

Coleco got lucky because everyone else (incuding Atari) screwed up with newer systems, and not only configured older/off the shelf parts for the systems, but often in quite inefficient manners.I think this is the point though, by your reckoning everybody was screwing up, I think they were often screwing up simply because videogames, and even computing was still a young, emerging market at that stage and there wasn't the experience or easily attainable knowledge that there is now.

I think that not only is a lot of hindsight being factored into some of your posts, but also that we may actually have access to information of the time better than a lot of people due to the internet, and forums.

The problem I have with some of the stuff you've put down, is that if what you were saying two posts ago is correct -

"A new console in '79-81 with that same sort of cost/performance could have been possible, with BETTER gaming capabilities than the TI99/4 by a good margin"

That would indicate that companies like Mattel, when attempting to enter the very lucrative videogame market (atari were making hoards with the 2600) could've made the Intellivision effectively double the power and then sold it for nearly half the retail price, you're saying that there were no companies in the United States at that time smart enough to invest any money in the video game market even though Atari were cleaning up.

I think the reason why so many companies worked with Texas Instruments is simply because TI were one of the few companies with the know how, and production muscle to provide the amount and quality of chips required. Look at what happened with a lot of the people who left Atari to start their own companies, most of them were big successes, I think, because they learnt a lot while working there, putting them into a better position than most people.

I ran into an interview with someone working at Commodore during the time, and he stated that back in the early 80s it could take a good team up to a year to examine and understand any given hardware, much longer than it does now. He also states that HAL were hired to create games for the VIC-20 simply because at the time "there were very few groups in the world capable of programming cartridge based video games"

Not according to a direct interview with Michael Katz where he stated that all the major Japanese arcade licenses were tied up in mid 1985. (during the lead up to the 7800 launch he was heading up)Well, when you think about it what he's saying is still true, the initial 6 licencees were Capcom, Konami, Taito, Namco, Hudson, and Bandai, obviously Nintendo and Sega were out of the equation because they had their own systems to support, so really, from the perspective of the US all the major arcade licencees were tied up by mid 1985.

From the perspective of Sega and Japan there were still a lot of 3rd party licencees around in 1985 just for the sake of making good games, had they actually started welcoming them before Nintendo.

I think Sega's bigger mistake is simply not welcoming 3rd parties to the SG-1000, but like you said earlier, this was not the done thing during that time period, and not that feasible either.

QuickSciFi

02-04-2011, 03:27 PM

Kool kity. Have you considered writing a book?

gamegenie

02-07-2011, 11:38 PM

All I can say is from a business perspective, in America, Nintendo beat the crap out of SEGA.

But in other parts of the world...

actually it's SEGA beat the crap out of Nintendo.

I want to bump this thread because some of you guys are right. I think for the longest this notion that SNES in the US beat Genesis over the head in have been due to incorrect Genesis world wide sales figures that been published for nearly a decade on Wikipedia.

This blog site here, have made a new discovery. That confirms that SNES really just won Japan.

http://segatastic.blogspot.com/2009/12/mega-drive-sales-figures-update.html

j_factor

02-08-2011, 03:00 AM

January-July 1994 Sales Charts: or, a thread about 1982.

JCU

02-08-2011, 09:39 AM

actually it's SEGA beat the crap out of Nintendo.

I want to bump this thread because some of you guys are right. I think for the longest this notion that SNES in the US beat Genesis over the head in have been due to incorrect Genesis world wide sales figures that been published for nearly a decade on Wikipedia.

This blog site here, have made a new discovery. That confirms that SNES really just won Japan.

http://segatastic.blogspot.com/2009/12/mega-drive-sales-figures-update.html

Six of one or half a dozen of another......

Should more stock be placed in a pro-sega site then a wikipedia article or vice versa? What if someone linked "proof" on a pro-snes site?

I'd prefer to hear it straight from the horses mouth but I doubt that will happen.

gamegenie

02-08-2011, 09:55 AM

Six of one or half a dozen of another......

Should more stock be placed in a pro-sega site then a wikipedia article or vice versa? What if someone linked "proof" on a pro-snes site?

I'd prefer to hear it straight from the horses mouth but I doubt that will happen.

the blogsite isn't using itself as proof, it has links to 5 different reliable sources :|

where as wiki was going off one source that was to a old sega fan site.

JCU

02-08-2011, 10:15 AM

the blogsite isn't using itself as proof, it has links to 5 different reliable sources :|

where as wiki was going off one source that was to a old sega fan site.

You'll have to admit some of the links take you to other sega sites as well. Unless Sega is revealing exactly how much was sold, where it was sold, etc.., everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Too bad hardware and software sales weren't tracked as well as they are now.

A quick look on the SNES Wikipedia site lists sales as being 49.10 million and being documented by some sort of Nintendo release. I'm not quite sure where the listed numbers of the Genesis are coming from since Sega has left us in the dark. One person says one thing while another claims something else. It's a never-ending circle.

kool kitty89

02-09-2011, 06:16 AM

Kool kity. Have you considered writing a book?
No, but the topic has some merit for it. :p

For that matter, a lot of the Atari stuff is coming from the historians currently working on a series of books that finally show the true history of Atari in detail with many things that were previously lost to time and others obscured by myths and outright lies. (that would be Curt Vendel and Marty Goldman -there should also be a major update to AtariMuseum detailing more of that eventually -prior to the full books being released)