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NEC TG-16/TE/TurboDuo => TG-16/TE/TurboDuo Discussion => Topic started by: BigusSchmuck on April 22, 2016, 01:22:26 PM
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Why didn't NEC just wait to release the Supergrafx here in the US instead of just releasing the Turbo? I mean aside of the localization and such there was only like 4 months between release dates? It couldn't have been that much more expensive to produce the Supergrafx here in the U.S and hell you could even had older pc engine games to fill in the void until more Supergrafx games were available. Just a weird thought...
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Well, they'd already spent a year redesigning the PCE into the Turbo, so they'd have been throwing away that work and starting over. They'd also have to miss out on holiday sales for '89 and have given the Genesis an even bigger window to steal their thunder. There may also have been an element of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. Maybe NEC Japan neglected to mention the Supergrafx to them?
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Why didn't NEC just wait to release the Supergrafx here in the US instead of just releasing the Turbo? I mean aside of the localization and such there was only like 4 months between release dates? It couldn't have been that much more expensive to produce the Supergrafx here in the U.S and hell you could even had older pc engine games to fill in the void until more Supergrafx games were available. Just a weird thought...
NEC didn't give a damn about the US market. They wrote the Turbografx off as "dead on arrival" before it even went on sale.
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Why didn't NEC just wait to release the Supergrafx here in the US instead of just releasing the Turbo? I mean aside of the localization and such there was only like 4 months between release dates? It couldn't have been that much more expensive to produce the Supergrafx here in the U.S and hell you could even had older pc engine games to fill in the void until more Supergrafx games were available. Just a weird thought...
TG-16 was cheaper to produce...larger profit margins.
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The SuperGrafx was cancelled before it even came out. It never had a bright future at any point. They only released it in Japan because in 1989 people would basically buy anything in Japan and being very obedient consumers they wouldn't get hella pissed when only five lame games get released for it. Their goals for the US market were completely different. I'm not sure what those goals were...but all of the premium products stayed in Japan with the US market being classified as cheap asses. This is a popular strategy still.
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This is actually interesting to think about anyway, even if it had no chance of ever happening. Had they come out with the more powerful system and had it caught on in a surprising way, perhaps the U.S. market demand could've sparked development.
When the NES was released the video game market was dead and the Genesis was the follow up to an unsuccessful system in the U.S. and both did well, so strange things did happen in our market before. I like this What If scenario, even from just a pondering position.
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The SuperGrafx was cancelled before it even came out.
May I ask where does that info come from? I've never seen that mentioned anywhere, before.
I know that the main PCE developers had little interest in the poor thing, together with and overly high release price ... leading to an early death ... but that's not quite the same thing.
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There is no official word of this, I never meant to imply the info existed somewhere publicly. Just look at the release schedule, the almost zero support from anyone, even Hudson. There was never any hope for the thing to catch on and stay that way. They obviously knew this before release but pooped it out anyway knowing people would buy it for the outrageous price they were asking. Keep in mind that Japan actually had video game magazines back then and extremely active fan communities. They probably caved to nerd pressure knowing they'd at least break even. I'm not sure it even sold that well. I remember heavily discounted SGX systems available new for a decade after it came out.
If they wanted it to stick around there would have been signs of it. Like...a second wave of software. Something cute. A CD game. Bomberman. None of this happened.
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"Cancelled" would imply that NEC had given up on it, but they were likely the ones that shoved the SGX down Hudson's throats and said "make something great for this!!!".
Hudson and others of course responded by reluctantly throwing one or two of their projects towards the SGX. Duty fulfilled, they then ignored the system as was their desire all along. I'd say only NEC Avenue (big shock, eh?) had any enthusiasm for pushing the SGX's hardware beyond what the PCE could do.
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It would have been interesting to say the least to see a U.S conversion of Ghouls N Ghosts for the Supergrafx side by side with the Genesis version. Hell, even though it existed on the Genesis, it would have been a better package than Keith Courage.
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Honestly, I feel the PC engine's biggest limitation was not the technology, but the hucard sizes. They were not designed to be cost effective for the amount of data stored.
The best pce games were mostly 4 mb, similar to nes games, while later snes and Genesis carts were 12 or 16 mb.
Part of the reason supergrafx failed right out of the gate, was because of larger hucards which meant larger prices. Over $100 for just an 8 mb game.
I'm sure some diehards like Black Tiger will tell me that the PC engine became the Duo, but certain genres like platformers were much more prominent on the hucard format. Certain big name companies like Taito and Namco didn't even support the cd console, except for a couple Darius ports and other things.
Personally, NEC and Hudson should have used the supergrafx development costs to engineer more efficient cards or carts, but that's just my opinion.
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I blame the censorship in JJ and Jeff. More farts = more units sold = more cocain at the corporate offices = more farts, and the process continues. They just did everything wrong, good thing they didn't release it as the super graphic 16² that'd been weeeeiiirrrdd.
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Honestly, I feel the PC engine's biggest limitation was not the technology, but the hucard sizes. They were not designed to be cost effective for the amount of data stored.
The best pce games were mostly 4 mb, similar to nes games, while later snes and Genesis carts were 12 or 16 mb.
Part of the reason supergrafx failed right out of the gate, was because of larger hucards which meant larger prices. Over $100 for just an 8 mb game.
I'm sure some diehards like Black Tiger will tell me that the PC engine became the Duo, but certain genres like platformers were much more prominent on the hucard format. Certain big name companies like Taito and Namco didn't even support the cd console, except for a couple Darius ports and other things.
Personally, NEC and Hudson should have used the supergrafx development costs to engineer more efficient cards or carts, but that's just my opinion.
I think you're off on this one. Nintendo's SFC carts were normally priced at ¥9,800, far more than almost every PCE game. It didn't hurt sales. Seiken Densetsu 3 was $135 motherf*ckng dollars when PCE RPGs released that same year were $50.
Also, it's kinda apples to oranges. By the time 8mb SFC carts had become common place the PCE had moved almost exclusively to CD and the SGX was long dead. Just look at the release timeline guys, it's a very valuable testament to what was going on back then.
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so far, a lot of this conversation is looking at video games in a vacuum within the walls of NEC.
Video games were a small slice of NECs holdings overall. A few factors I'm sure play into the history of the supergrafx. First off, USA was still reeling from Black Monday (1987), so releasing any pricey electronic was going to be tough in 1989, especially a marginal upgrade to an existing console. Yes Gameboy succeeded, but it was exponentially different, and $89 at launch was a friendly Christmas price to pay. But this is a small factor overall. In 1989, Japan was in the midst of their own equity/capital market crash which I am sure shifted focus for NEC. The sharp fall of the Yen, coupled with NEC losing major market share in the PC space were probably bigger factors to NEC shifting resources to it's core businesses. It took Japan almost a decade to get out of the bank crisis overall, so it's no surprise in the early 90's that NEC and Hudson offloaded most of the work to TTI which essentially was a glorified licensing deal. Frankly it was smart since a major component of the JP stock market crash was centered around real estate. It was becoming less and less profitable to utilize square footage for a business unit that wasn't producing the capital that could be made in other electronic areas. Just saying, I think many bigger factors were playing into the supergrafx fate rather than nerd pressure and cart prices.
However, Zeta almost has a point, in 1989, Japan consumers were spending at high rate because of the easy access to money. Typically, Japanese citizens were known as frugal savers. This was good for the banks. But sometime in the late 80's, this mindset shifted to more money being put into investments. To recapture revenue, banks were forced to start lending at an alarming rate. They were offering loans at 2x, 3x, 4x the value of a borrowers collateral (typically homes). Most of that money was being funneled into the capital markets by the borrowers. Stocks started to fall, and banks weren't getting paid back. This lead to home prices and real estate value to fall sharply. Sound familiar? We could have learned something about this in 2008. Problem is, most of the people involved in that cycle were already retired and record keeping wasn't what it is today.
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Honestly, I feel the PC engine's biggest limitation was not the technology, but the hucard sizes. They were not designed to be cost effective for the amount of data stored.
The best pce games were mostly 4 mb, similar to nes games, while later snes and Genesis carts were 12 or 16 mb.
Part of the reason supergrafx failed right out of the gate, was because of larger hucards which meant larger prices. Over $100 for just an 8 mb game.
I'm sure some diehards like Black Tiger will tell me that the PC engine became the Duo, but certain genres like platformers were much more prominent on the hucard format. Certain big name companies like Taito and Namco didn't even support the cd console, except for a couple Darius ports and other things.
Personally, NEC and Hudson should have used the supergrafx development costs to engineer more efficient cards or carts, but that's just my opinion.
They did engineer more cost effective cards, they're called CDs.
Namcot and Taito were not major PC Engine publishers and did not put much effort into their PCE games. Taito did not make all of the games you think they did on any format. It was common that generation for publishers to license the games of other companies to port to consoles.
The Darius games, like that other CD Taito game Rainbow Islands, were all done by NEC Ave. Sega and Capcom did not make PCE games either.
It's been generally agreed upon since these games were current, that the success and publishing costs of CD games is what limited HuCard sizes. Log before the Duo/SCD format. Otherwise, why are there so many CD2 games? Why bother making a HuCard any bigger when you could maje 2 CD games for the same cist and they'd each sell better than that HuCard?
The SFC has far fewer shooters than MD & PCE. The MD has far fewer RPGs than PCE & SFC. The SFC has far fewer mature/adult games than MD & SFC. Are these just format issues? Tokimeki Memorial made it to SFC, why not Snatcher?
Maybe it's just not that simple and each console was supported and catering to different audiences. If platformers sold better than RPGs and shooters on PCE, we'd probably have seen more of them. Just as North America didn't get many sim or RPG games back then, because there wasn't enough of a market for them. Not because they weren't delivered on 8-track cassettes.
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There is no official word of this, I never meant to imply the info existed somewhere publicly. Just look at the release schedule, the almost zero support from anyone, even Hudson. There was never any hope for the thing to catch on and stay that way.
"Cancelled" would imply that NEC had given up on it, but they were likely the ones that shoved the SGX down Hudson's throats and said "make something great for this!!!".
Thanks for the clarification.
There's no doubt that something went drastically wrong between the initial planning and reality upon release.
I'd love to hear the real story of what NEC's was actually thinking.
I was one of the "oh-so-smart" folks that per-ordered the SuperGrafx as a grey-import before it was released, based upon the hype and promises at the time, and on my love of a friend's PCE briefcase setup.
I remember hearing about its eventual release in Japan and how it sold over 50,000 units in the first week, which IIRC was very good for the time in Japan.
You can only imagine my feelings upon eventually receiving my console a couple of months later together with ... Battle Ace!
I still have it, together with the frighteningly-huge credit-card receipt!
Also, it's kinda apples to oranges. By the time 8mb SFC carts had become common place the PCE had moved almost exclusively to CD and the SGX was long dead. Just look at the release timeline guys, it's a very valuable testament to what was going on back then.
Yep, I agree. The 8Mbit limit on HuCards really wasn't a problem until way beyond the time that CDs had taken over.
IHMO, the bigger problem with the PCE was its tiny 8KB of RAM that made it harder to sensibly store compressed data on the HuCard, and then the initial CD unit that only had 64KB RAM for loading the current program and data.
so far, a lot of this conversation is looking at video games in a vacuum within the walls of NEC.
Video games were a small slice of NECs holdings overall. A few factors I'm sure play into the history of the supergrafx.
You've got some very interesting points ... especially with NEC itself, who never seemed to really understand the video game business.
With it being such a small-and-new part of their overall business, the executives in charge of the PC Engine probably didn't have the power within the organization to commit the resources needed to run the business like Nintendo or Sega did (nor did they appear to have the skill).
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They did engineer more cost effective cards, they're called CDs.
I love PCE-CD games, but when the necessary hardware to play them cost more money than the core demographic of gamers at the time - middle-class elementary-school-aged children - could ever hope to convince their parents to buy, they seem a poor substitute for games on a cheap base system as a mainstay.
Yes, the Duo was given the hail-mary price of only (only) $300 in the US, but in Japan, it was going to cost you basically twice that to play CD games through any means until the RX came out in mid-1994.
It's been generally agreed upon since these games were current, that the success and publishing costs of CD games is what limited HuCard sizes. Log before the Duo/SCD format. Otherwise, why are there so many CD2 games? Why bother making a HuCard any bigger when you could maje 2 CD games for the same cist and they'd each sell better than that HuCard?
We have sourced numbers stating that A) there were far more people in Japan who had a core Hucard system only than people who had either the CD expansion or the Duo B) yearly sales of CD games as a whole never reached the same levels as Hucard games at their peak, and C) Hucard sales tanked in Japan right after the Super Famicom came out.
I don't think the transition to focusing on the CD platform happened because Hudson decided to slip the surly bonds of earth and fly to the stars. I think it's because their battleship was torpedoed by Nintendo, and their premium CD platform turned out to be a very good life-boat.
The high number of CD games was probably because the CD system did manage to find a comfortable and long-lasting niche.
"Cancelled" would imply that NEC had given up on it, but they were likely the ones that shoved the SGX down Hudson's throats and said "make something great for this!!!".
Hudson and others of course responded by reluctantly throwing one or two of their projects towards the SGX. Duty fulfilled, they then ignored the system as was their desire all along. I'd say only NEC Avenue (big shock, eh?) had any enthusiasm for pushing the SGX's hardware beyond what the PCE could do.
Is that really how it went, though? I'm not saying it's irrational at all, but has it been written anywhere that the SGX was in fact basically NEC's idea? I glanced through my late 1989 issues of Marukatsu PC Engine and couldn't find anything to that effect.
Hudson was a complex company, and they dreamed big. I wouldn't be surprised if the SGX came mostly from them.
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Is that really how it went, though? I'm not saying it's irrational at all, but has it been written anywhere that the SGX was in fact basically NEC's idea? I glanced through my late 1989 issues of Marukatsu PC Engine and couldn't find anything to that effect.
SamIAm I have a Japanese interview with NEC about the SuperGrafx (and Power Console) would you be up for translating it for us?
If yes I'll PM you the scans and start a new thread in the PC Engine forum section.
The interview is from a brochure/pamphlet NEC did just before the SuperGrafx release.
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Is that really how it went, though? I'm not saying it's irrational at all, but has it been written anywhere that the SGX was in fact basically NEC's idea? I glanced through my late 1989 issues of Marukatsu PC Engine and couldn't find anything to that effect.
SamIAm I have a Japanese interview with NEC about the SuperGrafx (and Power Console) would you be up for translating it for us?
If yes I'll PM you the scans and start a new thread in the PC Engine forum section.
The interview is from a brochure/pamphlet NEC did just before the SuperGrafx release.
That would be awesome, and maybe sticky it for future reference?
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so far, a lot of this conversation is looking at video games in a vacuum within the walls of NEC.
Video games were a small slice of NECs holdings overall. A few factors I'm sure play into the history of the supergrafx.
You've got some very interesting points ... especially with NEC itself, who never seemed to really understand the video game business.
With it being such a small-and-new part of their overall business, the executives in charge of the PC Engine probably didn't have the power within the organization to commit the resources needed to run the business like Nintendo or Sega did (nor did they appear to have the skill).
I assume this played into the partnership with Hudson overall. Just like Nintendo and Sega, during the early 90's, the core business WAS video games so it was probably tough for them to get priority on NECs powerpoints.
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IHMO, the bigger problem with the PCE was its tiny 8KB of RAM that made it harder to sensibly store compressed data on the HuCard, and then the initial CD unit that only had 64KB RAM for loading the current program and data.
I was just reading the December 1989 issue of Marukatsu PC Engine, and they actually mention the compression aspect when talking about the advantages that the Supergrafx's larger main-RAM has over the base PCE.
Some other interesting points:
- They say the extra RAM is also very good for playing sound samples, and vastly expands the possibilities for doing pseudo-3D games.
- The Power Console was a really big deal pre-launch. Seriously, the way it's introduced, it's practically the other half of the Supergrafx. It had a fully analog joystick, lever, and steering handle combo. It had its own CPU and 8k of RAM. It had a light-up LED panels that acted like gauges. It had the ability to store short strings of button presses. It had a built-in calculator. It had multiple ports to connect regular controllers. And the Supergrafx didn't connect to it via cable; you literally stuck the front of the Supergrafx into the back of the Power Console.
Also, it was going to cost 59800 yen.
- In addition, they teased just how many different perhiperals - such as light guns - would be connectable through that front port on the console.
- They emphasize in a large column that the 68000 is really only stronger as a CPU when you're doing operations that are more complex than what most games really need.
- By the way, it's really interesting that the Supergrafx was released in December '89, but there were no announcements about it until the October issue. Granted, I think that that issue was technically published in September, but still, before then, there was nothing. Daimakaimura and Strider were initially announced as regular PCE games the month before.
- Finally, many PCE owners wrote in angry that their system was about to become obsolete. It could be that this backlash is part of the reason why NEC/Hudson didn't do much to support the Supergrafx.
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Yes, the Duo was given the hail-mary price of only (only) $300 in the US, but in Japan, it was going to cost you basically twice that to play CD games through any means until the RX came out in mid-1994.
Ouch! I knew that the briefcase was an absurdly-expensive combo, but it hadn't hit me that the Duo and Duo-R still came with such a huge price tag in Japan, I'd always imagined them hitting the equivalent of that $300 US price.
That's more expensive than HuCard-only, yes, obviously ... but you're getting a much better platform with the Super System Card built in ... and it's basically the same price that the PlayStation launched at.
Were the Duo and Duo-R sold in Japan at the equivalent of the $399 Sega Saturn launch price?
I don't think the transition to focusing on the CD platform happened because Hudson decided to slip the surly bonds of earth and fly to the stars. I think it's because their battleship was torpedoed by Nintendo, and their premium CD platform turned out to be a very good life-boat.
The PC Engine is/was a wonderful system, but technology was moving really fast back in those days, and the 3 years of difference in timing made it affordable for Nintendo to put a lot more graphical and sound goodies into the SNES.
Despite the things that Nintendo goofed on ... it's pretty hard to try to argue against the opinion that the SNES is a better cartridge-game system than the PCE.
As a bunch of tech-geeks, even Hudson's programmers wanted to develop for it.
But from 1987-1990, the PCE beat everything else on the market, including (IMHO) the MegaDrive.
But, as I've said before, the most-interesting thing about the PCE is the CD ... that changed the industry, and allowed for wonderful experiences like Ys (early on) and Xanadu (later on), and even Sapphire and the Arcade Card Neo Geo ports.
Is that really how it went, though? I'm not saying it's irrational at all, but has it been written anywhere that the SGX was in fact basically NEC's idea? I glanced through my late 1989 issues of Marukatsu PC Engine and couldn't find anything to that effect.
Hudson was a complex company, and they dreamed big. I wouldn't be surprised if the SGX came mostly from them.
It wouldn't surprise me if Hudson's tech-geeks had a big part in evangelizing to NEC about just why they should bring out the SuperGrafx to compete against the MegaDrive and whatever-Nintendo-were-cooking-up.
Remember Hudson were still developing for Nintendo and they may well have had early-access to SNES developer info (a 2-year lead isn't uncommon to get top developers on-board).
- The Power Console was a really big deal pre-launch. Seriously, the way it's introduced, it's practically the other half of the Supergrafx. It had a fully analog joystick, lever, and steering handle combo. It had its own CPU and 8k of RAM. It had a light-up LED panels that acted like gauges. It had the ability to store short strings of button presses. It had a built-in calculator. It had multiple ports to connect regular controllers. And the Supergrafx didn't connect to it via cable; you literally stuck the front of the Supergrafx into the back of the Power Console.
Also, it was going to cost 59800 yen.
Someone was definitely snorting too much Peruvian Marching Powder to ever think that was going to work out well! :shock:
In some ways, it almost seems like they were trying to produce a cut-down version of the Sharp X68000 and its Cyber Stick.
The SuperGrafx's 128KB VRAM and 64-sprites-per-line comfortably beats both the SNES and the MegaDrive, and begins to approach the X68000.
Finally, many PCE owners wrote in angry that their system was about to become obsolete. It could be that this backlash is part of the reason why NEC/Hudson didn't do much to support the Supergrafx.
The backlash may well have surprised NEC who, I suspect, were more used to the regular backwards-compatible upgrade-cycle of computers ... where the SuperGrafx could basically be seen as just an upgraded high-end PCE.
The lack of developer interest (who thought that the PCE was "good-enough", and didn't want to develop for a split-market) was probably the bigger factor.
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Even though they have close release dates, I'm sure the TG-16 was being planned long before the SGX was born. For the SGX to have been released as the original TG-16, they would've had to scrap their plans and delayed the US launch for another year or more.
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Ouch! I knew that the briefcase was an absurdly-expensive combo, but it hadn't hit me that the Duo and Duo-R still came with such a huge price tag in Japan, I'd always imagined them hitting the equivalent of that $300 US price.
That's more expensive than HuCard-only, yes, obviously ... but you're getting a much better platform with the Super System Card built in ... and it's basically the same price that the PlayStation launched at.
Were the Duo and Duo-R sold in Japan at the equivalent of the $399 Sega Saturn launch price?
The Duo was 60,000 yen.
The Duo-R, which came out in mid-93 was 50,000 yen, and the RX was 40,000 yen.
My bad, the Duo-R was 40,000, and the RX was 30,000. Sorry about that!
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Ouch! I knew that the briefcase was an absurdly-expensive combo, but it hadn't hit me that the Duo and Duo-R still came with such a huge price tag in Japan, I'd always imagined them hitting the equivalent of that $300 US price.
That's more expensive than HuCard-only, yes, obviously ... but you're getting a much better platform with the Super System Card built in ... and it's basically the same price that the PlayStation launched at.
Were the Duo and Duo-R sold in Japan at the equivalent of the $399 Sega Saturn launch price?
The Duo was 60,000 yen.
The Duo-R, which came out in mid-93 was 50,000 yen, and the RX was 40,000 yen.
What was that in USD at the time?
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Apparently 60,000 yen was about $550. But remember, just because the yen was a little weaker doesn't mean people were making more of it. A dollar bought 80 yen a few years ago; a few months ago it bought 120. People's salaries sure as heck didn't go up 50%.
60,000 yen in 1991 was a lot of money. It was well out of the range of middle-class Japanese kids to ask for.
For reference, the Saturn came out at about 50,000 yen, but it came with a 5,000 yen rebate. It also went down to 40,000 yen in about seven months.
Super Famicom came out at 25,000 yen.
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Apparently 60,000 yen was about $550. But remember, just because the yen was a little weaker doesn't mean people were making more of it. A dollar bought 80 yen a few years ago; a few months ago it bought 120. People's salaries sure as heck didn't go up 50%.
60,000 yen in 1991 was a lot of money. It was well out of the range of middle-class Japanese kids to ask for.
For reference, the Saturn came out at about 50,000 yen, but it came with a 5,000 yen rebate. It also went down to 40,000 yen in about seven months.
Super Famicom came out at 25,000 yen.
Lot of money then... He'll that's a lot of money now for some. Lol Inflation adjusted that's even more (https://s3.amazonaws.com/tapatalk-emoji/emoji37.png)
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Sorry! I got the numbers for the Duo-R and RX wrong. It was 40,000 and 30,000 respectively, not 50,000 and 40,000.
The original duo was definitely 59,800. Also, the Super CD system was 47,800.
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My thoughts on the DUO-R:
http://archives.tg-16.com/Gekkan_PC_Engine_1993_05.htm#duo_r_reduced_price
...but the more interesting tidbit is how the price of the CoreGrafx held firm for so long!
http://archives.tg-16.com/Gekkan_PC_Engine_1993_05.htm#coregrafx_ii_reduced_price
TANGENT: I was trying to figure out the cost of the BOSE subwoofer + speaker system...and I was trying to use Yen<->USD calculators (based on data from 1993 exchange rates) to get the most accurate approximation of buying power... BUT, I still don't know if I am in the right ballpark:
http://archives.tg-16.com/Dengeki_PC_Engine_1993_11.htm#hudson_soft_by_bose
¥89,000 ~ 870 USD in 1993...
...but what would that be today, adjusted for inflation?
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If you want to go by inflation calculators, which use consumer-price-indexes, and exchange rates, 89,000 yen in 1993 would be like $1400 today. The Japanese Duo, in 1991, was about $950 today.
That's with a bit of rounding, of course.
You have to keep in mind, however, that exchange rates aren't really fair - they're not based on domestic buying power to anywhere near the degree that they're based on import/export activity and speculation in financial markets, along with other global-political factors.
Similarly, CPI inflation calculators don't give a totally cut-and-dry picture of a currency's domestic strength just because the prices of different goods fluctuate in different ways.
If you really want to know what 89,000 yen was like for a Japanese person in 1993, you have to look at what wages were like, what living expenses and disposable incomes were like, and what perceptions about the economy were like i.e. whether people expected to be making more money next year.
I don't know exactly what 89,000 yen was like back then...but it was a lot. For a young single person outside of the densest urban areas, it was two month's rent. On the other hand, the high from the 80s bubble hadn't totally worn off yet, and wages for full time workers were actually higher than now. Domestic manufacturing was still very strong, and there was more optimism.
It's a big dumb messy can of worms. I think the only important thing to take away from the numbers is that there was a big price barrier to getting involved in PCE-CD games and buying the bells-and-whistles, even if the software itself wasn't more expensive than the competition.
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If you want to go by inflation calculators, which use consumer-price-indexes, and exchange rates, 89,000 yen in 1993 would be like $1400 today. The Japanese Duo, in 1991, was about $950 today.
That's with a bit of rounding, of course.
You have to keep in mind, however, that exchange rates aren't really fair - they're not based on domestic buying power to anywhere near the degree that they're based on import/export activity and speculation in financial markets, along with other global-political factors.
Similarly, CPI inflation calculators don't give a totally cut-and-dry picture of a currency's domestic strength just because the prices of different goods fluctuate in different ways.
If you really want to know what 89,000 yen was like for a Japanese person in 1993, you have to look at what wages were like, what living expenses and disposable incomes were like, and what perceptions about the economy were like i.e. whether people expected to be making more money next year.
I don't know exactly what 89,000 yen was like back then...but it was a lot. For a young single person outside of the densest urban areas, it was two month's rent. On the other hand, the high from the 80s bubble hadn't totally worn off yet, and wages for full time workers were actually higher than now. Domestic manufacturing was still very strong, and there was more optimism.
It's a big dumb messy can of worms. I think the only important thing to take away from the numbers is that there was a big price barrier to getting involved in PCE-CD games and buying the bells-and-whistles, even if the software itself wasn't more expensive than the competition.
Thank you :)
I was frustrated by my inability to find any context that would have been helpful: what was the cost of a train ride? A can of soda? A coffee? A beer?
Also: who was buying all of the expensive stuff? What were the demographics? Was there an overlap between people who bought expensive electronics/computers and video games?
Or was the console video game market its own unique demographic (successfully drawing in people from all economic classes)?
MORE IMPORTANTLY: What are your views on the ability of NEC to keep the price of the CoreGrafx models constant for so long? I would have expected gradual price reductions, but NEC held firm (I think it was a strategy for maintaining a "premium" brand that was worth spending $$$ on).
Of course, we need context...and I haven't checked to see what the prices of FamiCom, MegaDrive, SFC, etc. were between 1987-1993....I should make a price chart, or something. It would help put everything into perspective.
:)
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Does your historical calculator only go back to '93? The combined original MSRPs were a bit less than 89,000 yen (82,600 yen), but that was 5 years earlier; by '93 you could get a Duo-R for less than half that. Compared to the various online inflation calculators that I checked, $1400 would be high even for '88, but the exact dollar amount doesn't really matter, I guess. The CD was unarguably expensive when it launched (as were all other CD devices at the time), but thankfully the price dropped fast. Also, I'm sure many early adopters already had a PCE and were comparing the add-on's cost to buying another system or a stand alone audio player, making the cost much more palatable than thinking "holy shit, it's gonna cost me $1500 to play Fighting Street!"
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I bought my CDX at launch for the same price as a decent discman.
The PS2 and PS3 launched for prices comparable to a higher end dvd player and equal to or less than most bluray players.
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You've definitely got to understand that the computer world was a totally different place back in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
I was shopping for a CD player in the late 1980s, when it was the transition from the 14-bit players to the first of the 16-bit players ... and the cost was hundreds of dollars (or pounds in my case).
Take a look at the price/capability of IBM PCs ...
IBM announced four PS/2 models during its April 1987 launch: the Model 30, 50, 60, and 80. They ranged dramatically in power and price; on the low end, the Model 30 (roughly equivalent to a PC XT) contained an 8MHz 8086 CPU, 640KB of RAM, and a 20MB hard drive, and retailed for $2295 (about $4642 in 2012 dollars when adjusted for inflation).
The most powerful configuration of the Model 80 came equipped with a 20MHz 386 CPU, 2MB of RAM, and a 115MB hard drive for a total cost of $10,995 (about $22,243 today). Neither configuration included an OS--you had to buy PC-DOS 3.3 for an extra $120 ($242 today).
Set against that, the Sharp X68000 ACE's 399,800Y price in 1998 for the model with 1MB RAM and a 20MB hard drive doesn't sound quite so bad for a "professional-level" graphics workstation!
In my young(ish) bachelor days in the early 1990s, I remember paying nearly $1000 for 64MB of RAM, and another $450 a 250MB hard drive.
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Early computer CD-ROM players were incredibly expensive, just take a look at this familiar drive's $798 price in June 1990 ...
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1642/26569196242_1d98afcde2_o.jpg)
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1701/26056878074_dbd25103c7_o.jpg)
The PC Engine + CDROM2 was pretty cheap back in its day as far as CD-ROM hardware goes.
Now ... that doesn't mean that it was affordable to game players, or that kids could justify it to their parents, particularly in comparison to cheaper cartridge-only consoles.
From my POV, the PC Engine was always a "premium" product at the high end of the price range, with cutting-edge features, and a price tag to match.
IMHO, that was the same kind of market that the Neo Geo home system was aiming at when it came out.
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Trying to figure out inflation versus tech is pointless since tech drops like a rock constantly. My first computer's RAM upgrade was $1000 and it was only 1MB.
Also, the yen was exploding in value overall in the 80s making comparisons to dollars equally pointless. Tracking from 1991 or so wouldn't be so bad but going back to 1983 or whether (Famcom debut) it's going to get weird because a dollar bought well over 200yen.
And if you think the PCE stuff was expensive it's probably because you haven't looked at anything else. Grab a 25 year old issue of Newtype and check out otaku pricing. The $6000 Laserdisc players, the $800 portable MD recorders, the anime box sets that cost thousands of dollars. That's just the way it was there back then and to a lesser extent things are still sorta like that. The customers aren't as obedient, they don't have as much money to spend, but they also don't like to have kids anymore which equates to tons of spare change.
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Well, just to go down memory lane, I found the cheapest, semi-decent CD player in 1985...it was $300. That was for a basic Sony model.
I was so happy to get that CD player.
I had no CDs to play (couldn't afford any).
But I looked at the glowing display and the remote control would close the empty CD tray from across the room.
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Well, just to go down memory lane, I found the cheapest, semi-decent CD player in 1985...it was $300. That was for a basic Sony model.
I was so happy to get that CD player.
I had no CDs to play (couldn't afford any).
But I looked at the glowing display and the remote control would close the empty CD tray from across the room.
CDs were ridiculous even in the late eighties. Most ranged $20-40. I remember the first CD I bought was Dokken Beast From the East in '91 for my turbo cd, and it was $25. But boy did it sound sooooo much better than the cassette.
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My first CD player was a Sony D-66, a Discman. In 1991 It was about $200 and with that you got zero seconds of skip buffer and a NiCad battery that would last, maybe, 2 hours. It was the best portable player at that price that I could find.
Now you can buy one with a minute of buffer that runs for days on a single charge. It will however be a total POS compared to the D-66, which wasn't even a premium product in its day.
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I think you have to keep in mind that until maybe the PS1 generation, and probably not really until the generation after that, gaming was mostly a kid's hobby. Yes, there were some gamers who bought games in the late 80s/early 90s using their own income, but they're not the ones who got the Famicom to 61 million units sold worldwide, or 30 million Mega Drives. That was kids. Kids who all went through that dreaded moment where they negotiated with Mom and/or Dad, and in most cases literally had to beg because what they wanted was both truly expensive and completely frivolous entertainment. Whatever the price of the PCE-CD hardware really was, it was FAR beyond what was acceptable in this situation. I mean, in my case, I wouldn't have even bothered asking my parents for such an expensive toy. They would have laughed in my face, or worse.
In Japan, the situation was slightly better, but not much.
(As an aside, one of the often overlooked reasons why Japanese gaming doesn't kick as much butt as it used to is that they lost the small "adult-advantage" that they used to have. Nowadays, it's much more acceptable to be an adult gamer in America than it is in Japan.)
Does your historical calculator only go back to '93? The combined original MSRPs were a bit less than 89,000 yen (82,600 yen), but that was 5 years earlier; by '93 you could get a Duo-R for less than half that. Compared to the various online inflation calculators that I checked, $1400 would be high even for '88, but the exact dollar amount doesn't really matter, I guess.
The 89,000 yen figure was just for the specialty Bose speakers esteban linked to.
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Minimum wage in the US was $3.35/hr through pretty much all the 80s, finally jumping to $4.25/hr in 1992.
In Japan, though it varies by region, mimimum wage in 1981 was 397 yen/hr, which climbed to 572/hr by 1991.
Sorry to double post. :mrgreen:
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The CDROM2 systems were expensive, sure, but the base PCE was pretty close in price to other cart systems. As they moved more towards the high end they lost the kids and gained otaku dorks who proceeded to turn the PCE into a "multi media" machine filled with pervy ota junk and weird sims.
None of this is a new observation of course...this is why Bomberman games usually came out on HuCARDs.
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For comparison, does anyone have numbers for how much a SNES, Megadrive, and Neo Geo cost back then?
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Neo Geo (1990) ¥58,000 (what you actually got with a Neo changed here and there over the years but I think at launch you got a controller...and that's it)
SFC (1990) ¥25,000 (I think you got two pads but no AV cable, IIRC)
Megadrive (1988) ¥21,000 (I think one pad)
None of these came with games, btw, which alone makes them seem expensive compared to the low prices Americans enjoy. Add ¥5,800 for most MD games, ¥7,800-9,800 for most SFC games and ¥21,000 for most Neo games...although they would be twice that before the system died.