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Thread: What is the best-selling classic console?

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    Play me a Newfie jig! markusman64ds's Avatar
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    Default What is the best-selling classic console?

    I know the PS2 is the best-selling video game console of all time, but what is the best selling classic game console? I'm guessing the NES.

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    Apple (Level 5) Gamevet's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by markusman64ds View Post
    I know the PS2 is the best-selling video game console of all time, but what is the best selling classic game console? I'm guessing the NES.
    Well, in the world of Cars, 15 years is considered classic. If that applied to videogame hardware, then it would be the Playstation.

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    PS1 sold over 100 million
    NES 60 million
    SNES 49 million
    Genesis 40 million
    N64 32 million
    Dreamcast 10.6 million
    Saturn 9 million



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    Kirby (Level 13) Buyatari's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ryudo View Post
    PS1 sold over 100 million
    NES 60 million
    SNES 49 million
    Genesis 40 million
    N64 32 million
    Dreamcast 10.6 million
    Saturn 9 million
    I'd be curious to see the numbers on the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Gameboy.

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    Cherry (Level 1) Shulamana's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buyatari View Post
    I'd be curious to see the numbers on the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Gameboy.
    30 million for the 2600 and 118 million for the Game Boy (counting all variants through the GBC)

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    ServBot (Level 11) tom's Avatar
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    Pretty sure Genesis and SNES are closer together in sales figures

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    Quote Originally Posted by Shulamana View Post
    30 million for the 2600 and 118 million for the Game Boy (counting all variants through the GBC)
    I don't see why they don't separate the b&W Game Boy sales from the Game Boy Color. They're pretty much a separate generation from each other. I am guessing the Game Boy Color's sales were a lot worse than original Game Boy or Game Boy Advance. The GBC had very few titles that justified buying one. Some 8 bit remakes, Pokemon Gold and Silver, Zelda Oracle of Ages and Seasons, and other than that mostly a bunch of licensed junk. Some people who waited a while for the good games to come out heard the news about Game Boy Advance around the corner and just waited for that. That's what I did. I just bought the games for GBC that I wanted to play before I had the system to play them on, then grabbed a GBA with Super Mario Advance as soon as it came out. The hybrid titles like Dragon Warrior I & II I just played on Super Game Boy with less color till then.
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    I thought the numbers were a little low for the NES and Snes. I've seen numbers somewhere around 65-70 million for the NES.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) jb143's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rickstilwell1 View Post
    I don't see why they don't separate the b&W Game Boy sales from the Game Boy Color. They're pretty much a separate generation from each other. I am guessing the Game Boy Color's sales were a lot worse than original Game Boy or Game Boy Advance.
    Technically they are extremely similar hardware wise. It was an update, not a complete redesign. A color screen of course, a slight modification for how monochrome palettes are now treated as color palettes, and a few other minor changes. It wasn't the same leap that GBC to GBA was. Technically, an original GB could play GBC games as well, the colors showing as shades of green would generally make it look too screwy to play though so they generally blocked out that ability with the lack of a notch in the cart and a screen that's triggered saying it's only for play on a Game Boy Color.
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    ServBot (Level 11) tom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gamevet View Post
    I thought the numbers were a little low for the NES and Snes. I've seen numbers somewhere around 65-70 million for the NES.
    More the other way around, as stated in the book Game Over, Nintendo (and Sega for that matter) always over exaggerated their sales figures.

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    ServBot (Level 11) Rob2600's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tom View Post
    More the other way around, as stated in the book Game Over, Nintendo (and Sega for that matter) always over exaggerated their sales figures.
    Interesting. I was under the impression that Nintendo always released the actual number of units sold to customers, while companies like Sony always released the number of units shipped to retail.
    Last edited by Rob2600; 04-18-2012 at 02:07 PM.

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    Europe has always been the region where sales numbers are questionable. The NES wasn't a huge seller there though, due to poor distribution and a late entry.

    There's no question that it was far more successful than the 16-bit consoles, in North America. And in Japan the Mega Drive barely sold a couple million, while Snes and NES thrived.
    Last edited by Gamevet; 04-18-2012 at 03:37 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gamevet View Post
    Europe has always been the region where sales numbers are questionable. The NES wasn't a huge seller there though, due to poor distribution and a late entry.

    There's no question that it was far more successful than the 16-bit consoles, in North America. And in Japan the Mega Drive barely sold a couple million, while Snes and NES thrived.
    Yes it would be best to show the regions for all the numbers. For example, both Mark III and Mega Drive were not huge sellers in their native land but in Europe they did pretty well, I think.

    Here's the most curious fact about best-sellers per console generation, and it applies to virtually all generations and regions. The console that was the most powerful in terms of hardware/processing power was NOT the best seller. This is my proof for stating that having the best machine is not going to make your console the "best" in terms of sales. How good the software library for the console is, that is a whole other matter entirely.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) jb143's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FoxNtd View Post
    Here's the most curious fact about best-sellers per console generation, and it applies to virtually all generations and regions. The console that was the most powerful in terms of hardware/processing power was NOT the best seller. This is my proof for stating that having the best machine is not going to make your console the "best" in terms of sales. How good the software library for the console is, that is a whole other matter entirely.
    Well...that makes sense. More power is generally going to mean more expensive. And as far as how good the software library is...you have things like the Jaguar, which you argue all day long about how powerful it really was, but in the end it's extra power also brought a ton of programming challenges which surely affected the quality of the library.
    "Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...

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    Quote Originally Posted by jb143 View Post
    Well...that makes sense. More power is generally going to mean more expensive.
    If we look at each region and each generation, grouping the consoles by price then I wonder if the cheapest console is often the winner or not. It might be tricky since a console's lifetime of sales can persist over periods of price drops which can boost sales toward the back-end of the lifetime.

    Speaking about price reminds me of game depreciation. I have some Square games for SFC that have values over 10,000-11,000 Yen printed right on the box. These games are very near worthless today. It's kinda disturbing...

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    Quote Originally Posted by FoxNtd View Post
    If we look at each region and each generation, grouping the consoles by price then I wonder if the cheapest console is often the winner or not. It might be tricky since a console's lifetime of sales can persist over periods of price drops which can boost sales toward the back-end of the lifetime.
    Yeah, but the same thing is happening with their competitors as well so I would think it would even out from a comparison point of view.
    "Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...

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    Peach (Level 3) A Black Falcon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jb143 View Post
    Technically they are extremely similar hardware wise. It was an update, not a complete redesign. A color screen of course, a slight modification for how monochrome palettes are now treated as color palettes, and a few other minor changes. It wasn't the same leap that GBC to GBA was. Technically, an original GB could play GBC games as well, the colors showing as shades of green would generally make it look too screwy to play though so they generally blocked out that ability with the lack of a notch in the cart and a screen that's triggered saying it's only for play on a Game Boy Color.
    The GBC is definitely a new system and not just aredesign. It's got exclusive games, more powerful hardware (faster CPU, more RAM, color screen)... what more do you need to make something a new system? They blocked some games from running on the original GB probably because they make use of the more powerful hardware, not just for the reason you say; dual-mode titles generally have to limit themselves to the original GB hardware only, though of course there are a few cases of dual-mode titles with big differences between the GB and GBC versions on the cart, such as R-Type DX or Conker's Pocket Tales.

    And yes, the DSi is a new system as well, very similarly to how the GBC is, but with fewer dual-mode games (games enhanced for the upgraded system that also work on the original).

    Also, I think some good efforts at GB/GBC sales breakdowns do exist, even if Nintendo itself has generally merged the two. Both sold very well, but separated neither one hits 100 million, obviously (given the 118 million total), so the Playstation is indeed the best selling "classic" console. I'm not sure which system is second offhand, though -- it well might be the Game Boy, not sure if GB or NES is 2nd. (Probably not GBC, but it's certainly high on the list).

    Quote Originally Posted by FoxNtd
    Here's the most curious fact about best-sellers per console generation, and it applies to virtually all generations and regions. The console that was the most powerful in terms of hardware/processing power was NOT the best seller. This is my proof for stating that having the best machine is not going to make your console the "best" in terms of sales. How good the software library for the console is, that is a whole other matter entirely.
    Quite true. The only time the most powerful even kind of won was the SNES, which was the most powerful system that generation if you ignore the Neo-Geo (and 32X, on the basis that it was an addon and released after some next-gen systems).
    Last edited by A Black Falcon; 04-18-2012 at 05:12 PM.

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    ServBot (Level 11) tom's Avatar
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    Not really, the SNES had a CPU which was more 8-bit than 16-bit, and the console processing power was plaqued with slow down quite often.

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    Quote Originally Posted by tom View Post
    Not really, the SNES had a CPU which was more 8-bit than 16-bit, and the console processing power was plaqued with slow down quite often.
    The slow CPU is pretty unimportant compared to the great power of the system in every other way. You seriously would say that the Genesis and Turbografx are more powerful than the SNES, really? It's just not true. They have faster CPUs, but are worse in every other way, and those other ways amount to being worse in far more ways than the one that they are better at.

    And plus, for games that really do need help, the system was designed for addon chips in the carts.

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    Quote Originally Posted by A Black Falcon View Post
    The slow CPU is pretty unimportant compared to the great power of the system in every other way. You seriously would say that the Genesis and Turbografx are more powerful than the SNES, really? It's just not true. They have faster CPUs, but are worse in every other way, and those other ways amount to being worse in far more ways than the one that they are better at.

    And plus, for games that really do need help, the system was designed for addon chips in the carts.
    Yup SNES had Sony's 8 channel sound chip to Genesis 4 Channel.
    Mode-7
    More colors than Genesis
    Plus SNES had the carts made so if they wanted a Cart could have a chip to extend it's limits. As Shown with games with the FX chip.
    =======================================
    Also the sales numbers I posted are well documented.
    I have many old mags and a couple books plus look around the internet. Those numbers are solid.

    The thing that finally pushed SNES past Sega was Street Fighter II. It was a SNES exlusive for a s short while and had very good sales. Not to mention as few remember it was supported by Xband. So you could take it online. When the Genesis version came out it also supported by Xband



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