Nintendo of America's Poor NES Memories. . .

[spman]

Hard release dates didn't really become a thing until the latter half of the 90's for the most part. Big releases generally had them, but a lot of things just sort of rolled out slowly over time. If you lived in a big city, you generally got stuff right away when it was available. If you were in middle of no where Wisconsin, you might not see some games for months, if you ever saw them at all. Availability was also an issue as well, stores might only get one shipment of a certain title in, and that was it. You might have to spend weeks following leads if you were looking to track down some games.

[Tanooki]

No offense but you seem to be the only one having an issue with my post. I'm saying they could do a closed emulation box, like Sega and AT Games did with the Sega Genesis, with the option of a cartridge port on the top to do with as they wish (make their own, let the market use what is out there.) I'm saying they could make more profit than just doing the virtual console alone. Clearly outside of the 3DS people are not very interested in Nintendo consoles anymore on the whole after years, generations in gaming, of going their own way and driving off most people to Sony and MS, if not just to the home computer. A cheap emulation box, and they are looking at what Sega through AT Games can charge for their junk, could be a way to rake in more dough, not a replacement, a supplement.

As it is now we see a lot of the talk from the outside pushing against their Japanese office of expanding out to other devices on top of smart phone/tablet type stuff to make more money as they're hurting worse and worse as things continue down the road they're on now. I'd think anything they could do at this rate which isn't the same old crap with consoles alone that could bring in more revenue would be good.

[Jorpho]

I'm saying they could make more profit than just doing the virtual console alone.

I have every impression that while VC sales may not have high volume, they almost certainly make up for that in profit margins. Also, what makes you think that what Sega achieves through AT Games is particularly profitable?

[Tanooki]

I don't have anything to cite or I would, but what I've been told is that on the whole, all of Sega's emulation projects from the multiple ATgames devices (keychain sized, LCD based handhelds (3genesis, 1 sms), tv-game closed system, and tv-games closed system but with cart slot(genesis) and then their porting of projects to android, apple, and various consoles/computers with 16bit ROMS have been a steady source of profitable income for them. They continue to keep releasing rom packages and having AT games do those home systems (and handheld that even let you load your own roms on SD card) because it gets their name out there and they make money off it from people who may have a computer/console already or those just wanting something in their pocket or plugged into a tv a/v out jacks. The costs going into it, especially just the ROM downloads/package discs are so cheap, and minimal effort goes into it so they keep it up.

VC sales don't have super high volume but the more popular stuff moves quite well, and you can kind of see third party wise at least what really rolls when they 3x over release the things from wii->3ds->wiiu now. Square caught onto the profit of it, and now they have some of their DS and SNES projects up on tablets.

[TheChristoph]

Hardly

It has sold just a small fraction of that of the DS which went up against the PSP which was a huge success for Sony. Not only that, but sales have been declining for a while now for this platform, sales this quarter were way down from the same quarter a year ago, and sales for this year were forecast to merely be stagnant (Which itself will be a difficult task given Q1's poor performance). And it should be added that they didn't even come close to meeting last year's projections when the verdict was read at its conclusion, a situation I predict will be repeated (For the 3DS, I have a hunch they underestimated the Wii U this year).

An individual at another forum recently didn't like someone's post about Nintendo's handheld performance being on the weak side this generation and countered by stating that it has sold 16 million systems alone in Japan at this point. But at this same point for the DS, after looking it up in Nintendo's own sales history that it keeps updated on the Japanese site, it had sold over 70 million systems in just Japan.

Sort of says it all...

"This thing is a sales failure because it isn't selling as well as the most popular gaming device of all time."

[Leo_A]

"This thing is a sales failure because it isn't selling as well as the most popular gaming device of all time."

Woah there, that's not what I said. I disagreed that it was selling like "hot cakes", I didn't say that it was a failure.

Nitpicking here since it absolutely doesn't matter, but I believe that the PS2 still holds a narrow edge with a million or two in additional units sold. That said, even with the removal of the DS from the equation which I disagree with since this is the direct follow-up to it, there's a lot there that demonstrates that this is a troubled business for Nintendo that has been a struggle this generation that doesn't appear set to get any easier.

Even though it's well liked, well built, has a solid library of 1st party releases, and is presumably profitable, its sales performance isn't very Nintendo handheld-esque. They're going to narrowly win this battle, but their hold on the portable front is the weakest it has been since 1995 or so right before the Game Boy Pocket and the Pokemon craze gave the Game Boy its second wind (Which was on the fast track out at the time).

It's not selling like hot cakes, unfortunately.

[SparTonberry]

They're going to narrowly win this battle, but their hold on the portable front is the weakest it has been since 1995 or so right before the Game Boy Pocket and the Pokemon craze gave the Game Boy its second wind (Which was on the fast track out at the time).

Oh really? Am I the only one who never noticed Game Boy "dying" pre-Pokemon?

I mean they didn't really have big competition then.
The closest was Sega, but the Game Gear still kind of struggled to get the same amount of third-party support the GB had (no Capcom, no Konami, and even Namco I think might've only released games like Pac-Man and baseball that they'd release on almost everything. Just to name a few.)
Atari was pretty much dead at that point (officially so in early '96, I believe).
And Tiger... was Tiger. :P

[Leo_A]

Major publishers were abandoning it en masse and it was starting to disappear (Check out Capcom's record, for instance). Pokemon and a redesign rejuvenated it and gave this aging 8 bit handheld from 1989 its second wind and another half decade of life (Although judging by MobyGames, it didn't lead to much more actual development happening despite its rebirth).

This is the best I can do on short notice to substantiate that claim since Nintendo doesn't have annual reports posted from the 1990's and their sales sheet only goes back to the 1998 fiscal year.

http://www.academia.edu/4676252/S_w_...R_INTRODUCTION

At the end are exhibits with sales data showing how quickly the Game Boy was declining and that Nintendo's success with Pokemon jump started a system that was on its way out by 1995.

I mean they didn't really have big competition then.P

It wasn't competition that was behind it that time, it was Nintendo themselves letting it wither on the vine. I presume they were too preoccupied with the Nintendo 64 launch to give it the necessary attention, but they didn't seem to have a clear vision of how to go forward with their handheld line in 1995.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

So here is what Nintendo should do. Rerelease the NES, exact same system, just new units. And make some new NES games. Sell the system for $69.99 with Super Mario Bros. 4 packed in.

Then, 5 years from now, do the same thing with rereleased the SNES, then the N64. To hell with new stuff. And sega could come back with Genesis again too. No actually wait, they could finally come out with the 32X Genesis combo. Ya.

But we don't want Retron to go out of business, do we?

[ccovell]

Major publishers were abandoning it en masse and it was starting to disappear (Check out Capcom's record, for instance). Pokemon and a redesign rejuvenated it and gave this aging 8 bit handheld from 1989 its second wind and another half decade of life (Although judging by MobyGames, it didn't lead to much more actual development happening despite its rebirth).

In terms of popular mindshare, I'd say the GB was almost dead in 1995-96. I know it's not scientific, but games released tells a lot:


Pokemon indeed jump-started the moribund GB, and I'd say the GB market was "rejuvenated" by supply-side production and promotion (that's a polite way of saying saturating the market and fooling kiddie consumers into believing that the next monster collect-a-thon was what they wanted.)

[Captain_N77]

Hardly

It has sold just a small fraction of that of the DS which went up against the PSP which was a huge success for Sony. Not only that, but sales have been declining for a while now for this platform, sales this quarter were way down from the same quarter a year ago, and sales for this year were forecast to merely be stagnant (Which itself will be a difficult task given Q1's poor performance). And it should be added that they didn't even come close to meeting last year's projections when the verdict was read at its conclusion, a situation I predict will be repeated (For the 3DS, I have a hunch they underestimated the Wii U this year).

An individual at another forum recently didn't like someone's post about Nintendo's handheld performance being on the weak side this generation and countered by stating that it has sold 16 million systems alone in Japan at this point. But at this same point for the DS, after looking it up in Nintendo's own sales history that it keeps updated on the Japanese site, it had sold over 70 million systems in just Japan.

Sort of says it all...

70 million systems in just Japan? No system has ever sold 70 million systems in single any region, let alone Japan. The 3DS has currently sold roughly 1/2 of of what the DS sold in it's lifespan in Japan.

And I personally would not say that the PS was a huge success for Sony. It sold a lot of systems, and not a lot of software relative to that. It is amazing how many people bought it for piracy alone. To this day I see PSP's being sold on craigslist loaded down with pirated games, and I'm in not even in a huge city like L.A., N.Y., or Chicago. So this, along with many other bits of evidence point to a lot of people either used their personal PSP's to pirate software, sold PSP's loaded with pirated software for profit, or both. I'd say the PSP was a success in that it survived against the DS, and it would be a success if SONY actually made a profit on the system. But with the insane amounts of piracy that the PSP was home to, that might be more difficult to quantify.

[Tanooki]

Oh really? Am I the only one who never noticed Game Boy "dying" pre-Pokemon?

I mean they didn't really have big competition then.
The closest was Sega, but the Game Gear still kind of struggled to get the same amount of third-party support the GB had (no Capcom, no Konami, and even Namco I think might've only released games like Pac-Man and baseball that they'd release on almost everything. Just to name a few.)
Atari was pretty much dead at that point (officially so in early '96, I believe).
And Tiger... was Tiger. :P

No I saw it and it was disturbing as I loved that thing. Game Gear was starting to beat its ass and took over a 1/3 of the market from when GB was holding like 90%+ not much earlier. They were losing space, black and white wasn't cutting it nor was the limitations they put to the GB for cost reasons (as always) so they colorized it a bit, maxed out the cpu, put more memory and boom, stop-gap GBC pops up and claws back a good bit of the bleeding until GBA arrived. Of course with GBC Sega ups the ante with the battery whore Nomad to go up against that and the Turbo Express.



Also that point against the PSP is very valid (old PS too) as they did sell a great amount of hardware, but the game sales, primarily PSP were not where they had to be for the hardware. The internet, ease of copying/downloading, just outright warezing the shit out of both those systems held them back software side (game profit) for sony and its developers. PSP got royally fucked the worst. I remember owning it and finding out the stories with piracy and the effects coming to a head with MGS Peacewalker where they didn't even sell a million units, yet there were millions of warez downloads that could be quantified with whatever info was out there causing Konami to pull the plug on the thing as it was a financial loss, on a MGS game of all things. It's no surprise they'd re-release it as they did to finally get some profit off that one. That Peacewalker financial raping caused me to sell the system eventually as so many projects other than barfy cutey JRPGs were coming out that I had nothing left to play which sucked as I like that system a lot.

[Leo_A]

70 million systems in just Japan? No system has ever sold 70 million systems in single any region, let alone Japan. The 3DS has currently sold roughly 1/2 of of what the DS sold in it's lifespan in Japan.

I indeed seemed to have screwed up my math. Looks like I totaled the worldwide figure for the first four fiscal years of the DS, not the Japanese one like I intended to do.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/library...ales_e1406.pdf

And I personally would not say that the PS was a huge success for Sony. It sold a lot of systems, and not a lot of software relative to that. It is amazing how many people bought it for piracy alone.

The attach rate is only about 1.5 games less the last I checked 2 or 3 years ago of that of the DS. There definitely was a dedicated minority of homebrew fans on it, but the vast majority didn't know such a thing even existed.

Regardless, I don't know any other way to portray this one when it hit 80 million units sold. We can argue all day that it didn't succeed as well as it could've or should've, but there's no debate that it was successful. It was the first serious dent in Nintendo's armor in a business they basically created 15 years earlier and they did it on their first try out and against Nintendo's most successful system to date.

It definitely gave the DS, a system not immune itself to easy piracy, far more competition than the Vita has the 3DS, which was the point. The smartphone has dealt a major blow to both Nintendo and Sony, and is why the 3DS, despite its pedigree, is selling in much more modest amounts.

[Jorpho]

No I saw it and it was disturbing as I loved that thing. Game Gear was starting to beat its ass and took over a 1/3 of the market from when GB was holding like 90%+ not much earlier.

The Game Gear wasn't doing anything different at that time that it hadn't been doing previously. I still can't name any particular Game Gear exclusive dating from that time. The likes of Sonic Labyrinth weren't exactly turning heads.

nor was the limitations they put to the GB for cost reasons (as always)

...Why would anyone design a product with limitations if not for cost reasons?

[Gameguy]

...Why would anyone design a product with limitations if not for cost reasons?

The Game Boy lacked backlighting for increased battery life, it wasn't mainly about cost savings. The extra battery life got people to choose it over the TurboExpress, Game Gear, or Lynx.

There's also legal reasons. Think of the Retron 5 not playing ROMs from the SD Card slot with the standard firmware.

No I saw it and it was disturbing as I loved that thing. Game Gear was starting to beat its ass and took over a 1/3 of the market from when GB was holding like 90%+ not much earlier. They were losing space, black and white wasn't cutting it nor was the limitations they put to the GB for cost reasons (as always) so they colorized it a bit, maxed out the cpu, put more memory and boom, stop-gap GBC pops up and claws back a good bit of the bleeding until GBA arrived. Of course with GBC Sega ups the ante with the battery whore Nomad to go up against that and the Turbo Express.

So they released the GBC to compete with the Game Gear, even though the Game Gear was already discontinued by that point? So many things are way off with the timing as you've described them. The Nomad was released even before the Game Boy Pocket came out, this has nothing to do with the GBC. Also, the TurboExpress was discontinued around the same time the Nomad was released, I'm pretty sure it was discontinued before the Nomad was released as the Turbo Duo was discontinued just 2 months after the Nomad launched.

Also that point against the PSP is very valid (old PS too) as they did sell a great amount of hardware, but the game sales, primarily PSP were not where they had to be for the hardware. The internet, ease of copying/downloading, just outright warezing the shit out of both those systems held them back software side (game profit) for sony and its developers. PSP got royally fucked the worst. I remember owning it and finding out the stories with piracy and the effects coming to a head with MGS Peacewalker where they didn't even sell a million units, yet there were millions of warez downloads that could be quantified with whatever info was out there causing Konami to pull the plug on the thing as it was a financial loss, on a MGS game of all things. It's no surprise they'd re-release it as they did to finally get some profit off that one. That Peacewalker financial raping caused me to sell the system eventually as so many projects other than barfy cutey JRPGs were coming out that I had nothing left to play which sucked as I like that system a lot.

A lot of people only bought the PSP to use it as a portable emulation machine, they had no interest in playing actual PSP games with it. That and playing actual PS1 games that they backed up themselves. Plenty of people pirated PSP games, but even more just used it for emulation. The best games on the PSP are remakes of earlier games, there's not a lot that would appeal to the average consumer.

[Leo_A]

There's also legal reasons. Think of the Retron 5 not playing ROMs from the SD Card slot with the standard firmware.

I'm sure that happens from time to time, but I doubt that's why they had unlit screens until the SP (Except for a rare Japanese exclusive Game Boy). You were right, I'm sure, about it being all about battery life.

So they released the GBC to compete with the Game Gear, even though the Game Gear was already discontinued by that point?

Game Gear wasn't discontinued at that time and had just switched hands to Majesco right around this time.

But that's quibbling since its days as any sort of a factor in this marketplace were definitely over by the release of the Game Boy Color. And even in its best of days, it was selling a mere fraction of what the Game Boy was managing. I don't think Nintendo was too concerned about Sega's handheld plans in the late 1990's.

A lot of people only bought the PSP to use it as a portable emulation machine, they had no interest in playing actual PSP games with it.

I'd be shocked to find out that more than 5,000 PSP's were sold to folks that only intended to use them as portable emulation machines.

There's no doubt that millions of these were modified and that its emulation capabilities contributed, but most certainly were done so primarily to enable piracy of PSP software. You can see it in the PSP sales statistics. I think it was 2008 where the hardware saw a significant jump in sales compared to 2007, but software sales basically remained unchanged.

They didn't sell 4 or 5 million additional PSP's over the year before just because people wanted to play classic games on the go. For all its capabilities as a portable emulation machine, it was piracy of PSP software that most were after. Emulation was just a bonus for most folks.

[Gameguy]

Game Gear wasn't discontinued at that time and had just switched hands to Majesco right around this time.

But that's quibbling since its days as any sort of a factor in this marketplace were definitely over by the release of the Game Boy Color. And even in its best of days, it was selling a mere fraction of what the Game Boy was managing. I don't think Nintendo was too concerned about Sega in the late 1990's.

From what I've read the Game Gear was discontinued in 1997 and re-released by Majesco in 2000. The GBC came out in 1998. I really don't remember the exact dates first hand, at this point I'm going by what I can find online.

I'd be shocked to find out that more than 5,000 PSP's were sold to folks that only intended to use them as portable emulation machines.

There's no doubt that millions of these were modified and that its emulation capabilities contributed, but most certainly were done so primarily to enable piracy of PSP software. You can see it in the PSP sales statistics. I think it was 2008 where the hardware saw a significant jump in sales compared to 2007, but software sales basically remained unchanged.

They didn't sell 4 or 5 million additional PSP's over the year before just because people wanted to play classic games on the go. For all its capabilities as a portable emulation machine, it was piracy of PSP software that most were after.

I just remember seeing tons of reviews for the PSP shortly after it came out(maybe a year or two later) saying it was the system to get if you're into emulation, if not a DS would be a better system for proprietary games. I remember one review which I'll post below, it was posted just over a year after the system launched in North America. I forgot about this Youtube guy but I used to watch his stuff way back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGlee6jDw-s

Everyone talked about emulation with it. I don't remember any games that became super popular for the system, it was always about emulation. Everyone I knew that had one used it for emulators or playing media files. When ScummVM could be run on it, it was a big deal with adventure gamers. I really don't remember much talk about the actual games for it besides here and other game collector sites.

[SparTonberry]

The only would-be competition I can think of would be the WonderSwan (with Gumpei Yokoi behind it, better prematurely kill it. In case the B&W graphics didn't stop it, and maybe Bandai's name on the box. Though the WSC was out a year before the GBA.) and NeoGeo Pocket.

From what I read the last official GG game was The Lost World in 1997.
At least during its proper lifespan. I thought I read Super Battletank was not released until the Majesco rerelease in 2000 (though it was made in like 1994).

[Leo_A]

From what I've read the Game Gear was discontinued in 1997 and re-released by Majesco in 2000. The GBC came out in 1998. I really don't remember the exact dates first hand, at this point I'm going by what I can find online.

Looks like it was 2001, judging by a quick search. I could've sworn that Majesco had already given up on this concept by 2000, leaving the announced $50 Saturn release dead in the water. But it was slightly later.

I'm not sure if Sega had already officially discontinued support, but if it was 2001, I'm sure there was a gap there with it probably absent from most retailers prior to its brief revival. But I wasn't paying attention to the whole deal, it was their Genesis and SuperNes rereleases in the late 1990's that had my attention.