NES Vs. Master System Sales - Rest Of World

[high voltage]

Also, Acclaim was especially formed in the US by ex Activision employers (Fischbach etc) to support the NES (source Game Over). It was the first US NES supporter.

 

Wow, all ex employers of Activision start their companies beginning with A: Absolute, Accolade, Acclaim....

Edited September 2, 2010 by high voltage

[pinball22]

...In fact, I think the only MSX that was even released in the US was the Yamaha CX5M, which was marketed towards musicians, not gamers.

 

Spectravideo made some MSXes for sale in the U.S. -- some friends of mine actually had one at the time.

[kool kitty89]

The reason why both the NES/SNES failed to get decent market share in UK/Europe (compared to it's sega equivalents) was largely due to Nintendo's then policy on software publishing/development (i.e tying up software devlopers/publishers to developing/publishing games content EXCLUSIVELY for nintendo for a specified period, which i think was 2 to 3 years unless i am much mistaken)

No, the NES was reasonably popular in Europe as a whole, just not as popular as the SMS, let alone several home computers, but it greatly depended on region. In the UK it did rather poorly, not particularly well in France either iirc, and was poorly marketed to Spain from what I understand. However, it was the dominant game console (ie excluding computers) in Germany and parts of Norther Europe (Scandinavia, Holland, Denmark, etc), and then you had the Dendy Clones in Eastern Europe, but that's a different issue as there wasn't an open market and those clones (and some computers) were the only video game consoles widely available prior to the fall of the iron curtain.

 

The NES got a poor start in several European countries for pretty much the exact same reason the SMS got a poor start in the US: crappy marketing. Nintendo was late to the game in the UK, though not so much elsewhere, but the big factor was the local advertising/distribution agencies that Nintendo delegated to were often inept at managing the product whereas Sega managed such delegation quite well in Europe overall. Sega also had stronger software in some key areas like Soccer, and the arcade appeal was stronger in Europe as well. (the US had a crash in the Arcade industry in parallel with consoles -starting slightly earlier actually)

 

In the US, of course, it was completely different with Nintendo getting their marketing down pat in 1986 and 1987 (the critical period) while Sega totally screwed up there in spite of having competitive software and a decent marketing budget. (vs Atari Corp's limited entertainment budget which Katz had to make do with -granted the Atari name helped a bit)

Hell, in 1986, Sega even had an advantage over Nintendo in some ways, with more of an arcade presence and brand recognition, buth from before and after the crash (granted the arcades were still recovering), albeit it probably wasn't as definite as Europe, with their stronger mid-80s arcade market. (for pre-crash stuff, Sega didn't have too much over Nintendo though)

 

Only after the initial success through 1987 did Nintendo really start to get big, and from what I understand, it was only then that they started to take action to seize the market by establishing the anti-competitive licensing restrictions for companies publishing in North America. (I know the licensing policies were established by 1988, not sure if they were already there by late 1987)

 

I'm not sure if Nintendo ever did establish those policies in Europe given the competition. (ie for companies publishing IN Europe, not European companies publishing in the US -though usually North American releases got published by a domestic subsidiary anyway -or other company entirely -Rare did a lot of games that got published in the US, so did Codemasters, but they used the Camerica label and went unlicensed with their lockout bypass glitch system -which Nintendo couldn't successfully sue over, similar to Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree)

 

I don't think Nintendo ever had such restrictions in Japan (let alone mainland Asia) either as the Famicom had no lock-out and the onyly thing barring developers from open publishing was tools/documentation just as with the 2600/Intellivision/ColecoVision/5200/etc in the US. The reason Sega got poor 3rd party support was sheerly due to Nintendo's console being more popular (the weaker ColecoVision-like SG-1000 hardware competition undoubtedly being a factor and some internal problems at Sega at the time), not unlike what happened with the VCS in the US. (1983 was really the beginning of popularity for the Japanese programmable console market, like ~1977 in the US -one factor was that the VCS didn't get a localization to Japan until the 2800 a couple weeks AFTER the SG-1000 and Famicom launched)

 

Due to lack of lockout there was also a significant piracy problem with the Famicom, especially in mainland Asia. (hardware clones were also present -and of course you had pirate software almost exclusively with the Dendy)

 

Back in 1986, the market for Atari, Nintendo, and Sega was pretty even, but what happened that year and the following one is what did it for Nitnendo.

Atari Corp simply lacked the funds (and lacked the significant in-house software of Atari Inc), though they 7800 and 2600 managed a surprisingly decent market share through the late 80s under Michael Katz's management. (they had a niche in the budget market as well as with some old Atari fans)

 

Sega had as much of an opportunity as Nintendo to hit the North American market, but totally screwed it up. (the only initial disadvantage was the Famicom's existing userbase, but the SMS/Mk.III was 2 years newer anyway -the previous SG-1000 Mk.I/II didn't get too much 3rd party support, of course)

 

Nintendo got it right in 1986, possibly aided a bit by how long they'd been trying to push into the market (giving them a better business perspective of the market) including the unsuccessful 1985 test market in New York. (I think the following test marketing in early/mid 1986 fared a bit better, starting with California in February and expanding from there, culminating the the actual Nationwide launch in September, by which point SMB was out and was being bundled with the console)

Sega might not have had a killer competitor to SMB until 1987 (Alex Kidd in Miracle World was out in fall of '86 in Japan but not stateside until '87), but they had a lot of other things to offer had the marketing been right. (the price point was part of that, but the packaging, distribution and advertising were way off)

 

Tonka took over marketing in 1988 and things made a decided improvement: ads started getting better, packaging/box art was FAR better, and I think distribution improved as well. Unfortunately, 1988 was too late and Nintendo already had over 70% of the market by then. (Atari in 2nd and Sega a distant 3rd)

 

 

 

 

 

Just to point out, that most of the initial supporters of the NES, i.e sony, konami and dataeast/capcom etc, nintendo picked them up after the MSX failed in the US (since these publishers were key supporters of the MSX format)

Are you making this stuff up? The MSX was never released in the US, and it had continued success as a game platform in Japan. The reason the Famicom got support was simply due to popularity and corresponding relationships with developers and Nintendo. You also omitted Namco, one of Nintendo's biggest early supporters.

 

Another way they got around it, is by releasing a sega version (or non nintendo versions) first, then saying they were releasing a nintendo version therafter (which also got around nintendo's exclusivity policy/contract)

Once any publisher started licensing for Nintendo (after those policies were in place for NA), they were locked in with heavy restrictions all around, pretty much the only other platforms allowed were computers iirc. (I believe there was a waiting period of 2 years before you could develop for any other game console)

 

However, one way big companies DID get around the limitations (usually the 3 games per year limit) was to publish via a subsidiary label (like Konami's Ultra and Acclaim's LJN). Others went unlicensed and used various techniques to bypass lockout. (usually voltage spikes to freeze the 10NES system, though Tengen/Atari Games went a step further with a proper reverse engineered authentication chip -which they were sued over ironically -spending more resources than the others using the simple glitch method- and ended up settling on a royalties deal less restrictive than the standard licensing contracts -Atari Games continued to manufacture their own carts) Interestingly, I believe the ruling in favor of Nintendo was on grounds of copyright/trademark infringement and not patent infringement. (namely copyright of the code used for authentication)

 

Also, one thing realy did surprise me, considering that nintendo followed their initial software publishing/development policy up until 1991 when they basically ditched the exclusivity aspect (as sega had by then caught up with them) and also allowed the publishers/devlopers to sell/market their own content (though they still had to get certain parts from nintendo) was that before nintendo changed this policy, why didn't any european or uk software publisher take nintendo to court over it's software publishing policy/practice...not only could that have cleaned out nintendo financially (since they could have contested that nintendo's policy prohibited competition in the games publishing/development market and also nintendo technically operated a cartel (as they controlled the prices the consumer paid for the software and also controlled the amount of game's content published/developed by third parties) and not only that they could have permanently blocked nintendo from releasing any new hardware in the UK/European market

I thought it lasted longer than '91 and only gradually slackened in restrictions. (due to Sega's gaining competition in the early 90s -1991 was really just the start of them getting big)

 

Not sure about Europe (again I think the licensing policies may have been different there too), but in the US, several companies (including Atari Corp, Atari Games, and I think Sega) did Sue Nintendo over antitrust violations, though most ened up in settlements out of court. (and Atari Game's case was complicated by copyright/patent litigation)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the main discussion here seems to be about the market situation of the NES in the US/Japan vs. other places in the world, it's amazing nobody has mentioned the North American video-game crash of 1983/84 yet.

 

What I think is the main reason Nintendo was so big in the US is because they used tactical marketing (see earlier comments) to regain trust from the storekeepers after the crash; causing them to gain a more or less legal monopoly for the first coupple of years (1985/86). Commodore's great price war in 84 also reduced the number of competing home-computers, so I clearly see how the NES became a such huge success in the US.

The crash definitely left an opening that Nintendo took advantage of, but it was mainly due to lack of competition (Sega screwing up, Atari Corp lacking funds, and not much of anyone else other than Intev and computers).

Nintendo got it right in the critical 1986/1987 period and then locked out competition after digging in. (plus they had the Japanese 3rd party support)

 

In 1985 Nintendo was more or less a nobody in the western game market: you had people who might recognize the name from the arcade games or Game & Watch handhelds, but not much else. The NYC test market in fall of 1985 was generally unsuccessful as I mentioned above (Curt and Marty also brought that up in a couple past discussions on this). The expanded test market in early 1986 did a bit better I think, but was still limited: all of that had been done with the early deluxe set iirc (ROB+Zapper pack-in with Duck Hunt and Gyromite) and additional software was somewhat limited -much of it common arcade games already on other systems. SMB wasn't out until spring of 1986 in the US, though I'm not sure how long it went before it got a pack-in, or Nintendo released the core "control deck" set with just SMB+NES+2 controllers. (I think that was there by the September launch, and the "control deck" might have been there earlier without any pack-in)

Still, in 1986 it was still a pretty level playing field, though Nintendo was moving up. (with Sega's poor marketing and Atari's limited funding for software development and marketing) 1987 was the really critical year though and where Nintendo started to get the definitive lead, and by '88 they pretty much owned the market with over 70% like Atari Inc had in '81/82. (by the '89/90 NES peak they had close to 90% market share)

 

In Europe we never had any kind of crash in the videogame market, and the market of Homecomputers in Europe didn't really bloom before after the success of the C64, which came as a result of the pricewar in 84 (as of I have heard). This increased the competition, and the NES never had such a head-start as it had in the US.

The Commodore price was was in the US, in 1983, not '84, Against TI (and also tied to Tramiel's fear of Japanese competition wiping out the US market as it had with Calculators, Typewriters, and Adding Machines), it wasn't anything directly aimed at the EU market, and the C64 was still fairly expensive (closer to the BBC Micro), and the ZX Spectrum was the affordable option, and really hit big in the UK, though the C64 was popular as well. (in different parts of Europe you had the MSX, C64, CPC, and Spectrum popular to varying degrees)

At least that's how I understand it. (the console market hadn't been nearly as strong as the North American one either, and again, in Japan, there wasn't much of a console market at all until the Famicom and SG-1000 launched in August 1983 -several months after the MSX -though there were several other 8-bit computers popular as well, namely the PC-8801, but also the FM7 and to a lesser extent Sharp X1 -the latter 2 being popular in part due to similar graphics architectures to the PC-8801 and similar CPU in the case of the X1 --the MSX was more affordable and far more gaming oriented though, but the PC-8801 took off as a general mass market business computer followed by the higher-end PC-like PC-9801)

Edited September 8, 2010 by kool kitty89

[atarilovesyou]

Thanks for the great replies, guys! Really interesting reading, and it's this kinda stuff that I'm after. What's strange to me is how early Nintendo was in the market, testing in 86? 87? I'm certain I read about it in early 87 in magazines, and a friend in high school had the first one I knew of in the fall of 87, the full blown system with ROB the robot.

 

It's an interesting story in terms of marketing and maintaining (or exploiting) an advantage.

[kool kitty89]

Thanks for the great replies, guys! Really interesting reading, and it's this kinda stuff that I'm after. What's strange to me is how early Nintendo was in the market, testing in 86? 87? I'm certain I read about it in early 87 in magazines, and a friend in high school had the first one I knew of in the fall of 87, the full blown system with ROB the robot.

 

It's an interesting story in terms of marketing and maintaining (or exploiting) an advantage.

No, the testing started in late 1985 in New York city but wasn't particularly promising. They expanded to California early the next year (probably should have started in CA given the game market seemed a big stronger in general and less severely affected by the crash) and then gradually expanded to testing in major markets across the country before finally launching the NES nationwide in September of 1986. (wiki has a pretty decent overview of that history)

 

You see a lot of people (especially Nintendo fans) assume that the NES was huge right off the bat and swept the market back in '85 simply because "it's Nintendo" and 1985 was the earliest introduction date for the US... But in fact, in many parts of the country (especially those most severely affected by the crash and last to recover -namely parts of the central US, ie away from the east and west coast) actually didn't even start to have the NES become notable until 1987, and again, 1987 was the defining year for Nintendo establishing dominance. (the video game market was much less severely affected in certain regions of the US and also recovered more quickly, already reviving by 1985: I think California in particular was among those least affected -I don't know if any current books of gaming history really address the regional differences as such, but that would certainly be a point of interest and given a lot of anecdotal accounts from people in different parts of the US there definitely seems to be a huge margin of difference in different regions -in most cases of people who live around the area I am who were active with games at the time of the crash, most don't even seem to know there was ever a crash as such, especially those not really paying attention to news at the time)

[high voltage]

Actually, in 84 Nintendo tried in the USA with the AVS (Advanced Video System), it was a Famicom with Zapper, Keyboard, music keyboard, tape storage, it debuted at the January CES and failed totally. Don James designed the CES booth, and everyone attended; Arakawa, Lincoln, Phillips, etc, AVS game demos were shown, brochures were given out. Nintendo tried again at the June 84 CES, same results. Finally, June 85 CES the NES, ROB and Zapper were shown, still no takers.

NES was testmarket in late 85 in New York, Gail Tilden came up with the names like control deck, game packs (not Nintendo Japan as many believe), and Nintendo managed to sell 50.000 units around the Christmas period in NY.

Year later, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco after that Nintendo went national.

Edited September 15, 2010 by high voltage

[kool kitty89]

Actually, in 84 Nintendo tried in the USA with the AVS (Advanced Video System), it was a Famicom with Zapper, Keyboard, music keyboard, tape storage, it debuted at the January CES and failed totally. Don James designed the CES booth, and everyone attended; Arakawa, Lincoln, Phillips, etc, AVS game demos were shown, brochures were given out. Nintendo tried again at the June 84 CES, same results. Finally, June 85 CES the NES, ROB and Zapper were shown, still no takers.

NES was testmarket in late 85 in New York, Gail Tilden came up with the names like control deck, game packs (not Nintendo Japan as many believe), and Nintendo managed to sell 50.000 units around the Christmas period in NY.

Year later, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco after that Nintendo went national.

Right, I forgot to mention that, plus, of course, they'd try to license the Famicom to Atari Inc in early/mid 1983, which was never going to happen. (the Famicom had not yet been released in Japan, the only games planned were already released on consoles in the US, and Nintendo was rather finicky about the terms -otoh Ray Kassar had planned to attempt to secure an exclusive license agreement anyway with the intention to lock Nintendo out, but as it happened all that was really possible was delaying Nintendo as long as possible and Nintendo finally dropped negotiations after Kassar left Atari -they'd already been growing impatient over delays)

 

With the AVS there was also the fact that it included a cassette drive and joystick as well and different gamepads and both were infrared wireless.

 

50,000 consoles for the NYC test market isn't too bad though, not amazing, but not terrible in the context. (I wonder how it would have done if first tested in San Fransisco or LA instead though)

2600 sales at the time wouldn't be fully comparable as it was already an established product. (nevertheless it certainly indicated a change in the market from the previous year)

It would be interesting to see Intellivision sales too.

Edited September 17, 2010 by kool kitty89

[mbd30]

Anyone agree with this assessment for why NES failed in Europe? Copying someone's reply in a similar thread on another forum.

 

"The main problem was that Nintendo hired Mattel to handle the NES in most parts of Europe and they botched it completely (I think Mattel Europe had no clue about video games, despite Mattels Intellivision and all). Why Nintendo didn't made it on their own...no one knows (they wanted to make the same in the US, license the NES to Atari but Atari wanted to much money)

Nintendo took the NES back from Mattel and released another NES. There were no less than THREE different types of NES around in Europe: PAL A, PAL B and Mattel NES. Games weren't compatible with the different systems, it caused a lot of frustration with buyers and of course publishers ,it was expensive releasing different region locked versions of their games (Master System is completely region free, so it didn't matter where you bought the console or the games)

 

The biggest problem were the games. Most games were released in europe 3-4 years after they were released worldwide. Most great games (Mega Man 3-4, Super Mario Bros. 3, Castlevania 3 and others) were released in 1992 (In the case of Mario, SMB3 was released months after SMW and the SNES were released)

It was just way too late, by then nobody cared for the NES anymore, it was all about the Mega Drive and the SNES started to get big (and Master System was still really popular)

 

The Master System was handled better, for most of the time Virgin handled everything and they did a very good job. Most games were released at the most 12 months after the japan release and not to forget that Europe got way more Games then the US or even Japan and support lasted until about 1996. The NES picked up in 1992 thanks to all the great games and a little more support but it lasted only until 1994."

[A2600]

$30 real quick at places like Kay*Bee and some music stores.

 

I bought my SMS II for 35 at Kaybee back in them days and this was in Puerto Rico mind you

[kool kitty89]

Anyone agree with this assessment for why NES failed in Europe? Copying someone's reply in a similar thread on another forum.

 

"The main problem was that Nintendo hired Mattel to handle the NES in most parts of Europe and they botched it completely (I think Mattel Europe had no clue about video games, despite Mattels Intellivision and all). Why Nintendo didn't made it on their own...no one knows (they wanted to make the same in the US, license the NES to Atari but Atari wanted to much money)

Nintendo took the NES back from Mattel and released another NES. There were no less than THREE different types of NES around in Europe: PAL A, PAL B and Mattel NES. Games weren't compatible with the different systems, it caused a lot of frustration with buyers and of course publishers ,it was expensive releasing different region locked versions of their games (Master System is completely region free, so it didn't matter where you bought the console or the games)

 

The biggest problem were the games. Most games were released in europe 3-4 years after they were released worldwide. Most great games (Mega Man 3-4, Super Mario Bros. 3, Castlevania 3 and others) were released in 1992 (In the case of Mario, SMB3 was released months after SMW and the SNES were released)

It was just way too late, by then nobody cared for the NES anymore, it was all about the Mega Drive and the SNES started to get big (and Master System was still really popular)

 

The Master System was handled better, for most of the time Virgin handled everything and they did a very good job. Most games were released at the most 12 months after the japan release and not to forget that Europe got way more Games then the US or even Japan and support lasted until about 1996. The NES picked up in 1992 thanks to all the great games and a little more support but it lasted only until 1994."

 

I got the impression that Nintendo outsourced to several different distributors in different European countries... Sega outsourced too, but ended up doing so very favorably (including several prominent record distributors iirc), but there's other factors too including sheer software being more favorable towards Sega in some EU countries than the NES (including Soccer games and the fact that Sega's arcade titles were a much more prominent selling point than in the US), having more flexible pricing, etc.

Then there's the fact that sensationalist marketing tends to have a far more extreme impact in the US, Magazine culture was strong in Europe (so more outlets to balance information in the media), and the fact that the home computer competition balanced things further while the C64 was more of a flash in the pan in North America prior to consoles coming back big time in the late 80s (and computers becoming more niche again until the mid 90s -not unlike the Japan computer vs console market) -and the fact that the SMS tended to look more like 16-bit computer games while the NES didn't look/sound that much better than the C64 (to many at least) was a factor as well. (though in Sound, the SMS was well behind the NES or C64... or Intellivision/Vectrex/ST/CPC/Speccy 128k as it used the even more primitive SN76489 of the TI99/4 and Colecovision)

 

Finally, you need to realize that the NES was not a failure in Europe at all, but it didn't dominate like in the US or Japan... it did fairly well in Europe overall but was weak in some prominent cases, especially the UK and was behind the SMS overall in sales (probably much more so than the SNES vs MD) and, like the SNES, Germany was the strongest major European market for the NES.

[Seob]

Thought that Germany was more of a computer stronghold, giving very little market to consoles.

[high voltage]

Sweden was the country with the biggest NES sales, Germany went from C64 straight to Amiga to PC.

Why would anyone in Europe where the Amiga dominated by the time the NES arrived go back to ...in the words of Happy Computer magazine...go back to 8-bits?

Edited December 15, 2010 by high voltage

[mbd30]

Why would anyone in Europe where the Amiga dominated by the time the NES arrived go back to ...in the words of Happy Computer magazine...go back to 8-bits?

 

Good question. I understand why some gamers might thumb their noses at a technically inferior console, but now we have XBOX, PS3 and computers a billion times more advanced than Amiga and people are still playing NES and even Atari 2600. Ultimately it's the games that matter and the NES had some great games.

[Seob]

So did the amiga, the c64, the spectrum, the bbc micro, the amstrad cpc464, the msx, the vic20, the ti99/4a, the atari st, and....

In Europe the people where focus more onto computers, because they could be used for other stuff then gaming to. They where "educational" so money was better spend, then on a gaming machine only .

[The_Laird]

Finally, you need to realize that the NES was not a failure in Europe at all, but it didn't dominate like in the US or Japan... it did fairly well in Europe overall but was weak in some prominent cases, especially the UK and was behind the SMS overall in sales (probably much more so than the SNES vs MD) and, like the SNES, Germany was the strongest major European market for the NES.

 

I would say that it was if you compare to the sales figures for other machines of the time in Europe.

Edited December 15, 2010 by The_Laird

[Blarginatorr]

I guess Nordic countries werent much of the market back then, but as far as I know, in early 90s everyone and their granma had a NES.

Well, atleast in Finland there was clearly a higher number of NES systems than SMS's.'

 

But it was like this on the console side. Like in most europe in those days, gaming seemed to been mostly on PC's of different kinds.

Commodore and Amiga had huge fanbases in finland.

 

 

Just my couple words.

[oky2000]

I am personally only interested in sales in UK (western EU at best) because my understanding is Harrier Attack on Spec/Amstrad/C64 sold more copies (250,000+) than most NES games in the UK and it's a horrible early 8bit game.

I can't speak for EU residents in the 80s but in the UK price was king as was a belief consoles were toys and computers were educational. It's more likely a parent would buy their kid a £299 ST with £9.99-£19.99 RRP games than a backwards step of 8bit console for £150 and inferior games on the whole of £50-60. Commando, Ghosts n Goblins, Defender of the Crown, Rocket Ranger, Gauntlet etc were salivated over on ST/Amiga only. NES was just background noise here, a curiosity.

 

OTOH SEGA was well known in the UK for arcade gaming and Mastertronic/Virgin were also well known in the 80s and with cheaper games than NES it took the lion's share of a very small potential piece of the home computer tape based gaming market with some slick advertising. Rad Racer on NES was great but I never knew it even existed!

 

However as my friend pointed out to me there is a single load tape game on C64 that is better in every way than NES Zelda and cost £50 less (Times of Lore). People outside the UK scratch their head why before SNES/GB Nintendo were also rans in the UK but then the Spectrum increased market share by 10% after second generation 64 games like Beach Head started coming out. Maybe in Germany/France/Spain etc price wasn't such an issue but I never met an NES owner once in the 80s and 90s.

 

I can tell you that Julian Rignall certainly wasn't aspiring to the NES.....because I had a quick go on R'Type on NEC PC ENGINE at a show where he was and that was the Japanese console he wanted to see in the UK he said whilst showing me the system.

 

More people would remember playing Sonic on Megadrive than SMB3 on NES at the time over here probably. The Megadrive did do well here but what do you expect with such badly programmed Amiga arcade ports like Outrun/Afterburner/Powerdrift I'd rather pay £25 more for Megadrive Outrun too haha

 

The SMS and NES library is limited and expensive and this hampered their sales in the UK where BMX Kidz on 64 was 95% as good as NES Excite bike but cost £2!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

(sorry for lack of facts)

[tripletopper]

On 7/27/2010 at 4:13 AM, malducci said:

 

Which is why I'm skeptical of posted sales numbers. (Back in the day) 7800 who? I knew of the SMS, NES, Amiga, ST, C64, A8, 5200/2600, Coleco, etc. I never saw one 7800, nor knew it existed, or anything. And yet it out sold the SMS (which every kid I know that played games back then, knew what an SMS was even if they didn't have one)? That doesn't add up.

There are lots a of musings ahead,+ but it's building up to 1 question?  What was the system sales of game formats in various markets.  The big one IO'm interested in is "Europe: NES vs 7800.".

 

If you don't like, instead of typing TLDR just scroll, concentreating on the next user ID picture.  A lot of people like  my novellas on Quora and I'm usually compemented, or reacted to like they read enough. Do like I do when I see thick books, take one glance, see npothing for mew, mand carry on.   I'm not a book critic who judges by tit;e, author and length.  If you don't read a thing, don't criticize.   If you read a tibdit by scanning, either comment on it, and if I amidit, I'll be quick and quote it.  Most movies you don't memorize the entire script for.

 

There's usually one "money item:" you remember.  Like Wing Commander (the move) being famous for 2 things, being number 1 for having The Phantom Menace preview, and showing in the preview a video of everything stppped and the camera moving through the human statue garden using complex 3D-video-game-like camera moves.  If you found a "money item" quote it (even if it's cheesy like "a great swordsman needs a great sword")

 

There's more details, and more questions, but I know lenght scares.  That's why I asked the main one up front. Tnagential ones would be nice, but that's like acknowledging Abe Simpswon's ramblings. Usually not expected.

 

Hello, found this article when trying to find sales figures of NES vsSMS vs 7800.

 

In America, NES had 90-95% of the market.  For whatever was left, Atari outsold Sega somewhere betweww 2:1 and 3:1

 

I don't see records of the 7800 being sod in Japan>.0 Wikipedia has 2 markets listed PAK (Europe) and USA.

 

Sega was to Brazil what Nintendo was to Japan and USA.

 

I know, that in Europe,  there were many what are called today in America "non-PC" computer formats made up most of the market.  Even though Sega was big against Nintendo and Atari 7800 (but not the 2600 or 5200).when youfactor in the computers, it was probably nt the number 1 format, and as a Percentage of the whole market, it looked like the "winnewr" got 20% if thewy were lucky.

 

Reminds me of the pre-crash market where there wete 8 CONSOLES (not including computers) still in active manuafuture and promotion.   As a single year, when they all were gung ho, what percent diod they get just before the crash:  (Atari 2600 was the winner if you define anything with a changeable ROM before the NES as one generation, and counted the combined generation grand totals from Farichild Channel F onward.   Personally, I'd spllit hewm at the Intellivision, because if anything [other than the Neo Geo of its day, the Bally Astrocade under Bally's ownership] defines a next generation console, it is advertising itself as better than the old because it's newer.  PLus Intellivision invented the Console Wars long before "Genesis does what Nintendon't". They learned by experiencing it from the wrong end.  The first ever in history [at least in certain industries, like toys, and games, and maybe entertainment media.  I never heard records, books, TV shows, or Movies compare itself to others by directly referencing the other's name in the ad.  I've heard of "vs Brand X" and "vs. the leading brand" stuff like that before] was used against Mattel, the Coleco LED Football comparison commercial, actually using the name Mattel, and giving reasons why nit's better than Mattel's version.).

 

Again in the last year, when there were 8 (9 if you count an unauthorized enhancer for an existing system that has its own games, and the enhancer was made by a different company, not counting 4 or 5 different computers)  What percentage did these get? (local only to that year): 2600, 5200, INTV, CV, Vectrex, Astrocade, Odyssey 2, Arcadia 2001, Supercharger.  Between these and the Computer Software, (Apple iie, Atari 800, Commodore Vic 20, Commodore 64, TRS-80, TI 99A, IBM, Timex Sinclair) unless you owned everything, there would about easily 75%+ of Electronics Boutique you'd skip.  (Any I forget?)
 

By reading here, you said "Still supported Retro formats" (2600, 5200, Colecovision are names I recognize that were thrift store fodder in the US until the Macklemore song combined with people actively seeking old format games, hoping to either complete a set, or Ebay-flip, made thrift stores either a game desert or made them price Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/ World Class Track Meet combo like it was Red Sea Crossing) were still selling.  Were those systems being made?  If new copies of these systems stopped being made before 1985, were new games beig made for these retro systems?  IF no, how did these systems still show up n sales figures to be significant?

 

what was the relative rank and percentage of the European Market when counting:

 

A. NES, SMS, and 7800?

B. A + Computers

C.  A + Retro Consoles

D. A + B +C

 

IF you'd rather answer with just one word and ignore the rest, answer who won the battle in Europe between NES and 7800?

[Punisher5.0]

Im going to go with:

 

E: No one cares 

[mr_me]

21 hours ago, tripletopper said:

...

By reading here, you said "Still supported Retro formats" (2600, 5200, Colecovision are names I recognize that were thrift store fodder in the US until the Macklemore song combined with people actively seeking old format games, hoping to either complete a set, or Ebay-flip, made thrift stores either a game desert or made them price Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/ World Class Track Meet combo like it was Red Sea Crossing) were still selling.  Were those systems being made?  If new copies of these systems stopped being made before 1985, were new games beig made for these retro systems?  IF no, how did these systems still show up n sales figures to be significant?

 

what was the relative rank and percentage of the European Market when counting:

 

A. NES, SMS, and 7800?

B. A + Computers

C.  A + Retro Consoles

D. A + B +C

 

IF you'd rather answer with just one word and ignore the rest, answer who won the battle in Europe between NES and 7800?

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Third_generation_of_video_games

 

According to the above link; some console sales in western europe:

SMS  6.95M

NES  5.98M

ZX Spectrum  5M (UK)

Amiga  3.8M

 

It's hard to estimate market share but most likely ZX Spectrums outsold consoles in the UK.  In other countries a different computer may have led sales.  I have never seen any mention of atari 7800 sales numbers in europe.  The reason is probably because it's very low.

 

In the late 1980s new Intellivision consoles and Atari 2600 consoles were still being manufactured as well as new cartridge releases for both systems 

Edited July 17, 2019 by mr_me

[Lost Dragon]

This has been.covered to death time and time again but...

 

People still seem to forget that Airolasoft were originally intended to be the UK distributor for the Sega Master System, until they pulled out of the deal.

 

Rumour being they felt UK gamers would be unwilling to pay the prices Sega were setting for 8 bit cartridge software.

 

And your unlikely to find UK 7800 sales figures as Atari lumped the 7800 in with the 2600 and referred to the market share both consoles had captured,rather than gave specific numbers for the 7800.

 

Even now Ex-Atari UK staff like Darryl Still can only give vague statements like the 7800 sold well enough via home shopping catalogues etc..it did well in the less affluent areas..it never gained the consumer traction the 2600 did.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[Austin]

If those numbers are to be believed, the NES wasn't anywhere near as far behind the SMS in Europe as I expected. Fans will often lead one to believe it was a complete shutout.

 

I find the market dynamic between console and computer over there interesting. It would have been neat to experience that first-hand back in the day. In the United States we were pretty much dominated by consoles.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Austin

[mr_me]

7 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

...

And your unlikely to find UK 7800 sales figures as Atari lumped the 7800 in with the 2600 and referred to the market share both consoles had captured,rather than gave specific numbers for the 7800.

...

The reason for that was probably because 7800 sales were so low and companies like to report the largest number possible.  Also any console market share wouldn't take into account personal computers which dominated the market.  What was that UK market share Atari reported? 

3 hours ago, Austin said:

...

I find the market dynamic between console and computer over there interesting. It would have been neat to experience that first-hand back in the day. In the United States we were pretty much dominated by consoles.

In the united states, the Commodore 64 took over the lead for video game platform sales around 1984 and held on to it until about 1986/87.  They sold millions of units.  Many people in North America switched to computer gaming and never went back to consoles.

Edited July 17, 2019 by mr_me

[Austin]

28 minutes ago, mr_me said:

In the united states, the Commodore 64 took over the lead for video game platform sales around 1984 and held on to it until about 1986/87.  They sold millions of units.  Many people in North America switched to computer gaming and never went back to consoles.

Sure, but it was still a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what consoles pulled in during the NES era.

[Lost Dragon]

@mr_me:

It was a snippet in Raze magazine claiming Atari via a Mintel Report, liked to say the 7800 along with it's older brother the 2600, accounted for  around 50% of the UK console market at that time.

 

The XEGS was not mentioned but only Atari could have 3 8 bit cartridge systems competing for the same limited market share here in the UK at the same time.

 

And it needs to be made clear that during the time period Atari refer to, the console craze as it was refered to in the UK had yet to really hit it's stride. 

 

 

And without independently verified and specific sales figures for the 7800, Atari's claims are meaningless. 

 

 

As for Raze itself..this was the publication telling it's readers if they visited the Atari UK Railway Carriage Tour, they would be able to try out 7800 Turrican.

 

Where on earth that claim originated i never did find out.