Are Plug and Plays Dead/Saturated Market now?

[Keatah]

What I don't get are these new plug and plays I saw at Target, that just have a single single game. Why do that now? That's just dumb and a waste of $20.

 

Because marketing and granularity, and attempting to fill ALL possible purchase scenarios. Consider that a customer may be alright at spending $20, but not $25. And so marketing has to be sure to capture *ALL POSSIBLE* audiences and ranges of customers.

 

And when that starts happening, you're approaching (if not in it already) market saturation.

[mr_me]

I thought the dedicated systems sub-forum was for first generation (non-programmable) video game systems. It's under the atari section so atari first generation systems. Plugnplays emulate some other system so they could go anywhere. Then there's the emulation and hardware sub-forums. Emulation is good for any type of software emulation and I guess hardware was for any type of hardware type discussion e.g. repairs.

[Flojomojo]

To answer the original poster's question, no I don't think the market for plug-n-plays is saturated, because they seem to be big holiday sellers, year after year.

 

It's only saturated to "hardcore gamers" like us, who have already seen this stuff many times over. It's new for the vast majority of the public, though.

[digdugnate]

To answer the original poster's question, no I don't think the market for plug-n-plays is saturated, because they seem to be big holiday sellers, year after year.

 

It's only saturated to "hardcore gamers" like us, who have already seen this stuff many times over. It's new for the vast majority of the public, though.

i agree with Flojo- every year is a new wave of gamers having the games readily available in an easily-digestible format I think is good for everyone.

[Video]

There will always be a market for a quality pnp system, or clone. You still have to address issues, like the known incompatibility of (deposit system here) that keeps getting rereleased year after year without being addressed. Quality construction, especially with controllers. Options for hooking it up. I like av, and in good systems it's fine, but not all modern tv's can do that. And it has to be price competitive.

 

I think some of the reasons these things keep selling is new comers to the market, but if hazard a guess that quite a few are bought by us old fogies who are hoping "maybe this latest version addresses the same old issues and I can finely retire my flakey original console" but they dont.

 

Oh, if someone could do nes, without that console/cart destroying death grip, I bet it would sell, even the trashy systems sell.

[pacman000]

"What I don't get are these new plug and plays I saw at Target, that just have a single single game. Why do that now? That's just dumb and a waste of $20.

 

Space invaders: https://www.target.c...em/-/A-51354194

Frogger: https://www.target.c...em/-/A-51354167"

 

"And when that starts happening, you're approaching (if not in it already) market saturation."

 

I remember seeing single-game plug-n-plays 10+ years ago at Hastings, same games even. Maybe Tetris too. I doubt it means the market's saturated.

[Keatah]

To answer the original poster's question, no I don't think the market for plug-n-plays is saturated, because they seem to be big holiday sellers, year after year.

 

It's only saturated to "hardcore gamers" like us, who have already seen this stuff many times over. It's new for the vast majority of the public, though.

 

My pants are saturated.

[Keatah]

i agree with Flojo- every year is a new wave of gamers having the games readily available in an easily-digestible format I think is good for everyone.

 

I kinda forgot hey are great introductory gadgets (I'm hesitant to call them systems though) for newcomers who've never played a classic game before.

 

And it's emulation carrying the flag with most of them!

[AtariLeaf]

I've owned a few of these but ultimately get rid of them. The only one I've kept is the Radica Space Invaders PnP because it has a great port of Phoenix, Qix, Lunar Rescue and Colony 7 - games you don't normally see on these units.

[Tanooki]

This topic reminded me yet again of one I'd like to own because of the 3 games it has, and because Jakks annoyingly skipped the US for the UK on it. There's a Capcom one with 3 arcade games (emulated?) on it with Ghosts N Goblins being the center piece. it was made with gamekey, but Capcom pulled the rug out or someone did, so the extra game(s) never made it. It was going to get the arcade version of Mega Man and I'm sure that's likely lost for all time.

[+GoldenWheels]

Goddamn I wish I had my old phone, I may have to dig it out of the drawer....I saw a Mega Man plug and play at Walmart a few months back which actually said on the side something like "plug into a CRT for a real retro feel" or some crap like that. I was so shocked by this I took a photo.

 

EDIT: Was this one but I swear the box was different:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/MEGAMAN-2-TV-Arcade-Plug-and-Play-MSI-Entertainment-Retro-Gaming-840172056463/232542747?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&adid=22222222227158197026&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=268294843853&wl4=pla-444547667254&wl5=9003185&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=online&wl12=232542747&wl13=&veh=sem

 

Mega Man 2 is a great game but...why? As a plug and play it makes little sense but if you do it, ya can't put all 6 on there?

[x=usr(1536)]

Mega Man 2 is a great game but...why? As a plug and play it makes little sense but if you do it, ya can't put all 6 on there?

 

You could... Or you could release multiple variants with different games in the same series on each one, but using the same hardware on each unit.

 

It's an easy way to shift a few extra units, but you'd probably want to bundle one or two of the duds of the series with other games that people would actually want to buy.

[atarilovesyou]

This topic reminded me yet again of one I'd like to own because of the 3 games it has, and because Jakks annoyingly skipped the US for the UK on it. There's a Capcom one with 3 arcade games (emulated?) on it with Ghosts N Goblins being the center piece. it was made with gamekey, but Capcom pulled the rug out or someone did, so the extra game(s) never made it. It was going to get the arcade version of Mega Man and I'm sure that's likely lost for all time.

 

I saw that Capcom only once in the wild, back in Future Shop on the west coast. I kiiiiinda wish I picked it up, but at the time I was rocking the Capcom's Greatest Hits on the PS2 so I literally saw no need.

 

Back when I was sane

[Eltigro]

First, I'd think it would probably be pretty difficult to play Mega Man 2 with a joystick. Could maybe get used to it after a lot of practice... but then second, plug and plays aren't necessarily known for having good quality joysticks. That Mega Man 2 Plug and Play would be one to get only if it were going to sit on the shelf and look pretty, I think.

[Tanooki]

Everything I read about it was that the joystick wasn't precise, the button were uncomfortable and felt reversed, so unless you're easy to adapt it's hopeless, and because of the joystick even if you did, many stupid deaths would happen. It's basically eye candy for the shelf.

 

 

And that's nice you saw that Capcom tv game. I'm really not into them, never was for those battery run things, but a very limited few I do appreciate like BanDai's pacman one, the dumb pinball thing of jakks, and then that capcom one as from what I've read reviewing it, it works well and isn't dishonorably rotten like most.

[Pixelboy]

First, I'd think it would probably be pretty difficult to play Mega Man 2 with a joystick. Could maybe get used to it after a lot of practice... but then second, plug and plays aren't necessarily known for having good quality joysticks. That Mega Man 2 Plug and Play would be one to get only if it were going to sit on the shelf and look pretty, I think.

I certainly wouldn't play with that MM2 P&P, because of the way the buttons are placed. It would probably be hard on my right hand to press both the jump button and fire button at the same time (like I do often in this game) with these buttons aligned vertically instead of horizontally.

[Atari Pogostick]

Actually despite what people here believe Plug N' Plays are a small niche market. Their height was the mid 2000's where companies were competing on amount of games and how good the default controller was. I remember you saw guys selling them in malls, and you could plug them in and play 2000 games, which was really 300 games but just various of the same game (like Pitfall allowing you to skip a level or Contra with cheat codes on automatically.)

 

They actually made money back then and were more expensive on average. The market imploded.

 

The new Game V portables and such you see in stores now are just replacing the old Zone systems, (Zone 20, 30, 40, 60)

[Tanooki]

No idea what a Zone system is, but I know what you mean the My Gamer V handhelds right? They're just an easier carry around of those terrible little mini-arcade cabs with a lot of below even subpar quality homebrew garbage they put out as stocking stuffers and cheap store pickups. Even they learned their lesson converting those to the pocket pixel still stacked with crap but at least there's like a half dozen or so Data East games on there making it worth it alone for that if you like the selection.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Actually despite what people here believe Plug N' Plays are a small niche market. Their height was the mid 2000's where companies were competing on amount of games and how good the default controller was. I remember you saw guys selling them in malls, and you could plug them in and play 2000 games, which was really 300 games but just various of the same game (like Pitfall allowing you to skip a level or Contra with cheat codes on automatically.)

 

They actually made money back then and were more expensive on average. The market imploded.

 

The new Game V portables and such you see in stores now are just replacing the old Zone systems, (Zone 20, 30, 40, 60)

EXcept most of those plug and play systesm sold at mall kiosks back in the early 2000s were illegal bootleg famiclones. The guys peddling those systesm did not ahve a right to the content contained within.

[derFunkenstein]

I'm in for some sort of Genesis with HDMI and support (even unofficially) for adding my own ROMs. I'd pay NES or SNES Classic prices for NES or SNES Classic quality with your own licensed ROMs. And by SNES Classic quality I mean high-quality playback (emulation or otherwise), not AtGames clone audio.

Edited September 6, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[82-T/A]

Personal opinion... it's going to be an uphill struggle. Unless you can do it on the cheap, I'm not sure how many people would be interested. Just being honest. I've already got one of the repro Genesis systems they sold at Wal Mart a couple of years ago, and I rarely play it. It's got like 50 games on it or something.

[Tanooki]

Hey Eli, if you can make a PNP, preferably a PNP with a screen on it for portability that can pull off some Kega Fusion/Genesis GX level of compatibility and keep it in the price range of the NES/SNES CE that does HDMI when popped into a TV -- I'll buy one. AT Games seems unwilling to fix their shitty handheld, you got room. Beat them to the market and scoop up those looking for a handheld Sega that doesn't suck.

[PikoInteractive]

I know for sure someone is doing a handheld with both SNES and Gensis games (may be NES?) and they did some ok products before.

 

My whole idea is not needing any 3rd party licensing at all, so for emulated one, we need to make emulators from scratch. Which it is the best way to do it, however will take a long time.

 

I am inclining on doing the best PNP hardware based that we can make fixing some simple errors other companies have made (I hate the small Genesis controllers, and short cables/infrared controllers). This PNP using available technology (like the chips on Retron 3, or Retro trios etc). Also HDMI out and about 25 games or so.

 

We need to start from somewhere, We can't start with system that will be Nintendo Classic quality. Fortunately we don't have a large company with 50+ employees, large warehouse and an office in LA, so we can really sell these at affordable prices, and really improve packaging as well as instruction manuals (how come these never have a manual which includes info from all the bundled games!!!)

 

For handhelds, I think we will do tiger styled handhelds with color lcd and nes/genesis games (popular ones) again, going the affordable/fair pricing route.

[Tanooki]

If you're going to go with tech, find out where hyperkin is getting their new chipset for the SNES in the Supa Boy HD/Supaboy S+SFC models. They finally decided to stop using the cheap garbage they and retrobit farmed from the same factory. That newer set of hardware they're using accurately covers almost all the odd quirks of the SNES hardware down to classic games that typically fail even on many emulators like ASP(Air Strike Patrol shadow issue.) it also is powerfully accurate enough to work 100% with the SD2SNES and Super Everdrive. It has no chipped game problems where the old hardware mostly failed on SA1 and SDD1, broke 1/2 or more of the FX games (auto reset or just broken like Yoshi), and other stuff was hit or miss outside of the DSP and normal Lo/HiROM stuff. If you're going to do it, do it right, get the better hardware as we know Hyperkin is too lazy to make their own stuff, so they got it somewhere.

[PikoInteractive]

If you're going to go with tech, find out where hyperkin is getting their new chipset for the SNES in the Supa Boy HD/Supaboy S+SFC models. They finally decided to stop using the cheap garbage they and retrobit farmed from the same factory. That newer set of hardware they're using accurately covers almost all the odd quirks of the SNES hardware down to classic games that typically fail even on many emulators like ASP(Air Strike Patrol shadow issue.) it also is powerfully accurate enough to work 100% with the SD2SNES and Super Everdrive. It has no chipped game problems where the old hardware mostly failed on SA1 and SDD1, broke 1/2 or more of the FX games (auto reset or just broken like Yoshi), and other stuff was hit or miss outside of the DSP and normal Lo/HiROM stuff. If you're going to do it, do it right, get the better hardware as we know Hyperkin is too lazy to make their own stuff, so they got it somewhere.

 

Of course,

 

And yes we have an Ex-Hyperkin product dev on our team. I know which chip you are talking about and that was the factory we were going to use for chip based consoles.