What were the lifetime sales for the PCE/PCEDuo

[Dicer]

Just wondering and can't seem to find much info....

Thanks in advance.

[CrackTiger]

Just wondering and can't seem to find much info....

Because there isn't much of any.

Lots of people toss around the 11 million figure for Japan, but it's unclear whether that includes all the various models.

[SamIAm]

Japanese wikipedia sez:

GamePro.com reported sales of 2.5 million for the US and 7.5 million for all other regions (which are composed almost entirely of Japan) for a total of 10 million worldwide.

However, the Asahi Newspaper (Japan's biggest newspaper) reported in an article from 2001 that the PC Engine sold 5.8 million worldwide.

And Famitsu (Japan's biggest gaming magazine) reported domestic Japanese sales of 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems including all variants.

I would bet that the Asahi Newspaper and Famitsu are both right, meaning that there were a little under 2 million systems sold in the US, and PCE Duo sales were added to both figures in Famitsu's report. The GamePro numbers reek of being estimated on the spot, and 7.5 million sounds high to me just based on how much PCE stuff seems to be floating around the market in Japan compared to other systems.

NEC has also been directly quoted as saying that the PC-FX sold 1/50th as much as the PC Engine, and PC-FX sales are said to be around 100k, so that adds up. Although the 100k figure might be derived from the assumption of 5 million PCE sales plus that 1/50th figure.

[TheClash603]

How times have changed.

The Wii U is a "failure" with over 6 million lifetime sale and counting.

The PCE was one of the biggest success stories in Japan in its day and worldwide sales were approximately 7 million.

[Dicer]

Seems low...but I'll take it interest was sparked by the Nintendo financial report which has numbers and I know the PCE was competition for Fami/mega drive just wanted to see where it sat over there.

[A Black Falcon]

Japanese wikipedia sez:

GamePro.com reported sales of 2.5 million for the US and 7.5 million for all other regions (which are composed almost entirely of Japan) for a total of 10 million worldwide.

However, the Asahi Newspaper (Japan's biggest newspaper) reported in an article from 2001 that the PC Engine sold 5.8 million worldwide.

And Famitsu (Japan's biggest gaming magazine) reported domestic Japanese sales of 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems including all variants.

I would bet that the Asahi Newspaper and Famitsu are both right, meaning that there were a little under 2 million systems sold in the US, and PCE Duo sales were added to both figures in Famitsu's report. The GamePro numbers reek of being estimated on the spot, and 7.5 million sounds high to me just based on how much PCE stuff seems to be floating around the market in Japan compared to other systems.

NEC has also been directly quoted as saying that the PC-FX sold 1/50th as much as the PC Engine, and PC-FX sales are said to be around 100k, so that adds up. Although the 100k figure might be derived from the assumption of 5 million PCE sales plus that 1/50th figure.

Those are some pretty good estimates for Japanese sales, but "a little under 2 million" US sales sounds extremely optimistic to me.  I've heard a 900k number mentioned before, for US TG16 sales, plus 30-50k each for the CD and Duo (though some think the Duo sold more than that).  Even if those estimates for CD and Duo sales are a bit low, there's no question that in the US they only sold a fraction as much as the TG16, which didn't sell very well itself.  I can't see 2 million as a possible total number.

And if those two reports you mention are accurate, it probably didn't.  I mean, 5.8 million worldwide, for all models?  That does sound a bit low, but if US sales are a million total for all models, and Japanese sales are 3.9 million + some fraction of 1.9 million, it adds up.  The big question is, what's the breakdown of that 1.9 million number, how much of it is overlap... but there's no answer to that I'm sure.

[esteban]

I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around. 

Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.

Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.

[CrackTiger]

I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around. 

Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.

Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.

Don't forget that NEC especially, and later TTi, both manufactured way more than the market demanded initially and that it continued to be sold off officially through 2001. How many of those "official" figures do you think were calculated after 2001?

We've never had anything near solid evidence that TE/GT, LT, LaserActive, etc were included either. Judging by how common TE/GTs in particular are, their numbers alone must be high.

Don't forget that most rough figures have been shown to have been taken out of context, especially the "I think I heard once" type stuff. Like how a comment by Vic Ireland was not so long ago used as definitive proof for a very accurate sales figure of Turbo-CD units... unless you actually think it through for a second (most didn't).

The fact of the matter is that because of the time the 16-bit gen took place, we'll never have accurate sales numbers for Genesis and SNES. There wasn't any kind of definitive system in place to track this kind of stuff and the Turbo/PCE is all the more mysterious.

Console War enthusiasts are the ones who obsess over uncertain figures and like to spin them to favor the console they've affiliated themselves to.

How times have changed.

The Wii U is a "failure" with over 6 million lifetime sale and counting.

The PCE was one of the biggest success stories in Japan in its day and worldwide sales were approximately 7 million.

The problem is that media and business enthusiasts are more interested in commercial dominance than video game systems' video game playing ability.

I don't consider the Sega Master System or Turbo libraries to be failures. They may not have dominated the mass appeal market, which as you pointed out has radically changed in size over time, but they were very successful as video game experiences. Both consoles went the distance and saw game releases spanning a console generation length of time and both libraries are much larger than necessary. How many games did the average person own? More than 100? How many great games justifies a console? Very few for me, but both the SMS and Turbo are loaded with them and they remain memorable and entertaining to this day.

I'm not very familiar with the Wii U, but the way I understand it, more games are accurately playable than the disastrous motion-only Wii library and there seems to already be more than enough games normies consider great. So by modern game standards, the Wii U could be discontinued immediately and still eternally be a success.

[PukeSter]

Working Designs said there were only about 20,000 Turbo CD units in the U.S.

[CrackTiger]

Working Designs said there were only about 20,000 Turbo CD units in the U.S.

Exactly.

[imparanoic]

it's probable that the pc engine units sold in japan was between 6-8 million on the basis that megadrive had installed user base of 3.5million ( distant third) in japan and based on accounts, pc engine was very popular and second to super famicom which had 17 million user installed base in japan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles_(Japan)

but by references over the years, megadrive was a distant third in their home market, nowadays,  even buying both consoles and games for megadrive from Asian countries and japan are not that common unlike pc engine and super famicom from online auctions and physical stores.

you also got to consider Taiwan, Hong Kong and unofficially china as well as licensed ver of pc engine in korea contributing a million here and there, as well as few tens of thousands unofficially imported to European countries

so, 9-10 million is possible when you take this account

[esteban]

I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around. 

Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.

Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.

Don't forget that NEC especially, and later TTi, both manufactured way more than the market demanded initially and that it continued to be sold off officially through 2001. How many of those "official" figures do you think were calculated after 2001?

We've never had anything near solid evidence that TE/GT, LT, LaserActive, etc were included either. Judging by how common TE/GTs in particular are, their numbers alone must be high.

Don't forget that most rough figures have been shown to have been taken out of context, especially the "I think I heard once" type stuff. Like how a comment by Vic Ireland was not so long ago used as definitive proof for a very accurate sales figure of Turbo-CD units... unless you actually think it through for a second (most didn't).

The fact of the matter is that because of the time the 16-bit gen took place, we'll never have accurate sales numbers for Genesis and SNES. There wasn't any kind of definitive system in place to track this kind of stuff and the Turbo/PCE is all the more mysterious.

Console War enthusiasts are the ones who obsess over uncertain figures and like to spin them to favor the console they've affiliated themselves to.

I don't think TTi, and later TZD, sold too many DUO's.

An already niche market was now completely reduced to a handful of crazy bastards. Us. The TurboList. But most of us had the hardware already.

LaserActive? I'm not silly to suggest that a mere handful were ever sold. Period.

LT? Negligible, as well (in Japan).

TE? I'm afraid it wouldn't be a significant amount. Not significant to radically change any estimates, anyway. I feel that TE was certainly more popular than LA...but that's not saying much.

[SamIAm]

I still think Asahi Newspaper's 5.8 million global sales quote is probably accurate, or at least very close.

I checked again, and it appears that Famitsu's domestic Japanese numbers, 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems, puts Duos exclusively in the CD systems group. Searching for info about Duo sales in particular, I found this webpage which says that the Duo systems sold about one million (and that the CD-ROM ad-ons sold about one million, which fits the 1.92 figure well). That seems reasonable to me.

So that would mean that Japan has just under five million independently playable systems, just under two million of which can play CD-ROM games. Put that together with Asahi's figure and the US has somewhere around 1 million. That sounds reasonable to me.

it's probable that the pc engine units sold in japan was between 6-8 million on the basis that megadrive had installed user base of 3.5million ( distant third) in japan and based on accounts, pc engine was very popular and second to super famicom which had 17 million user installed base in japan but by references over the years, megadrive was a distant third in their home market, nowadays,  even buying both consoles and games for megadrive from Asian countries and japan are not that common unlike pc engine and super famicom from online auctions and physical stores.

It's a fallacy to assume that the sales of the 2nd place contender lies right in the middle of the 1st and the 3rd. Nintendo walloped everybody back then in sales, both with the Famicom and the Super Famicom. This is obvious when looking in used game stores and Goodwill-style recycle stores. Nintendo stuff is everywhere.

Also, I think that in 89, 90 and 91, the PC Engine was much stronger, but the Mega Drive crept up on it in the later years. 3.5 million Megadrives, 3.9 million PC Engines and another million Duos seems very believable to me based on availability in Japan.

You also can't really say much by comparing import demand for the systems, except that the Genesis was more popular in the US than Japan, and the PCE was more popular in Japan than the US. Not to mention, many Mega Drive games are region locked in a way that can't be defeated with a simple cart-port mod or a converter.

You also got to consider Taiwan, Hong Kong and unofficially china as well as licensed ver of pc engine in korea contributing a million here and there, as well as few tens of thousands unofficially imported to European countries

I would be shocked if sales in all regions other than the US/Canada and Japan exceeded even half a million. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even 100k. The Korean system is incredibly hard to come by. I mean, systems that sold in the 50-100k region (PC-FX, Supergrafx, Playdia) are far, far easier to locate.

[CrackTiger]

Dragon Quest had such an impact in Japan that it kicked off the RPG craze and inspired the launch day rule/law. It was the ultimate killer app for the time. The Famicom is supposed to have sold 19.3 million units and the Super Famicom 17.2 million units in Japan. Here's the reported sales of the most popular series* for the most popular consoles:

FC Dragon Quest: 1.5 million in Japan

FC Dragon Quest II: 2.4 million in Japan

FC Dragon Quest III: 3.8 million in Japan

FC Dragon Quest IV: 3.1 million in Japan

SFC Dragon Quest V: 2.8 million in Japan

SFC Dragon Quest VI: 3.2 million in Japan


*for reference, Super Mario 3 is reported to have sold 4 million copies after 5 years. I don't know if that includes the All Stars version.


lukester says that Tengai Makyou II sold 1 million copies. Considering how common it is, that is believable. But how is that possible if only 1.92 million CD-ROM units were sold? And if TMII only sold 1 million copies and less than 2 million people ever had the ability to potentially play it, then how did it manage to be ranked 12th by readers in Famitsu's all-time favorite game poll? How impressive could the 2003 budget remakes have been after disc based tech was old news? Is this definitive proof that Famitsu is a niche mag which caters to the small hardcore crowd?

I'm not saying that any of this proves anything, only that speculating is just that and is inconsistent.

[SamIAm]

Regardless of the tastes of their readership, if there is any media source in Japan that was in a good position to get an accurate number from Hudson/NEC, it was famitsu. I can't find which issue it was, but apparently the figure comes from an issue published during the mid 90s.

Where did lukester get the figure for 1 million copies of TMII? I'm searching in Japanese and found an interesting summary:
Game-sales ranking website m-create.com says 158,620.
The game's director himself said 200,000.
Hudson said 300,000.
Hudson also announced later that the total sales of all Tengai series games combined is 2.2 million.

By the way, the number 5 game in that famitsu reader poll is an interactive novel called Machi. You know how many that apparently sold? 120,000.

[A Black Falcon]

Working Designs said there were only about 20,000 Turbo CD units in the U.S.

Exactly.

What?  Why is Vic's estimate of ~20k each for the Turbo CD and Duo not a plausible estimate?  Sure, I think it might have been slightly higher, but I would not believe numbers over 50k for the Turbo CD for sure, and I just don't think that the Duo did better.  They put some effort into trying to sell Duos, but it bombed HARD.  If you think it did much better than Vic's estimates, I don't think there is any evidence to support it.  Sorry, but that "one million TOTAL for US TG16+CD+Duo sales" number is something I find the most likely estimate of US sales, with the TG16 being at least 90% of that total.  Do you have any actual facts behind your opinion that you think the Turbo CD and/or Duo sold significantly better than Vic thought?

As for the TurboExpress, though, yeah, that one is an unknown... is that included in TG16 sales, or not?  I have no idea.  Haven't seen any sales estimates for it before, either.  I doubt it sold huge though, not at its price; probably not beyond the tens of thousands.

I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around. 

Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.

Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.

Don't forget that NEC especially, and later TTi, both manufactured way more than the market demanded initially and that it continued to be sold off officially through 2001. How many of those "official" figures do you think were calculated after 2001?

We've never had anything near solid evidence that TE/GT, LT, LaserActive, etc were included either. Judging by how common TE/GTs in particular are, their numbers alone must be high.

Don't forget that most rough figures have been shown to have been taken out of context, especially the "I think I heard once" type stuff. Like how a comment by Vic Ireland was not so long ago used as definitive proof for a very accurate sales figure of Turbo-CD units... unless you actually think it through for a second (most didn't).

The fact of the matter is that because of the time the 16-bit gen took place, we'll never have accurate sales numbers for Genesis and SNES. There wasn't any kind of definitive system in place to track this kind of stuff and the Turbo/PCE is all the more mysterious.

Console War enthusiasts are the ones who obsess over uncertain figures and like to spin them to favor the console they've affiliated themselves to.

I don't think TTi, and later TZD, sold too many DUO's.

An already niche market was now completely reduced to a handful of crazy bastards. Us. The TurboList. But most of us had the hardware already.

LaserActive? I'm not silly to suggest that a mere handful were ever sold. Period.

LT? Negligible, as well (in Japan).

TE? I'm afraid it wouldn't be a significant amount. Not significant to radically change any estimates, anyway. I feel that TE was certainly more popular than LA...but that's not saying much.

Agreed on all points, unfortunately, esteban.  The LaserActive sold nothing, the TurboExpress okay-ish but not great, and the LT wasn't released here and in Japan sold nothing either.

And yeah, I know TTI/TZD sold lots of over-produced games, but systems?  If you say that they didn't have many Duos, I believe you.

I still think Asahi Newspaper's 5.8 million global sales quote is probably accurate, or at least very close.

I checked again, and it appears that Famitsu's domestic Japanese numbers, 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems, puts Duos exclusively in the CD systems group. Searching for info about Duo sales in particular, I found this webpage which says that the Duo systems sold about one million (and that the CD-ROM ad-ons sold about one million, which fits the 1.92 figure well). That seems reasonable to me.

So that would mean that Japan has just under five million independently playable systems, just under two million of which can play CD-ROM games. Put that together with Asahi's figure and the US has somewhere around 1 million. That sounds reasonable to me.

Yeah, these numbers add up perfectly!  That 900k number for US TG16 sales and under 100k for the TCD and Duo combined -- maybe 40k combined if we believe Vic, maybe a bit more if he was off by some, but certainly terrible.

it's probable that the pc engine units sold in japan was between 6-8 million on the basis that megadrive had installed user base of 3.5million ( distant third) in japan and based on accounts, pc engine was very popular and second to super famicom which had 17 million user installed base in japan but by references over the years, megadrive was a distant third in their home market, nowadays,  even buying both consoles and games for megadrive from Asian countries and japan are not that common unlike pc engine and super famicom from online auctions and physical stores.

It's a fallacy to assume that the sales of the 2nd place contender lies right in the middle of the 1st and the 3rd. Nintendo walloped everybody back then in sales, both with the Famicom and the Super Famicom. This is obvious when looking in used game stores and Goodwill-style recycle stores. Nintendo stuff is everywhere.

Also, I think that in 89, 90 and 91, the PC Engine was much stronger, but the Mega Drive crept up on it in the later years. 3.5 million Megadrives, 3.9 million PC Engines and another million Duos seems very believable to me based on availability in Japan.

Also, remember that if your numbers are right, it's 3.5 million Genesises versus ~4.8 million Turbos, if 50% of that 1.9 million CD systems were Duo/R/RX models, as you say.  That's a fair gap.  What about the Sega CD and 32X, though?  Are they included in that number, and how did they sell?

It is a little surprising that it apparently was that close, though.  I also have always heard of how the Genesis finished far behind the Turbo in Japan, and 3.5 (maybe + CD and 32X) vs. ~5 million isn't as much of a gap as I would have thought.  I mean, the PCE was the leading-selling system for a few years in the late '80s... but I guess the market was smaller then.  And sure, it'd make sense that the Genesis would start selling better in the '90s as its game library improved, while the Turbo seems to have done best there in the late '80s.

Still though, I'm surprised that it's that close.  Maybe NEC's switchover to CDs really did hurt them?  I mean, with 4.8 million HuCard systems vs. 1.9 million CD systems, there were a lot more card systems out there... but the HuCard releases died out in 1993, for the most part.  I know gameplay-wise there were good reasons to go over to CD, but it obviously limited the audience somewhat, though it really is a no-win situation -- do you help the original cartridge system more at the cost of the addon, or do you help that addon and hurt the original system?  That generation Sega ended up doing more of the former, and NEC the latter.  That probably caused issues for both of them, as Sega hurt its addons while NEC hurt its original system.  Maybe Sega was hurt more, since the 32X debacle really hurt them badly while NEC's biggest problems in Japan were probably more about the PC-FX than the PCE/CD/SuperGrafx... but that's probably debatable. 

The lesson really is that both Sega and NEC released too much hardware that generation.  Keep things simpler, like Nintendo did, and it pays off... you split your market less!

You also can't really say much by comparing import demand for the systems, except that the Genesis was more popular in the US than Japan, and the PCE was more popular in Japan than the US. Not to mention, many Mega Drive games are region locked in a way that can't be defeated with a simple cart-port mod or a converter.

True.

You also got to consider Taiwan, Hong Kong and unofficially china as well as licensed ver of pc engine in korea contributing a million here and there, as well as few tens of thousands unofficially imported to European countries

I would be shocked if sales in all regions other than the US/Canada and Japan exceeded even half a million. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even 100k. The Korean system is incredibly hard to come by. I mean, systems that sold in the 50-100k region (PC-FX, Supergrafx, Playdia) are far, far easier to locate.

Yeah, those 'other' regions were very small sales-wise.  They didn't add up to much at all for any platform.

Regardless of the tastes of their readership, if there is any media source in Japan that was in a good position to get an accurate number from Hudson/NEC, it was famitsu. I can't find which issue it was, but apparently the figure comes from an issue published during the mid 90s.

Where did lukester get the figure for 1 million copies of TMII? I'm searching in Japanese and found an interesting summary:
Game-sales ranking website m-create.com says 158,620.
The game's director himself said 200,000.
Hudson said 300,000.
Hudson also announced later that the total sales of all Tengai series games combined is 2.2 million.

By the way, the number 5 game in that famitsu reader poll is an interactive novel called Machi. You know how many that apparently sold? 120,000.

This sounds like the answer there to me, TMII didn't sell nearly a million copies.

[A Black Falcon]

dp

[SamIAm]

The Japanese magazine MEGA published 380,000 Mega CD units sold. I suspect that this is not part of the 3.5 million Mega Drives figure, though I don't have proof. Considering that the vast majority of Mega CD systems sold were add-ons, though, it would be brazenly disingenuous of Sega to add it to the number of Mega Drives without telling anybody.

The 32X barely sold at all in Japan. It was actually released two weeks after the Saturn, and on the same day as the Playstation. I can't find any figures for it, but it probably only sold in the low ten thousands, if that.

[TurboXray]

I saw that someone posted 200k units for MegaCD (Japan). I don't remember the source.

Given the switch over from hueys to CDs, that number of total CD units doesn't seem to jive. I'd say 2mil for all CD addons (original, bundled original, Super CDROM). I'd say the Duo numbers aren't figured into that, especially considering they did another redesign (Duo-R/RX). Not to mention the release of the Arcade Cards (both version). I mean, cost of Heuys went down and if it WAS a larger consumer base - why didn't the hucard format expand over CD games from there? Size wasn't a limitation, and costs of roms came down. Plus, other form factors were possible (extended bumps and such, upgraded hardware on hucard, etc). Nintendo did this with the famicom. Was the sole fact that they could produce a higher profit margin with CD games, be enough to negate hucard consumer base? I mean, it's not like the Duo and CD consumers didn't have hucard support on their setups.

[Ray]

Given the switch over from hueys to CDs, that number of total CD units doesn't seem to jive. I'd say 2mil for all CD addons (original, bundled original, Super CDROM). I'd say the Duo numbers aren't figured into that, especially considering they did another redesign (Duo-R/RX). Not to mention the release of the Arcade Cards (both version). I mean, cost of Heuys went down and if it WAS a larger consumer base - why didn't the hucard format expand over CD games from there? Size wasn't a limitation, and costs of roms came down. Plus, other form factors were possible (extended bumps and such, upgraded hardware on hucard, etc). Nintendo did this with the famicom. Was the sole fact that they could produce a higher profit margin with CD games, be enough to negate hucard consumer base? I mean, it's not like the Duo and CD consumers didn't have hucard support on their setups.

The 8kB Work RAM limitation on HuCARD games was getting very limiting in the PC Engine's later years. It was possible to include more RAM on the HuCARD(Populous is, as far as I know, the only game that did this) but that would have driven up manufacturing costs significantly for something most consumers still playing PC Engine after 1993 could already use without any additional hardware upgrades.

Street Fighter II' with it's 20Mb HuCARD retailed for ¥9800, which was ¥3000 more than a normal HuCARD game and ¥2000 more than a SCD game like Tengai Makyou II or Dracula X. SFII could do this because it was an extremely popular game, but lesser known games would have priced themselves out of the market. They would likely be able to lower this to ¥7800 but that would also make the profit margin significantly lower and the larger audience would not be enough to compensate at that time.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, that sounds like the Sega CD numbers I've heard... and like a sadly plausible 32X estimate too.  The thing sold okay in the US for a while, but doesn't seem to have done as well elsewhere.  Of course, that ended up hurting Sega far more than it helped it, once they betrayed all those 32X buyers by ditching the system so early, but that's how it went.

On the note of numbers though, accurate worldwide Sega CD sales numbers are another thing that seem to remain somewhat elusive...

[SamIAm]

I saw that someone posted 200k units for MegaCD (Japan). I don't remember the source.

Given the switch over from hueys to CDs, that number of total CD units doesn't seem to jive. I'd say 2mil for all CD addons (original, bundled original, Super CDROM). I'd say the Duo numbers aren't figured into that, especially considering they did another redesign (Duo-R/RX). Not to mention the release of the Arcade Cards (both version). I mean, cost of Heuys went down and if it WAS a larger consumer base - why didn't the hucard format expand over CD games from there? Size wasn't a limitation, and costs of roms came down. Plus, other form factors were possible (extended bumps and such, upgraded hardware on hucard, etc). Nintendo did this with the famicom. Was the sole fact that they could produce a higher profit margin with CD games, be enough to negate hucard consumer base? I mean, it's not like the Duo and CD consumers didn't have hucard support on their setups.

For what it's worth, I've found two places quoting that famitsu figure of 1.92 million units, and they both state clearly "Duo systems included". At the least, that means that the famitsu report itself probably had that information.

This might not win me much affection around here, but I suspect that the story goes something like this: in the 80s, the base PCE did well because the system came ahead of the others, right when the Famicom was starting to look like old hat in Japan, and because it had high-quality arcade ports and action games. But by 1992, the Super Famicom and the Mega Drive were both starting to build strong libraries, and the base PCE had a hard time distinguishing itself against them. It had no real killer app (sorry Bonk) and the hardware alone didn't have the juice to make the games stand out.

It's the CD system that set the PCE apart and gave it its identity in those later years. I think it's likely that NEC and third parties alike realized that the hucard market was going to dry up no matter what, but the CD system could hang on for a few more years. Thankfully, it did well in that time; in fact, it basically cornered the early 90s CD-console market in Japan. The Mega CD, founded on a small Mega Drive user-base, late to the game, and even later to get good software, was no threat.

If you want to talk about Sega finishing far behind NEC in Japan, the Mega CD vs. the PCE-CD is where the story is.

But don't forget that the PCE-CD expansion was expensive as hell in Japan, too. The Duo was 59,800 yen when it came out in September 1991. Yes, that's about $600. The Duo-R was about $400 in March 1993. The RX was $300, but that was in June 1994, when the next generation was right around the corner. So even if the PCE-CD thrived, its market was small because there weren't that many people who could afford it.

tl;dr - The abundance of CD software is due to HuCards essentially being given up on and the PCE-CD dominating the CD-console market at the time, even if it wasn't as big as the cartridge console market.

[TurboXray]

I personally don't care about numbers, in relation to winning or popularity or whatever, I just find it really strange that the consumer base for hucards was potentially twice that of CDs, yet they pretty much dropped the format. If you took the 2 million number and said half that was to for all Duo units, then that leaves 1million for addon units. That's roughly 1/4 of the Core base purchased the CD unit. What about the other 3/4? Did they just abandoned the system? Or did NEC just abandon them?

The 8kB Work RAM limitation on HuCARD games was getting very limiting in the PC Engine's later years.

The cost of ram was cheap. We're talking about a small amount of kilobytes, not megabytes. Even NES/Famicom carts added 8k of ram. NEC had bigger purchasing power than Nintendo, and even manufactured ram. The cost of adding 8k or 16k more ram, into the hucard, wouldn't have been anymore expensive than Nintendo doing it (and probably less so). Surface mount ram from back then, easily fits right into the hucard format (even without a bump). Nintendo also did complex mapper chips and audio upgrades. Both are just as feasible on the hucard format.

Street Fighter II' with it's 20Mb HuCARD retailed for ¥9800, which was ¥3000 more than a normal HuCARD game and ¥2000 more than a SCD game like Tengai Makyou II or Dracula X.

SF2 was a special case scenario. The hucard format was pretty much dead by then; it was released and marketed as a special item (just looking at the special case, gives the first indication) and attached to a very popular license. But on the tech side, the mapper is simple and cheap (probably simpler than any mapper on the NES) and a couple of roms (nothing special there). If the hucard format hadn't been replaced by CD, both the cost and the sale price wouldn't be that high for large or upgraded hucards.

[SamIAm]

Perhaps a worthwhile thing to look into would be sales of Japanese hucards over time.

If I'm right about NEC/Hudson giving up on the base PCE and hucards as a viable format (which of course I'm just speculating), then a sharp downturn in Hucard sales in late 90/91 would be the kind of thing that would have led them to that decision.

The thing about mappers and extra RAM is that they just make hucards moderately more competitive. The CD-ROM, though, was something that Sega and Nintendo couldn't mimic at all with their base hardware and would have a hard time accomplishing with their own expansions.

EDIT: Hucard sales figures aren't going to be easy to find, and who knows how accurate they'll be. But one interesting thing I was able to put together is the number of Hucard titles sold in Japan in each year:

87: 5
88: 19
89: 61
90: 91
91: 61
92: 29
93: 9
94: 2

Also of interest:
PCE launch: October 87
Mega Drive launch: October 88
PCE CD launch: December 88
Super Famicom launch: November 1990
Mega CD launch: December 1991

Based on these figures alone, it would seem that the Super Famicom killed the hucard. But there may be more to it than that.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, looking at those numbers, it definitely looks like the SNES killed the PCE HuCard system.  NEC's response was the Super CD and a new focus on CDs, and as you say, it worked... but only somewhat; only a quarter of HuCard system owners upgraded, apparently, and the CD userbase was only 1.92 million versus 4.9 million for the HuCard (if 1 million of that 1.9 million was Duo systems).  Some of those Duo buyers probably were HuCard system owners too, of course, but there's no way to know how many.

But overall, I'd guess that HuCards died both because of the SNES doing so well, and also at the same time because NEC's response to that was to phase out HuCard support in favor of CDs.

SF2 was a special case scenario. The hucard format was pretty much dead by then; it was released and marketed as a special item (just looking at the special case, gives the first indication) and attached to a very popular license. But on the tech side, the mapper is simple and cheap (probably simpler than any mapper on the NES) and a couple of roms (nothing special there). If the hucard format hadn't been replaced by CD, both the cost and the sale price wouldn't be that high for large or upgraded hucards.

What special case?  Do you just mean that it uses a dual-jewel case?  That's true, but plenty of CD games use dual-jewel cases even though they have only one disc; SFII is in that same category, a game which didn't really need a dual-jewel, but they decided to add extra paper stuff (the second book) in the case in order to justify a larger case.  The case itself, of course, is a standard case (with the jewelcase with HuCard plastic insert), of the type they started using sometime in '91 and stuck with until they stopped releasing HuCards.

I personally don't care about numbers, in relation to winning or popularity or whatever, I just find it really strange that the consumer base for hucards was potentially twice that of CDs, yet they pretty much dropped the format. If you took the 2 million number and said half that was to for all Duo units, then that leaves 1million for addon units. That's roughly 1/4 of the Core base purchased the CD unit. What about the other 3/4? Did they just abandoned the system? Or did NEC just abandon them?

This is a good question, but I'd say NEC abandoned them.  Look at NEC's release list on the system,  NEC pretty much went almost exclusively over to CDs in Japan in 1991.  Between 1991 and 1994, NEC only released four HuCard games -- Genji Tsuushin Agedama and Morita Shogi PC in '91, SFII in '93, and 21 Emon in '94.  That's it.  NEC wanted people to buy CD systems, because that's what they were more interested in at the time, or because they thought it'd be more clearly different  and compete better as SamIAm says, as the SNES took off.

Hudson had better HuCard support during that period (they released 11 + 2 SuperGrafx HuCard games in '91, 9 HuCard games in '92, and 5 in '93), but they too gradually increased their number of CD games versus HuCards, and dropped the HuCard system at the end of '93.  And instead of going all-PCECD, what Hudson did was start supporting the SNES in '92, and they moved the kind of stuff they'd had on HuCard over to the SNES, instead of the Turbo CD.  That says something.

[CrackTiger]

What?  Why is Vic's estimate of ~20k each for the Turbo CD and Duo not a plausible estimate?

You can't take anything he says too seriously and have to interpret it all with an understanding of his personality. As it is relayed by people, it was a casual comment about a memory of a casual comment decades ago. Taking it as people post it, it is hard to take as accurate just because it fits perfectly into Vic Ireland's perpetual "nothing is my fault/I did everything right/the rest of the world failed me" mentality. Even taking his word, as people put it, as accurate, when would this conversation have taken place? After the Turbo line was handed over to TZD? After it was finally officially discontinued altogether? As it is reported by people, it sounds like a conversation that occurred while the Turbo line was still current, which was before Turbo-CDs had finished selling and likely before it was $150 at the same time the Tg-16 was <$100.

But I've never found that quote the way people retell it. Even if he did tell it that way somewhere else, 1up's description adds interpretation to the actual quote they use and isn't as clear a portrayal as people interpret it to be. But between Vic's reputation, the fact that he may be telling varying versions of this story, that people are interpreting a possible interpretation of fourth hand facts by 1up... along with the fact of how unlikely it is that he had this conversation after the Turbo-CD had finished being sold... plus the obvious (to those not jumping to wild conclusions from select musings) fact that we never saw a surplus of MIB NOS Turbo-CDs floating around the internet or anywhere else...

-all we know for a certainty is that we cannot know and how likely it is that we will never be able to piece together accurate figures.

Sure, I think it might have been slightly higher, but I would not believe numbers over 50k for the Turbo CD for sure, and I just don't think that the Duo did better.  They put some effort into trying to sell Duos, but it bombed HARD.  If you think it did much better than Vic's estimates, I don't think there is any evidence to support it.  Sorry, but that "one million TOTAL for US TG16+CD+Duo sales" number is something I find the most likely estimate of US sales, with the TG16 being at least 90% of that total.

Even if it's not "over 50k" and is simply just 50k, the margin of error between 20 and 50 is 150%.

Do you have any actual facts behind your opinion that you think the Turbo CD and/or Duo sold significantly better than Vic thought?

Why are you asking me for facts to counter wild speculation?

I was there when the Turbo-CD launched and have closely followed the Turbo and PCE line till this day. I've monitored Turbo sales and chatted with Turbo fans about everything Turbo since your first video game system launched. Going by everything I've seen and heard, it does seem like sales of the Turbo-CD must be higher, but for all I know there may only be 2000 in existence. Just as an inside source has "proven" that there are only around 150 copies of Magical Chase in existence. But I'm open to collecting actual evidence and understand that any proof of sales is only proof of a minimum number.

As for the TurboExpress, though, yeah, that one is an unknown... is that included in TG16 sales, or not?  I have no idea.  Haven't seen any sales estimates for it before, either.  I doubt it sold huge though, not at its price; probably not beyond the tens of thousands.

Again, you seem to be learning history from wiki articles and putting together your (Turbo) knowledge by glossing over dubious stats without thinking them through. The TurboExpress, like the Turbo-CD (and so many other systems), may have been pricey at launch for early adopters like myself, but they soon dropped in price (and continued to) and a TG-16 + Turbo-CD retailed in the U.S. for what the SNES retailed in my area around the same time.

The lesson really is that both Sega and NEC released too much hardware that generation.  Keep things simpler, like Nintendo did, and it pays off... you split your market less!

This seems to tie-in more with your usual perspective which has nothing to do with the subjects you're talking about and is all about <Nintendo. But this last statement of yours is still contradicted by the Nintendo 64 bombing so hard immediately after.

[A Black Falcon]

You can't take anything he says too seriously and have to interpret it all with an understanding of his personality. As it is relayed by people, it was a casual comment about a memory of a casual comment decades ago.

Sure, as I remember it he was talking about how his Turbo CD releases sold very well for the tiny userbase of the US Turbo CD.

Yeah, I'm sure I've linked this before, but here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17589981&postcount=190 (a reply to me, 4 1/2 years ago, in fact! :p)  It's true that it's just his recollection, not a statement of proven fact.  But he is one of the few people outside of NEC USA who might actually know something about how the system sold!

Taking it as people post it, it is hard to take as accurate just because it fits perfectly into Vic Ireland's perpetual "nothing is my fault/I did everything right/the rest of the world failed me" mentality. Even taking his word, as people put it, as accurate, when would this conversation have taken place? After the Turbo line was handed over to TZD? After it was finally officially discontinued altogether? As it is reported by people, it sounds like a conversation that occurred while the Turbo line was still current, which was before Turbo-CDs had finished selling and likely before it was $150 at the same time the Tg-16 was <$100.

But I've never found that quote the way people retell it. Even if he did tell it that way somewhere else, 1up's description adds interpretation to the actual quote they use and isn't as clear a portrayal as people interpret it to be. But between Vic's reputation, the fact that he may be telling varying versions of this story, that people are interpreting a possible interpretation of fourth hand facts by 1up... along with the fact of how unlikely it is that he had this conversation after the Turbo-CD had finished being sold... plus the obvious (to those not jumping to wild conclusions from select musings) fact that we never saw a surplus of MIB NOS Turbo-CDs floating around the internet or anywhere else...

-all we know for a certainty is that we cannot know and how likely it is that we will never be able to piece together accurate figures.

Hmm, an old conversation?  Has he said this multiple times, beyond that post there?  If so that'd be interesting, to see if he was consistent.

Even if it's not "over 50k" and is simply just 50k, the margin of error between 20 and 50 is 150%.

That's true, but both of those are still pretty small numbers. I said that to account for the possibility that his estimates were low.  Maybe he remembers right though, I don't know.  SamIAm's 5.9 million worldwide, ~1 million of that probably in the US, number doesn't allow for much beyond 100k MAX for the Duo+Turbo CD, so I said that as an upper bound, but it was probably less than that.

Why are you asking me for facts to counter wild speculation?

Wild speculation?  Vic Ireland was in a position where he should have had some knowledge about how well the Turbo CD and Turbo Duo were selling, though.  He had fairly close contacts to NEC for a while.  If anyone outside of NEC or Hudson would know something, it'd be him.

I was there when the Turbo-CD launched and have closely followed the Turbo and PCE line till this day. I've monitored Turbo sales and chatted with Turbo fans about everything Turbo since your first video game system launched. Going by everything I've seen and heard, it does seem like sales of the Turbo-CD must be higher, but for all I know there may only be 2000 in existence. Just as an inside source has "proven" that there are only around 150 copies of Magical Chase in existence. But I'm open to collecting actual evidence and understand that any proof of sales is only proof of a minimum number.

As they say though, personal experience doesn't mean all that much... and if the Turbo CD or Duo really had sold much better than they did, they wouldn't be so rare today!  I know the system has diehard fans, but so does the Jaguar CD.  That hasn't changed the probable fact that there were probably only 20,000 Jag CDs ever made --a number which is only half or less of Vic's Turbo CD + Duo estimate, by the way, since he said ~20k each.

Again, you seem to be learning history from wiki articles and putting together your (Turbo) knowledge by glossing over dubious stats without thinking them through. The TurboExpress, like the Turbo-CD (and so many other systems), may have been pricey at launch for early adopters like myself, but they soon dropped in price (and continued to) and a TG-16 + Turbo-CD retailed in the U.S. for what the SNES retailed in my area around the same time.

Wikipedia articles are useless for NEC sales numbers.  SamIAm's numbers are the ones I believe.

On that note though, someone should change the English TG16 article to reflect the more accurate sales numbers he's pointed out, like was done with the Genesis several years back...

As for prices though, in large parts of the US, finding TG16 stuff in the first place was a major challenge.  Around here, Toys R Us was pretty much the only place that carried anything TG16, and evidently few people bought it since I almost never see TG16-related stuff locally -- and from what we know about NEC, this kind of issue was clearly common.  So even if the prices declined, that wouldn't have helped sales much if few stores were carrying the system by that point anyway...

This seems to tie-in more with your usual perspective which has nothing to do with the subjects you're talking about and is all about <Nintendo. But this last statement of yours is still contradicted by the Nintendo 64 bombing so hard immediately after.

Contradicted?  How so?  But my point there was about dividing your market.  That gen, neither Sony nor Nintendo did that, so that was clearly not a factor in why Sony won -- though that Sony did do that, while Sega did not, was obviously a factor in why Sony was in the position to win the generation in the first place!

But yes, in the 4th generation, ultimately I think Nintendo did the right thing in not releasing the SNES CD.  And Sega shouldn't have released the 32X, and NEC... I don't know about NEC, they made such a mess of things with so much hardware it's hard to decide what was reasonable and what wasn't. :p

[Ray]

But yes, in the 4th generation, ultimately I think Nintendo did the right thing in not releasing the SNES CD.  And Sega shouldn't have released the 32X, and NEC... I don't know about NEC, they made such a mess of things with so much hardware it's hard to decide what was reasonable and what wasn't. :p

In NEC's case, they pretty much designed the PC Engine with CD expansion in mind. I'd say it was worth it, not only for the great library it eventually got but also for treading new grounds with the CD medium. All the different CD expansions, accesories and Duo systems also meant everyone with any of the PC Engine models could access the CD library.(except for the unfortunate Shuttle, which was just badly designed and deserves no excuse)

The Supergrafx was admittedly a bad idea, but 4 out of 5 of the SGX library are great games, and it was backwards compatible with HuCARDs and supported the CD add-ons in one way or another.

[A Black Falcon]

But yes, in the 4th generation, ultimately I think Nintendo did the right thing in not releasing the SNES CD.  And Sega shouldn't have released the 32X, and NEC... I don't know about NEC, they made such a mess of things with so much hardware it's hard to decide what was reasonable and what wasn't. :p

In NEC's case, they pretty much designed the PC Engine with CD expansion in mind. I'd say it was worth it, not only for the great library it eventually got but also for treading new grounds with the CD medium. All the different CD expansions, accesories and Duo systems also meant everyone with any of the PC Engine models could access the CD library.(except for the unfortunate Shuttle, which was just badly designed and deserves no excuse)

The Supergrafx was admittedly a bad idea, but 4 out of 5 of the SGX library are great games, and it was backwards compatible with HuCARDs and supported the CD add-ons in one way or another.

Yeah, the Turbo CD is defensible.  So is the Sega CD, I think.  I'm not opposed to all addons, just unnecessary ones or too many addons... there is something of a slippery slope there, and NEC and Sega both ended up going down it.

However, even though the TG16 was designed to have a CD addon, going by the numbers we have, only a quarter of PCE owners bought CD addons; the rest either stuck with the HuCard system until it died, or, in some cases, got Duos eventually.  They released this confusing mountain of hardware, and it's nice to have because it's great to have any PCE/TG16 system be able to run all the games (SuperGrafx excepted), but most users didn't buy most of it, and I'm sure it confused people.

But what was clearly unnecessary?  Well, yeah, the SuperGrafx is a good place to start.  NEC either needed to move to the SGX as their main system -- this means SuperGrafx Duo, instead of PC Engine Duo, as the next system, and lots of SGX software -- or never have released it in the first place.  Never releasing it in the first place would probably be better.  Sure, I agree with you that the SGX has a few great games, but.;.. it has only five games (plus two that have less flicker with it)!  That's ridiculous, there's no way to really justify such a thinly supported system.

Second is the Arcade Card.  Sure, the idea was good, and Arcade Card-required games have very impressive graphics that the Super System Card could not have handled.  However, it's addon-only -- even the Duo-RX, which probably should have had a built-in Arcade Card given that it comes with a 6-button controller, doesn't -- and didn't do nearly as well as Hudson hoped.  Better would have been to have a bit more RAM in the Super System Card and stick with that until the end of the generation.  I mean, the Super System Card was only 256KB, while the Sega CD, which released just three months later in Japan, has 768KB of RAM in it... and that was enough for the generation.  NEC couldn't have gotten closer to that?  They probably did need more RAM, but should have had more the first time, I think.  They have to have known something, releasing so close.  The Arcade Card was NEC/Hudson's last attempt to get more attention to their system by releasing yet more hardware, but as with the SuperGrafx, it was too much and wasn't supported enough, and it failed.

I don't think that any one addon of NEC's was a clear company-hurting debacle on the level of the 32X, but having too many models and too many addons can't have helped; it divides your market.  Sure, I can understand why NEC mostly abandoned HuCards in favor of CDs -- it's been said -- but the result was to basically abandon at least 60% of their sales base, those who didn't get CD drives.  And SFII shows how much you can do on a HuCard.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

This dumb argument again, eh?  What kind of dullard really found it to be a 'confusing mountain' of hardware?

1)  The Shuttle was nothing but an attempt to sell to people on price.  It was never pushed as an upgrade path.

2)  Unlike the 32x, the Arcade Card was never intended to be (or marketed as) a way to make the PCE competitive with next gen systems; nobody bought it thinking there'd be 100+ games made for it.  Of the games that came out after its release, about one third of 'em used it in one way or another, which hardly makes it an unsupported failure.

3) The SGX was admittedly a bit of a blunder, but who gives a shit?  The writing was on the wall almost immediately after launch, so the only people that could feel burned were those that bought it during those few short months.  By the time the Super CD / Duo came out, there was no question which system was the future.

[TurboXray]

What special case?

Uhm.. my post already explains why it's a special case scenario? And yes, the case was special too; only hucard to have it AFAIK, and didn't need it. Obviously created for special item appeal. A regular hucard case would have worked just as well. The bump also wasn't needed either. There's nothing under the bump. Another decoration to show that it was 'special'. They could have easily consolidated the mapper and rom into a single regular hucard PCB.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Two years earlier, Populous also got the "special" treatment with double case, hump, and spine card.

[A Black Falcon]

What special case?

Uhm.. my post already explains why it's a special case scenario? And yes, the case was special too; only hucard to have it AFAIK, and didn't need it. Obviously created for special item appeal. A regular hucard case would have worked just as well. The bump also wasn't needed either. There's nothing under the bump. Another decoration to show that it was 'special'. They could have easily consolidated the mapper and rom into a single regular hucard PCB.

Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.  SFII is just a standard dual-jewel case with two standard 1991+ HuCard-holding plastic trays inside, just like all the other Japanese games from 1991 on use.  There's nothing special about it other than that they used a dual-jewel in order to get more shelf space for the game. 

And what bump are you talking about?  Are you talking about the case insides, or the outside?  Outside, it's a completely normal PCE dual-jewel case.  Inside, it's got two normal 1991-on HuCard holders.  It's not special, apart from using a dual-jewel -- which as Necromancer points out, they also used in Populous.  I don't have that game, but I do have several other games with that same kind of HuCard tray in a single jewelcase, such as Spiral Wave, Druaga, and Bomberman '93.  I'm sure anything from late 1991 on uses it.  SFII uses regular HuCard holders in a regular dual-jewel case.

This dumb argument again, eh?  What kind of dullard really found it to be a 'confusing mountain' of hardware?

1)  The Shuttle was nothing but an attempt to sell to people on price.  It was never pushed as an upgrade path.

Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.

o2)  Unlike the 32x, the Arcade Card was never intended to be (or marketed as) a way to make the PCE competitive with next gen systems; nobody bought it thinking there'd be 100+ games made for it.  Of the games that came out after its release, about one third of 'em used it in one way or another, which hardly makes it an unsupported failure.

Oh, the Arcade Card wasn't supposed to sell?  Yeah, sure.  Then why was it apparently easy to get whole cases of sealed copies of the first Arcade Card game, Fatal Fury 2, for years?  There's only one reason why that could be, and it's that they significantly overprinted copies of the game, surely under-estimating how well the Arcade Card would do.  You can also see the Arcade Card's failure when you look at its games released and games supported list -- most of the games that require the Arcade Card are from 1994, while there are only two from '95 and just one from '96.  Even just Arcade Card-enhanced games thinned out badly in 1995 versus 1994, and there were no more after 1995 -- all 1996, 1997, and 1999 releases, except for that one 1996 game which requires it, are regular Super CD titles.  Clearly the Arcade Card failed to take off like Hudson must have hoped, when you look at how many copies of Fatal Fury 2 they made.  It was one addon too many, and the market didn't bite; they'd released too much stuff, and there wasn't enough to convince people to buy, not with the next generation coming up.

3) The SGX was admittedly a bit of a blunder, but who gives a shit?  The writing was on the wall almost immediately after launch, so the only people that could feel burned were those that bought it during those few short months.  By the time the Super CD / Duo came out, there was no question which system was the future.

Sure, but you don't think that it hurt NEC at all to have this system release and bomb?  I mean, someone could say that about the 32X, that it only sold well for a few months so it's not that important, but that's obviously not the case at all.  As I said I"m sure the SuperGrafx didn't hurt NEC like the 32X did Sega, but it has to have done some damage to their image, and people who did buy the things, probably harder-core fans, can't have been happy!

[imparanoic]

are you sure about the raised/bump hucards with nothing but empty space, I believe it's really an extended super thin pcb folded within the raised/bump area, there is reference to it, for special games such as populous, there is a battery as well

http://nfggames.com/games/pce/

[CrackTiger]

are you sure about the raised/bump hucards with nothing but empty space, I believe it's really an extended super thin pcb folded within the raised/bump area, there is reference to it, for special games such as populous, there is a battery as well

http://nfggames.com/games/pce/

There is no battery in Populous. It just has extra ram on the card.

[imparanoic]

are you sure about the raised/bump hucards with nothing but empty space, I believe it's really an extended super thin pcb folded within the raised/bump area, there is reference to it, for special games such as populous, there is a battery as well

http://nfggames.com/games/pce/

There is no battery in Populous. It just has extra ram on the card.

according to this site there is a internal battery inside popolus

http://nfggames.com/games/pce/

http://www.videogameden.com/article.htm?hu

[Ray]

according to this site there is a internal battery inside popolus

http://nfggames.com/games/pce/

http://www.videogameden.com/article.htm?hu

It's a common misconception due to the HuCARD being called a "ROMRAM" HuCARD like the Tennokoe Bank card. It just has more RAM and the bump was used for labeling reasons rather than protecting a battery.(SFII', Super System Card and the Arcade Card Pro were like this as well, although the Arcade Card Duo used a stick-on label instead.)

[Nazi NecroPhile]

And what bump are you talking about?

The hump on the hucard.  Duh.

It's not special....

It's special simply because it's Street Fighter II.  Its higher MSRP wasn't to cover manufacturing costs, it was because the license was surely expensive and because they could pad profits.  Again, duh.

Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.

The CGII isn't relevant, seeing as the CGI and Shuttle were no longer being manufactured by the time it came out.  As for the Shuttle and CGI, the Shuttle was cheaper (19,800 yen vs. 24,800); obviously the point was to snag a few more sales from people that wanted a cheaper entry point.  The Shuttle's low sales show that that market was small, but they also show that it didn't hurt the CGI's sales.  It's a non-issue.

Oh, the Arcade Card wasn't supposed to sell?  Yeah, sure.

That's not what I said.  Not even close.

Then why was it apparently easy to get whole cases of sealed copies of the first Arcade Card game, Fatal Fury 2, for years?  There's only one reason why that could be, and it's that they significantly overprinted copies of the game, surely under-estimating how well the Arcade Card would do.

Yeah, I'm sure Fatal Fury Special had nothing to do with its lackluster sales.  For your argument to hold water, there'd have to be an equal number of sealed Arcade Cards available.

You can also see the Arcade Card's failure when you look at its games released and games supported list -- most of the games that require the Arcade Card are from 1994, while there are only two from '95 and just one from '96.

Wrong.  Four are from '95, so 42% of the AC games came out after '94; hardly the immediately abandoned failure you want it to be.

Even just Arcade Card-enhanced games thinned out badly in 1995 versus 1994...

Wrong again.  7 of the 19 came out in '95, meaning 37% came out the second year; and PCE releases in general followed a similar decline, with 84 in '94 and only 39 in '95.

... and there were no more after 1995 -- all 1996, 1997, and 1999 releases, except for that one 1996 game which requires it, are regular Super CD titles.

Still, that's 10%.  It's not like new games were being developed like crazy after '95; and of the whopping ten titles you're whining about, at least two of 'em were developed years earlier (before the AC existed).

[TurboXray]

Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.  SFII is just a standard dual-jewel case with two standard 1991+ HuCard-holding plastic trays inside, just like all the other Japanese games from 1991 on use.  There's nothing special about it other than that they used a dual-jewel in order to get more shelf space for the game.

 Just a standard dual-jewel case? As if that was standard for hucards. That's the whole point; the jewel case sets it apart from other 'average' hucard games. SF2 is presented as a special item/released.

 My point being, they could have used a standard jewel case and a normal sized hucard format (no bump).  I'm not sure how I can make this simpler to understand. It was marketed as something special/different/etc. The price they charged, does not realistically reflect the prices hucards would have become as they expanded in size.

Just because the hucard and PCB form factor are small, doesn't mean that roms were costly to manufacture. The size of an actual rom, in a large DIP package, is actually tiny. NEC chose glop-top method, but shallow surface mount packages were also an option (which the arcade card did use). SF2 uses three roms (4+8+8), but they could have easily used one single rom. Hell, they could have even consolidated the rom and mapper chip in one. Anyway, the point being that size of SF2 hucard (rom space) is not an accurate reflection of what the cost would have been to keep the hucard format progressing and expanding to a larger storage need.

And what bump are you talking about?  Are you talking about the case insides, or the outside?  Outside, it's a completely normal PCE dual-jewel case.  Inside, it's got two normal 1991-on HuCard holders.  It's not special, apart from using a dual-jewel -- which as Necromancer points out, they also used in Populous.  I don't have that game, but I do have several other games with that same kind of HuCard tray in a single jewelcase, such as Spiral Wave, Druaga, and Bomberman '93.  I'm sure anything from late 1991 on uses it.  SFII uses regular HuCard holders in a regular dual-jewel case.

How could you not understand what I meant by 'bump', especially in relation to SF2, and be part of the PCE community?  Hucard bumps are famous. People have been curious for years, what was under those bumps.

[CrackTiger]

Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.

Then this must seem completely ridiculous to you:

/n64c1.jpg
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[ClodBusted]

Even though I can't really contribute anything useful for this topic, I'd like to thank you all for your thoughts, opinions and insights. They make this thread very enjoyable to read.

[SamIAm]

I have yet to find a single reliable-looking number for sales of any particular Japanese hucard, which pretty much brings my data-based analysis to a close. I'll chime in real quick on all the hubbub about add-ons and the Arcade Card, though. 

On one hand, I think that the PCE-CD expansion and the Super System Card 3.0 are both examples of add-ons that actually worked, and undoubtedly improved the fate of the system(s) they became part of. The 3.0 Card in particular seems like quite a gamble when you think about it, but everyone pulled completely on the same rope, and it all worked out. Interestingly, if you check a release list, you can see how within about 1 year of the 3.0 system coming out, a significant majority of PCE releases were SCD games.

On the other hand, the Arcade Card was probably not the best idea in the world. It's just that it wound up not mattering much anyway.

See, if NEC had had their act together, they would have released a system with a fighting chance against the Saturn and the Playstation. What they actually released - the PC-FX - was so terrible that it didn't sell as much in three years as the competition sold in literally a few days. But imagine a scenario where NEC had a viable all-around strategy. Part of that has to consist of rallying their fan-base around their next generation console. And of course, one of the most important parts of getting your fans to make that transition is gracefully winding down the previous generation system.

For both consumers and developers, the Arcade Card would have been a distraction, and it would have diverted resources away from the PC-FX and the Super CD system just like the 32X did with the Saturn and the Genesis. That's why however much they are embraced in the PCE library, most of the Arcade Card games...like Fatal Fury2, Art of Fighting, Sapphire...these should have been PC-FX games. And they should have been running on a much better PC-FX.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Even if the Arcade Card had never been released, those games likely wouldn't have been a part of the PC-FX library anyway.  They would've been on Super CD or not exist, as that's not the types of games NEC wanted for the FX.

[SamIAm]

That's also kind of the problem.

I mean, there are a few ways that NEC could have approached the PC-FX. Maybe they could have made the anime-heavy digital-comic-book/pseudo-RPG thing work if they made the hardware cheap, courted developers and put no limits on the content. But if they were going to use a conventional approach, they probably should have not only revised the hardware, but the software, too. The PCE was the first system with Street Fighter II, right? Why shouldn't its successor cash in on that fighting game heritage?

EDIT: By the way, if anyone wants to see a bunch of Japanese nerds talking about this same crap, here you go. Just beware, it ain't pretty:
http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1397208601/
http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1399556230/

The second thread is currently active.

[Dicer]

Lol, this went off the rails....still a good discussion though

[Ray]

On the other hand, the Arcade Card was probably not the best idea in the world. It's just that it wound up not mattering much anyway.

From what I've heard, the Arcade Cards were originally scheduled to be released in December 1993, but due to a fire in a resin plant in Taiwan and subsequent severe shortage of RAM chips worldwide it's release was delayed to March 1994 along with Fatal Fury 2.

If it was released a little earlier, it might have done better, although 4 months probably doesn't matter much. Tengai Makyou III was also originally planned for the ACD format, but that got shifted to the PC-FX.(which got cancelled later)

[TurboXray]

IIRC, the arcade card was in working prototype sometime in 1992. Art of Fighting was in development in early 1993 (you can find this info in the source code of Art of Fighting for the ACD) and if I read the docs right, was finished fall of 1993.

[SamIAm]

That's pretty interesting. I still think that the Arcade Card would have threatened to damage a better thought-out PC-FX, but this is all so hypothetical anyway that it doesn't really matter.

By the way, one of the more enjoyable links I've found, again in Japanese, is a list of people talking about their five favorite PCE games, regrouped according to game:

http://www.openspc2.org/~bgm/CON/PCTL.html

[CrackTiger]

The PC-FX isn't a direct successor to the PC Engine the same way that Sega and Nintendo consoles that followed one another. The PC-FX seems like it was strictly an NEC console, even though it contained PCE hardware. Hudson treated the Saturn as more of a successor to their PCE early on with game release anouncements. Their ACD games would not have been planned for PC-FX and the Neo Geo ports in particular were a tribute to their own hardware.

People like to think of the PCE as NEC's brand/console because they're used to things being simple and too often that Nintendo leads the way and everyone does things the same way. It's much easier to fuel console wars when the sides are narrow targets.

[SamIAm]

Hudson designed most of the Ironman, all of the PC-FX, and apparently all of the software development tools. They were the ones who decided to put the emphasis on streaming FMV instead of 3D rendering. Want more Japanese links? I've got one by an executive director from Hudson talking all about it.

Hudson was always in bed with other systems. I think that if their vision of the PC-FX came to fuller fruition on the sales side, they would have supported it much more. Two of the three launch titles were by Hudson.