Official sale numbers of the pc engine

[BigusSchmuck]

Just curious, whats the official worldwide sales of the pc engine console and family? I find wikipedia's figures pretty underwhelming...

[Tatsujin]

I have heard of 7 millions, but there are different figures out there.

[Bernie]

A lot

[RegalSin]

You need to add the release data, of all the consoles together.
Then subtract them number of sold units, and round off by each release. The rounded off number will give you an idea of who brought
what, at what time. The original suitcase is the standard model, along with the RF pc engine. Those two have the primary answer.

[SamIAm]

The number that people are saying on the Japanese internet is 3.92 million units shipped for the domestic Japanese market, unknown for the international markets. One website I found has someone saying 5.84 million units shipped worldwide. The CD-ROM userbase in Japan was apparently around 2 million.

http://www.d6.dion.ne.jp/~yosou-oh/hard2.htm
http://unkar.org/r/retro/1230618840

Curiously, I keep seeing people saying 400,000 units of the PC-FX were shipped.

Maybe the key word in all this is shipped, not sold.

EDIT: I hate to admit it, but 2chan puts on some fun flame wars between old systems. Some of the slams read like haiku.

"The Mega-Something?
I remember that system
when I take a shit."

[RegalSin]

2 million was probably the Japanese release, while 5.8 was that plus the turbo grafx units sold. So how many turbos was released in the USA.
Also into consideration, the Japanese product line was most likely over produced, and people sold it aboard.

Here is another intresting, topic. How many bee-cards units were manifactured?

[grimm]

I thought the numbers would be higher, since the pc engine was the second most popular console system in japan in the mid 90's...

[BigusSchmuck]

Curious on what the sales numbers on the pc engine gt and turbo express? Or are they included on wikipedia page? So many unanswered questions...

[henrycsc]

The July 1989 issue of VG&CE quotes NEC sales figures at 1.5 million units sold by April 1989.  If this is accurate, it would seem that the numbers are probably closer to the 7 million mark Tats mentioned (once you factor in all of the variations of the hardware).

If you had actual hard figures, the IFU and SCDRom2 probably should not be counted as separate units, since you needed another console to actually play anything.

What about the Super Grafx?

[SamIAm]

The PCE may have come in second, but the SNES was first by a mile. I haven't met anyone under the age of 60 here who doesn't know what an SNES is, but it's much more rare to meet someone who knows about the PCE.

1.5 million is almost exactly 25% of the total worldwide sales from that link, and considering that the sales figures almost certainly tapered off over time, I bet it's accurate.

[CrackTiger]

I thought that it was supposed to be around 11 million as far units that were counted and that Duo's, SuperGrafx, Laseractive, computer combos, GT and LT might have been excluded?

[SignOfZeta]

I thought the numbers would be higher, since the pc engine was the second most popular console system in japan in the mid 90's...

By 1995, "the mid 90s", I'm not sure PCEs were even being produced. The FX came out in '94. I remember seeing ads featuring both the FX and Duo RX, but I'm not sure if they were actually still making RXs or if they were just trying to move the old stuff.

The SFC ruled Japan from the time of its launch until the Playstation took over. There really was no second place. The only time the PCE lead the pack was after everyone in Japan had a Famicom and the Super Famicom hadn't come out yet.

As for the underwhelming figures, don't forget that consoles and games in general now sell in much larger numbers than they did back then. Back then a medium budget game could sell 50,000 units and make the company a huge profit. Now people are selling 400,000 copies of something and then laying people off because they needed to sell a million to break even.

[SamIAm]

For a country with 120-odd million people and probably half as many households, ~4 million sales of an expensive home-electronics product is fairly decent. All the more so if it's not even the leading product.

I'm only guessing, but I bet that it was strong sales of quality CD games that kept the PCE afloat until '95, not strong sales of the system itself.

[spenoza]

Well, we know what contributes to high console sales these days: the fact that the flippin' things break when you look at them wrong.

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Wikipedia says around 10 million for worldwide sales of PCE/TG16-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars

Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom – 49.10 million (Japan: 17.17 million, the Americas: 23.35 million, Other: 8.58 million)[8][33]

Mega Drive/Genesis – 40 million (United States: 20 million,[34] Rest of the world: 15 million,[35] Tec Toy: 2 million,[14] Majesco: 2 million,[14] Sega Nomad: 1 million[36])
    
TurboGrafx-16 – 10 million (US: 2.5 million)[37]

  If it's on wikipedia, it must be true.

[SamIAm]

Reference #37 is this article.

I don't have proof either way right now, but I'll see if I can't find a source quoting directly from NEC in Japan.

[SignOfZeta]

Well, we know what contributes to high console sales these days: the fact that the flippin' things break when you look at them wrong.

There is no question in my mind that at least %15-20 of all PS2s and 360s were sold to replace broken ones. No question whatsoever. I remember working at a game store when GTA: Vice City came out and I couldn't believe how many people bought new PS2s with the game saying that their last one broke while playing GTA3 or some shitty sports game.

MS warranteed litterally millions of 360s during their "nice" period but they aren't bein as nice anymore.

I remember when PS1s were dropping like flies and I thought it was bad. Hell, the PS1 is like a CoreGrafx compared to the PS2 and 360.

[BigusSchmuck]

Well, we know what contributes to high console sales these days: the fact that the flippin' things break when you look at them wrong.

There is no question in my mind that at least %15-20 of all PS2s and 360s were sold to replace broken ones. No question whatsoever. I remember working at a game store when GTA: Vice City came out and I couldn't believe how many people bought new PS2s with the game saying that their last one broke while playing GTA3 or some shitty sports game.

MS warranteed litterally millions of 360s during their "nice" period but they aren't bein as nice anymore.

I remember when PS1s were dropping like flies and I thought it was bad. Hell, the PS1 is like a CoreGrafx compared to the PS2 and 360.

You mean like putting your playstation upside down so it will work? http://n1ckn1ck.blogspot.com/2007/12/playstation.html