PCEngineFans.com - The PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 Community Forum
NEC PC-Engine/SuperGrafx => PC Engine/SuperGrafx Discussion => Topic started by: sunteam_paul on January 26, 2010, 01:32:50 AM
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I had this random thought today, but how big do you think the PC Engine/TG-16 fanbase is - discounting those that purely buy and sell for profit?
It always seems that there are really not that many 'active' PCE fans - there are a handful of regular members here, ME and Rising Stuff (PCE section) forums are always very quiet. Are we a dying breed perhaps, or are they just all hanging out somewhere else? I guess that the PCE/TG-16 will always be the underdog when compared to Nintendo or Sega, but it would be interesting to wave a magic wand and know just how many interested people there still are.
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I think sadly the PC-Engine Fanbase is surprisingly very small, I would of guessed it was alot larger but as you say most forum sites are pretty dead revealing just how small and specialized it is.
Saying that though the TG-16 Fanbase appears to be growing at the moment, how long for and how much bigger it will get, who knows...
:D
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it is still bigger as it seems to be. some also hanging in the assembler forums or can't speak nuff english to hang around on english boards anyway (what i'm doin' here?). f.e. lot of french, spain, italian, portuguese, germans :lol: etc.
i know at least 10 to 15 other swiss peeps which are pce fans and not on this or any other english boards. and everyone knows of how small the lil swiss is.
then also don't forget about the even huger japanese fanbase.
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There seems to be a fair amount of peeps on a few boards (CAG, DP), and like tats said... french, and spanish sites. If those peeps on the other boards are here, they aren't "active" here, or have different names, but I see more than a few enter into various conversations about TG/PCE.
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I'd say it's a relatively small number of active fans when compared to some other systems, but it's a rather large number of fans when compared to original sales (outside of Japan, of course).
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There are deffinitly more then it seems. There are some that post only at the Magic Engine boards, some at the Ancient Land of Ys boards, some that don't even post anything anywhere, but still buy the games & look forward to homebrew's. I know one personally whose a huge Turbo fan, but, doesn't go to forums or anything. Some people just don't have the time. I can understand that, as I've had to limit my forum surfing so that I can live a semi normal life outside the internet, & *gasp* actually play the games once in awhile. I seriously was just surfing too many boards, I had to do some pick & choosing.
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I think the fanbase overall is still small even if there are fans lurking off the internets.
The local game show I ran the Insanity booth at, alot of people saw the PCE/TG and were like "Oh that thing" or "i played it some once". Not alot of dedicated fans. Kinda depressing.
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Excellent question, sunteam_paul.
I've wondered this myself.
Here are a bunch of factors to consider:
1. Some folks have an exceedingly narrow interest in PCE (i.e. their favorite franchise). Akumajyou Dracula X Chi no Rondo, anyone?
2. In that vein, old-skool shoot-em-up fans eventually familiarize themselves with PCE. At least these folks are interested in exploring an entire genre in the PCE library. I'm sure this applies to other genres as well... to a lesser extent.
3. Some folks have a fleeting interest in PCE. They don't stick around for long.
4. Some folks love PCE, but don't find the forums sufficiently endearing and/or engaging.
E. I thought Wii's Virtual Console would really "popularize" TG-16/PCE... and it has, to an extent, but the stagnant VC has silenced our best "promotional too".
F. The Swiss love PCE.
G. .....:)
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I think all the VC did was spread the word to people who are either severely misinformed, or want to use TG/PCE gameplay footage as more pro-SNES / pro-Genesis propaganda.
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I had the bright idea of actually checking the Analytics data for my site. It reckons there have been nearly 49,000 unique visitors which seems to me extremely unlikely, even though spiders and bots are not counted in the data. But even if you drop that to a quarter to discount those that have stumbled upon it by accident, that's still an awful lot of people. Perhaps it's not such a small fanbase after all.
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Where's Joe? I wonder how the stats for Sega-16 look in comparison.
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probably like 12 dudes
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It's hard to tell how big it is. One thing I do know is there is a lot of interest/curiosity out there.
I visit alot of different videogame/computer related forums and there is always at
least one thread about the NEC systems.
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Perhaps we should start an awareness campaign, as obviously not enough people have learned to OBEY PC ENGINE.
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Perhaps we should start an awareness campaign, as obviously not enough people have learned to OBEY PC ENGINE.
There's no such thing as 'enough'. It's like having 'too much' money; can't be done.
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I had the bright idea of actually checking the Analytics data for my site. It reckons there have been nearly 49,000 unique visitors which seems to me extremely unlikely, even though spiders and bots are not counted in the data. But even if you drop that to a quarter to discount those that have stumbled upon it by accident, that's still an awful lot of people. Perhaps it's not such a small fanbase after all.
It would be awesome if that represented the PCE fanbase, but look at the duration of the visits and decide how long a person needs to stay for it to be considered a "legitimate" visit.
I say this, not to be cruel, but because many "visitors" are searching for something very specific (not necessarily PCE-related) and leave a site once they get (or don't get) the info they need.
Others are simply curious about the PCE (rightfully so!), but aren't necessarily familiar with PCE.
That said, I'm glad it's 49,000 and not 4,900 unique visitors per month!
Perhaps we should start an awareness campaign, as obviously not enough people have learned to OBEY PC ENGINE.
(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/mount_fuji_holiday_pce.jpg)
Yes, I'll keep recycling this until someone tells me to stop!
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build me one of those!
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That said, I'm glad it's 49,000 and not 4,900 unique visitors per month!
Eek, that's 49k unique since September 2008 when the stats started up.
This last month I've had just over 4200 unique visitors, an average of 8 page views per visit and getting roughly 215 hits per day. The bounce rate is around 42% so that's nearly half who browse straight away from their entry page.
Oh, and I want one of those too.
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As Esteban talked about Switzerland, I will speak about my country (Spain). Sadly, in Spain the PC Engine is not very known. In fact in those years we had only Sega and Nintendo (and previously Atari). In those years Spain was not updated as far as videogames is concerned. Now things have changed a lot and we are updated, but in those days people didn't know the PC Engine, nor the Jaguar, 3d0, Philips CD-I... we only knew Sega and Nintendo :cry:
Nowadays, internet has made that many people can know these old systems, and the PC Engine was known in first instance by the fantastic Akumajo Dracula X... but luckily there is people that have began to love the system too.
My personal case is different: my brother had a Sega Saturn, and in the game Saturn Bomberman (in the battle mode) the characters that you can pick were... characters from the PC Engine games!! There were Bonk, Manjimaru, M. Higgins... I began to investigate who were those cool characters and I knew the PC Engine then... so maybe I am the first spaniard who knew that system ;-)
How much people in Spain does know the system now? Well, many people but... how much of them really LOVE/OBEY the system? It's hard to say, but I guess that we are very few. Anyone there? ;-)
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More statistics:
Assuming that anyone who visits the site more than 25 times can be classed as a fan, or at least pretty interested in the system, that makes 6,253 unique visitors since the beginning of this year.
The top ten visiting countries are:
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. France
4. Germany
5. Italy
6. Japan
7. Canada
8. Brazil
9. Spain
10. Sweden
However, when you look at the stats by city, London is the clear winner.
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pcedaisakusen is quite a good representative. it counts 156 users with at least 10 games registered and overall 303 users in total.
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More statistics:
Assuming that anyone who visits the site more than 25 times can be classed as a fan, or at least pretty interested in the system, that makes 6,253 unique visitors since the beginning of this year.
The top ten visiting countries are:
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. France
4. Germany
5. Italy
6. Japan
7. Canada
8. Brazil
9. Spain
10. Sweden
However, when you look at the stats by city, London is the clear winner.
Wow... Can you write the number of visitors of each country? I was surprised by the fact that Spain was in the top ten... How many countries do appear in your list?
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Wow... Can you write the number of visitors of each country? I was surprised by the fact that Spain was in the top ten... How many countries do appear in your list?
96 countries in total.
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which country is on place 96? let's see if we heard of its name before :lol:
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Looking at total stats, there's actually 147 countries. The last 16 are the same, each with 1 hit, but they include Cuba, Iraq and Vanuatu.
There have been no hits from places like Papua New Guinea, Serbia and Montenegro, North Korea and Greenland.
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In France, the fanbase is quite big, I think. The "Bible PC Engine Vol.1" that we released last year sold much more copies than we thought at first (I'm not allowed to say how many copies were sold, though). A lot of gamers who couldn't find or afford a PCE back in the time are now trying to get one and at Necstasy, we have a lot of members who sold their pce stuff 10 years ago who come back to our beloved machine.
We currently have 500+ members. Of course, they're not all very active but still, it's not too bad I think.
When I read other VG forums, many members are very intrigued by the pce. Our book seems to have been very influencial here as it was edited by an editor that's getting very famous here.
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The "Bible PC Engine Vol.1" that we released last year sold much more copies than we thought at first.
Any news on a translation and/or Vol. 2?
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(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/mount_fuji_holiday_pce.jpg)
That's my desktop background now :)
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Some more interesting statistics:
The most popular game page is Ghouls 'n Ghosts.
The least popular game page is Himitsu no Hanazono (Technically it's J Thunder but that page has only been added recently)
The least viewed pages tend to be Chris Bucci's video reviews, the Ultrabox minisite (won't be rushing the next one out soon then!) and the screenshots of opening/ending scenes.
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no hits from North Korea and Greenland.
not that surprising. in the one country there's only one man who has internet and he seems not to be so much into pce'ing. the other probably never heard of the internet before.
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hey is my wallpaper too. lol.
i noticed France seems to be pretty PCE-hip, based off the box of Insanity's i sent over there.
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no hits from North Korea and Greenland.
not that surprising. in the one country there's only one man who has internet and he seems not to be so much into pce'ing.
That's not acceptable. We should send him a strongly worded letter and a copy of Xevious.
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i noticed France seems to be pretty PCE-hip, based off the box of Insanity's i sent over there.
the french had that inofficial PCE goods deticated distributer called sodipeng. they did this quite in a proffessional waz with standard moding the pces to RGB, making french instruction booklets, high quality game flyers etc.
a lot of the europe countries around ordered from them.
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no hits from North Korea and Greenland.
not that surprising. in the one country there's only one man who has internet and he seems not to be so much into pce'ing.
That's not acceptable. We should send him a strongly worded letter and a copy of Xevious.
good idea, but I would go more with a legion or so.
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That said, I'm glad it's 49,000 and not 4,900 unique visitors per month!
Eek, that's 49k unique since September 2008 when the stats started up.
This last month I've had just over 4200 unique visitors, an average of 8 page views per visit and getting roughly 215 hits per day. The bounce rate is around 42% so that's nearly half who browse straight away from their entry page.
Well, I feel a lot better knowing that your monthly unique visitors is ~4,200 because I only get ~2,200 per month.
"Holy cr*p! 49,000 unique visitors a month? I wish I had that many in a year, let alone a month!" I said to myself. It was insanely humbling. :)
Some basic info:
1.3 visits/visitor
2.53 Pages/Visit
Visit Duration
00s -30 s 77.9 %
30s -2mn 7.4 %
2mn-5mn 4.7 %
5mn-15mn 4.9 %
15mn-30mn 2.3 %
30mn-1h 1.9 %
1h+ 0.4 %
Only 9.5% of visits lasted 5+ minutes, and...
Number of visits: 2845 - Average: 159 seconds...
...so, every month, only 256 visits last 5+ minutes...
(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/mount_fuji_tg16.gif)
That's my desktop background now :)
hey is my wallpaper too. lol.
You are too kind. :)
I can make a high-resolution version, exact dimensions you need, if you want.
Heck, I can even alter it to your specifications: shadow gradient on left for PC (or vice-versa for mac), so desktop icons are easier to read... "OBEY resized/raised to fit above task bar...
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I'm averaging 7.76 pages/visit and an average time on site of 5:57.
(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/mount_fuji_tg16.gif)
I can make a high-resolution version, exact dimensions you need, if you want.
The low resolution and ill fitting appearance of it gives it some sort of charm. It would be less effective if it were all tidied up.
I want to know where you got it though :D
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im a big pc engine fan,but i also buy and sell pc engines and all related items,a lot of my success selling pc engines etc comes from my love of the console which has resulted in an extensive knowledge about it,when i list something on ebay i go on about pce excellent arcade conversions that got magical pce treatment that other contempary consoles never got. ive met many young teenagers that have bought pc engines,a system that was out before they were born,maybe these boys are exception to the rule but i think xbox live arcade psn and wii have started a retro revival,in my opinion pce isnt dieing because a lot 2d shmup fans regard pce as one of the greatest formats for the genre they love.salamander price seems to be going up constantly lately on ebay.The bigest problem for pce or any discontinued console is that the stock is always geting smaller and deman exceeds supply ,then you end up with sky high prices,look at fm towns marty,a couple of years ago you could get one for around 50 60quid but now it costs at least 220quid,there is also emulation which is a grey area but many peoples first encounter with pce was through emulation so long live our beloved pc engine,i have a mint white one that ill never sell
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(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/mount_fuji_tg16.gif)
The low resolution and ill fitting appearance of it gives it some sort of charm. It would be less effective if it were all tidied up.
I want to know where you got it though :D
I took that photo... on new year's day (give or take a few days)... :)
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No, I meant where you got that ghastly but great Mount Fuji thing.
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I also think the PC Engine fanbase is rather small, especially when compared to other systems. I feel that the PCE's popularity increased when the VC was at its peak but it's still a very niche system... The fanbased in indeed relatively large in France, hence the system was "officially" available - back in he days we had access to a fairly large amount of original Japanese games, even games such as God Panic ! This also helped later on when nostalgia kicked in as these games were available for cheap all over second hand shops.
There's something I still wonder today though - do you know how big the PCE fanbase is in Japan ?
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The only thing I know is that it seems the PCE is quite known as 30 year old guies are concerned. Indeed, when I show the PC Engine Bible to japanese friends, when they see the Necromancer review, they will all say "I know this game, it actually was the first video game that could show kanjis on screen!". Things like this. Apart from that, I could not say.
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Hmm (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=PC-Engine&word2=Megadrive)
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Could it be because of the word "PC" ?
If I run it again between quotes I get something like that :( (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22PC+Engine%22&word2=%22Megadrive%22)
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I'm 101% sure it has to do with the word "PC" in the first example.
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This one (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22Obey+PC+Engine%22&word2=%22Obey+Mega+Drive%22) seems to have broke it. I guess that means it's a tie.
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Awesome ! This last one even crashed my session of Mozilla ! Waaaay too powerful stuff ! :wink:
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Strange, it doesn't like this one (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22obey+turbografx%22&word2=%22obey+jaguar%22) either.
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This is all because of the evil chinese hackers from hell.
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It's so busy OBEYING that it forgets to give us the result.
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It's so busy OBEYING that it forgets to give us the result.
or we aren't obeying enough to see it!
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Paul, the stats refer to your site or this site ?
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Paul, the stats refer to your site or this site ?
My site.
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1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. France
4. Germany
5. Italy
6. Japan
7. Canada
8. Brazil
9. Spain
10. Sweden
I helped with both #6 and $7 in the past three years. :)
I do fairly well selling random PCE/PC-FX stuff at Racketboy.com and Digitpress.com, so people there are definitely interested in NEC's systems. Personally, I keep a white PCE, a Duo and a GT. I've had pretty much every version go through my home except the LT, which I just fondled for a bit in a store.
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i helped with 6 :)