Best selling PC Engine games?

[guyjin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games

The PCEngine and Turbografx-16 aren't listed.
Anyone know where you might find sales numbers for the PCE?

Also, on this side of the Pacific, did any TG16 games sell a million copies? Did they even sell a million turbos?

[runinruder]

Anyone know where you might find sales numbers for the PCE?

No, but I bet Manji Maru would rank way up towards the top of the list. 

Did they even sell a million turbos?

I seem to remember Bill Kunkel speculating in one of his Game Doctor columns late in the Turbo's life that sales of the "various Turbo units" were still "under a million."  Seems like a safe guess to me.  The Turbo's performance in the States was pathetic. 

[Tatsujin]

worldwide they've sold about 7 million units (all variations included).

[nat]

7 million what? Games? Consoles? Avenue 6 pads?

[Necromancer]

Surely Tats was talking consoles, as few games (or Avenue Pad 6s) were sold in multiple variations ( ).  According to GamePro (an infallible source if ever there was one), they sold 2.5 million consoles in the U.S. and a total of 10 million consoles worldwide.

P.S. - Welcome back Tatsujin.

[awack]

I also believe that the Tengai Makyou games were the best selling games on the pc engine, if remember correctly, at least one of them sold 2 or 3 million copies.

[lukester]

I hope nobody minds me bumping this, but I'm curious to know if anybody knows more.

I read somewhere that if a PC Engine game sold at least 30,000 copies, it was a success. Though idk if that was for HuCards or CDs.

I'm sure Wonder Momo sold extremely well, it even had a promotional event.

The Fire Pro and F1 Circus games were also big hits.

[SamIAm]

That "30,000 = success" number was from late 1994.
http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=17044.msg352196#msg352196

I remember searching extensively for numbers of Manji Maru. I think Hudson claimed 300,000, the creator said 200,000, and other sites claim upwards of half a million.

Hucard sofware sales peaked around 1990.
http://nfgworld.com/?p=1508#comment-21492

However, try as I might, I cannot find any specific sales figures of Hucards from reliable sources. I don't think Hudson ever made them available.

[Samuray]

Wouldn't 30,000 have been a pretty high number back then? I would have guessed that many games would have sold between 5,000 and 10,000, with the latter being the line in the sand between success or failure, more or less.
I have nothing to base this on, just a gut feeling. 30,000...whew, that's a lot for niché shmups and whatnot.

[DragonmasterDan]

I seem to remember Bill Kunkel speculating in one of his Game Doctor columns late in the Turbo's life that sales of the "various Turbo units" were still "under a million."  Seems like a safe guess to me.  The Turbo's performance in the States was pathetic. 

Between the three major variations of the Turbo in the US the rough number of how many manufactured were. The TG16 (850,000), The TurboExpress (90,000) and the TurboDuo (50,000) (I have no idea how many LaserActive N-10s were made but it wasn't many). So just under a million manufactured , and with a lot of New Old Stock floating around long after the systems mainstream shelf life had passed makes this seem like a pretty accurate statement.

[A Black Falcon]

For software sales, I've never seen accurate software sales for any PCE games.  It definitely sounds like Tengai Makyou II: Manji Maru is the best-selling CD title, no question, but I'd think the best selling game overall would be a HuCard title since so many more HuCard consoles sold... but maybe not?  I don't know.

The rest of this post is about hardware sales numbers, because we actually have those.

This thread is the one to check out: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=149571125&postcount=1

I seem to remember Bill Kunkel speculating in one of his Game Doctor columns late in the Turbo's life that sales of the "various Turbo units" were still "under a million."  Seems like a safe guess to me.  The Turbo's performance in the States was pathetic. 

Between the three major variations of the Turbo in the US the rough number of how many manufactured were. The TG16 (850,000), The TurboExpress (90,000) and the TurboDuo (50,000) (I have no idea how many LaserActive N-10s were made but it wasn't many). So just under a million manufactured , and with a lot of New Old Stock floating around long after the systems mainstream shelf life had passed makes this seem like a pretty accurate statement.

Where did you get those numbers from?  I don't remember hearing them before.

For the TG16 - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/225466/stalled_engine_the_turbografx16_.php?page=1 says 735,000 to 750,000, with at least a hundred thousand of those or more sold overseas later that generation because they never managed to sell them all in the US.

For the Turbo CD / Duo -  And as for the Turbo CD, Victor Ireland (of Working Designs at the time, TG16/CD developer) estimated several years ago in a NeoGAF post (I could find it if you want) that he thought that the Turbo CD sold 20,000 systems, and the Turbo Duo also about 20,000 Turbo Duo.  He said that with reference to how high an attach rate his Turbo CD games were selling to.  Now his estimate may be as of mid '93 when he stopped supporting the system, I'm not sure, but sales after that were not good, the Duo bombed hard unfortunately. To that I'd add an unknown but probably small number of systems sold by TZD from 1994 on, but over 50,000 for the two combined is... unlikely, sadly, I think. Awesome system, it just didn't sell at all.

As for the TurboExpress, never seen numbers for that system before.


For Japan, according to the sales numbers we have, the PC Engine sold 3.92 million HuCard systems.  The PC Engine CD sold about a million, and the PC Engine Duo line also sold about a million, adding up to 1.92 million CD and Duo systems combined.  These numbers are very plausible, but they do also include too-high numbers for outside-of-Japan sales -- checking the chart (see the link at the top, it's in the first post) it claims 1.77 million PC Engine/TG16 HuCard systems sold outside of Japan, and 100,000 combined CD/Duo systems sold.  I believe the lower numbers I mentioned earlier over these.

[DragonmasterDan]

Where did you get those numbers from?  I don't remember hearing them before.

For the TG16 - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/225466/stalled_engine_the_turbografx16_.php?page=1 says 735,000 to 750,000, with at least a hundred thousand of those or more sold overseas later that generation because they never managed to sell them all in the US.

For the Turbo CD / Duo -  And as for the Turbo CD, Victor Ireland (of Working Designs at the time, TG16/CD developer) estimated several years ago in a NeoGAF post (I could find it if you want) that he thought that the Turbo CD sold 20,000 systems, and the Turbo Duo also about 20,000 Turbo Duo.  He said that with reference to how high an attach rate his Turbo CD games were selling to.  Now his estimate may be as of mid '93 when he stopped supporting the system, I'm not sure, but sales after that were not good, the Duo bombed hard unfortunately. To that I'd add an unknown but probably small number of systems sold by TZD from 1994 on, but over 50,000 for the two combined is... unlikely, sadly, I think. Awesome system, it just didn't sell at all.

As for the TurboExpress, never seen numbers for that system before.


For Japan, according to the sales numbers we have, the PC Engine sold 3.92 million HuCard systems.  The PC Engine CD sold about a million, and the PC Engine Duo line also sold about a million, adding up to 1.92 million CD and Duo systems combined.  These numbers are very plausible, but they do also include too-high numbers for outside-of-Japan sales -- checking the chart (see the link at the top, it's in the first post) it claims 1.77 million PC Engine/TG16 HuCard systems sold outside of Japan, and 100,000 combined CD/Duo systems sold.  I believe the lower numbers I mentioned earlier over these.

I think these numbers came from a variety of sources. I recall hearing that NEC had spent way too much money on TurboGrafx 16 inventory prior to launch and they they had produced 850,000 units.

They did this based on feedback from retailers having just come off of the Holiday season in 1988 where Nintendo had major product shortages (which may or may not have been planned to drive up demand).

They never sold all 850,000 units hence the comment about there being New Old Stock still floating around. I recall someone tied to TTI mentioning that they only had 45-50,000 Turbo Duo units produced, again many wound up as New Old Stock.

The 90,000 TurboExpress unit produced number came from some comment on those being produced at a number of being just under 100,000 units. That was a bit of a guess.

The 20,000 Turbo add-on CD number sounds about right.

[DragonmasterDan]

I think these numbers came from a variety of sources. I recall hearing that NEC had spent way too much money on TurboGrafx 16 inventory prior to launch and they they had produced 850,000 units.

They did this based on feedback from retailers having just come off of the Holiday season in 1988 where Nintendo had major product shortages (which may or may not have been planned to drive up demand).

They never sold all 850,000 units hence the comment about there being New Old Stock still floating around. I recall someone tied to TTI mentioning that they only had 45-50,000 Turbo Duo units produced, again many wound up as New Old Stock.

I just re-read the gamasutra article. I certainly could have been off and it was 750,000 units produced.

[A Black Falcon]

I think these numbers came from a variety of sources. I recall hearing that NEC had spent way too much money on TurboGrafx 16 inventory prior to launch and they they had produced 850,000 units.

They did this based on feedback from retailers having just come off of the Holiday season in 1988 where Nintendo had major product shortages (which may or may not have been planned to drive up demand).

They never sold all 850,000 units hence the comment about there being New Old Stock still floating around. I recall someone tied to TTI mentioning that they only had 45-50,000 Turbo Duo units produced, again many wound up as New Old Stock.

The 90,000 TurboExpress unit produced number came from some comment on those being produced at a number of being just under 100,000 units. That was a bit of a guess.

The 20,000 Turbo add-on CD number sounds about right.

I think these numbers came from a variety of sources. I recall hearing that NEC had spent way too much money on TurboGrafx 16 inventory prior to launch and they they had produced 850,000 units.

They did this based on feedback from retailers having just come off of the Holiday season in 1988 where Nintendo had major product shortages (which may or may not have been planned to drive up demand).

They never sold all 850,000 units hence the comment about there being New Old Stock still floating around. I recall someone tied to TTI mentioning that they only had 45-50,000 Turbo Duo units produced, again many wound up as New Old Stock.

I just re-read the gamasutra article. I certainly could have been off and it was 750,000 units produced.

The Gamasutra number comes from NEC employees from the time, so it does sound credible.  That article was the first time we got a real, credible production number for the system, it was great to see.

The 45-50 thousand Duos manufactured thing is plausible, they could well have made that many but only have sold half of them by summer or fall of '93 because of the system's failure, sure.  Then the rest either sold later on clearance, or went to TZD.

As for the TurboExpress, it's interesting that they seem to have made so many of them.  That's more than you'd think a handheld spinoff of an unsuccessful console would sell.  I wouldn't have guessed almost a hundred thousand, even if I have heard before that it seems to be rarer in Japan than it is in the US...

[DragonmasterDan]

As for the TurboExpress, it's interesting that they seem to have made so many of them.  That's more than you'd think a handheld spinoff of an unsuccessful console would sell.  I wouldn't have guessed almost a hundred thousand, even if I have heard before that it seems to be rarer in Japan than it is in the US...

And again, I'm pulling a lot of this stuff from memory based on magazine articles from back in the day or comments made by people who were "in the know" so under 100,000 could also have meant 60,000. From what I recall about the express they initially produced a very small number of them, they sold well and they replenished their supply sometime later (apparently at an initially higher price) in 1991, and sales dropped off from there.