I spent a f*ckload of money on games back then, a lot more than I do now, and most of it was spent...on SFC and SCD games, actually. That and the arcade. I mean, I played almost every AC game (had a Die Hard near me) but Mad Stalker and the SNK ports just didn't do it for me so I passed until ACs were really cheap. Now that I have almost every AC game I can honestly say I made the right choice. From what I can tell, the people in Japan did pretty much the same thing.
Wow. Thank you for proving
original my point. Software sales drive hardware sales. See my later part of this thread as to
why the AC failed.
Even if you are hella rich you can still see that it costs $120 more to play Fatal Fury 2 on the PC Engine than it does to play it on the SFC...and if you want a superior version of an SNK game, and you don't mind the huge load times, there was also the Neo CD, released about the same time.
One, your logic fails in that you assume FF2 only and the AC. Who the hell is going to one addon card to play 1 game (a port at that)? Your point is invalid. Just because you didn't care for the other ACD games, doesn't mean others don't. Let's take a few games; Mad Stalker, FF2, AoF, Sapphire. Four games off the top of my head. You divide the
one time cost of the card, across the titles you bought. The more AC titles released (and those would include ACD/SCD bi-compatible games with significant additional context for ACD users), the more the original cost of the card becomes irrelevant. It's no different than when you buy a game system, or a DVD player, or whatever. All you're doing is bitching about the end result, and not the source of the problem (which you seem to have trouble formulating). The four repeated points you keep mentioning; price of the card, available titles, additional load times, and the lack of any audience left to buy it - as being the reason why it wasn't successful. The price is a non issue - about the cost of a game and a half or less. The lack of an audience to buy it - bullshit. While the card might have come out later (feb-ish '94), I'll give you that, PCE consumers/softs sales were still strong. And enough to warrant of bringing out the card to begin with. Additional load times - I've already discussed the technical f*ckups of most ACD games (two of them) and how they would have improved, but general logic still holds - if gameplay periods
between loading are longer and/or the visual/animation/gameplay/whatever experience is dramatically increased, the additional length in load times are relatively tolerable (I'm not talking about the extreme load time cases like in some ACD games). Also, see might point in how load times could/would be decreased in the following two years.
And lastly, the available titles.
This is the failure of the AC. The difference isn't as great as between hucards to SCD, than it is from SCD to ACD. Not just that, but CD to SCD was not only needed because of how crippling the 64k of ram the original CD system had, but that the upgrade was solidified in being included in the
new main system - the Duo. Even if they had come out with a new Duo model with AC built in, the conditions weren't the same as when the original Duo came out.
So this addon required a completely different approach to entice existing Duo/PCE consumer base (I highly doubt NEC was expecting to gain any new consumers to its base with AC). Companies were reluctant to develop ACD
only games for such a small audience when the SCD audience was
HUGE in comparison. Therefore it relied on bi-compatible softs to get hardware sales moving. Bi-compatible softs that atleast gave a taste of what a true ACD game meant (which
didn't happen, obviously). That and there weren't enough "show boat" ACD only titles out either. A Far East of Eden only ACD game released in mid '94 would have been a
much bigger pusher of hardware sales than any of the fighting games/ports combined. Matter of fact, bi-compatible ACD/SCD softs would have been the biggest factor in selling these addon cards, more so than ACD only titles. You've said yourself, ACD
only market is much smaller than SCD market and given the time left on the console even if you assume great sales numbers of the arcade card, it still wouldn't have matched it or exceeded it. I'm
not trying to say it would have. I'm saying ACD offered two advantages; bi-compatible games would have
upgraded content, and ACD only games (as little number as they still would be) would offer something that SCD games
couldn't do - if a company wanted to take that route. It's a win/win situation that didn't play out... for the very fact that the existing so called bi-compatible ACD/SCD games that did come out (and there are quite a few of them) was a complete let down on the ACD side/content of the game. It was laughable. Leaving only ACD only games to show any real improvement/difference between SCD/ACD and the only incentive to purchase the card. Thus, failure. I think it's a perfectly safe logical assumption too, that if the ACD sales were much greater and that those users
left near the very end of the consoles life - would more than likely be PCECD consumers with that card. The hardcore/loyal fans are usually the last to go. And the possibility of more ACD only titles that what was put, would have been a reality.
Yeah, they had a user base. An ever shrinking one. Every time a new fancy thingambob came out for PC Engine the user base was fragmented. This is why you can still buy unopened copies of Fatal Fury 2 by the case (literally) on eBay 16 years after its release. Not even mentioning the early PCE gamers who ditched NEC/Hudson before without ever buying a CD system, if %80 of all Duo owners bought an Arcade Card (highly unrealistic), and %80 of those people all bought AC games (also, unrealistic) you still wouldn't have enough sales to generate SFC quantities of revenue.
Who's the hell is making the point that NEC was gonna be level competitive to the SFC at that point? That's just stupid. You need to keep your thoughts/focus in context. Nobody that I can see, is saying how the ACD would generate sales figures anywhere near SFC at that time. Yeah, the PCE softs might have out sold the SFC softs for a
short while - but that's only because of the popularity of the PCE at the time and the limited number of SFC titles at the time of the SFC's release. And fragmented the user base? Are you retarded? They combined the CD unit into the Duo as a single machine for the sake of focus. CD format was now the new machine starting 1991, hucards were the old machine and nothing but a legacy format. Fragmented what? If you're looking at it in the perspective of pce+cd addon+scd, then you're a fool. The so called "addons" were meant to keep existing customers giving them the option of upgrading without having to buy a
whole new system. Be it owners there never have a CD unit (the Super CDROM2 was their option because it included the new SCD 3.0 card in it) or the SCD 3.0 upgrade card for those users that already had purchased the original CD unit. But I'm sure you'll probably come up with some asinine response pointing out all the devices NEC ever came out with and some how try to make it all logically (and I use that word loosely) fit into your point - and how the AC is related/fits in.
