That's all great information Dan. I guess I'm just not understanding how it would take a lot of money from TTI to get games released in the US that were already released in Japan (and popular there). This goes for Konami, Capcom, or any other company. It would have benefited Capcom to make as much money as possible by releasing SF2 on as many systems as possible (which they just about did). Why would they require a lot of licensing dollars just to release their own game in the US when it was already released in Japan? That'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, realistically, how many copies could they have sold on the Turbografx? 15K? 25K? More? Even if it's not a huge amount, profit is profit. I'm sure everyone could have come to *some* sort of agreement to get it done if they had really wanted to.
Here's your answer, TTI had about a 40 million dollar operating budget as a whole company from NEC. That's not just for licensing games but for advertising, distribution, purchase of hardware, and everything, just a fraction of what Nintendo and Sega spent on say Advertising alone. For it to be worth it to Konami to license Dracula X, even 1 million dollars would have been a huge blow to TTI to spend, especially on a game where there were around 30K (and this is a generous number) Super CD-ROM systems in circulation in North America. Even if everyone who owned a Duo or Super CD card bought the game, it would be difficult to turn a profit on such an expensive license and the risk was astronomical.
As far as Street Fighter 2 goes, HuCards weren't cheap to manufacture (and all had to be manufactured by Hudson of Japan which was part of the reason NEC tried to get out of the business by starting TTI), by 1993 when CE was released in Japan the US TurboGrafx was basically only sold by Toys R us, Babbages, EB Games, Software Etc and smaller independent game stores. It was also developed by Hudson licensed from Capcom.
So there's two possible ways a US release would have been handled, way #1 Capcom publishes it themselves. Seems simple enough, Capcom would license the port done by Hudson soft. This would cost Capcom money in one way or another. Next they would need a licensed 6-button controller to be released in the US, this would require TTI buying and distributing additional inventory just for one game. So then they need TTI's full cooperation on this. By the time all of these factors could be worked out, the Genesis and SNES versions of Champion Edition would already have been out, and as I mentioned the Turbo was a niche platform. If people who owned a Turbo REALLY wanted Street Fighter II CE they could very easily have bought it since they're highly likely to have owned one of the other systems.
Way #2 Would involve TTI licensing it from Capcom (the Hudson part shouldn't be an issue), but they still have to buy large inventory of a 20ish meg HuCard (read expensive to produce) of a game that would soon (if not already) be out for two other platforms. In addition to having to buy inventory for a 6-button controller. Remember, all of TTI's inventory HAD to come from NEC and Hudson of Japan. The cost would have been high, and the payoff minimal. If Street Fighter II CE was a timed exclusive (for a year or more) then it might have been beneficial, but it wasn't.
Added in edit:
As for a 6 button controller issue... Sega released one almost specifically for Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition, so I don't see why it would be an issue for the Turbografx to have the same. Hell, pack in a controller with the game for $60 and you'd sell a bunch of those. Then you could sell an extra controller on the side. As for having to purchase a Turbo Tap, that was just a dumb and short-sighted decision all around.
The 6-button controller problem is bigger than it sounds, remember TTI has very little money to operate. This requires, producing lots of 6-button controllers and releasing them in the US. Creating packaging for the 6-button controllers in the US, and then potentially getting stuck with unsold inventory of 6-button controllers in the US. This is also why the arcade card didn't come out here.
As far as packing the controller in with the game, the problem here is SF II was an expensive HuCard to produce to begin with, at 60.00 (only 10.00 more than a normal release) the profit margin would be little to non-existent for a bundle at that price. With a huge risk of excess expensive inventory.
I should probably add this as well. Nintendo of America is a subsidiary of Nintendo of Japan who produced the Super NES and its official hardware. TTI had to buy their inventory from a combination of NEC and Hudson from their operating budget. Something like a new controller rollout was far easier for Sega than for TTI because TTI had too many loops to jump through to get something like that off the ground.
Further Edit: I should probably give you some background on how TTI was set up and why that was such a disaster. In early 1992, NEC Home Electronics USA decided they were sick of losing money on the TurboGrafx 16. There were a number of reasons they were losing money on it, one of which was they had to purchase most of their software inventory from Hudson soft who also got a cut of the entire business. In early 1992 Hudson and NEC came to an agreement to continue marketing the TurboGrafx in the US. Realizing that Sega had a huge Holiday season and that catching up to them was no longer likely and that they wouldn't have the interest in investing as much money as Nintendo, they came up with the idea of starting a partnership firm called Turbo Technologies Inc to handle and market the system in the US. TTI was made up of a combination of Hudson and NEC employees who were then given a very strict budget and goals. The problem was they were still subjected to the same limits NEC was, they couldn't take bids on who could produce cheaper HuCards, all large licensing decisions had to be made by their Japanese counterparts. This led to very few options and very little money to license with. I DO know that an attempt was made to acquire Street Fighter II, but for the reasons I described above it was not pursued.
The Duo launched in Fall 1992 and by early 1993 a lot of stores started removing TurboGrafx products from their stores, this put TTI in a really tough situation as recruiting further third party publishers in the US (keep in mind, most of the larger Nintendo publishers like Konami and Capcom had only just started publishing for Sega in the US) almost impossible. The terrible franchising agreement set up with Hudson had a lot to do with the failure of the TurboGrafx as a platform and was not corrected when the new company was formed.
Topic: A Pat the NES Punk Christmas - Pat Examines the Turbografx 16 (Read 614 times)