BKK2 on 25 July 2008
Hand-held video game war rages at electronics show
Chicago Sun-Times; Jun 4, 1990
The hand-held video game wars are escalating, and the battle was hottest at McCormick Place this weekend.
Following the phenomenal success of Nintendo's $90 Game Boy last year, two competing home video game manufacturers showed up at the summer Consumer Electronics Show with their own hand-held video games.
Atari has LYNX, a color hand-held unit it introduced nationally in April for $179. It comes with extra wiring so kids can hook their machines together and play in the car, the playground - anywhere outside the house so their parents can have some TV time to themselves.
NEC has TurboExpress, another pricy, color, hand-held game (it will cost $200 to $250 when it hits store shelves in November) that can play the same game software that its home TurboGrafX uses. That's important because Game Boy and LYNX's game software won't fit in a home game.a home game. Yet TurboExpress has something more: an $80 option that allows you to convert itscolor liquid crystal display to a miniature portable TV set. "Kids are like adults. They're trading up, getting older, and they don't want to play video games just in front of the TV anymore," said Grant Schneider, spokesman for NEC.
Nintendo forecasts it will sell $1 billion in Game Boys this year. Much of the excitement at the Consumer Electronics Show has been in the video game section the last few yearsNintendo, which resuscitated the video game business in 1986 with the introduction of its Nintendo Entertainment System for the home, now has a lock on 80 percent of the $5.1 billion industry.But since the video game industry has gone from a $400 million business to a $5.1 billion industry in only the last four years, experts are waiting for a shakeout on the hardware and software sides of the business. For instance, this Christmas is expected to be do-or-die time for Nintendo's competitors boasting more powerful game systems. Sega's Genesis system and NEC's TurboGrafX, which boast screengraphics that are more arcadelike than Nintendo's, say their units are selling well, but they have a tremendous obstacle in Nintendo's established base. "We think Nintendo is a system for small kids, and when they want to trade up for better, more complex games, they're going to come to us," said AlNilson, Sega's marketing director. Nintendo itself concedes that it expects sales of its bedrock home system to be flat at 9 million units this year. It also acknowledges that a tremendous number of software game titles are out there for its aging machine and that prices have started to fall by as much as 50 percent to 60 percent on those games, which once went for $25 to $45 apiece. It's likely you'll find an early Mario Brothers game - which once sold for upwards of $40, for about $10 to $15 now, and other cheaper titles probably will join the ranks by Christmas. Yet Nintendo spokesman William White says the Japan-based company isn't preparing for the poorhouse: "Ninety-six percent of our systems are still in play, and 80 percent of our players say it's more fun than when they purchased it. . . . We're not finding them shifting to any other competitors, either." He says that Game Boy, which sold 1 million units in the five months after its debut in 1989, will sell 5 million units in 1990. Nintendo will have 70 game titles available for Game Boy this year, compared with 25 titles last year. Yet everyone, even Nintendo, has something to fear in the maturing video game markett of the 1990s, says Bob Gerson, senior editor of the electronics trade publication TWICE. "What this reminds me of is a few years ago where you had Atari in the lead with the old ColecoVision and Intellivision games," Gerson said. "It was still the Atari 2600 that did all the volume, and that never changed until all of them went down in the market collapse of the early 1980s."
Chicago Sun-Times; Jun 4, 1990
The hand-held video game wars are escalating, and the battle was hottest at McCormick Place this weekend.
Following the phenomenal success of Nintendo's $90 Game Boy last year, two competing home video game manufacturers showed up at the summer Consumer Electronics Show with their own hand-held video games.
Atari has LYNX, a color hand-held unit it introduced nationally in April for $179. It comes with extra wiring so kids can hook their machines together and play in the car, the playground - anywhere outside the house so their parents can have some TV time to themselves.
NEC has TurboExpress, another pricy, color, hand-held game (it will cost $200 to $250 when it hits store shelves in November) that can play the same game software that its home TurboGrafX uses. That's important because Game Boy and LYNX's game software won't fit in a home game.a home game. Yet TurboExpress has something more: an $80 option that allows you to convert itscolor liquid crystal display to a miniature portable TV set. "Kids are like adults. They're trading up, getting older, and they don't want to play video games just in front of the TV anymore," said Grant Schneider, spokesman for NEC.
Nintendo forecasts it will sell $1 billion in Game Boys this year. Much of the excitement at the Consumer Electronics Show has been in the video game section the last few yearsNintendo, which resuscitated the video game business in 1986 with the introduction of its Nintendo Entertainment System for the home, now has a lock on 80 percent of the $5.1 billion industry.But since the video game industry has gone from a $400 million business to a $5.1 billion industry in only the last four years, experts are waiting for a shakeout on the hardware and software sides of the business. For instance, this Christmas is expected to be do-or-die time for Nintendo's competitors boasting more powerful game systems. Sega's Genesis system and NEC's TurboGrafX, which boast screengraphics that are more arcadelike than Nintendo's, say their units are selling well, but they have a tremendous obstacle in Nintendo's established base. "We think Nintendo is a system for small kids, and when they want to trade up for better, more complex games, they're going to come to us," said AlNilson, Sega's marketing director. Nintendo itself concedes that it expects sales of its bedrock home system to be flat at 9 million units this year. It also acknowledges that a tremendous number of software game titles are out there for its aging machine and that prices have started to fall by as much as 50 percent to 60 percent on those games, which once went for $25 to $45 apiece. It's likely you'll find an early Mario Brothers game - which once sold for upwards of $40, for about $10 to $15 now, and other cheaper titles probably will join the ranks by Christmas. Yet Nintendo spokesman William White says the Japan-based company isn't preparing for the poorhouse: "Ninety-six percent of our systems are still in play, and 80 percent of our players say it's more fun than when they purchased it. . . . We're not finding them shifting to any other competitors, either." He says that Game Boy, which sold 1 million units in the five months after its debut in 1989, will sell 5 million units in 1990. Nintendo will have 70 game titles available for Game Boy this year, compared with 25 titles last year. Yet everyone, even Nintendo, has something to fear in the maturing video game markett of the 1990s, says Bob Gerson, senior editor of the electronics trade publication TWICE. "What this reminds me of is a few years ago where you had Atari in the lead with the old ColecoVision and Intellivision games," Gerson said. "It was still the Atari 2600 that did all the volume, and that never changed until all of them went down in the market collapse of the early 1980s."
NES:
1992: 3m / 33m
1991: ?? / 30m
1990: ?? / ??
1989: 9m / ??
1988: ?? / ??
1987: 4.1m / 5.2m
1986: 1m / 1.1m
1985: 0.09m / 0.09m
