The most powerful systems are never the sales leader

[archbrix]

RolStoppable said:

archbrix said:

IMO, this is a bit of a grey area.

I do agree with CGI that Neo-Geo was priced and situated out of the realm of the competition, in that there was no hope for it to compete succesfully...

However living in the US, I used to see Neo-Geo all the time at Babbage's (where I always bought my games), and in EGM every month; those places treated it just like one of the systems on the market (in fact, it actually launched before the SNES), so I personally have always proclaimed what the OP is saying as well.

What's throwing you off is that the Neo Geo is a one of a kind console. This is the one time where the car analogy for consoles actually works. When you consider normal consoles to be BMWs, then the Neo Geo was a Ferrari. You can see it in stores, media write about it even if most readers can not afford it, but it's in a different league.

SNK had no intention to directly compete with Nintendo or Sega. If they had, they would have aggressively cut the price of their hard- and software. The Neo Geo, just like a Ferrari, was not a massmarket product.

True; I'm not saying that you or CGI are wrong.  Just saying that it's a grey area to me and could be argued either way.

Your car analogy certainly makes sense; in fact owning a Neo-Geo and its full library was about the same price as a Ferrari!