wow amazing read

Here is some context folks:

N64, in its best year, worldwide, only topped in 9m shipped once

Gamecube never topped 9m shipped worldwide in a year ever

Also:

In the 12 months ending June 30, 2008 Microsoft just announced that they shipped 8.7m Xbox 360s worldwide. I'm pretty sure thats their best Xbox year ever by shipments too. NES shipped 9m in the Americas. In the 80s...in a similarly shitty economy.

Sony has only forecast shipments of 10m PS3s in the year ending 3/31/2009, after shipping 9.24m PS3s in the year ending 3/31/2008.

If this article is correct, Nintendo shipped 9m NES units in the Americas alone in Jan-Dec 1989

US to Japan trade defecit

2007 -82,759,900,000

1989  -49,058,800,000

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2008/080424e.pdf

Nintendo of America sales 2007 = 6.15~6.20 billion or about 7% (.07)

1991 = 4 billion article says that should be lower than 1989... so 10% is not really out of the question.

Remember total trade defecit is not the same thing as total trade

Nice find Source. Very interesting read.

@TheSource: Nice find. Anything like this you(or anyone) finds, be sure to let us know. Anything that has old data is like a little slice of heaven for me. :)

@Viper: The NES did have a limited release in 1985, but didn't have a proper nationwide release until 1986(in the US). Ya know...a certain point of view. :)

Yeah NES launched in NYC in Nov 85'

LA in early 86'...but the rest of the USA in the fall

87' was the first full year nationwide which is why it peaked in 89'

Retailers were still so skeptical of video games thanks to the crash Nintendo had to guarantee to buy any unsold units.  It's really amazing how much success they managed to have after such a terrible period.

Great read Source!  Here's another one from '89 with NEC's intro of what would become TurboGrafx-16:

May 24, 1989
NEC Tries to Zap Nintendo In the Video Game Market
By DOUGLAS C. MCGILL

LEAD: A Japanese company is stepping up to challenge Nintendo for a piece of the $3.5 billion American market for home video games.

A Japanese company is stepping up to challenge Nintendo for a piece of the $3.5 billion American market for home video games.

NEC Home Electronics, an American subsidiary of NEC, the Japanese computer and telecommunications giant, announced yesterday that it will would begin selling a new video game system this fall. It contended that the system would have better graphics, sound and special effects and longer playing times than Nintendo games, which have 75 to 80 percent of the American market. The game will sell for about $200 - about twice the price of the Nintendo system - in toy and electronics stores.

The announcement was the first in what promises to be a tumultuous year in the video game industry, with one company after another planning to introduce video games with more computing power than ever.

The new NEC game ''allows us to provide the user over 10 times more color, and 16 times bigger characters,'' said Keith Schaefer, senior vice president of NEC Home Electronics. ''You will be able to see them cry, you can see the eye movement, the muscle movement. In the baseball games, you will be able to see dirt on the players' uniforms when they slide.''

Electronics and toy industry experts said yesterday that NEC's reputation and resources - it is a $22 billion company, worldwide - automatically gave it a chance of success in the home video game market. Since late 1987, NEC spokesmen and industry analysts said, it has had great success in Japan with the same home video game that it is bringing to the United States.

The key to the system is a 16-bit graphics processor that provides images that are clearer and more detailed than those generated by Nintendo's smaller processor. Nintendo does not release the size of the processor, but it is widely believed in the industry to be 8 bits. There is also an optional compact disk player attachment that produces high-quality stereo sound to accompany the games.

But Nintendo spokesmen, reached at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., yesterday said they were not impressed. Nintendo revived a moribund home video game market after 1985 with its games, which are believed to be in 17 percent of American households.

NEC ''is a hardware company, and we think they are looking at this from a hardware, rather than a software point of view,'' said William White, Nintendo's director of advertising. ''Their software is offering improved graphics, but it's not offering another level of play and challenge to the player. We believe that's not enough to justify the investment that NEC is asking for their system.''

Still, Nintendo is planning to introduce a new, 16-bit machine itself in Japan this summer, and may introduce it in this country as early as next year. Mr. White said Nintendo had decided to offer the new machine in Japan only after its software programmers had devised new programs of ''extraordinary'' nature, that made full use of the 16-bit chip.

Sega of America, a manufacturer of arcade video games, is also planning to release a home video machine with a 16-bit microprocessor this spring. The microprocessor, not to be confused with the 16-bit graphics chips in the NEC and new Nintendo machine, will give the Sega machine more computing power and thus potentially far greater speed and special effects than the other machines.

Analysts said computing power was not necessarily the crucial ingredient, however. What Ninendo has proved, they say, is that success in home video games relies as much on clever marketing and software.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=a&query=Nintendo&srchst=nyt&submit.x=20&submit.y=9&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=period&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1985&mon2=07&day2=22&year2=1990

for more '85 through '90 Nintendo related NYT articles.

Nice work. I also got some Forbes articles about Nintendo bookmarked. It is interesting how Forbes has been predicting doom for Nintendo for almost a decade.