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Post by darkman01 on Feb 19, 2018 15:51:43 GMT
meh , central Europe isn't a huge market now, and certainly not back then , hence why I didn't bother counting it
in terms of systems, there weren't , though I can assure you there was plenty of piracy . There were a tonne of bootleg and imported Mega Drives though, not to mention an ocean of famiclones.
Its the same for Brazil , yes there are plenty of people, but because of things like taxes, local suppliers taking a cut ,etc , the prices of consoles and games are through the roof and people turn to bootleg and piracy as a result (again , Im speaking from experience on this)
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Post by xDerekRx on Feb 19, 2018 22:27:07 GMT
Sales figures in the US have been pretty consistent over the years but Ive never seen PAL numbers almost at all for Saturn stuff. Perhaps just too many different countries to keep track of. And there is noway only 1000 copies exist in Europe. If so the game would cost $2000+ Its generally well known Sega of America, in the late Saturn days required 15,000 print runs at a time. So its been said 15x2 for PDS. Vic Ireland of working Designs confirmed this as well with Magic Knight Rayearth getting 15,000 only as the final game released outside of Japan. Its also been reported 75k copies of Shining Force III ended up in circulation in the US suggesting 5 x 15. Rumors used to say House of the Dead and Burning Rangers only got 5k each over here but its more likely they both got a similar 15k at least. alot of it really just comes down to most publications being US based imo , and thus the focus is on the US market (hence the focus on its bad US launch for instance)This is certainly true. There were soooo many US based publications, multi-plat game magazines, websites and such even back then that documented these things. So for me, a US collector, there is always this wealth of knowledge available here (well as far as Saturn info generally goes...). Also because Sega of America was so large, a lot of former employees still live in California and will tell stories, release prototypes and such. US companies like Working Designs were very open about their past with Sega and Vic will release spreadsheets of data sometimes. And our collecting market is also so massive for just about every system so you have lots of youtubers and collectors driven to unearth little facts. (Master System is one that was way bigger in PAL regions). You even see newer companies put money behind new US Saturn retail stuff. Just this year we saw Retrobit go nuts and bring all the controller colors over with original US packaging. Then Limited Run Games probably did the most passionate project possible as they are recreating exact US replacement plastic cases with the trays as well down to spec. I should also be fair to mention Canada is absolutely included and thus North America is more accurate. Cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver are massive markets and with Saturn they received exactly the same copies of Saturn games (no special french manuals like now adays) I imagine Canada was included in print run numbers. As for Brazil they might be the most underrated game market in the world. They might be next in passion after Japan. But they have so many other issues (as mentioned import taxes and such)
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Post by bultje112 on Feb 20, 2018 8:07:55 GMT
meh , central Europe isn't a huge market now, and certainly not back then , hence why I didn't bother counting it in terms of systems, there weren't , though I can assure you there was plenty of piracy . There were a tonne of bootleg and imported Mega Drives though, not to mention an ocean of famiclones. Its the same for Brazil , yes there are plenty of people, but because of things like taxes, local suppliers taking a cut ,etc , the prices of consoles and games are through the roof and people turn to bootleg and piracy as a result (again , Im speaking from experience on this) then explain to me how master system sold more than 3 million units officially in a poor third world country like brazil in the 90s, yet much richer central europe, not to mention all eu nations, got nothing?
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Post by darkman01 on Feb 20, 2018 10:28:47 GMT
meh , central Europe isn't a huge market now, and certainly not back then , hence why I didn't bother counting it in terms of systems, there weren't , though I can assure you there was plenty of piracy . There were a tonne of bootleg and imported Mega Drives though, not to mention an ocean of famiclones. Its the same for Brazil , yes there are plenty of people, but because of things like taxes, local suppliers taking a cut ,etc , the prices of consoles and games are through the roof and people turn to bootleg and piracy as a result (again , Im speaking from experience on this) then explain to me how master system sold more than 3 million units officially in a poor third world country like brazil in the 90s, yet much richer central europe, not to mention all eu nations, got nothing? The Master System sold well in Brazil , though you have to remember Sega kept the system going for far longer than it did in other markets. It may also be the case that there were a lack of clone systems (were there even any clones for the SMS?) Also , as far as I know, certainly later versions of the system were produced locally in Brazil by Tectoy, which is one way of getting around the crazy taxes that plague other systems. Add to all this the fact that Nintendo mostly left that market alone and you have the reason why the system did well. By the way ,3 million units, in a country of 200 million people is not massive . From what I know, the SMS sold some 2 million units in the US, and in that country the SMS was a considered mostly a flop.
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Post by darkman01 on Feb 20, 2018 10:51:36 GMT
to give you an idea of how crazy it could get at the time if you lived outside one of the "main" markets, when I was growing up in Israel , the most popular system in the 80s was.....the famiclone, since the official stuff was too expensive for most people (first time I played Mario Bros was on one of those). In regards to Sega, You had the choice of buying the official consoles (which due to local electrical/TV standards, were basically just the Euro systems with different power plugs), or you could get a "clone" system , which was often a legit Mega Drive imported from Hong Kong, which was usually cheaper. segaretro.org/images/4/4b/SegaIsraelSegaClub_IL_PrintAd.jpgif you look at this ad from the time you can see on the bottom right corner how they literally go out of their way to tell you to avoid "fakes" (including falsely claiming they wont work with the Mega CD). It got to the point where you didn't even need to look in back alley shops for them , as they were often carried by large retailers (including the Mashbir , the largest in the country, putting them on display next to the official ones). The reason why the official systems were often more expensive was import taxes from Europe and the fact they went through a local distributor , and this bumps up the price. And we are talking about what was even then a relatively well off market, even if it was small.
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Post by bultje112 on Feb 20, 2018 11:53:38 GMT
then explain to me how master system sold more than 3 million units officially in a poor third world country like brazil in the 90s, yet much richer central europe, not to mention all eu nations, got nothing? The Master System sold well in Brazil , though you have to remember Sega kept the system going for far longer than it did in other markets. It may also be the case that there were a lack of clone systems (were there even any clones for the SMS?) Also , as far as I know, certainly later versions of the system were produced locally in Brazil by Tectoy, which is one way of getting around the crazy taxes that plague other systems. Add to all this the fact that Nintendo mostly left that market alone and you have the reason why the system did well. By the way ,3 million units, in a country of 200 million people is not massive . From what I know, the SMS sold some 2 million units in the US, and in that country the SMS was a considered mostly a flop. 3 million in a country of 150 (which brazil had in 1995) is a lot when you think europe with 600 million had probably less than 10 million? master systems sold and it was considered a success.
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Post by darkman01 on Feb 20, 2018 12:00:06 GMT
sure , for a developing country its not bad figure, and as I stated there are problaby several reasons for this, Im just saying that in alot of these periphery markets , piracy, clone systems , bootlegs, etc , eat a big chunk of the sales.
put it this way, if you were a parent wanting to get his child a console , you would go for the cheaper one at the time, and that was what happened often.
btw remember that in Europe, consoles in the 80s were less popular than the 8 and 16 bit home computers, consoles only started getting really popular with the Mega Drive.
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Post by barryburton on Apr 30, 2018 17:21:24 GMT
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Post by bultje112 on Apr 30, 2018 20:44:58 GMT
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Le Roi
Saturn Gamer
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Posts: 231
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Post by Le Roi on May 2, 2018 21:54:08 GMT
Brilliant article.
Good to get their thoughts on the storyline - - even if they don't seem 100% clear themselves.
I always felt the ending was open ended (without wanting to mention any spoilers).
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martiniii
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Post by martiniii on May 14, 2018 14:54:48 GMT
The format's a bit odd - there were a couple points where I had a hard time telling whether they were discussing Zwei or Saga, and those portrait images are way bigger than they need to be, especially as many of them appear a half dozen times or more in the article - but yeah, great content. I really got a kick out of this bit:
It was interesting to read how many elements of the game were developed largely in isolation from the rest of the game. I suspect that's not uncommon in such large projects, but to a layman like myself it seems counterintuitive given how well everything fits together.
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yuc2002
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Post by yuc2002 on Jun 10, 2018 21:19:34 GMT
Thanks for the great reads! 20 years now... wow
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Post by zyrobs on Jun 11, 2018 5:00:52 GMT
then explain to me how master system sold more than 3 million units officially in a poor third world country like brazil in the 90s, yet much richer central europe, not to mention all eu nations, got nothing? The master systems sold in Brazil were the Master System equivalent of famiclones: extremely cheap and plentiful, except that they were officially licensed through Tectoy. And due to taxes, every other console cost the equivalent of 600-1200$, so they pretty much covered the low-end market with no competition. Central Europe got barely anything because Sega and Nintendo had much less presence in the area, and those who wanted video games already got Commodores and Amigas (especially behind the iron curtain, where the C+4 and C16 sold in way higher numbers than it deserved).
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Post by zyrobs on Jun 11, 2018 5:02:00 GMT
The format's a bit odd - there were a couple points where I had a hard time telling whether they were discussing Zwei or Saga, and those portrait images are way bigger than they need to be, especially as many of them appear a half dozen times or more in the article - but yeah, great content. Zwei and Saga were made simultaneously, so it makes sense that they talk about a bit of both. The gigantic portraits bugged me too, but the article linked in here is the mobile version of the site. Their desktop one has a better layout.
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yuc2002
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Post by yuc2002 on Jun 27, 2018 8:32:39 GMT
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