What ever happend to the pc engine? I know it flopped in the US. But it was still a powerhouse in japan with strong support. How come no 32bit system?
There was a successor to the pc engine called the pc-fx( a 32 bit system) released only in Japan in 1994. It looks like a pc tower and was sold for a few years there. It did terribly because NEC was originally going to release the system in 1992, but waited two years since there was still interest in the pc engine and people didn't want a new system yet, and the only notable thing about it was that it had the best full motion video quality compared to the 5th gen consoles( could decompress jpeg pics w/ audio at 30frames/sec) and besides that, it was a pretty underpowered system that got crushed and taken out of the market pretty soon that NEC wouldn't never bother with sending the system overseas( especially after the failure to sell the pc engine to the U.S. audience under the name Turbografix-16)
Jesus the pc-fx is a mess. Why no 64 bit system? I heard the pc engine was outselling the famicom at one point.
The pc engine was outselling the famicom until the super famicom was released; then sales dipped putting the pc engine into second place. The 64-bit system would have had to be a successor to the pc-fx, as the tech in the pc-fx technology was from 1992, and using components that were 64-bit would have been too costly( the first 64 bit microprocessor the MIPS R4000 was released in 1991, and is used in the Nintendo 64 as a low cost variant) and even less people would have bought the system. From what I've read, it seems that the system sold less than 100,000 units, and only had 62 games. The terrible sales in linked to lack of consumer interest, and the fact that NEC had to make most of the games for the system due to a lack of developer support, and this pretty much contributed to NEC's exit out of producing their own consoles with Hudson Soft.
Why wasn't it supported well? The pc engine, and cd had loads of games for it. And how many were they planning on selling to be successful? or at least enough to make a successor, it finished support same year dreamcast launched.
Well, the PC- Engine sales worldwide were around 10 million, with a huge majority being in Japan. So I think that due to the marketplace for its successor,the pc-fx, NEC would probably hope for sales of at least 3.5-4+ million to keep supporting the console( an assumption on my part, it could be more or less). However, the sales figures of the pc-fx and lack of games have a huge link to not being supported very well compared to its predecessor. For example, the original pc-engine offered a variety of enhancements that the console could accomplish such as way less sprite flickering, a faster cpu along with a dual 16 bit graphic processor setup, which offered gamers more things that the famicom could simply not due being based on older technology. In addition, the pc engine was the first console to offer a cd add-on to the system, which gave developers more possibilities to explore in CDs that could not be done on cartidges/HuCards, as well as additional support for system upgrades. So, when the pc-fx came out, it was already very outdated in technical capabilities, for example it had very limited support on 3d graphics at the time when developers were becoming interested in creating 3d games for other consoles, in fact NEC was planning a 3d expansion and games such as Super Star Solider 3D to compensate for this error( the latter was never released). In addition, the console was marketed as being very upgradeable, but was very underused compared to its advertisments. NEC was pretty lenient on game development, which created a pretty poor library of games and drove away consumers from buying the console. So it pretty much comes down to NEC misreading the market demands, and releasing a console that was very underpowered, drove away developers and consumers, and pretty much killed any chance of a successor.
