The NEC PC-FX: The worst business decision in gaming history?
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2024
- NEC designed the follow-up to it's hugely successful PC Engine line but decided to shelve it when the decision makers got cold feet about releasing a machine that couldn't play the existing games.
This led to NEC releasing an underpowered machine into the following generation.
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I read an interview with Takahashi Meijinand he was saying the reason there was so meany RPG and dating sims and not arcade games on the PC-FX was that the Japanese public wanted that type of game at the time so that what they made, seemed like a crazy decision to me but there you go. i was planing on doing a PC-FX live stream soon will be play the 3 games you can.
PC-FX got overlooked because people were moving on to different things.
Biggest gaming fail would have to be the Google Stadia
I'm talking about business decisions not gaming fails. The decision to not release the PC-FX into a generation it would have dominated in terms of power and potentially dominated in demand to instead release it in a generation it didn't have the feature-set for thus ending NECs successful gaming arm (at least successful in Japan) was an awful business decision. Google Stadia, whilst not loved by quite a few people, has largely been successful for Google. With relatively little outlay they have quite a few paying subcribers and have garnered some positive industry reviews. I personally wouldn't use it, but then I mostly play retro games, but i'm unconvinced that Google are really into this for the long haul.
Great vid Mr B. Not aware of this one before your stream.
Maybe after all of SEGA's shenanigans. It's truly a shame NEC couldn't find any more success than they had however.
Quite a feat to be dumber than sega
this thing was basically a more advanced Sega CD
Effectively, just with slightly better FMV
This console was doomed to failure. It had potential if they released it earlier and focused on 2D action games like the PC Engine before it, but instead they made the mind boggling decision to focus on light novels, dating sims and eroge stuff. I think the decision to not let Hudson make action games for the console was an even worse decision, it's the equivalent of Nintendo releasing a console with no Mario or Zelda.
Crazy to say no to a Bomberman or PC Kid on the platform. Saturn Bomberman is still one of my favourite games on that Saturn, it would have been great on PC-FX (especially with that anime intro!).
Very true, unfortunately NEC felt they had to push new boundaries. Which is great obviously, but only when you back it up with well known titles.
Thanks for posting. Good review. Still on the fence on if I will buy a PC-FX or just pickup some of the games and run them under emulation.
Thanks Paul. Yes the PC-FX is a tricky one, there are a couple of good games but no really great games, so outside of the fact that it's an interesting piece of technology it's hard to outright recommend getting one.
@@ReEnthused I took the plunge into PC-FX ownership, and the quality of your video is even more evident! AJW Queen of Queens was the reason I bought the system, as once all the controls are understood (I translated the Japanese manual to English), it is an impressive FMV fighting type game and I am a huge fan of Japanese pro wrestling of that era. Battle Heat and Far East of Eden also stand out in that FMV fighting game category. That said, to do it all again I would have definitely purchased the games for the manuals as they aren't easy to find. However I would have have gone with Mednafen's quite accurate emulation on PC instead of buying the console itself, especially at the price I paid for a near-new unit still in box.
Welcome to the owners club :D I understand what you mean about the buying the games still, the boxes are really nice - in the same sort of category as Neo Geo shock boxes.
@@ReEnthused Thank you :) The original large PC-FX game cases are quite nice and durable. My console plays burned games without laser adjustment, so I will enjoy it while it lasts.
Yeah, at the time everything was blocky and shimmered in 3D department. Sony PS1 was a good example.
Shame there's only a couple games you can really play on the system unless you know japanese well. System had a lot of potential to have arcade games and the like, but nec seemed to have lost their head with this one. I never understood why the supergrafx failed as hard as it did. The japanese didn't want to lose backwards compatibility, nec gave them that, and the system didn't sell worth a damn.
I'd guess that NEC were promising more, because the started out promising the PC-FX. But losing backwards compatibility was too much for the company. Maybe if the SGX had CD out of the box things would have been different?
No it is still Phillips CD-i
They should have made Super CD games compatible with the PC FX. What were they thinking making a lot of bad decisions. I would have fired them all. Just a waste of time and money fooling with the people making the PC FX. I really think they wanted the gaming business to fail. Maybe somebody was paid a whole lot of money to make very bad decisions.
Oddly you might not be a million miles away there. There does seem to be some evidence that changes in the board at NEC had changed how they thought about their business, and were concentrating more on the computer side
@@ReEnthused A guy told me that a secretary that works for TTI inc said it was Hudson Soft of Japan that kept saying no to games that TTI wanted to bring to United States.