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okay, i finally Found some numbers. It's word of mouth only, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thenewguy
I had a Talk with a pal of Mine recently, who writes for "Return", a German Retro Magazine. According to him, there were about 500.000 Atari 400, 800 and 800 XE Sold in Western Germany. That's a Rough estimate though, but I Don't Know if I can find any numbers more accurate than that. Hth.
Firstly, I'm glad this thread still existsQuote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
Secondly, whoa, thats quite a few units when you take into account that the Atari 8-bits apparently only sold 2 million worldwide in total!
I guess if it really was 2nd place in Germany, then thats still quite a way behind the C64, which you said sold approximately 3 million, so I guess the number is definitely feasible.
Well, if you believe the memories of the former director of the "Atari Computergesellschaft GmbH Deutschland", Klaus Ollmann (whom I mentioned before):Quote:
Originally Posted by Thenewguy
"In 1983, while visiting the CES in Las Vegas, I was told that Atari Germany was not only the most efficient Atari subdivision worldwide, but also the most efficient company in the entire federation of Warner's enterprises". (roughly translated from his memories published in this german article.)
Ah! the famed German efficiency :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
I just realized that I could just run all the Klaus Ollman-stories through Google translate and link them here :lol:. It's not perfect (I mean hey, it IS Google Translate after all), but I guess it still carries over the gist of the stories told.
Here we go... Ollman remembers:
The introduction of the Atari VCS in Germany
When Atari conquered Germany
Interview with Klaus Ollman - memories of a german Atari Manager
Last but not least:
Reader Interview - Klaus Ollman answers questions from Atari fans
Some interesting stuff in there about the Atari era in Germany from 1980 to 1984.
So yeah, when Atari started out, it was as a subdivision of a record company first :p
Great!
Another noticeable european developer: the Polish studio CD Projekt RED, which made The Witcher 1 and 2. CD Projekt started as a publisher in 1994 in Poland, then in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In 2002, a development studio was created.
Finland
Haven't seen much on Finnish companies, but there were some Finnish programmers who worked with British publishers.
Stavros Fasoulas - C64 programmer who made Sanxion, Delta, and Quedex (as well as some others), worked with Thalamus. His games were quite well received in Britain, especially Delta.
Jukka Tapanimäki - Made Netherworld, and Zamzara for C64, both pretty good games.
Netherlands
The Boys Without Brains - Made Hawkeye (pretty good game, I played it when I was a kid), and then I think may have disbanded and been incorporated into the British company System 3, after which they made Flimbo's Quest, which was a pretty popular game in the UK back in the day.
Jeroen Tel - Musician, very popular and highly acclaimed at the time, did the music for the C64 Cybernoid games (and many other C64 games)
Another swedish company: DICE (Digital Illusions CE). Their only game I knew was the canned project Hardcore (started on Amiga then reported on Mega Drive and Mega-CD) but it seems it developed some famous games like the Battlefield series, Mirrors edge...
You'll find some of their developers' names in the first link.
An Austrian Video Game company, JoWooD, announced a month ago that restructuring the company had failed and that they are now facing bankruptcy.
JoWooD started out as a video game developer creating economic simulations ("Industry Giant" in 1994 or the "Settlers"-knockoff "Die Völker") before concentrating on publishing video Games. The most famous games published by JoWooD were probably parts II-IV of the "Gothic"-Series. Current projects, like the Add-on for ArcaniA (also known as Gothic IV), are on hold until the matters of insolvency can be resolved. This happened after a series of legal battles in recent years (Among others an issue about the rights of adapting a Stargate SG-1 computer game in 2005 and a fight with the developers of the Gothic Games, Piranha Bytes). Things don't look so well for the company.
It was the most well known Austrian video still in existence. The most famous Austrian software developer was probably "neo", who later on became a Part of the Rockstar Studios as "Rockstar Vienna". As neo software they created games like "Whale's Voyage" or "The Clou!"; as Rockstar Vienna the were mostly responsible for console ports, like porting Max Payne 1 and 2 to the XBOX. Rockstar Vienna was closed in 2006. (parts of the old team are now part of the austrian Subsidiary of Deep Silver)
Another Austrian software developer was Max Design, who are probably best known for creating the post-apocalyptic strategy game "Burntime" in 1993, as well as having a hand in creating the Games "Anno 1503" and "Anno 1602". Max Design folded in 2004. The founders regrouped and started a new company called Red Monkeys in 2006, but so far they haven't published another new game.
This US article has some figures for Germany as of the end of 1983
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/80/germanyr.png
Another swedish studio: Southend Interactive known for XIII and R-Type dimension and some XBLA games.
L'histoire de Nintendo Volume 3 is now available and there are a few interesting points inside:
Sales of consoles per year in France:
1988
Nes: 33000
Master System: 10000
1989
Nes: 89000
Master System: 29000
1990
Nes: 327000
Master System: 140000
1991
Nes: 697000
Master System: 375000
1992
Nes: 436000
Master System: 235000
1993
Nes: 206000
Master System: 181000
total
Nes: 1 788 000
Master System: 970 000
Total of games sold (excluding games included with consoles)
Nes: 4 169 000
Master System: 2 352 000
Thats pretty surprising numbers seen as the NES did quite poor in Europe as a whole
Bear in mind that each national market had its own distributors. NOE and SOE were created in the 90es, not before. In France, Bandai (Nintendo's official distributor) had a better distribution network than Mastertronic (Sega's official distributor).
If these figures are even remotely accurate, then the NES probably destroyed the SMS in European sales.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crackdown
NES sold more than SMS in Germany, Scandinavia, and (if this is true) France too, at the moment the only country where SMS won is the UK, though we do really need some figures and info for Spain and Italy (albeit even if SMS did win those markets, their sales should be fairly low compared to Britain/France/Germany regardless)
I wonder apart from the UK, what other countries in Europe did the Master System do well?
I actually do wonder if some of the sales figures for the Master System also include Austrailia and New Zealand as well cause I'm seem confused. Eastern Europe had the Famiclones and Russia had the Dendy (Russian Famiclone) but they aren't part of the sales, Scandinavian countries the NES were number 1, Germany I think was number 1, France as seen above as the NES doubled in sales (but doesn't have sales figures from 1994 to 1996, Smurfs 2 was the last game on the SMS). That means Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Austria, Greece and Italy have to have sales greater than the NES to be considered a success. Some of them countries sound like Nintendo might be the successful one or the Famiclones. I'm worried that it might just end up being the UK, Spain and Portugal (due to that they got a few Tec Toy imports like Sapo Xule).
I've run into multiple posts from Dutch members before on forums (this forum, and others across the internet) from what I can recall all of them said NES was more popular there than SMS.
The best remaining possibilities for SMS dominant countries are just Spain and Portugal I think. Italy is a possibility though
Talking about Nederland, Nintendo was distributed by Bandai there, as for France and Belgium. That's why French and Dutch games had these 2 languages on their cartridges and manuals.
The NES was a late competitor in Germany, but it gained quite a bit of steam riding on the success of the GameBoy.
Funny situation... while in the US the GB was successful for being the NES little brother with many franchises carried over, here many people played GameBoy first and then NES.
Overall there seems to be the common understanding that the SMS outsold the NES in Europe.
I live in Spain, and the SMS was always considered more succesful than the Nes (by a 1.4/1 margin or so). I had a magazine that listed the total units sold when both systems were dead, but I don't know how official are they (not much I think, considering they are numbers from 2006).
One thing to consider, is that piracy for the Nes was very extended in Spain at the time. Famiclones and its games costed half the real thing, and many people had them instead. So, it's probably that in Spain, the number of Nes+Famiclones sold is higher than that of the SMS.
A big problem is that afaik Sega hardly ever (never?) released official sales figures, unlike Nintendo. There is still controversy about the sales of the MD to this day, ranging from 28 to, like, 40 million.
Nintendo released sales data for pretty much every big game also, unlike Sega.
I seem to remember having a conversation with somebody who was Italian on another forum and he said Sega were very popular there. He even posted pictures of exclusive Italian packaging on Sega machines which at the time was pretty unusual. I know when I lived in Spain I saw lots of Sega stuff but very little Nintendo stuff other than Gameboy.
I've gathered a few informations about Sega in Italy in an old message, but I would be glad to know more about it.
But no concrete evidence, worse still every piece of info we find points to the contraryQuote:
Originally Posted by 108 Stars
SMS was ahead in the UK by 500,000 units at best
NES was ahead in France by somewhere in the region of 800,000
So from those numbers France has already offset the UK, and from multiple accounts from different people -
Germany - NES outsold SMS
Scandinavia - NES outsold SMS
The Netherlands - NES outsold SMS
Two of the three major countries in Europe are NES territories, and there's not a whole load of countries left that are big enough to make up the difference
Spain - High possibility SMS territory
Portugal - good possibility SMS territory
Italy - Who knows at the moment (limted info that I can recall)
It would be useful to know exactly how many units were sold of each system in Germany, maybe Nintendo's dominance of the region has been overstated in the past, and the NES only sold a little bit more.
We won´t find exact numbers; but what I can say about NES-SMS in Germany is that if anything it was a close call.
The SMS had the head start, outselling the NES in the late 80ies. Accompanying the release of the Game Boy in late 1991 the NES got a popularity boost, thanks to the GB itself for one, and the coming of stuff like Nintendo themed cartoons etc everywhere.
The SMS probably got the upper hand later again, thanks to continued support until 1996, while the NES had lost its momentum.
I would have to look it up again, but from what I recall, the NES didn't outsell the SMS in Germany. As 108 Stars insinuated, they gained the upper hand for maybe 2 years, when the Game Boy and shows like Captain N arrived here. But before and after that, it kinda sat on the back seat.
I'll have to look for conise numbers, but I'll see if I can dig anything up. So ar, I've only found the confirmation that in the years of '86 (via import) and '87, the SMS outsold the NES in Germany. It had the advantage that on average, SMS games were cheaper than NES games (39 DM as opposed to 49 DM).
And I think the main reason why the SMS did perform better than the NES in Europe was because, for quite a long time, many countries in Europe didn't sell any NES consoles at all, while at the same time SEGA granted third party support to developers in Europe more easilly (at least for the SMS), for example in Spain.
/edit: Hm. Seems to have been a close one: According to estimations by Power Play Magazine, by 1992 the NES manages to outsell the SMS. In the 1/92 issue an article mentions that the SMS had "fallen slightly behind". However, the article is missing any concrete sales numbers. Only got the link to the german article, but if anyone's interested, here it is.
DOUBLE POST... well, look what we've found here...
when the Mega CD 2 was announced in August of 1993, MEGA FUN magazine included a list of games to be released the very same year.
There are a couple of interesting, never realized announcements: Ports of Indiana Jones IV or Wing Commander 2, for example.
Here, have a look for yourself:
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4889/megacdpreview.png
Indiana Jones 4 = Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis.
Power drift was already canceled on Mega-CD and re-planned on Mega Drive.
Wing Commander 2: never heard about this one.
I don't know if this list is about Europe only. I don't remember Willy Beamish and Monkey Island have ever been planned in Europe.
You're pulling my leg, are you?Quote:
Originally Posted by youloute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Co...28franchise%29
Wing commander is one of the most successful first person space shooters ever created. The first part was ported to the Sega CD - apparently there were plans to port the second part as well. I guess this would've coincided with the release of Wing Commander III for the PC, which however had to be pushed back into 1994.
Given that the article is about the German release of the Mega CD 2 and also states that these games are to be released until Christmas, I think that they were indeed intended to see an European release.Quote:
Originally Posted by youloute
I rephrase my sentence: never heard about Wing Commander 2 on Mega-CD (which was the subject of your post ;) ). AFAIK, Wing Commander 1 was released in Mars 94 in both the USA and Japan on Mega-CD. Maybe EA/Origin originally wanted to port the 2nd game instead of the first.
I've to admit I feel a little guilty since I saw the wonderful movie with Freddie Prinze Jr.
Ah, then, sorry for misunderstanding your statement ;)
Ah yes, that wondurful masterpiece of a videogame/sci-fi movie that showed us that even the creator of a franchise can totally ruin everything good about his creation when he attempts to convert it to the silver screen (I mean, he should have been the person to know best what the game was all about...). I'm a great fan of the games, but I admit, I had a blast watching the movie - it was so inept, it was hilarious! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by youloute
/edit: Back to the European (and in particular Italian) situation concerning the Master System: It appears that Italy was a big enough market for SEGA to establish their own office (Sega of Italy) there. Also, they hired local celebrities to make commercials for the Master System (they didn't do that for any of their consoles in Germany), like for example Italian national goalkeeper Walter Zenga:
Hmmmm, that info certainly indicates that it may have been a close raceQuote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
This would be quite interesting, as it would break the whole commonplace idea that Germany has always been Nintendo country.
We really need to find something for the end of 1992 though, because in Britain 1991 was the year that NES sold more than SMS, but then SMS made a big comeback in 1992 and it was basically the final nail in the coffin for NES.
I've thought about this before, and I disagree, European sales are too focussed on Germany, France, and UK. As long as NES was released in these three countries then a lack of release in a handfull of the others (places like Poland, or Greece for example) shouldn't have a huge impact on the overall sales total.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
I think the only way it would count up hugely is if NES wasn't released in the majority of the smaller markets, or one of the major three (and we know NES was released in UK/Germany/France, as well as Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy). Is there a list of countries where the NES was unreleased? the only thing I've seen is a mentioning that it wasn't released in Eastern Block countries, and frankly official sales from those regions would've amounted to next to nothing anyway.
On top of that we have the fact that SMS was actually more popular in Britain, even though the two systems came out around the same time, were very much in the public eye (everyone here knew what a NES was, and most of the major magazines gave it coverage), and Nintendo outspent Sega on advertising.
I think people in Britain were just too obsessed with image (Nintendo's name was stigmatised as being for children), and the ones who tended to decide to dump their home computers for consoles were mainly interested in state of the art Japanese arcade games (of which Sega's name was famous). Also, initially Nintendo were cocky, and slowed their releases of up-to-date games, attempting to dump their older, outdated 1st party software first, whilst Sega simply released everything they could as quickly as possible.
In Britain the NES was released to a lot of magazine coverage, and hype, SMS simply beat it, Nintendo blamed the company who handled NES here, and decided to replace them (new company was headed by someone who originally worked for NoA I believe), the new guy went on about how he was going to set things right, how he had a huge advertising budget, and how Britain was going to catch up with the rest of the world's NES mania, this guy made no inroads at all, so the company was replaced yet again, and still nothing.
NES started making inroads in Britain when their free advertising, in the form of their cartoon shows (Zelda, Mario, Captain N) turned up, these cartoons gave them maximum exposure to their target audience (which in Britain was pre-teens). Game Boy was also big in Britain, and even spread to the adult population on the back of Tetris, Game Boy also introduced people to popular NES characters like Mega Man, and Castlevania, and helped increase interest.
In 1992, Sega took back a lot of the pre-teen market due to Sonic mania taking over videogamers here, Master System also became the budget, kids alternative to the Mega Drive, and SMS took back the popularity crown.
Do not forget that in Europe, the Master System was supported up until 1996, and was discontinued together with the Mega Drive.
hm. Alright, let's try rolling this question up from another angle:
According to this article, Nintendo (and I quote) "only shipped 8.56m NES consoles in non-Americas & Japan regions".
Furthermore, the book "Game Over" states that Nintendo sold only 3.5 Million NES-units in Europe.<== scratch that, misconception.
The Master System officially sold 13 mio. units worldwide (not counting Majesco- and TecToy-versions). According to this source, only 1.5 million systems were sold in the US.
That leaves 11.5 Million Master Systems sold outside of Japan and the US. Now, if we could extrapolate how many Sega Master System-units were sold in Brazil, we could get a good estimate of how well the Master System fared against the NES in Europe.
(hm, although this still leaves Australia out of this calculation...)
/edit: found another nice graphic,LA Timesfrom a british magazine (I don't know which, exactly).
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/9894/segasales.jpg
1990: 1.6 million SEGA units (although those numbers include Genesis sales) vs 655.000 NES-units sold in Europe. Though I can't say how reliable this source is, what with the Typo ("staggereing") and the somewhat mystifying way to end the article...
Before Jack Tramiel took over, the Atari VCS and home computer systems were pretty successful, so I'd rather say Germany was more of an "Atari"-country... :pQuote:
Originally Posted by thenewguy
I think you ran into the same forum post as I did a while back :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
Game Over does not say that, I've checked myself, I believe the poster mixed up this sentence on page 418 -
"In 1992 a total of 6 million Game Boys, and 3.5 million NES units sold in Europe.
Alright, then I revert to the sentence before that one: Nintendo "only shipped 8.56m NES consoles in non-Americas & Japan regions". (source) ;)
Phantar are you sure of the source being from La Times?
I've run into it before, and judging by the focus (Britain), and the tone (heeee, heeeee, heee) I always thought it was most likely from a British dedicated format Sega magazine.
Almost 2 millions NES in France only (according to Nintendo France, years later the death of the console), hard to believe that so few NES were sold in the rest of Europe.
What is the rest of the world?
_South America, South Korea, China and Russia: as seen in other threads, back in the day, Nintendo wasn't there and I don't think the machines produced by Hyundai and Dendy are included in this sales.
_Australia/Oceania
_North Africa?
That's all I know. I don't think the sales were that high in these countries/continents.
Damn, sorry, my bad: It was a british magazine; I've mistakenly attributed the graphic to a link provided in the same context, but leading to different sources. I'll fix that accordingly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thenewguy
France could very well be the biggest NES country in Europe, I know in Britain there were only ~1.1 million NES' soldQuote:
Originally Posted by youloute
Sorry, I was referring to "3.5 millions NES units sold in Europe."
If you add French and Britain sales, you have almost 3 millions NES. I don't think only 500 000 NES were sold in the rest of Europe. Nintendo probably had not that bad sales in countries such as Nederland, Belgium or Germany.