Random Gaming Thoughts

[BogusMeatFactory]

Must have been a sad time to be into Sega. I wasn't back then.

The Dreamcast must have felt like a resurrection and then....................

*sniffles*

Yeah I was a teenager in that generation. We just moved back into PC gaming. It was a constant back and forth for my brothers and I. We would always shift our attention based on the lulls of our preferred system. Thanks to being a sega supporter, we had lots of lulls!

[Violent By Design]

So Magic Knight Rayearth was the last Saturn games released in the US, in November 30, 1998.

The Dreamcast came out in September 1999.

So does that mean there were 10 months with no games released for Sega consoles?! I feel like I'm missing something here.

ya, the saturn wasn't supported for along time in the US.

[dsheinem]

So Magic Knight Rayearth was the last Saturn games released in the US, in November 30, 1998.

The Dreamcast came out in September 1999.

So does that mean there were 10 months with no games released for Sega consoles?! I feel like I'm missing something here.

In the US, yes. In Japan, these were out: http://segaretro.org/Category:1999_Saturn_games

[BoneSnapDeez]

Falcom Classics Collection is solid.

[oxymoron]

Why are consoles so scarce at launch? I remember Jack Trenton say something along the lines of "If you want one, you'll get one" yet it took me over a month of scouring the web to get my hands on a PS4. If this some sort of marketing technique?

[Xeogred]

Production?

[BoringSupreez]

Why are consoles so scarce at launch? I remember Jack Trenton say something along the lines of "If you want one, you'll get one" yet it took me over a month of scouring the web to get my hands on a PS4. If this some sort of marketing technique?

I think it's because it's so hard to judge exactly how much demand there will be at launch. If you produce too few, that sucks for obvious reasons. If you overproduce, you get people posting online saying things to the effect of, "look at all these unsold consoles. Must be a flop." I think most companies would rather underproduce a little.

[Cronozilla]

Short answer: it's ludicrously expensive.

Long answer:

There's tons of reasons why they don't have like, 20 million units available at launch.
Here's a few:

To that point in time, that console's endeavor has been a financial money pit. All the money they've spent over the last 5-10 years developing it is essentially down the drain until the thing actually comes out. So, you need to hedge bets. IF you built that many units, or even 10 million or even 5-8 Million you're not only taking a huge risk, because people might not buy it, but you're also increasing the initial manufacturing cost without any funds being fed back into it. You're just wasting money without knowing if people will buy it or not.

You don't want to put too old of hardware or have something finalized before you're really sure it should be that way. Because once that first unit hits the line ... that's it, it's a console, the second unit can't be different. So, that is actually the finalization date: the delivery to manufacturing. That date, is as close to launch as possible. It takes like three or four months to manufacture enough consoles for launch in various regions (Which is one of the big reasons why world-wide physical launches don't happen). Because it is not out yet, you can't just keep making more while people are buying it. In addition to manufacturing time, waiting until the last minute possible to make final tweaks and changes, you have to physically deliver the units to everyone. If that involves 1-2 million items going to three or four different continents ... that takes some additional time.

You have to balance between how long does it take to make the units we need and we have to have the specs be as recent as we can make them. If manufacturers started pumping these out and putting them in warehouses in July 2013 ... The Xbox One would have a lower clock speed than it has now.

You can always do things later through firmware and re-releases ... but it costs so much money to launch something. Even something that looks insignificant in cost can easily be ballooned when multiplying it by one to two million. If you add, in conjunction, manufacturer's selling the system at a loss at retail ... That means you have to be able to finance this thing for at least the entire R&D phase, the manufacturing phase, and the launch phase, which can last over six months.

[CFFJR]

So, shopping for imports, ncsx vs. play-asia, any thoughts?

I feel like buying from ncsx will get the game in my hands quicker since they're based in New York, but I'm curious if anyone here has ordered from both and has a preference.

[dunpeal2064]

I have ordered from ncsx and everything went great. Got the game much faster than when I order from play-asia