From: tzs@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: Re: Hot games at Winter CES '93
Date: 11 Jan 1993 09:26:58 GMT
Organization: University of Washington School of Law, Class of '95
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

In article <93011.012106AUTSW@ASUACAD.BITNET> AUTSW@ASUACAD.BITNET writes:
>>I want to comment on the idiocy (sp?) of this SFX chip.  Why add $10 to
>>the cost of EACH new game that uses it?  Why not charge $15-$20 for a
>>SFX module (cartridge extender) that plugs into the regular cartridge
>>slot and an SFX-using cart plugs into the SFX module?  The SFX module
>>would only need to be about an inch tall and as wide as a normal cart.
>>The bus lines would pass thru so that the regular cart can make use of
>>them.  This seems so incredibly obvious to me (I have lots of hardware
>>& software experience; little in marketting :-).  With the right
>
>Simple. They don't make as much money if they provide a one time purchase of
>an SFX module... They know they can get away with the 10 dollar increase in
>cost to each game...

Suppose they did come out with an adapter.  Let's say it costs $30 in the
store.

In effect, the SNES+SFX is a *NEW* game system, that happens to be able to
play SNES games, and for which there is an upgrade path for $30 for
existing SNES owners.  The SNES cannot play games meant for the SNES+SFX.

If a store has space to display, say, 50 games for SNES and SNES+SFX, how
many of each should they display?  The SNES+SFX games are probably better,
but they can't be played on the SNES without the adaptor, so their potential
market is much smaller (unless Nintendo starts bundling the adaptor with
the SNES on new sales, which will then hurt them when compared to
Sega on price -- will the SFX be so good to make it worth spending $30
more for SNES+SFX rather than a Genesis?).  I don't think most people
are going to run out and buy the adaptor.  They will wait until a game
comes out for it that is so good that they are willing to spend $30 extra
to play that game.  Then they will buy an adaptor.  Another group will
wait until there are several good games, none of which alone would induce
them to buy an adaptor, but which as a set will.  Until this point is
reached, stores won't want to display the new games -- their display space
would be better used on games that work for the SNES too.

In addition to trying to get stores to display SNES+SFX games (which will
cut the number of SNES games displayed), Nintendo would have to convince
developers to develop for this.  They would face all the problems of
introducing a new system -- no market without games, and nobody wanting
to do games without a market.

By putting the SFX chip in the cartridge, they don't have these problems.
An SNES game is an SNES game...some will just look better but cost more.
There is no disruption in the stores, and they don't hurt themselves relative
to Sega at the most important point in the process of getting money from
the video game consumer: convincing the consumer to buy your system rather
than another system (most people are only going to buy one system, remember,
so if you don't win the very first battle, you don't get any money from the
customer).

There could also be technical reasons for putting the chip in the cartridge,
depending on how the chip is implemented.  I can imagine the chip being
customized to a specific game or group of games, and new games that need
different functions getting slightly different chips -- if it is a special
purpose microcoded processor, for example, I could imaging there being
different microcode for different games.

--Tim Smith