What do you guys think of this ingenious idea?

T

TEXAN

Regular
I just recently had an amazing idea!

What if SEGA released a nextgen arcade board for the home!

- The system would be ordered online only you wouldnt be able to buy them in the shops (like the dell business model)

- They would manufacture them in limited numbers, say 10k a month worldwide.

- It would be priced at around $700-$900. Making $100-$200 profit per unit sold.

- Games would only be $10-$20 as they would be exact arcade gd-roms with no home enhacments like you get for console translation. Remember the money would be made from the hardware. So the arcade perfect cheap software would be the incentive to get people to splash out for the hardware.(XB2/PS3 software is assumed to be around $60/60UKP)

Why would people want to splash that much money for a games unit? well lets face it, as many gflops the cell can do and as powerfull as xenon will be there's nothing quite like an arcade system with 2-8GBs of onboard ram.

I know one thing and thats in Japan the thing will sell like wildfire. people there pay extrordinary prices for latest electronics products and I can see hundreds of thousands of these systems being purchased by VF fanatics just to play arcade perfect Virtua Fighter 5 in the home.

At the same time they wouldnt be competing with Sony, MS, thus they can still be a third party publisher.

I dont know maybe the SEGATOYS division would handle it.

It'd just be extra income for Sega Sammy.

What do you guys think
 
Erm.... They are already doing that. Not such high numbers, but they usually put out arcade boards that, if people wanted, they could buy for their house too. And one could call them "next gen". Naomi2 was quite "next gen" when it was released.
It's impossible that they price the boards at $700-$900.

All in all, not a fantastic idea.
 
How about somebody straps the top of a bmx to the bottom of a snowboard? In 5 years that will be huge... (and that ones free of charge boys and queens)

Console pillow talk going a little far...
 
london-boy said:
Erm.... They are already doing that. Not such high numbers, but they usually put out arcade boards that, if people wanted, they could buy for their house too. And one could call them "next gen". Naomi2 was quite "next gen" when it was released.
It's impossible that they price the boards at $700-$900.

All in all, not a fantastic idea.
Click to expand...

Yes, I now they do that, but I'm not talking about the entire cabinet though.

I'm just talking about the actual system, the box, only difference would be that they would add connections in the back that would allow you to hook it up to your tv at home.
 
You mean like NeoGeo? In that case the problem is that arcade games aren't as respected and looked upon as high-end as they used to be (if at all).
 
Squeak said:
You mean like NeoGeo? In that case the problem is that arcade games aren't as respected and looked upon as high-end as they used to be (if at all).
Click to expand...

That's exactly what i was thinking about.
Back in the days of SF2 and the first MK, arcade games were THE games. People went to the arcades and spend gazillions in change to play the best games available to the public.
Then consoles started getting versions of the arcade games that were, at each generation, closer and closer to their arcade counterparts (SF2 on SNES), sometimes the same (Tekken on PS1) and sometimes even better (Soul Calibur on DC, Tekken Tag on PS2 etc). And people noticed that it's just cheaper to get a console and the games to be able to play them at home whenever they want for as long as they want, than put a coin in for every game they start.

And look at today's situation. Arcade games are nothing. Sega still bothers, they probably make a profit out of it, but really, the consoles now rule the world of videogames, and quite rightly so, arcade games have always been a total rip-off for consumers, if you look at the economy involved.

I haven't been in an arcade for bloody years, and i will not even think of putting a pound (that's slightly less than 2 dollars, and that's what they cost here today, IIRC) in a cabinet to play a game that will last a few minutes.
 
But if there is radical graphical difference you will.

This can be acheived with ram, something next gen consoles will limited with.
 
TEXAN said:
But if there is radical graphical difference you will.

This can be acheived with ram, something next gen consoles will limited with.
Click to expand...

Look, it would be too expensive, it's not feasible in large scale and they might as well keep doing what they're doing now cause no one would buy a $1000 machine that only plays a couple of games. VF5 and the next House of the Dead.
 
sytaylor said:
How about somebody straps the top of a bmx to the bottom of a snowboard?
Click to expand...
That's apparently patented (at least according to "The Dragon's Den" on the BBC)
 
Guden Oden said:
Um, aren't things supposed to have merit and be non-obvious in order to be patentable? :D
Click to expand...

I'm not going to debate this particular case, but it may also be an issue of "oh that's obvious" once you've seen it. Bit like some puzzles.

It might also be that the patent is "how" they did it rather than the idea of doing it. <shrug>
 
TEXAN said:
arcade perfect cheap software
Click to expand...

The Xbox has arcade perfect versions of Outrun 2 and House of the Dead 3.
As far as I know, only very few Sega arcade games get ported to consoles perfectly. Although the Chihiro board has more ram, the ports are visually identicle, its like having an arcade machine in your home. They could have ported VF4 perfectly over too.

I suspect PS3 will eventually get a perfect port of VF5, something I've always wanted.
 
TEXAN said:
But if there is radical graphical difference you will.

This can be acheived with ram, something next gen consoles will limited with.
Click to expand...

Really that idea was dead long before you said it. market for such games would be extremely small=not worth it.
 
Simon F said:
sytaylor said:
How about somebody straps the top of a bmx to the bottom of a snowboard?
Click to expand...
That's apparently patented (at least according to "The Dragon's Den" on the BBC)
Click to expand...

Isn't that uncool ? Though I suppose, you can do all sorts of tricks not possible on a normal snowboard. Probably good for beginners to learn too.
 
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