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| Bloody
Roar 2 in stock |
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The Playstation version of Bloody Roar 2
(US$55) is available for shipping today. Fans of the first Bloody Roar will
be familiar with the fast action, cool morphs and great sound. The Dual Shock support is
an added bonus over the arcade original. |
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| DC
Sega Rally 2 shipped |
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It's on the way and expected tomorrow. Please confirm pre-orders today if you haven't
already so that all orders may be shipped efficiently on Thursday morning. |
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| SGX
Game System Details |
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We mentioned the SGX game system from Sega yesterday and after checking the unit out, it
makes a little more sense. To recap, the SGX is a coin-operated Saturn console for use in
arcades or in stores with a pay for play option. The unit looks like a Pioneer laserdisc
player with two controller ports and a remote control. A caddy that can hold up to six
CD-Roms slides in and out for multiple game choices without having to swap discs. In this
manner, the SGX works similarly to the SNK MVS arcade board which can accept 2-4
cartridges. The added bonus of the SGX is a built-in Video-CD card so that you can insert
Video-CDs into the caddy if you want to give your customers the option of watching movies
instead of playing Saturn games. The operator presets the amount of quarters required for
certain choices. For example, we preset our unit so that a quarter would play a Saturn
game but set it to demand two quarters in order to watch 15 minutes of a video-cd. If you
wanted to continue watching, the viewer would have to insert another two quarters to
continue watching the next 15 minutes. We can see this thing doing fairly well in malls.
It could also work well as a demo unit in stores for new games so that customers can try
out the latest releases for a quarter before actually commiting to buy the game. The steep
cost of the unit at US$1150 makes it a hard sell for operators since a
comparable Saturn console with video-cd card costs roughly $200 now. The six CD caddy and
the revenue potential may however appeal to certain operators with high traffic arcades. |
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| Yen
Equilibrium |
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Trading range bound for the dollar-yen. The wide fluctuations seen earlier this month have
more than likely been contained. |
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| Sony
Corp profits tumble |
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Sony suffered a group operating profit decline of 19.8% in the 4Q of 98 from year ago
levels. Senior VP Masayoshi Morimoto cited disappointing sales in walkman units, stereo
systems and color television sets in Asia and Latin America. Pricing pressure on cellular
phones from Nokia and other European competitors have also contributed to weaker margins.
Sony expects a group operating loss of 41.9 billion yen for the 1Q/99 period. |
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| Dreamcast
Transparent Casing |
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The natural extension of our proposal for a transparent Playstation shell would be a
variant Dreamcast shell. The DC casing is tricky because of the modem component. The shell
can be fabricated easily but the console will look out of sorts if the case is clear and
the modem on the bottom is chalk colored. We'll hold off on any DC plans for now. In the
meantime, NCS has found a manufacturer in Asia who already has the mold for the
Playstation shell available, which eliminates the most arduous and expensive part of the
process. We have asked them to send us a sample so that we can compare their work to an
original Playstation shell. If everything is exacting and up to snuff, we will start off
with a small production run. Their minimum batch size is 1000 units which is fine since we
were expecting launch runs of 10,000 units and up. A black casing was offered and perhaps
we will have some black cases manufactured for those who wish to own a pseudo-Yarouze.
Please visit yesterday's update
for the skinny on transparent Playstation shells. Any input to our account at ncx@ix.netcom.com is
appreciated. |
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| Capital
Market |
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No positions today but we're watching and waiting. |
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Send e-mail to ncs@escape.com
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