| NCS had a number
of discussions with distributors in Japan and Hong Kong overnight concerning the
Dreamcast. It appears that additional DC supplies will be hitting the market as early as
tonight. The prices remain sky high for the new shipment but we must caution everyone,
from associate distributors, resellers and direct retail customers that from what we are
hearing and based on past experience, prices could begin dropping at any time from this
point forth. While it is unlikely that Sega will flood the market with DC consoles over
the next couple of days, there has been some resistance from consumers around the world to
the premium being priced into the DC. Most consoles have found homes already, but when
large supplies start hitting the market, expect the prices to drop quickly. Sega's target
of 500,000 shipped units is a big number and we fully expect the company to reach their
goals by the end of this year. NCS will keep our customers updated on the situation but
stock will be available this week if you don't want to wait and gotta have it now. The
highest price (or king's ransom), after the first day of "western DC retail" we
have heard comes from our associates in London at 1400 pounds (US$2314) for a DC, all four
games, four joypads, one VMS and one joystick. They sold out yesterday. |
|
| At the risk of
repeating our request and sounding redundant, we must repeat one point, just one time.
Many customers and visitors are not reading our DC update from last Friday. All the
answers to Dreamcast pricing and it's scarce availability are posted in Friday's update. This link also
appears on our front page, the moment you surf onto the NCS site. Please take a minute or
two to read it before calling or e-mailing us about why the Dreamcast is priced so high or
why it isn't available in large quantities. 400-500 messages with pretty much the same DC
questions are flooding our mailbox each day so please read our update from last
week for Dreamcast details. Thanks. |
|
| One can only
play Virtua Fighter 3tb so long. NCS has already opened up our Dreamcast console for a
look inside. Very clean design and the unit features a mini-fan on the lower left corner
that draws air outside through a set of grills on the casing. The board design is clean
and the modular internals remind us of the Playstation's innards. A large silver heat sink
sits atop the core CPU while another heat sink is directly below it. We're not sure what
the second sink is covering just yet. Each heat sink features a metal pipette that is
connected to the fan so that heat is funneled directly outside of the casing. It is
interesting to note that every modular unit, from the power board to the control port deck
to the pcboard is imprinted with the original name of the console, Katana. We've got a lot
more exploration to do but we're very pleased with the clean internal design. Time
permitting, NCS will post scans of the innards for those who are interested. We'll also
post some small details on the Dreamcast tomorrow such as what is shown on the screen when
you play a music disc and what the intro looks like. |
|
|
| Two new
Dreamcast imports today
|
|
| A shipment of
new Saturn imports will arrive on Thursday. The Thanksgiving holiday skewed some of our
shipped packages and a number of parcels are still being held in Customs or are still in
transit. A few cartons were also misdelivered to other businesses but that's a story for
another day... |
|
A few Color
Gameboy cartridge delays to report:
| Product Title |
Date |
Price |
| Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 3 |
01/29/99 |
US$39 |
| Ganbare Goemon Tengutou |
01/14/99 |
US$39 |
| Tokimeki Memorial Culture |
02/11/99 |
US$39 |
| Tokimeki Memorial Sports |
02/11/99 |
US$39 |
| Please
re-confirm pre-orders for the new dates |
|
|
|
| Konami's Silent
Hill (Y5800) for the Playstation console has been confirmed for
February 25, 1999. Pre-orders are welcome from now until December 22. |
|
| Yesterday, NCS
mentioned that Sony's latest PS game Poporogue would not boot
on chip modified American Playstations. This has spurred fear and speculation from our
customers that other publishers will begin utilizing the new boot track. This is unlikely
but in the case that Namco, Capcom, et al decide to encode their discs with the new
lock-out, one should know that "chip" development is brisk in Taiwan and Asia.
We estimate that chips are easily a 1/2 billion dollar business worldwide per annum. If
the new encoding scheme becomes widespread, a new mod will be available to defeat it.
There's too much money involved to not crack the code. There was a time, years ago, when
the Playstation lock-out was deemed unstoppable. That ended with one little chip in the
spring of '96. |
|
| Namco's Ridge
Racer R4 will ship tonight and we expect to take delivery on Friday. The special
package with the Jogcon pad is extremely limited due to underproduction. NCS is fairly
confident that all of our pre-ordered quantities will be fulfilled but we will be unable
to fill new orders in the first shipment. There are no shortages on the regular edition of
R4 so new orders may be submitted for that version. The final price for R4 LE is still
tentative at this point so please wait for final delivery on Friday before we post retail
quotes. |
|
Send e-mail to ncs@escape.com |
|
