What's all this about MSX not being technically good enough?!
MSX was far ahead of its time! The graphic and video qualities of a 1985 MSX2 have only been surpassed by PC in the early 90's.
A MSX turboR to me seemed just as fast as a 486SX25 which was available at the same time, but then a turboR was capable of much better graphics then the average 1MB VGA card.

And really, what did a PC kost? An IBM 8088 PC was $15000 (including printer, yay!)...

It seems a lot of you have bad memory.

And about piracy... Sure, it's still here today.. Percentage-wise piracy probably remained stable (although in recent years it's gotten worse, because of the internet). But you are forgetting ABSOLUTE NUMBERS are more important!!
Let's make a comparison of then and now with some rough numbers.
Playstation has a market of 60 million. If piracy is 50%, there's still a market for 30 million.
MSX was sold 5 million. If piracy is 50%, there's only a market of 2.5 million.

If you sell your game to 2% of the market, that's 50.000 people for MSX, versus 600.000 people on Playstation.

So even if the total market for Playstation is 6 times bigger than for MSX2, it sells 12 times more than MSX.

If you make 1 euro/dollar/whatever profit on the selling of a game, and the costs of developing are 100.000, then on MSX you're making big loss, while on playstation you make big profit.

And that's with the SAME piracy figures! So back in the late 80's piracy DID kill MSX. (although ofcourse it wasn't the ONLY reason)

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There are Apple and IBM mainly and Microsoft choose the second one, if they were try to introduce MSX in the states, they're doing competence himself!

Yes, that's obvious. And I would like to know what kind of contract did ASCII with Microsoft. Maybe it was stated clearly that MSX couldn't be sold in the US...

The market in the US was already dominated by Commodore. There where just no business partners willing to put money in the MSX system, to promote it there. Except for Yamaha, but those computers where sold as musical instruments (CXM).

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What's all this about MSX not being technically good enough?! MSX was far ahead of its time! The graphic and video qualities of a 1985 MSX2 have only been surpassed by PC in the early 90's.

I totally agree with you.

Why MSX2+ was not good enough??? How many computers in 1988 were capable of displaying 19268 colors at once? What was the price of a PC with such graphical capability in that time? (remember to include the color monitor because a PC cannot be connected to a TV...)

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What's all this about MSX not being technically good enough?! MSX was far ahead of its time! The graphic and video qualities of a 1985 MSX2 have only been surpassed by PC in the early 90's.

Ermm the Atari ST (1985), the Amiga500 (1987) and the Sega Megadrive (1988) all surpassed the '85 MSX2 in terms of graphic capabilities. If you meant that it wasn't before the early 90s before the IBM PC surpassed the MSX2 you are right...but MSX2 wasn't technically superior in its own time. If any of the other systems I mentioned had the same ease of use, and would have invited self-development as well as MSX did I would have switched.

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What's all this about MSX not being technically good enough?! MSX was far ahead of its time! The graphic and video qualities of a 1985 MSX2 have only been surpassed by PC in the early 90's. A MSX turboR to me seemed just as fast as a 486SX25 which was available at the same time, but then a turboR was capable of much better graphics then the average 1MB VGA card.

A turbo R was and is slower then a 286 at 12 MHz, really... It's a fast MSX but it was just not up to the competition in 1992 anymore, even though the graphics quality was indeed (lots) better then the VGA cards of the time.

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And really, what did a PC kost? An IBM 8088 PC was $15000 (including printer, yay!)... It seems a lot of you have bad memory. And about piracy... Sure, it's still here today.. Percentage-wise piracy probably remained stable (although in recent years it's gotten worse, because of the internet). But you are forgetting ABSOLUTE NUMBERS are more important!! Let's make a comparison of then and now with some rough numbers. Playstation has a market of 60 million. If piracy is 50%, there's still a market for 30 million. MSX was sold 5 million. If piracy is 50%, there's only a market of 2.5 million. If you sell your game to 2% of the market, that's 50.000 people for MSX, versus 600.000 people on Playstation. So even if the total market for Playstation is 6 times bigger than for MSX2, it sells 12 times more than MSX. If you make 1 euro/dollar/whatever profit on the selling of a game, and the costs of developing are 100.000, then on MSX you're making big loss, while on playstation you make big profit. And that's with the SAME piracy figures! So back in the late 80's piracy DID kill MSX. (although ofcourse it wasn't the ONLY reason)

That's the point here, I think. There were some large mistakes made by the MSX consortium in the early 90's. I think the usage of an 8-bit processor, albeit a fast one, in the turbo R was the biggest one. An ideal MSX3 would have had a new 16 bit CPU and a V9990. But it seems that there was just not enough budget for R&D in those days anymore in the MSX consortium.

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A turbo R was and is slower then a 286 at 12 MHz, really...

No way. Maybe if you only look at the raw CPU power, that might be true (but even then I'm not convinced, 286 was really slow!), but there are more components in a computer system and overall turboR is much faster than that, easily comparing to a 468SX25.

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It's a fast MSX but it was just not up to the competition in 1992 anymore

MSX turboR was released in 1990, 2 years earlier. PC's weren't that advanced yet.

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I think the usage of an 8-bit processor, albeit a fast one, in the turbo R was the biggest one. An ideal MSX3 would have had a new 16 bit CPU and a V9990. But it seems that there was just not enough budget for R&D in those days anymore in the MSX consortium.

R800 IS 16 bit. *sigh* I'm not having this discussion again.
I agree the V9990 should've been included in the turboR, that was a mistake indeed... But think of the extra costs that would've given.

If MSX turboR was made 2 years earlier, and released as MSX3 (in stead of the MSX2+), it probably would've had a positive influence on the life of MSX, but it was too late and MSX was already dying.

There are all kinds of things in the turboR that could've been better... But by the time MSX turboR was released, the amount of MSX software was already declining rapidly. MSX turboR not being 'good enough' had very little to do with the death of MSX.

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>>A turbo R was and is slower then a 286 at 12 MHz, really...<< No way. Maybe if you only look at the raw CPU power, that might be true (but even then I'm not convinced, 286 was really slow!), but there are more components in a computer system and overall turboR is much faster than that, easily comparing to a 468SX25.

I was referring to raw CPU power, for instance, a 286 could run a MOD-player at way higher mixing frequencies than any turboR MOD player ever could...

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>><<MSX turboR was released in 1990, 2 years earlier. PC's weren't that advanced yet.

No, but the competition were all *real* 16 bit systems with a 68000 CPU...

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<<R800 IS 16 bit. *sigh* I'm not having this discussion again.

That is a question which depends on how you would define a 16 bit CPU. And if an R800 is considered a 16 bit CPU, then it's major competitors were all to be considered 32 bits, especially the M68000 CPU...

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I agree the V9990 should've been included in the turboR, that was a mistake indeed... But think of the extra costs that would've given. If MSX turboR was made 2 years earlier, and released as MSX3 (in stead of the MSX2+), it probably would've had a positive influence on the life of MSX, but it was too late and MSX was already dying. There are all kinds of things in the turboR that could've been better... But by the time MSX turboR was released, the amount of MSX software was already declining rapidly. MSX turboR not being 'good enough' had very little to do with the death of MSX.

Well, if it would have made a real technological leap ahead, it could have. But MSX turboR was just by far not advanced enough to be serious competition to the Atari's, Amiga's, x68000's and Macs of the time.

D00DS I'VE FOUND OUT WHAT KILLED THE MSX !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


According to many sources around the web, there are rumours it was the Floppy Disk Reader invention which killed the MSX !!!

OMG !

If only they had only released nms 8220 )))

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And I would like to know what kind of contract did ASCII with Microsoft. Maybe it was stated clearly that MSX couldn't be sold in the US...

I can bet for that... I guess some "break into european market" for both of them -Matsushita and Microsoft-

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Ermm the Atari ST (1985), the Amiga500 (1987) and the Sega Megadrive (1988) all surpassed the '85 MSX2 in terms of graphic capabilities. If you meant that it wasn't before the early 90s before the IBM PC surpassed the MSX2 you are right...but MSX2 wasn't technically superior in its own time. If any of the other systems I mentioned had the same ease of use, and would have invited self-development as well as MSX did I would have switched.

absolutelly agree

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No way. Maybe if you only look at the raw CPU power, that might be true (but even then I'm not convinced, 286 was really slow!), but there are more components in a computer system and overall turboR is much faster than that, easily comparing to a 468SX25.

...but comparisons have to be done without dedicated hardware, otherwise, consoles like PS2 or Gamecube are like a Pentium IV at 2 GHz, but this isn't true

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D00DS I'VE FOUND OUT WHAT KILLED THE MSX !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! According to many sources around the web, there are rumours it was the Floppy Disk Reader invention which killed the MSX !!!

LOL

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...but comparisons have to be done without dedicated hardware, otherwise, consoles like PS2 or Gamecube are like a Pentium IV at 2 GHz, but this isn't true

And not even that goes for the turboR: it does not really have that much dedicated chips either. It's architecture is quite (x86-)PC-like in a way: most processing power rests in the CPU.

Mind you, I am not saying the turboR is a bad system, on the contrary, it's open and clean architecture makes it one of the best homecomputers ever built, way better then it's more powerfull competitors with their very clumsy architecture. Way more capable of running stable(!) software than any Amiga 500... But it was just too late to save the MSX standard and it was outdated when it was introduced. It would have made a nice MSX3 if it would have been introduced worldwidely in 1988...

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>>Ermm the Atari ST (1985), the Amiga500 (1987) and the Sega Megadrive (1988) all surpassed the '85 MSX2 in terms of graphic capabilities. If you meant that it wasn't before the early 90s before the IBM PC surpassed the MSX2 you are right...but MSX2 wasn't technically superior in its own time. If any of the other systems I mentioned had the same ease of use, and would have invited self-development as well as MSX did I would have switched.<< absolutelly agree

Besides the Atari ST, all those listed were 2 years or more later than MSX2. Apples and oranges.

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...but comparisons have to be done without dedicated hardware, otherwise, consoles like PS2 or Gamecube are like a Pentium IV at 2 GHz, but this isn't true

Bullshit. The combination with the MSX VDP is exactly what makes it so powerful!
A Pentium IV at 2 GHz will slow down to a crawl on an old ISA VGA card.

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Bullshit. The combination with the MSX VDP is exactly what makes it so powerful! A Pentium IV at 2 GHz will slow down to a crawl on an old ISA VGA card.

Yeah, as the V9958 is the major slowdown of the turboR

True

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Bullshit. The combination with the MSX VDP is exactly what makes it so powerful! A Pentium IV at 2 GHz will slow down to a crawl on an old ISA VGA card.

Yeah, for that reason exists GeForce 4

mind you insist comparing MSX "powered" machines (tMSX+V9999+Moonsound etc...) with some kind of "ISA VGA Pentium IV" O_o ... perhaps my old gameboy with an ATI Radeon 9800 could beat your tMSX

... it's a joke it's a joke man...

nevermind... we are in 2003, and today many cheap PC runs much better than the best (and expensive) tMSX you can find. But I'm still enjoying them