Why the MSX2 was so little known outside of Japan?

MSX2 was also popular in the Middle East. Of course the AX170 was the king, but Al Alamiah had also a few MSX2 models that were popular too (AX350 and AX370). The only reason why they were less wide-spread compared to the AX170 was the price tag. AX170 was a very popular end-of-school-year gift from our dads. Costing 750 Saudi Riyals at the time (~220 USD back then). Monthly salaries were around 3000-4000 SAR for the middle class, so the AX170 wasn't a cheap buy to begin with.. IIRC the AX350 was double the price (~1400 SAR) so you can imagine what it means to ask daddy to spend almost half of his salary on what they considered then "another Atari" (in the Middle East parents used to name any computer with cartridges "Atari" ).

Philips’ deal with the government (at least I think it was?) to have a program for MSX2 computers in schools certainly helped the sales numbers I think. My primary school also had two MSX computers in my 8th grade classroom. I wish we had used them more often though.

And my dad’s work also used MSX2 computers, at some point we had two at home, one bought ourselves and the other “borrowed” from his office, which we never returned after they were replaced with PCs.

Thanks a lot for so interesting information. I have to confess I knew nothing about MSX software from the Netherlands. This caused my wrong conclusion that the MSX2 models were not numerous in this country. However, were there any good games for the MSX2 created in Europe? And it is still very odd for me that the Netherlands' neighbors Germany and Belgium missed the MSX almost completely. The rich Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway) somehow missed the MSX too. Indeed the most interesting thing for me is to know the history of the MSX in the USA. One can only wonder how the Chinese Lasers got much more success in the USA than more advanced Japanese designs in the 80s.

Really?, USA or Australia?. I've always though that Yamaha and SVI were popular enough to sell a decent number of machines in the USA...

I remember when TurboR arrived to Spain I considered buying one... but I had to share it with my brother who rightly pointed out it was a stupid idea as for a little more money we got a PC with a hard drive.