What's with the proliferation of hardware systems recenty? (mini-consoles, mini-arcades, VCS, Amico, etc...)

For a long time the gaming hardware market was relatively stable. You had the big 3 consoles, PCs, and then some random plug and plays and Atgames Flashback retro consoles that were sold as novelties at Target and drugstores.

Then VR entered the mix and we got a bunch of headsets added on top. That made sense because VR requires hardware to function.

Then Nintendo came out with the NES Classic and started a small boom in mini-consoles, with the SNES, the PlayStation, the Genesis, and even the TurboGrafx-16 getting similar products.

Then Arcade 1UP came on the scene with relatively inexpensive 3/4 scale arcade machines that still cost hundreds of dollars. We'd had tiny novelty arcade machines for at least a decade in the plug and play category, but these were dedicated machines that (without being modified) could only play a dozen or so games, and were sold for the price of consoles.

What's going on here?

Who is buying all this stuff? I certainly don't have room for mini arcade machines, but even if I did I wouldn't want them. Software emulation has come a long way, and projects like the MiSTer use FGPA to do hardware emulation across a variety of systems. The idea of having dedicated hardware for retro games seems pretty unappealing. I don't even like getting up to put a new disc in my console, let alone moving to an entirely different machine.

But I sort of get the arcade thing because a lot of people have arcade nostalgia and if you like the way they look they can be used as conversation pieces and decorative furniture, so okay. The arcade machines have a niche market that makes sense.

I own the mini-consoles, and I think they're even dumber. They should have just been software packs. They can't have been super profitable since they didn't cost much but they had to be manufactured, shipped to retail, etc.. They're pretty inconvenient because you need to hook them up to your TV via HDMI and what gamer has free HDMI slots? For something like the PlayStation classic the emulation isn't even very good! But again there's nostalgia there, and they are kind of visually cool I guess, and they make decent Christmas gifts. There was definitely a market because they sold extremely well (at least the Nintendo versions did.)

Then we get to projects like the VCS and the Amico, and they make no sense at all. Maybe they're just Kickstarter semi-scams? The VCS did ultimately deliver hardware and the Amico seems like it will, but they're very expensive and they don't actually seem to offer anything of value. The Ouya, for all its faults, was cheap and a novel idea. These seem like someone said "Hey, the Ouya was a giant flop, what if we made it three times as expensive? Is that something people would want?"

What all this adds up to is that for retro games we've moved from software packs to dedicated hardware where if you want to buy something like Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder the only way to get legit copies is to buy a mini arcade machine from Arcade 1 UP or....a different mini arcade machine from Sega itself. There have been a bunch of cool releases of licensed games and other stuff that are only available on these machines. We used to get re-releases in big software combo packs, but now you need to pay for a bunch of hardware along with the games and you get fewer games to boot, for a lot more money.

And maybe that's the point. To extract more cash from retro players by restricting the product to a much more expensive format. If so, it sucks. If this is the future of legitimate retro games then I am not on board. Technology has made it easier and easier to consolidate games on to a single piece of hardware. The Xbox Series S/X plays 4 generations of Xbox! But the industry is moving in the opposite direction and forcing you to buy a new piece of hardware for like 6-12 games.

It seems like a strange development.

It's nostalgia from the crowd that stopped playing games when they got so...complicated. I had tons of friends who got super excited and moms/dads about reliving the "good games" and having the counsel in the room to show you. It being small adds the "cute" factor. Most didn't play the thing for more than a bit. Add to that the PS1 version failed as you notice the closer you get to advanced games the fewer people care. Hence Dreamcast mini wasn't reviewed internally as a smart plan to hop on the bandwagon. Mini had Mario and Mario sells via nostalgia and good conservative values. He's not pushing a narrative that will offend people who like things to stay the same in this rapidly changing world. I'm generalizing of course and joking a bit, but the real reason is nostalgia and missing out on value, with the whole sold-out thing and people thinking sold out equals quality or that YOU NEED IT OR YOULL NEVER HAVE IT. We see the same tactic being used during the you know what and mask. People brought mask as if were running out of tissue to cover our mouths, add to that paper for toilets, the rush to buy gas cause "WERE RUNNING LOW" when gas has always been made from a "RUNNING LOW RESOURCE!" point is people are sheep and generally buy things if you tell them to as long as you don't make it obvious. People are catching on now that they know twitch's trending is trends cause companies pay players incentives to play certain games at release, games use 1/3 of their budget they could have used to make their game better, in marketing cause goodness forbid a gamer doesn't understand a 10/10 game is worth buying without hype from false advertising about how it will change your life. I'm salty given I brought a PlayStation classic or whatever or at least my family brought me one for Christmas even after I told them it's cheaper to find the 4 or so good games you wanna play else where along with them never getting that crash bandicoot wasn't on it. It's a paperweight given new games are more appealing and the games on it we all already beat. Anyway, it's all nostalgia and FOMO. The same thing happens with the limited stock of PS5, though that's a real shortage and not manufactured. PS5 has more exclusives now but when it first came out there was no need to rush like people were, given most who did, couldn't notice the PS5 and PS4 difference after playing a while. Of course, now that's different so ill let that pass.

I own both a NES and SNES Mini, got them both launch price so they were fairly affordable, I enjoyed playing them but then Nintendo do the Switch online thing so you don't really need either of them if you have switch online.

There nice though, work well and have a good selection of games.

The SNES classic is absolutely spectacular...

...as a modular emulation device. I don't know many people that haven't "hacked it" and absolutely LOADED IT with a USB stick and tons of ROMS. Why buy a NES/SNES/PS1 Classic when the SNES classic runs them all, and hundreds more games by simply plugging it into a PC for an hour.

I mainly game on my PS4, but having an absolute back catalog of history is great. Plus, if my partner and I wanna play a game from our childhood, its a 30 second job

Software emulation has come a long way, and projects like the MiSTer use FGPA to do hardware emulation across a variety of systems.

People enjoy and will pay for convenience and generally prefer the least amount of set up possible - meaning, average Joe can plug in power and an HDMI cable but he has no idea what the fuck this weird nerdy FPGA board thingy is and who the hell wants to sit at a computer and configure all these weird graphics settings and controller setups?

For most adults who are buying these things for nostalgia, they want something they can plug in, play for a week or two or maybe a month in their spare time, and then set aside once their nostalgia has been satisfied. It's also incredibly easy to get custom firmware on any of these boxes that allows you to play whatever you want if you can provide the ROM. Once you've spent an afternoon modding a SNES classic, for instance, you can just put whatever you want on it and play virtually anything - after all, the emulation tends to be pretty good on this latest batch of official "classic" machines.

In addition, people like physicality. They like to see and hold something. The sight of a MiSTer setup doesn't ignite those feelings of nostalgia. It's just this weird nerdy board. And playing Super Mario Bros. with that wired 360 controller you happen to have laying around just feels wrong, somehow. It's not the same, man!

A MiSTer set up is a project. That's a hobby you get into and work on. That's not something you buy, plug in, and go. A lot of people don't want that, they just want to play the damn games. Software emulation is still spotty in some cases, but more than that it requires some work to set up (and you have to be sitting at your computer, which many people just don't want to do).

For my part, I have a SNES Classic and I used it a lot, but eventually I bought a Super NT so I could use the handful of SNES cartridges I have (and any I may purchase in the future) without having to worry about emulation ever failing. And I really want to get one of those Analog Pockets if they ever actually come out and are in stock. But also, I know what I'm buying and I know where and how I can play this stuff if I ever feel like I'm being ripped off or if these big corporations lose interest in making their old games available.

It's interesting that literally nobody is addressing the actual question raised, which is why all this hardware has proliferated. Instead the focus has been on why people BOUGHT SNES and NES classics specifically, which is not a difficult question to begin with, as I indicated. It's not even particularly interesting to ask why those particular consoles were made (they certainly were not intended to be reflashable emulation boxes like people are saying, and they mostly aren't used as such anyway) because that was all path dependent stuff that related to where Nintendo was when it launched the NES Classic, and that mini console being a big enough hit to make a SNES Classic a foregone conclusion.

The actual question is more about all the other stuff that's come out since. The dozens of arcade machines and video pinball tables. Multiple relatively high profile new consoles based on old properties that seem like guaranteed flops. The fact that Sega finally released Revenge of Death Adder and on two different pieces of hardware but there's no widely available legal software version. That's what makes this moment interesting, not whether you personally bought and reflashed a SNES classic.

@bigsocrates: I think you might have shot your question in the foot by bringing up the NES and SNES classic before you got to your real question.

And my answer to your real question is... I dunno. I barely knew the VCS and Amico existed before reading your post more thoroughly and couldn't tell you anything else about anything else you mentioned. Perhaps they want to tap into all the new gamers who have popped up over the past ten years? China only recently lifted their video game ban so perhaps some of these companies are hoping to get cheap consoles into homes outside of North America or European territories, where Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo are household names. That and there are tons of people out there who currently only play games on smartphones who might be willing to buy something cheaper than a $500 Xbox to plug into their TV.

I'm guessing they're cheap to make and the mark up for profit is great.

Maybe because tech for tech's sake is fun? Bakalar doesn't have to build his own keyboard, but he does. I think there's just a growing DIY tech-interest that intersects with games. It's also much easier and affordable to build custom arcade setups or likewise. As games as a hobby expands, I don't think it's only going to be the games themselves that become varied, the method of delivery will equally find new ways to attract specific interests.

Also, there's really a big difference enjoying an arcade title on something that feels more like an arcade machine than sitting on your couch playing with a controller. Now, that's arcade machines and like you say they have their own appeal for various reasons. But I think fundamentally, we're probably in a time when people are trying to find new ways to distribute and consume games that isn't limited to 'the big 3 and PC'.

My only other wild guess is that mainstream games or gaming has turned stale for a lot of folks, so they're trying to figure out alternatives. They still like games but don't want to be stuck in the same echo system of ideas. So the enthusiasm for games turns to tech rather than titles, so to speak.

@justin258: You can't really talk about hardware proliferation without talking about the NES and SNES classic. Those mini systems probably sold orders of magnitudes more than all the other projects combined. But in terms of the number of projects, there are an absolute ton beyond the mini-systems.

These are not aimed at the Chinese market. China has its own homegrown consoles, getting through regulations in China as a foreign company is a nightmare and requires the resources of something like Sony or Microsoft, and these companies don't have the resources to censor their stores in order to meet the Chinese market anyway. And they're also not cheaper alternatives. That's part of the issue. The VGS and Amico cost more than an Xbox Series S, with a tiny fraction of the power. It's not even clear if the Amico can run 7th gen 3D games (it apparently runs on a chip kind of like a Banana Pi; most of the cost comes from the touchscreen controllers) though the VCS can run Cyberpunk! Sort of.

@pezen: These are not DIY projects. Arcade machines, as I said, kind of make sense in a functional furniture type of way, though I think that the sheer number of them is pretty surprising. But that doesn't account for the fact that a lot of these games are NOT being offered in software versions, nor weird things like the Astro City Mini.

There have always been people who didn't like mainstream gaming but most of them used to play games on PC or something where there's a ton of stuff out there, and lots of retro stuff was made available on PC (and other consoles) for that reason.

We've gone from Virtual Console to having to buy whole ass arcade machines for legit versions of old games!

Nostalgia, conversation pieces, and scams.

The Arcade 1up machines could be repurposed. ETAPrime has a guide on installing a modifying a 1up Cabinet to put in a Pi or PC. https://youtu.be/09DQCOr6zQM

The mini-consoles have been a thing for... forever? 20 years ago, I could walk into a Kohls or Grocery store and find a Retro-Genesis with built in Genesis games. Or the mall kiosks with some plastic gray box with NES roms loaded on it that played like butt. Cheapo things I'd see on the streets of Hong Kong with super crappy controllers.

No one cared until Nintendo put their's out - the hardware was good, hit nostalgia hard, and it became that year's Cabbage Patch Doll. It was cheap enough that if you didn't -really- care all that much, but saw one, you snagged it anyways. Then everyone else came along when no one cared anymore.

Modern Atari and Scam go hand in hand. Surely someone out there is interested in wearing an Atari speaker hat. Probably paying for a room at the Atari hotel with their Atari crypto currency. I mean, it's right there in the name. Atari Venture Capital Scam.

Maybe its like a reset. Get those kids who never got into the rat race of new systems every 6 years. Slowly build them up. Hard to get new gamers into games when they play like uncharted 4 and to keep up with critics they need to keep getting faster and more complex. Little mister playing candy crush isn't too excited about plugging in all those wires, figuring out their name set up, etc. It's nice to hit that market of simple is best even if they are the market that loses out given there are cheaper alternatives. Take it this way. I got an Xbox arcade as a present when Xbox 360 was out. Arcade sold to parents who didn't know what from what and saw that one was 50 or so bucks cheaper and did the same thing. Not knowing it would cost me 150 bucks for a hard drive that I needed otherwise I couldn't play any game on it, plus a 100 for a wireless adapter that I needed to plugin. Overall it costed more than just buying the system with all the bells and whistles. My parents thought I was ungrateful no matter how I broke it down and explained it. This is why diskless systems and all the cheap add ons exist. It's to catch you. People are way less discerning about spending on small amounts for small things. Why $1 stores thrive. You leave spending 100 bucks and only meant to spend 3. Marketing and so on....in the end, the reason is humans are easily influenced and function by stimuli linked to their happier days (for most people childhood.)

So aI worked at a big box retailer for 5+ years and I can say anecdotally that the mini consoles sold fairly well across the board, year round. The 3rd party retro consoles mainly sold during Christmas season as a cheap gift. We carried the arcade cabinets but never sold any until we put them on a heavy clearance sale. I also never got the economics of them. I could buy the Atari Flashback Collection, or the Sega Vintage Collection or whatever the Capcom version is called, for any modern console or computer and get 100+ games for $50 or so. Or I could spend $200-$300 to just play Centipede or Pac-Man or what have you.