JVC X'eye - Videogame History #21 - Retro Review
SEGA, the great competition of the famous Nintendo in the 90s, had a great weight with its game consoles for several years, when it launched its 16-bit console to the market a large number of people were impacted by those excellent 2D graphics, but this company is not remembered precisely because of this, the Sega Mega Drive had in its long way too many modifications and peripherals, the one that most caught the attention was its Mega CD, which involved this company the world of CD-ROM in 1991.
At the time of the departure of the Sega CD, he caught the attention of a company that was in the market since 1927 with entertainment equipment (specifically VHS), it is JVC, seeing the functionalities that had the Sega CD were totally fascinated , this impelled them to get involved in this world of videogames, but they chose the easy way, they decided to buy the rights to Sega to be able to manufacture an all-in-one console using the articles of the previous mentioned company, being able to play in it Mega Drive games and Mega CD and as a final touch they added a karaoke function and multimedia encyclopedias reader, that's how the WonderMega was born in Japan.
Aesthetically the console attracted a lot of attention, had everything a sega loving person wanted, its respective Slot for cartridges and peripherals like the Sega 32X, its respective CD tray which was fully compatible with all the Mega CD games, however, it received a small criticism from its users because it was of a large size, so JVC decided to redesign this console, launching the Wondermega M2, which included a wireless control which worked with an infrared port.
But JVC did not want to remain alone in the Japanese market, knew of the great sales potential that existed n the American continent, so it takes the decision to redesign its console again, dramatically reducing its size and retaining all the previous functions of its previous models , thus launching in 1994 with a great marketing campaign, the JVC X'Eye.
Everything pointed out that JVC would have a good product for the public gamer, a console with a fairly compact design, you had several peripherals in one place, good material, compatible with all the accessories of the great Sega, a great marketing to publicize your console, what could go wrong ?, its price in the market, in america was put on sale with a value of $ 500, quite exorbitant figure if we compare it with a Mega Drive that cost $ 90 and if you wanted it with the Mega CD about $ 300, its more direct competition Nintendo offered a much cheaper product with a lot of amazing games, obviously did not have the same characteristics, but in the market the costs of the items are quite valued, this console came in the At that moment the Mega Drive was almost dead, only a total of 10,000 consoles were sold, adding all its models, giving tremendous losses to the JVC company and taking it away from the gaming world.
Currently the X'Eye is a console much coveted by retro video game collectors, for being a device which was not sold on a large scale it is quite difficult to get a copy, selling up to $ 300, despite the fact that this console did not have important innovation, has its merit with respect to the quality with which it was made and be an all in one device, unfortunately I enter the market at a bad moment, being like another video console more in the forgetfulness of videogames.
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very nice and informative post.u always post valuable contents thats y i followed you.people always got advantage and infromation from your post.good and keep it up.
Thank you very much for your great support, I just try to share my little experience in the world of videogames. Excellent that you like this type of articles.