Atari Jaguar sales figures

[Foxsolo2000]

..and you had the PC version a couple years back that blew the Jaguar version away in every sense of it.

 

Uh, I have the PC version and no it does not 'blow the Jaguar version away in every sense of it. '

 

The Jag version in many respects is the most fun version. It is without a doubt, hands down the SCARIEST version.

 

It's the scariest because even with all weapons you're still nearly helpless. The weapons they give you are pathetic and they're so stingy with giving you ammo. I think it's impossible to finish the game playing as the Marine and not using cheat codes. I got AvP and Doom with my Jag when I got it. I was much more impressed with Doom. It's sooo much faster and smoother. It doesn't take 5 seconds for you to turn around and all the walls aren't at 90 degree angles(puke). AvP is just like the Wolfenstein engine with different graphics.

 

It isn't impossible to complete it as a Marine without cheating, it just takes a lot of patience and to learn how to conserve your shots to three second bursts.

[Godzilla]

I like the falling 'i' thats a nice touch...

[Michael_]

I like the falling 'i' thats a nice touch...

 

Eh?

[darklord1977]

Hi guys,

 

Perhaps this can help. http://www.atari-explorer.com/jaguar/jaguarend.html

 

Karl

very interesting..thanks for the link

[Zonie]

I recall reading an interview with the developers from Rebellion and they said that AvP sold 250,000 copies. Maybe that many were produced but they didn't all sell right away. It's silly how people get in bidding wars over AvP when it's the Jags most common game besides Cybermorph. Who here doesn't own AvP?

Ummm.... I dont. everyone wants too much for it. To me, It's worth $10 tops.

 

As for the movie, I thought it was pretty entertaining. It's been my experience that when a gamer says a move sucks, it's pretty good. People today expect too much from a movie. They worry too much about timelines and such.

 

I thought the thing weyland did with the pen and his hand was a nice touch. It was a subtle tie in to the knife scene in aliens.

Edited May 7, 2006 by Zonie

[Djmicklovin]

On 4/23/2006 at 4:51 AM, spacecadet said:

 

Does it really matter? You're talking about the difference of a couple hundred thousand units. Their competition sold tens of millions more than they did either way.

Take Europe and Japan out of the equation and suddenly it’s not tens of millions like everyone thinks and maybe a few million if they’re lucky. And probably closer to the hundreds of thousands like the Jaguar numbers in the USA, at least for the other consoles at that time that were considered failures as well like the 3DO, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc. American made consoles don’t sell in Europe or Japan remember? Even the Xbox to this day has a hard time selling in Europe and Japan, even with Microsoft’s money they have thrown at it. They just haven’t gotten any traction. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Djmicklovin

[agradeneu]

12 minutes ago, Djmicklovin said:

Take Europe and Japan out of the equation and suddenly it’s not tens of millions like everyone thinks and maybe a few million if they’re lucky and probably closer to the hundreds of thousands like the Jaguar numbers in the USA. American made consoles don’t sell in Europe or Japan remember? Even the Xbox to this day has a hard time selling in Europe and Japan, even with Microsoft’s money they have thrown at it. They just haven’t gotten any traction. 

I am sure you don't mean the PS because it sold 40 Million (LTS) in the US. 

 

Edited February 4, 2022 by agradeneu

[Djmicklovin]

2 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

I am sure you don't mean the PS because it sold 40 Million in the US. 

 

PS is the exception and the Jaguar could’ve been a far bigger success if Atari had Sony’s money at that time. The company with the most money wins unfortunately. A lot of games that were meant to be exclusives for Atari, Sega, and even Nintendo went to Sony because they offered bigger money. That’s how the game works. Like we have now with Sony and Microsoft eating up these big game companies. 

[agradeneu]

22 minutes ago, Djmicklovin said:

PS is the exception and the Jaguar could’ve been a far bigger success if Atari had Sony’s money at that time. The company with the most money wins unfortunately. A lot of games that were meant to be exclusives for Atari, Sega, and even Nintendo went to Sony because they offered bigger money. That’s how the game works. Like we have now with Sony and Microsoft eating up these big game companies. 

Exception? SNES 20 Million, Genesis 16 Million....

Jaguars competition were the 16 bitters, not the PS.

 

 

The company with the most money winning, well that would be Microsoft, but both Sony and Nintendo are outselling them.

 

[+Sauron]

1 hour ago, Djmicklovin said:

Take Europe and Japan out of the equation and suddenly it’s not tens of millions like everyone thinks and maybe a few million if they’re lucky. And probably closer to the hundreds of thousands like the Jaguar numbers in the USA, at least for the other consoles at that time that were considered failures as well like the 3DO, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc. American made consoles don’t sell in Europe or Japan remember? Even the Xbox to this day has a hard time selling in Europe and Japan, even with Microsoft’s money they have thrown at it. They just haven’t gotten any traction. 

Taking Europe out of the equation would have nothing to do with it. Atari had a much larger market in Europe than in North America at that time, and I'd venture to say that a rather hefty percentage of the total Jaguars sold were in Europe.

 

[+cubanismo]

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure a few thousand of these bags could have saved the Jag. Or the 3do. Maybe not the VirtualBoy though.

[Djmicklovin]

3 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Exception? SNES 20 Million, Genesis 16 Million....

Jaguars competition were the 16 bitters, not the PS.

 

 

The company with the most money winning, well that would be Microsoft, but both Sony and Nintendo are outselling them.

 

How? You realize the Jaguar launched in Nov 93 which was already late into the lifecycle of the Genesis and SNES? The Genesis and SNES had a 4-5 year headstart on the Jaguar. So it’s only fair to compare it to the 3DO, Saturn, and Playstation. Atari obviously had no chance going up against Sony and their money. How does Sega go from selling 16 million Genesis’ to barely 2 Million Saturns in one generation? There was market saturation as well. Back in the 90s we had too many companies trying to compete for a piece of the gaming pie and it led to the extinction of many of them. Similar to what happened during the gaming crash of the 80s. Too many companies competing and fighting for resources and it ended up killing a lot of them.

 

Sony and Nintendo might be outselling them now but they will run out of gas in the long run. Somewhere along the way they are bound to slip up and they can’t afford to take a big hit financially on their gaming business. Sony is now heavily reliant on their Playstation business. They are not the big tech behemoth they once were in the 90s. They used to dominate in the consumer electronics business selling TVs, DVD/Blu Ray players, sound systems, Walkman Cassette/CD players, everything. Not anymore. Meanwhile Microsoft can keep losing billions on Xbox but still be okay because that is just a small part of their business, they can cover their losses with the revenue they’re bringing in from their Windows business.

[agradeneu]

8 hours ago, Djmicklovin said:

How? You realize the Jaguar launched in Nov 93 which was already late into the lifecycle of the Genesis and SNES? 

 

Well here is the data of sales of 1995:

 

Best-selling video game consoles[edit]

Rank	Manufacturer	Game console	Type	Generation	Sales
					Japan	USA	Worldwide
1	Nintendo	Super NES / Super Famicom	Home	16-bit	1,780,000[15]	1,738,000[16]	3,518,000+
2	Sony	PlayStation	Home	32-bit	1,700,000[17]	800,000[17]	3,100,000[17]
3	Sega	Sega Saturn	Home	32-bit	1,660,000[15]	400,000[18]	2,060,000+
4	Sega	Mega Drive / Genesis	Home	16-bit	30,000[15]	1,968,000[16]	1,998,000+
5	Nintendo	Game Boy	Handheld	8-bit	1,000,000[15]	Un­known	1,000,000+
6	Panasonic	3DO	Home	32-bit	150,000[15]	250,000[19]	400,000+
7	Nintendo	NES / Famicom	Home	8-bit	80,000[15]	104,000[16]	184,000+
8	Sega	Game Gear	Handheld	8-bit	180,000[15]	Un­known	180,000+
9	Atari Corp	Atari Jaguar	Home	32-bit	Un­known	150,000[19]	150,000+
10	NEC	PC-FX	Home	32-bit	120,000[15]	Un­known	120,000+

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_in_video_games#cite_note-Newsweek-19

 

Looking at the data, your claims seem rather funny. It also shows that I was right about the 16 bitters being market leaders in U.S., not the PS or Saturn. 

Atari wanted those consumers to buy Jaguars, not SNES or Genesis. Despite higher price points, all CD machines were outselling the Jaguar by 2x at least. PS and Saturn sales do not represent a whole year as both launched in the U.S. that year. (Sat in May, PS in September)

 

Given Ataris measly financial situation one could argue they did rather well. At least they tried. They could have sold many more Jaguars in EU and UK, but the system was not very available during 1994.

But for the US alone, they were outsold by everyone, on their home market. In 1995, there was a sign of hope with the multi million dollar deal with SEGA. However, Jaguar sales did not improve.

 

When they merged with JTS, they had a huge inventory of unsold Jaguar products, despite price cuts to 150 dollars and less. Only 20.000 CD drives were produced. But Atari still had money.

 

Another source of interest would be Ataris financial reports. End of 1995 they had no viable product to sell for 1996, so they decided to dump the Jag, fire everyone and sell the company. But the Tramiels left the business with a quite huge profit from the JTS merger. 

Edited February 5, 2022 by agradeneu

[+Biff Burgertime]

11 hours ago, cubanismo said:

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure a few thousand of these bags could have saved the Jag. Or the 3do. Maybe not the VirtualBoy though.

and nowadays you'll need a few thousand of those bags just to buy one.

[Djmicklovin]

1 hour ago, agradeneu said:

 

Well here is the data of sales of 1995:

 

Best-selling video game consoles[edit]

Rank	Manufacturer	Game console	Type	Generation	Sales
					Japan	USA	Worldwide
1	Nintendo	Super NES / Super Famicom	Home	16-bit	1,780,000[15]	1,738,000[16]	3,518,000+
2	Sony	PlayStation	Home	32-bit	1,700,000[17]	800,000[17]	3,100,000[17]
3	Sega	Sega Saturn	Home	32-bit	1,660,000[15]	400,000[18]	2,060,000+
4	Sega	Mega Drive / Genesis	Home	16-bit	30,000[15]	1,968,000[16]	1,998,000+
5	Nintendo	Game Boy	Handheld	8-bit	1,000,000[15]	Un­known	1,000,000+
6	Panasonic	3DO	Home	32-bit	150,000[15]	250,000[19]	400,000+
7	Nintendo	NES / Famicom	Home	8-bit	80,000[15]	104,000[16]	184,000+
8	Sega	Game Gear	Handheld	8-bit	180,000[15]	Un­known	180,000+
9	Atari Corp	Atari Jaguar	Home	32-bit	Un­known	150,000[19]	150,000+
10	NEC	PC-FX	Home	32-bit	120,000[15]	Un­known	120,000+

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_in_video_games#cite_note-Newsweek-19

 

Looking at the data, your claims seem rather funny. It also shows that I was right about the 16 bitters being market leaders in U.S., not the PS or Saturn. 

Atari wanted those consumers to buy Jaguars, not SNES or Genesis. Despite higher price points, all CD machines were outselling the Jaguar by 2x at least. PS and Saturn sales do not represent a whole year as both launched in the U.S. that year. (Sat in May, PS in September)

 

Given Ataris measly financial situation one could argue they did rather well. At least they tried. They could have sold many more Jaguars in EU and UK, but the system was not very available during 1994.

But for the US alone, they were outsold by everyone, on their home market. In 1995, there was a sign of hope with the multi million dollar deal with SEGA. However, Jaguar sales did not improve.

 

When they merged with JTS, they had a huge inventory of unsold Jaguar products, despite price cuts to 150 dollars and less. Only 20.000 CD drives were produced. But Atari still had money.

 

Another source of interest would be Ataris financial reports. End of 1995 they had no viable product to sell for 1996, so they decided to dump the Jag, fire everyone and sell the company. But the Tramiels left the business with a quite huge profit from the JTS merger. 

First of all, Wikipedia is never a reliable source to use. You realize anyone can go in and edit a Wikipedia page right? Nothing is verified so I wouldn't trust that. I would take those numbers with a grain of salt. But even so, actually click on the link that those Atari Jaguar numbers are sourced from and actually read what it says because the Wikipedia page editors actually got it wrong. They're showing the Atari Jaguar lifetime sales as less than 150,000 units. 150,000 is how many Jaguars were sold in the year 1995. So let's say they did 150,000 per year for instance, they had to have had at least well over 300,000-400,000 sold by the end of 96. No data for Japan of course because American consoles don't sell in Japan, so not really a fair comparison. Why would Japanese people buy a Jaguar or Xbox anyway when they have companies in their own backyard making consoles?

Edited February 5, 2022 by Djmicklovin

[LordKraken]

What is sure is that in the early 90s Atari was very successul in Europe with the ST, and as such many people like myself actually waited for years for the Jaguar. It was "available" as early as the US release date in many stores, but ONLY as a demonstration unit. It became available to the public 2 years later... yep... I had given up by then.

 

So that's how Atari would have had a (moderate) success in one of his last big market, Europe. By releasing it on time.

[Djmicklovin]

19 minutes ago, LordKraken said:

What is sure is that in the early 90s Atari was very successul in Europe with the ST, and as such many people like myself actually waited for years for the Jaguar. It was "available" as early as the US release date in many stores, but ONLY as a demonstration unit. It became available to the public 2 years later... yep... I had given up by then.

 

So that's how Atari would have had a (moderate) success in one of his last big market, Europe. By releasing it on time.

Honestly, Atari might have been better off just avoiding the console market altogether at that time and they should have just focused on their PC business and made games for the ST because that’s where most of their money was coming from. They would have been fine. Maybe they could’ve been a viable competitor to Apple, Microsoft today.

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, Djmicklovin said:

First of all, Wikipedia is never a reliable source to use. You realize anyone can go in and edit a Wikipedia page right? Nothing is verified so I wouldn't trust that. I would take those numbers with a grain of salt. But even so, actually click on the link that those Atari Jaguar numbers are sourced from and actually read what it says because the Wikipedia page editors actually got it wrong. They're showing the Atari Jaguar lifetime sales as less than 150,000 units. 150,000 is how many Jaguars were sold in the year 1995. So let's say they did 150,000 per year for instance, they had to have had at least well over 300,000-400,000 sold by the end of 96. No data for Japan of course because American consoles don't sell in Japan, so not really a fair comparison. Why would Japanese people buy a Jaguar or Xbox anyway when they have companies in their own backyard making consoles?

It is surely a more reliable source than you. Look, you can do your own research and check the sources of the article.  But IMO you are just making things up, pull some fantasy figures out of your arse, while being too lazy or too ignorant to do even some basic google research and back your claims.

 

And this is a pattern with you since you came around here for the first time. 

 

You have absolutely no clue how many Jaguars Atari really produced. Some figures say it's 250.000 units lifetime, but that does not add up with Ataris sales claims and the huge amount of unsold inventory.

They sold some thousand units in Japan which was probably way better by proportion than how they fared on the US market. 

 

In the end, they managed to sell 200.000 units in 2 years at best. Which was obviously way below their expectations. 

 

 

 

 

[youxia]

15 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Jaguars competition were the 16 bitters, not the PS.

It's not really that straightforward and a bit like saying that Xbox 360 competed with PS2 directly, because in 2005 this machine was still a top-selling powerhouse.

 

Jaguar launched in a weird time window, when SNES/MD were still at top of their game, but still on their way out, and was also a bit of a weird design, aiming at the budding 3D. At the time people knew the future is 3D even if they were still buying 2D consoles. If Atari had handled many things differently it certainly did have a chance of staking a much bigger claim in the early adopter 3D market (peopel who couldn't spend 1000+ $ on a PC rig), perhaps not seriously threatening Sony in the long run, but at least turning in some more respectable sales figures.

 

So, it did have to compete with existing 2D kings to some extent, but definitely also with the upcoming 3D ones (year and a bit is not that much of a hardware release gap), while being neither a 2D fish nor 3D fowl. And one only has to look at Tramiel's tantrums: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar#Arrival_of_Saturn_and_PlayStation to see the big 3D boys were very much part of the problem.

[+Sauron]

On 2/5/2022 at 5:54 AM, Djmicklovin said:

Honestly, Atari might have been better off just avoiding the console market altogether at that time and they should have just focused on their PC business and made games for the ST because that’s where most of their money was coming from. They would have been fine. Maybe they could’ve been a viable competitor to Apple, Microsoft today.

Um, that's largely what Atari did from the mid 80s to the early 90s. However, by the early 90s the writing was on the wall for the non-Wintel computer market, with computer sales for both Atari and Commodore dropping rapidly. Even Apple barely survived that decade. The Jaguar was essentially Atari's last ditch effort at remaining a viable company.

 

[Editorb]

On 2/5/2022 at 4:23 AM, Djmicklovin said:

First of all, Wikipedia is never a reliable source to use. You realize anyone can go in and edit a Wikipedia page right? 

 

I always enjoy that argument. Yes, anyone who registers may edit a page, followed by a million geeks poring over the changes to ensure they're correct. The only wikipedia changes I've seen that were clearly incorrect were a Mac change featuring the terms "Macintrash" and "Crapintosh," and a line on a PS page advising the system was junk and everyone should buy an Xbox instead.

 

I should have edited the latter to indicate they're both junk and everyone should buy a Jag.

[Atlantis]

I did buy two Jags and one CD add-on, so I think I did my part at least. 

[Djmicklovin]

7 hours ago, Editorb said:

 

I always enjoy that argument. Yes, anyone who registers may edit a page, followed by a million geeks poring over the changes to ensure they're correct. The only wikipedia changes I've seen that were clearly incorrect were a Mac change featuring the terms "Macintrash" and "Crapintosh," and a line on a PS page advising the system was junk and everyone should buy an Xbox instead.

 

I should have edited the latter to indicate they're both junk and everyone should buy a Jag.

It's not a million geeks and i've seen plenty of things that were very clearly wrong and misleading. A lot of biased garbage too. On top of that, information is constantly changing. Is if they didn't get it right the first time, that's a problem. Wikipedia is a great way to find sources though but the people that publish a Wikipedia page often miss key facts, and take things out of context.

[Atlantis]

Who is this geek you are refering to here?………………..,,,,,,……….,……………………….. Don’t get it…

[Bill Loguidice]

We've had this discussion before right here on AtariAge (and probably more than once), and backed with data. You can not believe the numbers all you want, but no more than 225,000 made it out in the wild, but probably well under 150,000 in total when it was not in a state of "close out/liquidation" at outlets like QVC and TigerDirect. It's not surprising then with two full years on the market having only sold 125,000 units that it was all but ignored by third parties even after pledging their early support.

 

SEC fillings for the Jaguar console sales by year:

• 1993: 17k
• 1994: 83k
• 1995: 25k

Simply put, historically low numbers paired with a very small cartridge library when it was commercially available in a relatively limited number of retail outlets.