/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10942160]

Why couldn't NEC make the leap to the PC-2000 and PC-XP?

[Anonymous No.10942364]

>>10942160
Shitpost aside, they did. They just weren't proprietary anymore as there was 0 point in doing so, though the last PC-98s did support Windows 2000 (this also has DOS/V for NTVDM). By that time they already had well moved on to the PC-98 NX line, but that PC-98 refers to Microsoft's PC System Design Guide, after that they were just another PC compatible maker.

The reason for the decline of their own proprietary standard was competitors. NEC was one of the bigger very early adopters of non-kit PCs and their first offering was just the best option, building on that gave them a massive uncompetable market share which they made sure to defend by dealing with any real threat to their business PC ecosystem.

They handled clones "better" than IBM, making it a niche market until DOS/V came about and allowed for Kanji to be stored on disk rather than special ROM chips. This introduce affordable IBM PCs in a rather expensive Japanese market and Japanese companies would make their clones, now with more compatibility with foreign software without the reliance on porting.

By this time the PC-98's graphical capabilities weren't exactly impressive for gaming and expansions cards would be needed, this was also more effort and costs than the compatibles had to deal with.
For business all you had to do was translate the application and it should mostly work for DOS/V. Of course, NEC realizes this and decides to change their standard to work nicer with foreign stuff too until it ceases being a standard. It held on strongly to the market (~50% is a lot better than IBM at that point) until Windows 95 ended the use for NEC's PC-98 standard outside of backwards compatibility.

[Anonymous No.10942785]

>>10942160
PC-88/PC-98 was a product of it's time, with a very specific reason to exist:
"Existing PCs at the time suck at handling Japanese kanji"
However that of course changed. DOS/V allowed for kanji at the software level, and now NEC's only selling point is the fact that all your software is stuck in their proprietary ecosystem.
But that doesn't end up working forever when everybody in the developed world is on a completely different standard. Eventually it becomes a problem where instead of working to make software for your system, the majority of people are now just working to port software to your system. At some point there's no reason to keep up the act. You cant (as one company) replace the existing market of tens of manufacturers, all constantly evolving and competing to create the latest, at the lowest prices.