The Playdia (プレイディア) Quick Interactive System (QIS) is a game console that was released in Japan by Bandai in September 1994,[1] less than three months before the Pippin platform was jointly announced by Apple Computer and Bandai.[2]
History[]
In 1994, Bandai CEO Makoto Yamashina (山科誠) had predicted to The Wall Street Journal that the company's interactive sales would surpass that of toys by US$ 1 billion by the year 2000. The Playdia platform was first announced as the BA-X Bandai Home Entertainment Interactive System at the Tokyo Toy Show in June 1994 and featured new advancements, such as a CD-ROM drive and wireless "Infrared Rays" controller.[3][4]
A Playdia motherboard.
The Playdia was released in Japan on September 23, 1994, beating the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn to market. It also targeted younger audiences than the other console makers. Bandai hoped to sell 200,000 consoles and 300,000 titles within its first year.[3]
By 1995, the Playdia had been overtaken in the Japanese edutainment market by the less-expensive Sega Pico. Bandai then partnered with Apple to develop the Macintosh-based Pippin Power Player which had been scheduled for release during the 1995 Christmas shopping season.[5]
After the Playdia platform was discontinued in 1996, Bandai subsidiary Banpresto repurposed the unsold consoles into coin-operated kinetoscopes called Micha King (みちゃ王) that played anime clips in Japanese arcades.[6][7]
Hardware specifications[]
- See: Playdia: Hardware specifications (at the Playdia Wiki)
Titles[]
- See: List of Playdia titles (at the Playdia Wiki)
Nearly every title for the Playdia was published by Bandai. Most took advantage of the CD-ROM format to present full motion video, though with simplistic gameplay. Launch titles were targeted towards young children and at least 8 promotional discs were given away or included with the console. However, soft sales drove Bandai to introduce releases for older audiences in 1995, which included higher-priced titles focused on Japanese pop idols. Improved sales helped Bandai mitigate initial losses on the platform.[3]
References[]
- ↑ プレイディア, GameForest. 2007-01-12.
- ↑ Bandai Pippin FAQ, The Mac Geek. Accessed 2017-04-10.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 The Bandai Playdia -- Bandai's Educational Home Console by Kelsey Lewin, YouTube. 2017-07-03.
- ↑ The Playdia / プレイディア (Bandai - 1994), initially advertised as the BA-X by VGDensetsu, Twitter. 2016-04-07.
- ↑ 'Morphing' Into The Toy World's Top Ranks by Andrew Pollack, The New York Times. 1995-03-12.
- ↑ みちゃ王用ディスク。 (Japanese) by じろのすけ, Twitter. 2017-04-27.
- ↑ Video Games Densetsu by VGDensetsu, Tumblr. 2017-04-04.
External links[]
- Playdia プレイディア IQKIDS at Bandai (Japanese, archived 1997-05-17)
- Bandai Playdia at RF Generation
- Bandai Playdia at Video Game Console Library
- Bandai Playdia – When animation and games colide (sic) at Super Gaijin Ultra Gamer
- Bandai Playdia (Platform) at Giant Bomb
- Playdia at Codex Gamicus
- Playdia at the Playdia Wiki
- Playdia at Wikimedia Commons
- Playdia at the Video Game Data Base (Portuguese)
- Playdia at Wikipedia