11 December, 1992. Video games background notes compiled by Duncan Mil ©GRAPHIC NEWS

In Japan, 40 per cent of households own an electronic video game. This drops to 30 per cent in the U.S. and just 14 per cent in Britain and 12 per cent in France, though 50 per cent of British homes with children have some form of electronic video game.

The worldwide video games market is worth $14bn (£9bn) and has seen double digit growth throughout the recession. Turnover in the UK has risen from a standing start of just $31m (£20m) in 1989 to $388m (£250m) in 1991, $855m (£550m) in 1992 and is expected to rise to $106bn (£1bn) in 1993.
 
Nintendo claims to have sold 615 million video games in the last six years – an 80 per cent share of the international market – with 10 million of those sales in the UK.

The latest video games, which connect to the TV, use 16-bit technology instead of the previous generation of 8-bit machines. This means that they can run games faster, show more colours and play digital stereo sound. Sega dominates this more sophisticated 16-bit video games market in the U.S. with a 61 per cent market share against Nintendo’s 34 per cent and NEC’s 5 per cent. 
In the UK, Sega expects sales of 965,000 16-bit Mega Drive consoles by Christmas, worth $193.5m (£124.5m). Nintendo have forecast 650,000 Super Nintendo sales in the same period, worth $182m (£117m).

Nintendo has spent $23.3m (£15m) on UK marketing in 1992 while its rival Sega claims a marketing budget of $29.5m (£19m). By the end of the year Sega will have spent almost $155m (£100m) on marketing throughout Europe.
Next year promises yet another state-of-the-art battle between Sega and Nintendo, with both producers unveiling CD-Rom variants of the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo systems. Compact discs, which increase storage capacity and improve speed and quality, are widely seen as the technology of the future.