Nintendo of America Inc predicts it will see retail sales of $1.487 bn, up 18% from last year and the entire games industry will grow 17% to $3.581bn. Nintendo’s own forecasting, of course, estimates that it will lead the industry when it ships its Nintendo 64 and capture 42% of industry sales, followed by Sega with 31% and Sony with 24% and the rest attributed to other companies in the year to March 1997. The company also announced a $250 price tag for the Nintendo 64, which ships in the US on September 30. NEC Corp is making the MIPS VR4300-derived CPU and 18M-bit Rambus Inc memory chip, which can transfer data at 500M- bytes per second. Meanwhile Sega of America yesterday said it will ship its Saturn Net Link for its Saturn games console in the fall. The 28.8 bps modem and Internet browser will retail at $200 and allow users to have the Internet on their television for networked games, email and other online play.
