The director behind SNK and Plaion’s upcoming NeoGeo AES revival has revealed how the global chip shortage forced it to reengineer the console, leading to the recently confirmed year-long delay and nearly canceling the device entirely.
NeoGeo AES+ was announced earlier this year, featuring full compatibility with original 1990s NeoGeo cartridges and a suite of quality-of-life improvements. However, months after pre-orders opened, Plaion and SNK recently announced a ten-month delay to September 2027.
Speaking to VGC at Tokyo Game Show, Plaion hardware & software director Ben Jones explained the slip came after it failed to procure the memory chips required to manufacture NeoGeo AES+, forcing it to rethink how the console worked.
“After we announced AES+, we received an overwhelming response and really significant levels of preorders,” Jones said. “So I straight away went into the procurement phase, and advised our partners in the Far East what our requirements were, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been refused ordering chips, and I’ve worked with Plaion for nearly 20 years in this field. I was like, ‘What do you mean you can’t get these chips? Oh, AI.’”
Jones is referring to the ongoing global chip shortage, driven by demand for AI data centers, which has caused the price of many consumer electronics to rise significantly as memory supply becomes increasingly constrained.
The particular form of memory Plaion needed for AES+, Parallel NOR flash, was “basically unavailable”, according to Jones. “I actually flew out to Taiwan to see these companies to basically see if there was any way that we could procure it, and it was a six-month wait to even see if we’d be considered,” he said.
The director told VGC there was a real risk that the console would have had to be canceled entirely, but thankfully, its engineers found a solution within the game cartridges AES+ was designed to play.
“We had already made the two ASIC chips in the cartridges that kind of deal with the memory chips, and then send the message to the machine itself. We had thousands of these chips ready for the cartridges,” Jones explained.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/we-were-almost-dead-neogeo-boss-reveals-forced-redesign-behind-aes-delay/
