alt Hacker NewsCasio has been leaving a lot of money on the table in terms of nostalgia products. There's been a low rumble of demand for the Casio CZ series of synthesizers for a decade or more, and a bunch of non-Casio companies have cashed in on it (Behringer makes CZ-1 Mini, Arturia has CZ V, several other phase distortion synths exist). It's incredibly cheap to replicate, a simple early digital synthesis algorithm that'll run on anything; Korg has been making ARM-based emulation synths (basically a Raspberry Pi-like SoC in a keyboard form factor with some knobs) for a decade or more and I have to assume their margins are very comfortable since most of the guts are off-the-shelf low-cost parts rather than custom chips.
But, I guess their watches were always a bigger business than the synths.
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> Casio has been leaving a lot of money on the table in terms of nostalgia products
Casio has been quite successful at not abusing trust in their brand by releasing lower-quality outsourced replicas like HP did with their calculators. Not that HP had much farther to fall but it’s nice to see a corporation that’s not incompetent!
Trying not to leave any money on the table is exactly the approach that reliably kills off nostalgia income streams.
Picking off some low hanging fruit while demonstrating provable restraint can result in a huge money stream that goes on and on. But when the mindset "it's good, but it can be better!" becomes dominant (e.g. through market dynamics, being publicly traded means that ownership perpetually shifts to those who think that income sources could be squeezed just a little harder, or much harder, actually), it quickly turns sour. And when it flips from beloved to "why throw money at those greedy $expletive,plural" it flips hard, and forever.
A lot of Japanese companies leave piles on the table. One often unnoticed reality of Japanese imports and exports, at least in modern days, is that Japan as a whole has total double standards on those, requiring over the top perfection for imports but exports are almost on take it or leave it basis. Even Nintendo products are at barely acceptable levels if the standards for imports were applied to e.g. en-US editions. It's a miracle that Japanese products have substantial sales volumes and good reputations at all. It's quite unlike Chinese engineering of today.
> basically a Raspberry Pi-like SoC
Not just Pi-like - the Wavestate is using an actual Raspberry Pi CM3 module! https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/electronic-music-icon-korg-...
Hmm I wonder what else Casio watches have been a big part of over the past 30 years that may have put a hamper on such things, I wouldn't look into it
The (relatively new) Casiotone CT-S1000V and CT-S500 have CZ sounds included along with fun voice synthesis technology, and are recommended as a good cheap keyboard on some forums.
It's a really good question why Casio didn't continue making synths after the 80s. It's possible that the entire CZ-line was intended to be a one-off response to Yamaha's breakaway success with the DX7. After the CZ-line, it looks like Casio tried to keep up with Yamaha for a few years, but exited the market after Yamaha launched the SY-line. From what I understand, the CZ-series were great sellers then, but even with all of the nostalgia they'd never move large numbers now.
For what it's worth, Yamaha aren't particularly nostalgic about their cult-classic synths either. I guess that from their perspective, the DX7 and CZ-101 were already obsolete within a few short years. By 1990 the sound had already become quite dated, and technology had moved on. Now that they've become popular again as a cult-classic, the margin just isn't there anymore because of the market share of software, or cheap independent FM/PD synths.
Shameless plug, in case anyone is interested, I've done some work reverse-engineering some of these synths:
- https://github.com/ajxs/casio_cz101_rom_disassembly
- https://ajxs.me/blog/uCOM-87_The_Strangest_Architecture_Youv...
Completely right about the synths, Casio has been missing out. Their new Sampler looks really nice, and has been a surprise in the music world.
Hopefully because they’re focusing on having relevance in the future. It’s sad as a gen Xer to see Japanese electronics companies fading away.
the watches are a high end fast fashion brand in japan. it seems to be very lucrative
you can have cz samples in the upcoming Casio SXC-1 ! toy sampler is the new toy synthesizer
Korg did it right - budget off-the-shelf processor, most of the money spent on the UI, wildly optimistic prices, no nostalgic ties.
The expensive part of a modern synth isn't the DSP board, it's the industrial design and tooling needed to build the rest of the hardware.
The CZ series was workable, but there really aren't many passionate nostalgic buyers waiting to drop a few hundred - minimum - on an expensive reissue.