NeoGeo AES+ had to be remade due to memory shortage

Plaion has revealed the technical reason for the long delay of NeoGeo AES+.The console was initially designed around Parallel NOR flash, but after pre-orders opened, the company was faced with a situation in which the required chips could not actually be obtained in the required volume.

Hardware chief Ben Jones told VGC that suppliers attributed the shortage to huge demand from AI infrastructure.For Plaion, waiting for the right batch would mean uncertain deadlines and rising costs, so the team chose a more difficult path - redesign.

Serial NOR required new signal conversion

The engineers decided to switch to the more affordable Serial NOR flash.The problem is that the original NeoGeo architecture works with a parallel interface.Therefore, the cartridge chips had to be redesigned and conversion of a serial signal to parallel had to be added.After this, a new testing cycle was required.

It was this work that became one of the reasons for postponing the global launch to September 16, 2027.Plaion previously announced that it did not want to release several thousand devices and turn the launch into a hunt for scarce consoles.Pre-orders save your place in the queue, and the price for those who placed an order does not change.

The project really could have been cancelled.

According to Jones, without an alternative memory solution, the project would have been in danger of being shut down.The company had already made thousands of custom cartridge chips and didn't want to throw away years of development.Now the delay is also used to expand the starting library.

Several more games were confirmed for AES+ at the Tokyo Game Show, including Zero Wing, Karnov's Revenge, Magical Drop II and III, Spinmaster and Street Slam / Street Hoop.Our previous material about transfer of NeoGeo AES+ to September 2027 contains details about saving pre-orders and starting bonus.