Nintendo Lowers Price, Will Offer CD Device : Video games: The company says it failed to meet expectations in 1991 on the Super NES system.

On the defensive for the first time since it reinvented the video game business in the mid-1980s, Nintendo on Thursday announced a price cut on its new game system and said it would introduce an advanced compact-disc accessory next year.

Peter Main, Nintendo of America’s marketing vice president, conceded that the company had not met its expectations for 1991. But he maintained that the new Super NES game system, introduced in the fall, was still far and away the market leader despite claims to the contrary by competitor Sega.

Nonetheless, Nintendo will cut the price of the Super NES from $200 to $180. That is a more modest cut than some had anticipated and still leaves it priced $30 higher than the Sega Genesis machine.

Nintendo also said it would move aggressively on the next generation of game machines, introducing a $200 compact-disc accessory next January. The CD stores a huge amount of information, allowing more elaborate and varied visual effects, Nintendo Vice President Howard Lincoln said in a briefing.

Sega has also announced plans for a CD add-on--though it has not yet given a specific rollout date. And NEC Technologies has long been promoting CD-based game machines.

NEC, however, has backed out of the video game race in the face of poor sales. The company recently entered a joint venture with Hudson Soft, a Japanese software company that will assume responsibility for marketing NEC’s game hardware.

Main, while acknowledging that Sega “took a very strong run at this business,” challenged his competitor’s claim to have sold 1.6 million units at retail, against 2.1 million of the new Nintendo systems. He claimed that Sega had sold about a million.

Sega asserts that it is now selling at a faster pace than the new Nintendo.

Main projected total Nintendo sales for 1992 at $4.8 billion, up 39% from 1991.