How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS

[triverse]

I have the edited version available (it is linked in the interview- all of the articles are linked back to each other actually)

http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/02/18/new-hardware-retro-video-game-system-in-development/ (that is the article that contains the disclaimer, names were removed at the request of the companies though)

 

For those that don't have FB or want to click over:

[elmer]

.... It might be a stretch, but do you believe he has spoken to 150-odd developers that have given a positive or neutral response.

 

I can easily believe that.

 

He was up at GDC this year, wasn't he?

 

It wouldn't be hard to wander around GDC for 3 days, giving out free magazines, and find 150 "developers" that had just graduated from DigiPen to say that they'd love to have Mommy and Daddy self-publish their next masterwork on a dozen cartridges so that they can get a high-paying dream-job in the industry.

 

Or is that just me being a little cynical?

[StopDrop&Retro]

I was thinking the same thing. The number keeps changing I always thought it was 200 developers on board. What he probably means is 150 developers on his mailing list that haven't requested to be taken off yet.

 

That's one of his main problems actually, getting the whole truth from him is like pulling teeth. He thinks he's being slick but when he makes such an absurd claim like that it only results in the forums working overtime to disprove it and asking him uncomfortable questions. Then he cries about people attacking him. If he would just be honest he wouldn't be fueling the fire.

 

... then again, if Mike Kennedy is reading this- please keep doing as you do. This forum wouldn't be half as fun if you were perfectly honest.

Edited September 29, 2015 by StopDrop&Retro

[InnovaX5]

Triverse - your coverage of this console has been great. You really went above and beyond all my expectations for the interview, thank you again for all the time you spent on it. I can only hope that the RVGS team does at least one more interview with you before the IGG ends. I'm curious to see how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'm hoping that it eventually leads us to Retro Land.

 

I half expect Mike to tell us he didn't mean Dave Siller, he meant Ben Stiller. Ben was having dinner with James Cameron when Mr. Xbox Seamus was having dinner with him. Ben called Seamus and told him to tell Mike that he wanted Mike make a Zoolander 2 game for the RVGS. Steve's been working on a flash version of zoolander 2 since.

Edited September 29, 2015 by InnovaX5

[tcdev]

It exists, but it is dead.

 

WTF? I never said anything of the sort?!?

[CPUWIZ]

[triverse]

InnovaX5, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve so don't rule anything out...

[Austin]

 

WTF? I never said anything of the sort?!?

 

There is a Politics/Religion sub-forum here, but the admin has to give you specific privileges to be able to see it. That's what he meant (he also meant there's little activity in it, i.e., it's dead).

[CGQuarterly]

 

WTF? I never said anything of the sort?!?

 

Calm down, guy. He accidentally attributed the quote to you instead of me.

[Albert]

Calm down, guy. He accidentally attributed the quote to you instead of me.

Fixed, no idea how I managed to pull that one off.

[ninja_gaiden2015]

InnovaX5, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve so don't rule anything out...

 

it's like a Retro gaming soap opera lol - lies, intrigue etc

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Just caught this video by Lon Seidman a great Tech and gadget review I am subbed to "Withdrawing my Retro VGS Pledge" - smart choice LON lol. He touches on some good points and even mentions Atariage beginning around 4m45s mark

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU2O32xMn6c

 

he explains why he withdrew his pledge, how he feels they are rushing the project and not ready as well miscommunication among the team etc. Just a clip from his video description - Last week I mentioned that I was backing the Retro VGS Kickstarter, but I have since decided to ask for a refund. The reason is that I don't think this project is ready for market. The team doesn't feel cohesive, with the hardware engineer John Carlsen revealing in a post this week that he withholds information from his business partner, Mike Kennedy. A subsequent interview with the full three person Retro VGS team posted by Retro Gaming Magazine had the partners frequently talking over each other and at times contradicting one another.

One instance came about twenty minutes from the end when they were asked who would foot the bill for correcting a buggy cartridge. Kennedy said the developer would and was then quickly cutoff by one of his partners saying both entities would absorb the cost.

With crowd funded projects typically the makers are risking at least as much as their backers. That does not appear to be the case here.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2015 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[doug0909]

Politics and religion? I am an ex fundamentalist/ex Republican who moderates a Facebook group including people from all over the world who have left various fundamentalist religions, and I am involved with several forums on and off Facebook where fundamentalists and ex fundamentalists debate each other (as well as political debate groups). The level of passion going into this thread, and the personal attacks, is right up there with the stuff I see and deal with in those places on a regular basis ... Wasn't expecting that from a fun hobby! But I guess it says something positive about the dedication of people in here to the hobby, and the lack of tolerance for people seen as bad or selfish actors...

[toiletunes]

I like turtles

[StopDrop&Retro]

Just caught this video by Lon Seidman a great Tech and gadget review I am subbed to "Withdrawing my Retro VGS Pledge" - smart choice LON lol. He touches on some good points and even mentions Atariage beginning around 4m45s mark.

 

...

 

Holy shit. That is huge.

 

For anyone who isn't familiar with Lon's channel, I highly recommend you subscribe to it not just because his content is Grade A stuff, but just subscribe for a week and you'll see why I say that he is the hardest working guy on YouTube. He pumps out videos quick and the quality never suffers. He is highly professional and knows his stuff. He is my power animal.

 

He did a good interview with Mike Kennedy too, I hope Mike doesn't criticize him for withdrawing his pledge because Lon is very fair and level headed.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

 

He did a good interview with Mike Kennedy too, I hope Mike doesn't criticize him for withdrawing his pledge because Lon is very fair and level headed.

 

 

lol but he will see him as becoming one of us "haters" and not keeping the faith in the Retro VGS dream!

[jaybird3rd]

So, how did the RVGS campaign do in the last 24 hours? By my count, they picked up two pledges but lost three, so they begin Day 11 at 191 backers and $63,546 raised, or $279 below where they started yesterday. They are now $14,454 away from finally bringing their cumulative total above 3% of their minimum goal; they would need to raise about $52.4K per day through the remainder of the campaign to meet their goal.

 

Here are their totals at the start of each day that I've been keeping track (in other words, the figures for each day are "snapshots" which show the state of the campaign at the beginning of that day, midnight CST):

 

Day 03 (09/21): 172 backers, $60041 raised
Day 04 (09/22): 186 backers, $66188 raised, +$6147
Day 05 (09/23): 187 backers, $65956 raised, -$232
Day 06 (09/24): 193 backers, $67580 raised, +$1624
Day 07 (09/25): 192 backers, $65970 raised, -$1610
Day 08 (09/26): 188 backers, $64920 raised, -$1050
Day 09 (09/27): 191 backers, $65145 raised, +$225

Day 10 (09/28): 192 backers, $63825 raised, -$1320

Day 11 (09/29): 191 backers, $63546 raised, -$279

 

EDIT 09/29 @ 10:30AM CST: The RVGS team has announced that they are in the process of suspending their fundraising campaign. Since they received no new pledges today, the initial figures for Day 11 are also the point at which the campaign expired: 191 backers and $63,546 raised.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Jibbajaba, I can personally attest that Konami, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco and a few others are NOT working on "new" titles in many key retro franchises. I wrote an article about it when Mike first mentioned those names, specifically, connected with the RETRO VGS over on NintendoAge's forums. I then followed up that article by calling those companies and after a bit of phone tag with various community managers, PR reps, devs I am connected with inside, was told by all but Konami that they have no idea who Mike was nor any idea what the RETRO VGS was. Konami PR reps did say that Mike did visit with them but they did not agree, admit or imply that Konami would be developing games for it in any way (taking that to mean licensing out properties or making new games or porting). They did say that they told him when he has the system launched to come back with sales figures, sell through on accessories, etc to show an installed userbase and if they would forward the information to their headquarters in Japan where the final decision would be made. That is a FAR FAR cry from what Mike was implying in his, now edited, post on NintendoAge. It is at least a company that did admit to him visiting though.

I mentioned this in PM but I think it's worth sharing. I've been following the chemistry between these guys and one of the big issues with Mike is that he is simultaneously both the sole PR/marketing buy and the head of development. That's a bad combination IMO. Here are my own thoughts regarding this...

 

I would never make a good pr man. I always blab stuff. Sure I could probably sign an NDA as well and never talk about anything at all, but to talk about topic A while remaining silent on topic B would be very difficult for me. This is why a well stuctured business keeps their marketing department separate from their engineering department. The producer/director/executive stays in touch with both marketing and research but wisely does not divulge every detail to marketing. You don't want your marketing department sitting in on an idea pitch session only to divulge tons of fantastic stuff that later turns out to be pipe dreams. You also don't want to toss an interception to your competition and give them a free touchdown off your ideas. Problem Mike faces with his 3 man team is he is the executive, developer, and marketer, and two additional developers (hardware and software) so sitting in on development and doing marketing, he's going to leak stuff he shouldn't. His comments seem about as loose and off the cuff during formal interviews as one would expect from a closed doors idea pitch session where each development team member is free to toss ideas. Regardless, these three men have proven, that the head, the right hand, and the left hand have no clue what is going on or who is doing what, and have contradicted themselves so many times that literally everything Mike and team says must be taken with whole salt mine.

 

Another neat point is the aforementioned NA post by GameGavel/Parrothead where he edited his own remarks. On AtariAge, you cannot edit your own posts after an hour's time pending mod approval. I kinda like that. With Mike's rampant censoring and deleting and changing his mind on things, it kind of leaves a permanent record. I wish more forums did this. He's even posted and deleted stuff off his IndieGoGo campaign. Every campaign I've ever seen, funded or not, has posted updates without tampering with older posts, except maybe to reword or clarify things.

 

Might as well sell us $300 Jaguar cases stuffed with grade A unicorn manure at this point because at this point nothing Mike says or does is credible anymore. But not all is lost.

 

#1: Shut down the IndieGoGo,

#2: Admit "we scewed up" and misjudged the market, and

#3: apologize to the community and fans you have insulted

#4: get your !@#$% together and figure out what it is you want to do, and lastly,

#5: let us know when you have a working prototype.

Edited September 29, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Andromeda Stardust]

I was thinking the same thing. The number keeps changing I always thought it was 200 developers on board. What he probably means is 150 developers on his mailing list that haven't requested to be taken off yet.

Sounds about right. Ouya had 40,000 developers, after all...

[ninja_gaiden2015]

Seems like their is several different visions of the retro vgs co-existing at the same time right now. One of them seems to think that the older FGPA system with cores exists. They even seem to think that cores exist that have not been created yet, such as NEO GEO cores. With "no updates" these NEO GEO cores are to be available from day one??

 

From the FAQ section of their website:

 

What’s going on under the hood?
(Steve Woita) Think of it as hardware that is reconfigurable by the cartridge. The RETRO VGS will have its own cool configurations (ways to make a game), and it can also be hardware-configured to be other old-school architectures that a lot of developers are used to developing for. Specifically, and at this current time, it’s an FPGA and ARM system. If a developer wants to make a Neo Geo game, they would include an HDL (Hardware Description Language) file that configures the FPGA to operate like a Neo Geo. The developer would code their game to run against the Neo Geo platform. This HDL code along with the actual Neo Geo game will be on the cartridge. Once that cartridge is placed in the RETRO VGS, it will become a Neo Geo and play that game. So in this case, the language is: 68000 and Z80 code. If you wanted to do a new Atari 2600 styled game, you'd include a 2600 HDL file that configures the FPGA to replicate the logic of the original 2600 hardware and then you'd include your new 2600 game on that cartridge too. These two files are then paired up on the cartridge and when plugged into the RETRO VGS, will turn the console into a 2600. So the language that would be used in this case is: 6507 (6502 with less address space). Does that help explain things a little "bit" more? Oh and we’ll have a nice little ARM chip for some more fun stuff. We'll be supplying the validated cores for developers to choose from and you don't have to know how to program an FPGA to make a game, it just gives us a lot of hardware flexibility, I didn't want to lock us in to a specific ASIC design.

The indie developer would use a regular RETRO VGS out of the box, with a USB cable & free downloadable software that could be downloaded from the RETRO VGS's website. The plan has always been from day one to support indie game development and what I mean by that is that if you're a game developer you'd have as much info, tools and help as possible and not be closed out of the system. This is not a closed console, meaning If you make a game for the RETRO VGS, and you wanted to order 50 copies of your own game to take to PAX and sell them on your own, you could! The plan is to be able to submit your box, cartridge & manual artwork, game code (for the cartridge), instructions and how many you'd like to order and you'd get your 50 shrink wrapped plastic cases with your awesome game cartridges all professionally packaged and sent to you. That still is the plan.

There is no firmware to upgrade. We're making this system in such a way that in 30 years from now when you plug in a game, the system won't have to rely on a bunch of garbage updates from servers that won't even be there! Most next gen games have a lifespan of 6 to 10 years because they need to ping a server for some kind of crap reason. This will be totally self contained and not have to rely on updates.

[leods]

Lon Seidman is a typical youtuber. He brought Mike on, played Mikes ballgame on the interview, pretty much free advertisement. How come he didin't ask anything relevant about the campaign when Mike was on his Show? He did the interview very shortly before the IGG campaign went up.

 

And when the IGG went up he didin't really make a critical update Video either did he? The campaign is better now than it was day one. How come he pledged when there was NOTHING on the page, and now that they actually clarified a lot of things and put up specs he whthdraws? Does anyone really feel they Need a working prototype? I somehow do believe that John can make this System no Problem. My gripe was never the fact they had no proto, but the fact they claimed it couldn't be done. That was a lie.

 

It's sad, but the truth is, the RVGS Team did fix a bunch of Problems in the campaign, but the public perception on their product is getting worse instead of better. Sadly public perception is not really related to the Quality of the product.

 

I made a critical Video about the RVGS a while ago when they were announcing the Color Shells for the System, and it got pretty much only thumbs downs. Now that it's cool to bash the System I have 15 thumbs ups on my new critical Video about the System.

 

This sucks. The RVGS Team is not being rewarded for straightening things oput at all. They're being bashed even more. My Problem is that it took so Long for them to come clear about things that should be clear even before this Project went up on IGG, but they fixed a large ammount of the IGG Problems. Now it should be to each Person to decide wether 300 or 350 bucks is worth their Money or not. But that's not how it works. Now it's cool to say the System sucks.

 

I'll be sincere. I'd personally rather buy this RVGS than buy an Xbox one. Hard to decide which I'd pick between the Retro and the PS4.

 

People really can't separate criticysm from negativity. Things just get polarized.

 

And this takes me to another Thing I already said: Mike should have stuck to the knowledgeable Retro gamer that would at least understand when they're offering. The average guy on the street would never buy into this. Sony and MS are desperate cause they are afraid of losing everything to cellphones, and Mike things People will buy a cartridge based console?

 

I tend to be the devil's advocate all the time. I hate to see this mob behaviour. People should think a bit on their own. If everybody was saying the RVGS was the best Thing ever I'd be complaining too, it's neither awesome nor complete garbage.

 

I can Bet you guys, if someone came out in a couple months, offered a worse product but much better Marketing they'd do better thasn the RVGS did.

 

Damn, the Retron 5 is doing fine and they stole their Emulators! At least the RVGS Team are trying to do things with some dignity.

 

 

Seems like their is several different visions of the retro vgs co-existing at the same time right now. One of them seems to think that the older FGPA system with cores exists. They even seem to think that cores exist that have not been created yet, such as NEO GEO cores. With "no updates" these NEO GEO cores are to be available from day one??

 

They just never updated the Website. Just ignore this text. It's pretty much the System they wanted to sell for 450 bucks (more or less their 3.8mi Dollar Stretch goal)

Edited September 29, 2015 by leods

[ninja_gaiden2015]

Jibbajaba, I can personally attest that Konami, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco and a few others are NOT working on "new" titles in many key retro franchises. I wrote an article about it when Mike first mentioned those names, specifically, connected with the RETRO VGS over on NintendoAge's forums. I then followed up that article by calling those companies and after a bit of phone tag with various community managers, PR reps, devs I am connected with inside, was told by all but Konami that they have no idea who Mike was nor any idea what the RETRO VGS was. Konami PR reps did say that Mike did visit with them but they did not agree, admit or imply that Konami would be developing games for it in any way (taking that to mean licensing out properties or making new games or porting). They did say that they told him when he has the system launched to come back with sales figures, sell through on accessories, etc to show an installed userbase and if they would forward the information to their headquarters in Japan where the final decision would be made. That is a FAR FAR cry from what Mike was implying in his, now edited, post on NintendoAge. It is at least a company that did admit to him visiting though.

 

I guess NintendoAge wasn't the only one that he mislead about the developers that he had on board with this systems. I wish his pie-in-the sky dreams were a reality, but it looks like nothing more than a "wouldn't it be neat if..." thought bubble. These ideas are pretty far from the reality of what could or would come to those who pumped money into the this crowdfunding campaign. I guess its up to everyone out there to figure out whether he outright fibbed to backers or potential backers, or just let his excitement get the better of him

Here is an interview listed as a link on the RETRO VGS website:

 

 

".... Kennedy: We’re talking to Yacht Club. It looks like there might be a chance — not 100 percent — but we’re talking about Retro City Rampage coming out on it, hopefully for launch. We’ve talked about some games already. ....

 

..... We’re trying to talk to some big-name publishers about bringing back old fan favorites on this thing, or sequels. That’s actually why I’m up here in San Francisco, meeting with a third party developer that’s done a lot of third-party development work for Sony and Capcom and Konami and Sega. We’ll be partnering with this group to lead our charge into those types of companies to work out licensing deals for some of these games that they haven’t monetized in 10-15-20 years. As you know, there’s a lot of games out there that people would love to see brought back. ..."

[jaybird3rd]

Seems like their is several different visions of the retro vgs co-existing at the same time right now.

I find it amusing that the very first post in this thread features a picture of a Jaguar shell and the infamous third-party Wii U controller, and that seven months and 127 pages later, those are STILL the only concrete aspects of the RVGS that we can be 100% certain of.

[+CyranoJ]

I guess its up to everyone out there to figure out whether he outright fibbed to backers or potential backers, or just let his excitement get the better of him

 

Is there any difference when put into context of what he was asking for?

[AE35]

I have the edited version available (it is linked in the interview- all of the articles are linked back to each other actually)

http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/02/18/new-hardware-retro-video-game-system-in-development/ (that is the article that contains the disclaimer, names were removed at the request of the companies though)

 

For those that don't have FB or want to click over:

 

Thanks for posting this!!

Edited September 29, 2015 by AE35