Place Logo Here Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I am firmly in the cart-only camp. While I understand the costs involved in producing the box, manual and overlays for a game, even the overlays are rarely necessary and I inevitably have only the cart out on the shelf and everything else in storage. I would much rather pay less for a game if it means it does not have those other materials. All that said, I would buy the ROMs for most of the homebrews I have purchased to date, as I would love the option of playing most content off of a multcart while still having my physical copy in case something goes wrong with the sd cart. Of course, that would be greatly dependent upon the cost of the ROM and, even more so, the acquisition of one of the sd carts currently in production (are there two or are up to three?) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
First Spear Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 It's probably most but not all of the potential market. I was suggesting casting as wide a net as possible. Talking about some topics here is kind of like the US Primary System in politics, where only the most vocal determine the direction but the larger audience is basically not considered. Posts in this forum get a lot of heat for a short time and then they get pushed off, so I was thinking about setting up something on a discrete website with a permanent link could be posted here, thrown on FB, put in people's sigs, etcetcetc. While we don't know what the Intellivisionaries audience is like in terms of size, I would wager that it has a listeners who care about buying games, with a larger community size than frequents the Inty corner of AA forums. I now think my suggestion preference is Naberhood site Surveymonkey Make your own website But still it's better than a quick ask here on AA. Well, the people in this forum encompass the vast majority of the market. If you're trying to improve your offerings, it makes sense to ask your target audience, no? Who cares how the general dude in the Interwebz feels about something he's not invested in? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
First Spear Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I also keep the cart handy and the overlays in a folio designed for baseball cards. It's great to pull the folio off the shelf and flip through them. Kids like the visual of the overlays also, makes the game more attractive. The manual and box for me sit in the basement. I actually tossed all of my boxes years ago, I just have a few recents like for Kroz. It's about the game play not museum pieces for me. I am firmly in the cart-only camp. While I understand the costs involved in producing the box, manual and overlays for a game, even the overlays are rarely necessary and I inevitably have only the cart out on the shelf and everything else in storage. I would much rather pay less for a game if it means it does not have those other materials. [snip] 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byte Knight Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 ROM releases for the $5-$20 range are a nice option for those of us who like to play in emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 It's probably most but not all of the potential market. I was suggesting casting as wide a net as possible. Talking about some topics here is kind of like the US Primary System in politics, where only the most vocal determine the direction but the larger audience is basically not considered. Posts in this forum get a lot of heat for a short time and then they get pushed off, so I was thinking about setting up something on a discrete website with a permanent link could be posted here, thrown on FB, put in people's sigs, etcetcetc. While we don't know what the Intellivisionaries audience is like in terms of size, I would wager that it has a listeners who care about buying games, with a larger community size than frequents the Inty corner of AA forums. I now think my suggestion preference is Naberhood site Surveymonkey Make your own website But still it's better than a quick ask here on AA. I agree. The people who come here are an important part of the market but they are not the only people interested in new Intellivision games. This is not just an Atari Age Intellivision forum scene. There are a lot of people who are members of my facebook page who don't come here. The market is bigger than that. However, the market is a lot smaller than allows for complete in box pricing at the level that most would like to see. The people who balk at buying a CIB game at $70 but will buy at $50 are far fewer than needed to allow that price drop. I am not going to get into a debate over it. It is what it is. All I know is that there are people who want complete in box AND a low price and you can't have both. Once a box is printed, saying that you don't want the box and expect a discount is not the way it works. The box has to be cost averaged over every copy sold. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 For me the LTO cartridge would be great. I like the idea of being able to pay $5-$10 for a Rom only option that is drm protected. I enjoy the cartridge only option as well, but with homebrews being developed at a more rapid pace it seems like a great option. I enjoy having options. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I agree. The people who come here are an important part of the market but they are not the only people interested in new Intellivision games. This is not just an Atari Age Intellivision forum scene. There are a lot of people who are members of my facebook page who don't come here. The market is bigger than that. However, the market is a lot smaller than allows for complete in box pricing at the level that most would like to see. The people who balk at buying a CIB game at $70 but will buy at $50 are far fewer than needed to allow that price drop. I am not going to get into a debate over it. It is what it is. All I know is that there are people who want complete in box AND a low price and you can't have both. Once a box is printed, saying that you don't want the box and expect a discount is not the way it works. The box has to be cost averaged over every copy sold. You could amortize the cost of printing the boxes over the predicted number of CIB you expect to sell. Then you could sell cart-only units at a more reasonable price. This would probably raise the price of the CIB games, since you wouldn't be forcing the entire market to purchase it that way. Of course, this would require understanding your market and preparing somewhat accurate sales predictions. I would imagine that based on your experience already, and the feedback you get from your customer base, that there is enough information there to gauge how much demand there actually is for CIB vs. cart-only releases. Still, this does not address at all the point that has been made about releasing different games in different ways. You could have a AAA title released CIB and a lesser title cart-only. Just doing CIB on everything may distort your view of the market since it may look like people don't want to buy CIB games, when in fact it may be the response to a specific title, which may have done better as a cart-only release. If, on the other hand, you want to do AAA titles exclusively, well, that's a rather tall other on such a small pool of programmers. Good luck with that. -dZ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 You could amortize the cost of printing the boxes over the predicted number of CIB you expect to sell. Then you could sell cart-only units at a more reasonable price. This would probably raise the price of the CIB games, since you wouldn't be forcing the entire market to purchase it that way. Of course, this would require understanding your market and preparing somewhat accurate sales predictions. I would imagine that based on your experience already, and the feedback you get from your customer base, that there is enough information there to gauge how much demand there actually is for CIB vs. cart-only releases. Still, this does not address at all the point that has been made about releasing different games in different ways. You could have a AAA title released CIB and a lesser title cart-only. Just doing CIB on everything may distort your view of the market since it may look like people don't want to buy CIB games, when in fact it may be the response to a specific title, which may have done better as a cart-only release. If, on the other hand, you want to do AAA titles exclusively, well, that's a rather tall other on such a small pool of programmers. Good luck with that. -dZ. I agree that a CIB release needs to 'deserve' the release in a box. I was never interested in doing boxes for everything. I only wanted to do CIB releases for quality stuff. I was NOT of the opinion that Old School deserved to be in a box. However, Tim disagreed with me and he paid for the box and overlays. He was right. I was wrong. Old School turned out to be a big seller. Go figure. I like the idea of offloading the cost of the box to the guestimated number of CIB sales. However, then you end up playing the limited game. I have a good idea of how many that would be for most titles, but my attempt was to expand the number of people interested to make AAA releases worthwhile. I certainly think that there is room for cart only releases. As I already mentioned, Old School came out in cart only. The market demanded and got a box for it.....maybe that is a good model for figuring out which titles would sell well? I would never box up Paddle Party if I had to do it again. Not that I didn't have great expectations for it and thought it was great...but you roll the dice and take your chances. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 (edited) I like the idea of offloading the cost of the box to the guestimated number of CIB sales. However, then you end up playing the limited game. Not necessarily. You predict the total number of units to be sold in CIB, based on the information at hand, as accurately as you can; and you compute your break-even point factoring in your profit margin. The idea is to sell enough to pass the break-even point and reach your target profit margin. I don't think you're in the "limited game" arena, since you have to print boxes and other collateral in rather large quantities. Most of them are sunken costs, but they are still inventory. If by chance you encounter a runaway success which busts through your predictions, then that's just pure profit. However, you can't count on that. You need to forecast realistically based on experience and market information (e.g., feedback from your customers). This is just how retail works. -dZ. Edited November 8, 2015 by DZ-Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 All that said, I would buy the ROMs for most of the homebrews I have purchased to date, as I would love the option of playing most content off of a multcart while still having my physical copy in case something goes wrong with the sd cart. Of course, that would be greatly dependent upon the cost of the ROM and, even more so, the acquisition of one of the sd carts currently in production (are there two or are up to three?) There are two that I'm aware of. One of which should arrive soonish, the other hopefully soonish as well. Soonish being anything from 2-12 months from now. Cross your fingers, folks! It's interesting to see the suggested ROM pricing people are throwing out there. I've seen a lot of $5-10, but some seem to be willing to pay as much as $20. Given that the community as a whole has seen very limited ROM sales, and those only for games that have already seen a physical release, and that no one seems willing to even hint at sales numbers... it's going to be very interesting to see how this shakes out for the pioneers. ROMs are something that appear to be insanely profitable at first glance (pure profit, after paypal fees!) but the riches will be dampened somewhat. There's no question that some folks will share between themselves rather than pay $5. Now, would those people have paid if they had no choice? Hard to say. The evidence from other media is ambiguous at best. Adding DRM into the equation gives some protection against this, but of course severely restricts your market - AFAIK only one of the upcoming multicarts has any kind of DRM support, so you may be cutting out 50% of the multicart market, plus the emulator crowd. Even a AAA title at $20 for a ROM, that sells an astounding 200 copies - while that seems like a lot of money, the programmer likely earned less than minimum wage for his or her time spent coding. I suspect we'll see a lot more $10 ROMs selling 50 copies, which basically pays for a title screen, some music, and some very crude, untested gameplay. 200 copies in this crowd comes about from people buying multiple copies, for collecting, for resale, etc. I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would buy multiple copies of a ROM, other than to be a nice guy. It's why I keep batting about the idea of something like Patreon. But that demands a LOT of regular, ongoing work. People aren't going to pay you a monthly fee if you release a game every 2 years (which is par for the course for those of us with day jobs). Anyway, expect the multicarts to open up a larger world of ROM sales. Hopefully people jump on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JasonlikesINTV Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 My ideal price point for a ROM is: $10 ROM only $5 (or free) with CIB purchase (to play on multicart) I might consider $15 for a premium ROM, but only for maybe 1-2 games each year. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I would like to announce the sales of Roms of any new homebrew game I am involved in at this time. For the low low bargain of: $0.00! I accepy money orders and PayPal. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I will take ten copies of each please Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JasonlikesINTV Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Hoarder! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I would like to announce the sales of Roms of any new homebrew game I am involved in at this time. For the low low bargain of: $0.00! I accepy money orders and PayPal. Thats exactly the same price point I'll be releasing my game ROMs for. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KylJoy Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Awesome. ROMs for everyone! I THINK most of us enthusiasts buy the physical games as part of our collections and as community support. I not only buy the physical releases, but, as you can see from my signature, I am SEARCHING for several! Shameless plug there... I love the ROMs for emulation and multi-carts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BBWW Posted November 8, 2015 Author Share Posted November 8, 2015 Yeah, I miss Vinyl too. All those huge LP's with and great artwork. But I use my iTunes library. The vinyl is all in boxes in the garage with the turntable. I think the future is in the ROM for Multi-carts and emulation IF they are supported and remain for sale. The big fear then is back up, because we all have lost of ton of digital media over the years. That is where the cart comes in handy it is almost always going to work. So I'm thinking that a CART /ROM release would thread the needle. I do lean towards some sort of DRM because we are a very "giving" community. The other alternative is to release the game and when shelf life has expired release the ROM. I don't really like paying for a ROM when I paid for a CIB game. But I do. As a musician I have stopped all my digital downloads for my new projects as Pandora and Spotify have sucked all the money out of the market. I'd rather sell a CD at $15 and keep $15. It would take 150,000 plays on Spotify to make that $15. Not can anybody help me complete my shrink-wrapped final two! :-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Thats exactly the same price point I'll be releasing my game ROMs for. Coincidentally, that's the same price point I've released all my ROMs, and will continue to do so for future ones. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m-crew Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 For me there nothing like going to the mailbox, with the excitement/hope that the new CIB game has arrived.. Opening up the shipping package and seeing the artwork of the box, reading the manual and sliding in the overlays into the controller I just don't get the same feel for a loose game or rom.. not to mention playing a game on a PC. I think most people here will pay a little more for the whole experience of a CIB release.. As long as the qualities of the games are there too... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intellivotion Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 (edited) I hate the dematerialization. If I like the album of a group, I buy the CD. If I like a modern game, I buy the DVD. If I like a book, I buy the hard copy.The same applies for Intellivision games. At least on cart. Much better if CIB. EDIT: I am with m-crew: I'm ready to pay more for the CIB games Edited November 8, 2015 by intellivotion 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m-crew Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I miss Vinyl too, the smell of a record, the art work on the album cover. opening up a double album cover.. Going over every inch of the cover and sleeves.. Not to mention picking up a record touching only the side edges and placing it ever so gently on the record player.. oh those were the times.. now crank the volume to 11 just Rock the Place to the ground.....lol 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intellivotion Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 (edited) I miss Vinyl too, the smell of a record, the art work on the album cover. opening up a double album cover.. Going over every inch of the cover and sleeves.. Not to mention picking up a record touching only the side edges and placing it ever so gently on the record player.. oh those were the times.. now crank the volume to 11 just Rock the Place to the ground.....lol Something that the young generations can't understand. I think we're getting old... Edited November 8, 2015 by intellivotion 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m-crew Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Something that the young generations can't understand. I think we're getting old... yes they sure miss a complete experience in most things these days... sad for sure.. We're not getting old , we're just aging to perfection... as long as we hold on to what youth we have left in us all goods!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intellivotion Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 hahaha aging to perfection!!! Something that I have to tell my wife Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BBWW Posted November 8, 2015 Author Share Posted November 8, 2015 If you guys are old I'm ancient. Something I have to keep telling my wife. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.