Intellivision POLL - Homebrew and Rom pricing

[1980gamer]

Where is everyone?

Looks like only about 50 LTO's are accounted for out of 1,000 ish sold.

[+Steve Jones]

I sold about 40 of them early last year for Joe Z, I would estimate about half of the buyers (believe it or not) aren't actually here on AA.

Not sure why not but that seemed to be the case.

 

 

 

 

[wolfy62]

5 hours ago, Steve Jones said:

I sold about 40 of them early last year for Joe Z, I would estimate about half of the buyers (believe it or not) aren't actually here on AA.

Not sure why not but that seemed to be the case.

 

 

 

 

Its probably considered a real cool collectible for people who dont actually play much Intellivision or collect the games for it.

I for one own most systems but I cant collect for all of them space wise and financially,so I try to purchase a multicart for whatever systems they have one for.

My Intellivision stuff takes up a large space so I have multicarts for Vectrex,Colecovision,Atari 5200 etc.

So one LTO Flashcart will cover the collecting need for many folks for the Intellivision. 

But they may not care enough to actually use it.

Or they are speculating it will be worth more down the road. 

Probably other reasons I didnt think of also that other people buy them for.?

[+JasonlikesINTV]

On 12/25/2021 at 8:56 AM, Rev said:

Thanks for the feedback!

 

On 12/25/2021 at 4:55 PM, cmart604 said:

You're welcome 

Ugh...get a room, you two.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

I highly doubt there's a 1000 regular posters on Intellivisionage.  I DO believe there are a lot of readers who don't have an account and/or don't post anything.  I'm guessing they account for a decent chunk of sales.  Then there's the Facebook crowd, the Amico newcomers, the fans of other consoles (or ISH -Intellivision as a Second Hobby), and finally the multicart whores who never buy physical games, but own every console.  The other half went to Cmart ?

[+cmart604]

14 minutes ago, JasonlikesINTV said:

I highly doubt there's a 1000 regular posters on Intellivisionage.  I DO believe there are a lot of readers who don't have an account and/or don't post anything.  I'm guessing they account for a decent chunk of sales.  Then there's the Facebook crowd, the Amico newcomers, the fans of other consoles (or ISH -Intellivision as a Second Hobby), and finally the multicart whores who never buy physical games, but own every console.  The other half went to Cmart ?

Bahahahaha! 

[1980gamer]

I think this data could be very valuable to game publishers.

 

Maybe, these question need to be asked at point of sale?

ie give a discount for taking the survey. Like 5% off.   So $.50 for a $10 rom.  $3 off of $60 cib etc.

Or maybe used toward a future purchase would be a better scenario.

 

Also pointing them to AA as part of the sales receipt or something.  We obviously are a stronger community than what is represented here.

I am not a facebook user.  I don't want to be the product and make Suckerberg any richer or powerful than he already is.

 

[+BBWW]

I still use our two Cuttle Cart III's as well....and of course the one of our 3 Ultimate Intellivision Flashbacks. (Two have crashed and I can't figure out how to restart them. LOL)

 

[mthompson]

22 minutes ago, BBWW said:

I still use our two Cuttle Cart III's as well....and of course the one of our 3 Ultimate Intellivision Flashbacks. (Two have crashed and I can't figure out how to restart them. LOL)

 

Often that’s the result of a corrupted SD card. That can happen from an improper shutdown. Swap it from one of your other Flashbacks, and if that boots it, clone it to make a fresh card. 

[intvdave]

On 12/27/2021 at 8:01 AM, 1980gamer said:

I think this data could be very valuable to game publishers.

 

The poll results do tie into what I am seeing regarding ROM sales.  The polls tell me the following:

 

31 play games every couple of week +
31 prefer digital  (4 circuit board)
33 say $10 is a good price
34 use their flash
40 download roms and play them
54 own a Flash
63 play in emulation or CC3/Flash

 

For ROM sales, I am seeing from 27 to 36 games sold. The number of 63 playing in emulation tells me that a half of players do not care for rom hacks or new games. The number of Flash sold, 1000+, provides no perspective to games sold in ROM only format.

 

Considering games CIB sell 100+ copies, it seems that most buyers are collectors and not gamers.

 

A suggestion to all game publishers, producing ROM only games may not be the path you want to take.

[carlsson]

55 minutes ago, intvdave said:

producing ROM only games may not be the path you want to take

The question is if there is room for digital commercial games, i.e. those that may be worth $10 - $15 but not the $70 that a physical cartridge with box, overlays etc sells for. Sure, you probably make more net profit selling 100 games @ $70 than selling 30 games @ $10.

 

Also currently with the component shortages, I'm not sure how cartridge manufacturing is affected. Clearly those publishers relying on Joe's boards are finding themselves at a shortage right now, trying various measures such as either releasing the games digitally in the mean time, or if possible reuse existing, unsold stock for new games. Some developers may even limit their creativity in order to fit games onto the boards of smaller capacity that currently are available, so you'd get a slightly more limited experience CIB $70 than you would be able to get digital $10 if you had the LTO Flash! or other hardware solution available to load it from.

[intvdave]

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

The question is if there is room for digital commercial games, i.e. those that may be worth $10 - $15 but not the $70 that a physical....

 

Few people are interested in ROM as most people are collectors. The quality of the game does not really matter. It is all about a finished CIB product.

 

I get the point of games not fitting on a game board, though I am not sure what you are referring to except for LTO's boards having save options. To make a game that needs more than what current game boards have is heck of a task. From what I am seeing, the component shortage is not an issue for Intellivision games. There are many other forces at play.

[carlsson]

Yeah, I suppose you're spot on regarding that collectors buy games based on their availability, not their playability. I don't keep track of other older formats where digital downloads are a possibility, if the two only options really are physical or freeware, but that might very well be the case. On home computers, you usually can write a floppy disk and make a simple packaging that makes it sellable in physical form for far less than what it takes to make a cartridge, but there is no such cheaper media option here.

[Morpheus]

57 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Sure, you probably make more net profit selling 100 games @ $70 than selling 30 games @ $10.

If we don’t consider the developement costs, 30 ROMs sold @ $10 would represent 300 bucks of net profit.

Such net profit for 100 CIB would mean  that a single CIB costs $40 and makes $30 of net profit.

I was imagining even less. If it is so, I think it’s great, since 70 bucks for a CIB it’s a good price in my mind and if the developers and producers can make a litte money out of it it’s great!??

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, intvdave said:

 

Few people are interested in ROM as most people are collectors. The quality of the game does not really matter. It is all about a finished CIB product.

 

I get the point of games not fitting on a game board, though I am not sure what you are referring to except for LTO's boards having save options. To make a game that needs more than what current game boards have is heck of a task. From what I am seeing, the component shortage is not an issue for Intellivision games. There are many other forces at play.

The LTO boards have a bit more than that.  To be honest, I do not know how they compare with other boards like yours, but at least I know that LTO's JLP boars offer:

• Support for very large ROM's able to map up to 42K words across various non-contiguous segments;
• Support for up to 16 pages of bank-switched ROM space;
• 8K of additional onboard 16-bit RAM.

I personally think those are very useful features, of which many already released games have taken advantage.  For some games, they are sort of required; unlike the save-game feature, which is to me just an extra nice-to-have.

 

My understanding is that the other PCB boards do not offer the extra RAM or bank-switching capabilities, but honestly, I do not really know.

 

    dZ.

Edited December 28, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[+5-11under]

6 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

My understanding is that the other PCB boards do not offer the extra RAM or bank-switching capabilities, but honestly, I do not really know.

My standard board has ROM only... all addresses except for $0xxx, $1xxx, and $3xxx (and of course whatever isn't allowed by the Intellivision).

I do have a ROM+RAM (16 bit) board, which allows ROM/RAM basically anywhere where it's allowed, but that board is very pricey.

Neither has bankswitching, and neither can do extra things like multiplication (which the JLP board can do).

 

 

[intvdave]

6 minutes ago, 5-11under said:

My standard board has ROM only...

 

You have the best boards out there!!!

[+DZ-Jay]

12 minutes ago, 5-11under said:

My standard board has ROM only... all addresses except for $0xxx, $1xxx, and $3xxx (and of course whatever isn't allowed by the Intellivision).

That's cool, it should cover the usable range.

 

12 minutes ago, 5-11under said:

I do have a ROM+RAM (16 bit) board, which allows ROM/RAM basically anywhere where it's allowed, but that board is very pricey.

That works too.  Is there a minimum/maximum range limit for making a block read/writable?

 

12 minutes ago, 5-11under said:

Neither has bankswitching, and neither can do extra things like multiplication (which the JLP board can do).

The accelerated multiplication and other functions, I don't know if anybody is actually using that.  To me, ample RAM and ROM is somewhat necessary, and bank-switching would be good to have, too, especially as games keep getting bigger and more complex (and I'm not talking about IntyBASIC games only).

It's good to know there are options out there. ??
 

   dZ.

[+5-11under]

7 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

That works too.  Is there a minimum/maximum range limit for making a block read/writable?

The ROM+RAM board has a CPLD that controls the memory map. Most games that have used this have blocks of RAM at $8xxx, and sometimes $9xxx. Keeping the RAM/ROM within blocks of $1000 words is super easy for the CPLD, but splitting it up further or in different ways is also possible. At some point the CPLD would run out of "computing" power, but that would require a number of RAM and/or ROM blocks of strange sizes to do that (and there's likely no reason to do that, anyway).

[+DZ-Jay]

44 minutes ago, 5-11under said:

The ROM+RAM board has a CPLD that controls the memory map. Most games that have used this have blocks of RAM at $8xxx, and sometimes $9xxx. Keeping the RAM/ROM within blocks of $1000 words is super easy for the CPLD, but splitting it up further or in different ways is also possible. At some point the CPLD would run out of "computing" power, but that would require a number of RAM and/or ROM blocks of strange sizes to do that (and there's likely no reason to do that, anyway).

Ah, no, that's cool.  I was asking because with the JLP you can have the $8xxx range and above be read-only or read/write, but you cannot split it into chunks with a read-only block, and a smaller read/write area.

This is primarily why I've had to use bank-switching, when I need more than 42K of ROM, and also have some extra RAM.  I am forced to declare the range as read/writable, but then that forces me to have to bank-switch the ROM overflow to that area.

 

Very good to know, thanks!

 

    dZ.

Edited December 28, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[+cmadruga]

 

4 hours ago, intvdave said:

For ROM sales, I am seeing from 27 to 36 games sold. The number of 63 playing in emulation tells me that a half of players do not care for rom hacks or new games. The number of Flash sold, 1000+, provides no perspective to games sold in ROM only format.

 

Considering games CIB sell 100+ copies, it seems that most buyers are collectors and not gamers.

 

A suggestion to all game publishers, producing ROM only games may not be the path you want to take.

Here's what I'm seeing on my side:

 

I'm selling an average of 51 roms for each game released, with one on track to 100.

 

What I'm seeing is that the best selling roms are those that had a previous CIB release.

I believe that is due to:

- increased awareness of the game due to the usually good job done by publishers.

- collectors wanting to preserve their copies, and willing to play the rom instead.

- buyers that could not afford the original CIB price point, but still wanted to play the game.

 

The second best performance is when digital is sold without expectation of a CIB coming later.

Buyers are not as sensitive to price in this situation.

 

The worst performance is when digital comes out first, and the expectation of a later CIB release is communicated right away.

 

Therefore, my take away so far is that CIB can either help or hinder digital sales, depending on timing. But there is definitely room for both.

[1980gamer]

5 hours ago, intvdave said:

 

The poll results do tie into what I am seeing regarding ROM sales.  The polls tell me the following:

 

31 play games every couple of week +
31 prefer digital  (4 circuit board)
33 say $10 is a good price
34 use their flash
40 download roms and play them
54 own a Flash
63 play in emulation or CC3/Flash

 

For ROM sales, I am seeing from 27 to 36 games sold. The number of 63 playing in emulation tells me that a half of players do not care for rom hacks or new games. The number of Flash sold, 1000+, provides no perspective to games sold in ROM only format.

 

Considering games CIB sell 100+ copies, it seems that most buyers are collectors and not gamers.

 

A suggestion to all game publishers, producing ROM only games may not be the path you want to take.

Hi David,

All things being equal, 1K flash carts out in the wild should translate into hundreds of roms sold.

Out of curiosity, do you know how many DK, DIIK or MS Pacman sold?

Also, I know you have sold some $5 and $10 roms, did you see any difference in those numbers?

 

I get collecting games, but don't you want to play them?  What a boring life. I collect "junk" myself, but I tend to use it.  I used to buy 2 cibs back in the day.

But a wonderful life changing event happened, super limited release games I couldn't get broke the spell.  Once I could not have a complete collection, I didn't need every game anymore.

Though I do want to PLAY every game.  I am certain I will not like many of them, but how do I know without trying them?

 

@DZ-Jay Do you have any idea how many Carol rom downloads from your site?

 

PS.  Tron with side button shooting actually lets me play the game on my laptop.  It is hard to play the original version on a keyboard.

 

[1980gamer]

8 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

 

Here's what I'm seeing on my side:

 

I'm selling an average of 51 roms for each game released, with one on track to 100.

 

What I'm seeing is that the best selling roms are those that had a previous CIB release.

I believe that is due to:

- increased awareness of the game due to the usually good job done by publishers.

- collectors wanting to preserve their copies, and willing to play the rom instead.

- buyers that could not afford the original CIB price point, but still wanted to play the game.

 

The second best performance is when digital is sold without expectation of a CIB coming later.

Buyers are not as sensitive to price in this situation.

 

The worst performance is when digital comes out first, and the expectation of a later CIB release is communicated right away.

 

Therefore, my take away so far is that CIB can either help or hinder digital sales, depending on timing. But there is definitely room for both.

I buy lots of roms.  Where can I find yours?

You do not have a web site on your profile etc.

 

[+cmadruga]

Just now, 1980gamer said:

I buy lots of roms.  Where can I find yours?

You do not have a web site on your profile etc.

 

You can find them at:

https://www.intellivisioncollector.com/roms.html

 

Thank you for your interest.

[1980gamer]

3 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

You can find them at:

https://www.intellivisioncollector.com/roms.html

 

Thank you for your interest.

I may be loosing my mind?  I know I got HELI and another game??? In some sort of DELUXE rom package, but I don't remember if I got it from you?

When I am less lazy, I will find the emails.

 

Thanks for the link.