Is the Amico dead?

[mr_me]

6 hours ago, kevtris said:

This doesn't mesh with what has been said on the record all along, though.  So someone's telling porkies.  There was the original 2600 preorders in january of 2020, and then Tommy claimed to gather another 10 thousand preorders in 4-5 days (depending on how you count) without any evidence or proof, other than telling someone in an email.  This is documented here:

 

https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/04/intellivision-takes-more-than-10000-vip-edition-preorders-for-amico-console-in-a-few-days/

 

This article was posted on 4/4, so 10K orders between 3/31 and some time on 4/4.

 

The Fig page showed 13050 preorders as of Nov 7th, 2021, which I assume includes the 2600 original and these "10K" preorders, and any orders in the next year and a half.

 

 

So they lost 6000-7000 preorders but the fig page must've never gotten updated, or they never had that many preorders to begin with and the numbers were just made up.  It's impossible to tell at this point, but apparently going by twitter, people have asked for refunds and are either getting paper checks mailed to them, or just radio silence and no refunds at all.  That isn't the sign of a healthy company.  The SEC filing probably has the 'real' numbers in it, and any preorder numbers Intellivision cites are just puffery.  I suspect they've lost tons more preorders since the first of the year, and the Flounder's Edition waiting list is empty, going by the ability of people to get on it at will now.

 

You'll have to ask Fig what those numbers mean because 13k preorders does not come close to $7M, so there must be something else there.  The revenue share investing started on Fig at about the same time as the preorders.  Those numbers could be a combination of revenue share investors and preorders before the investing moved to the Republic page.  Also, Republic/Fig, according to the SEC documents, considers themselves an Amico distributor.  If that's the case than preorders at Fig would not be part of the 6000+ direct preorders reported later.

 

The Startengine risk disclosure actually has a 2020 balance sheet showing $539k of deferred revenue.  That probably represents 5390 direct preorders, and that's before 2021 fiscal year.  Again direct preorders don't include those taken by retailers.  Any preorder number that the company reports to the press is going to include both direct preorders and preorders by retailers.  You'll have to ask the former CEO about the venturebeat article.  I used the lower direct preorder number given investors to discuss how much deposit money the company collected.

 

5 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

Well it's easy to puff up journalists and friend YouTubers. You don't want to be hyperbolic to the SEC. People kept believing the puffery even when fundable was saying console not complete and only 6000 preorders.

(To clarify, Fundable said the hardware is 100% complete, and that goes back to last summer)

 

Specifically, it said $1.9M worth of direct preorders, more than 6000 units.  The $1.9M puts it closer to 7000 direct preorders but they rounded down.  And again that's direct preorders.  How many preorders did Fig, Gamestop, Amazon Europe, and other retailers take.  What would that put the total number of preorders at.

 

These numbers, whether its 6k or 10k are not significant.  This company has to sell Amicos in the hundreds of thousands in order to be successful.

 

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by mr_me

[Cebus Capucinis]

13 hours ago, atarifan88 said:

I had hoped it would have been released by now.  I love the idea of gaming with the family and trying to get my wife back into gaming playing some more simple games that the Amico had to offer.  I am contemplating jumping ship and getting a Switch.  After looking at the Switches library of games, they have most things I'm interested in: motion controlled games like bowling & golf, party games from jackbox, and even arcade classics.  The only things missing are a good game of disc golf, and an Arcade Archives Vs Ice Hockey from the old NES.  I know there is the Nintendo Online membership, but I am still old school and would prefer to have a physical copy that I actually own.  Can anyone out there who owns a Switch tell me how the motion controlled games compare to the Wii?

Didn't you hear? The Amico doesn't compete with the Switch and consumers would NEVER compare the two ???

[Rev]

Wata ready! Grab these on ebay while you have the chance. Very rare sealed. 

[SegaSnatcher]

16 hours ago, harmonyFM said:

There is no way this product can ever have a successful launch, it isn't dead but it should be. Amico should have folded a year ago and refunded everyone's money now they're going to fold and leave a bad taste in folk's mouths by not giving them their money back before they dissolve. Their failure to act responsibly by their customers is going to have a chilling effect on legitimate efforts at creating new-age retro consoles for years to come.

Pretty much this, I mean even if they pull off a miracle and actually ship this console the likely hood it will be successful at this point in time is extremely unlikely. The current preorder numbers tells you the kind of appeal this console has and it isn't much.   It's selling mainly to hardcore INTV fans and the numbers back that up.  I don't care if Gamestop wants to place an order of 100K units, they will never sell that many consoles to actual consumers given the price point of Amico and the games being made for it.  If you are going to price your console near the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series S then you need to offer something truly special and unique and I'm sorry but I don't see the Amico doing anything truly revolutionary or special with what they have shown so far.   

Most of those games don't even need the Amico controller to function properly.  It's mostly just tacked on touch screen controls because the controller lacks face buttons. 

Edited April 1, 2022 by SegaSnatcher

[Steven Pendleton]

5 hours ago, Albert said:

LOL

Eh, I've had some more unrealistic dreams, like when I dreamed that gravity had gone sideways or that I was sliding down mountains on Iwo Jima at midnight for some reason... although those might be more realistic than an Amico shipping to a customer at this point.

[roots.genoa]

14 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

although those might be more realistic than an Amico shipping to a customer at this point

OOF!™️

[SegaMasterSystemPunk]

4 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

OOF!™️

You forgot the attribution!

 

Oof

- Joey Kuras

[SanicSpeed]

3 hours ago, Rev said:

Wata ready! Grab these on ebay while you have the chance. Very rare sealed. 

lol

[SegaMasterSystemPunk]

19 hours ago, mr_me said:

That's different than saying it would ship as was claimed.  A target date would need confirmation, since phrasing it that way means it is not known if the date will be achieved.

 

The headline suggested it was a release date.

[youxia]

6 hours ago, mr_me said:

This company has to sell Amicos in the hundreds of thousands in order to be successful.

Not a problem, since their target audience counts in billions apparently. It's all been proven by "market research" and "focus groups", hasn't it?

 

4 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

I don't care if Gamestop wants to place an order of 100K units, they will never sell that many consoles to actual consumers given the price point of Amico and the games being made for it.  If you are going to price your console near the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series S then you need to offer something truly special and unique and I'm sorry but I don't see the Amico doing anything truly revolutionary or special with what they have shown so far.   

But this was a major red flag since the early stages of this endeavour. Some small positive ideas they had, such as no ads/microtransactions, could not counter the fact that they are trying to launch an overpriced product with mostly bland and uninteresting games, in a saturated, cutthroat market. In a way, Covid/chip shortage was probably a blessing in disguise for them - a very convenient excuse and a spared embarrassment.

 

I've been saying that since the beginning, but once a hype train starts rolling for something on the Internet, any critical voices are automatically dismissed as "haters", and such projects have many cult-like similarities.

[Flojomojo]

8 hours ago, Albert said:

LOL

Today would be a fine day to restore the old Amico forum in read-only mode in the Archive section. Especially if you were able to restore some of the salient predictions that were removed from the thread. The new owners of Intellivision took people for a ride and collected lots of money. The now-former CEO made hundreds of claims that seemed dubious at the time. They look even worse with the benefit of hindsight, now that we know more about what was (and was not) happening behind the scenes. 

 

Why today? Because it's April Fool's Day. 

[atarifan88]

15 hours ago, Rev said:

Us Amazon has no search results for Intellivision Amico. 
 

Didnt US Amazon previously sell Amico items?  I dont know. Someone verify. 

 

No ordering on Canada Amazon.  Couldnt you before?

 

 

US Amazon never had the Amico listed.  When pre-orders were going on, I searched for it for several months and nothing.  I wanted to see what exclusives they were going to offer before I decided to place an order.  I also wanted to compare it with what Gamestop had to offer.  I'm glad I went with my gut and NEVER pay for anything that is not officially released, unless you have money to burn.  In which case, I will gladly accept donations if others are looking to throw their money away! ?

[atarifan88]

7 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Didn't you hear? The Amico doesn't compete with the Switch and consumers would NEVER compare the two ???

Yeah, I get the humor because of what Tommy always said about comparison with the Switch.  I was asking an honest question because I have been out of the loop of modern gaming since the Sega Genesis (not kidding).  I've been doing some research on the Switch and it appears the motion controls are worse than the Wii, but hey it's Nintendo so it has to be good right? ?

[atarifan88]

6 hours ago, Rev said:

Wata ready! Grab these on ebay while you have the chance. Very rare sealed. 

I'll refrain for the same reason I did when they originally went on sale...IT'S A BOX OF NOTHING! ?

[roots.genoa]

11 minutes ago, atarifan88 said:

I've been doing some research on the Switch and it appears the motion controls are worse than the Wii

It doesn't mean the rest isn't better, though. Are motion controls that important to you? Did you have a Genesis solely for the Activator?

[harmonyFM]

22 hours ago, mr_me said:

Preorders were never required to buy an Amico nor were they required to manufacture Amicos.  Deposits were only a fraction of the purchase price of an Amico, totalling only about $600k.  That's a tiny fraction of what they've raised from investors.

So they only took more than half a million dollars from their customers in exchange for broken promises and no product? My point still stands, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The fact that they're still accepting people's money is a bad joke. It doesn't matter that this is a technically small amount in the grand scheme of the company, it's still taking money from potential customers who are now burned because of Amico's abject failure to deliver anything resembling their promised product in a timely manner. They've got nothing, they should have folded when they still had the resources to refund everyone's money.

[MrBeefy]

7 hours ago, mr_me said:

(To clarify, Fundable said the hardware is 100% complete, and that goes back to last summer)

To clarify it still isn't done. A board is just a fancy Coaster for my coffee mug until the software's done.

 

That board doesn't mean a thing without the rest. It might as well be a SNES board.

 

7 hours ago, mr_me said:

You'll have to ask the former CEO about the venturebeat article. 

I just posted the venturebeat article and the link to preorder the VIP woodgrain. He flipped out shouting phoney. Turns out he was probably projecting how everything shown is puffery and the only phoney thing was it coming out on 10/10/2020, 4/3/2021, 4/15/2021, 10/10/2021, 12/31/2021, 3/31/2022. Or projecting how they were phoney for saying they wouldn't us crowdfunding but the Fig link was to a crowdfunding platform. Take your pick, but there is no point in asking anything because if it isn't the SEC asking the questions, it will be an answer full of fluff.

 

7 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Didn't you hear? The Amico doesn't compete with the Switch and consumers would NEVER compare the two ???

If it never shows up to the race it isn't competing. So they may have been honest with that.

 

[MrBeefy]

1 hour ago, Flojomojo said:

Today would be a fine day to restore the old Amico forum in read-only mode in the Archive section. Especially if you were able to restore some of the salient predictions that were removed from the thread. The new owners of Intellivision took people for a ride and collected lots of money. The now-former CEO made hundreds of claims that seemed dubious at the time. They look even worse with the benefit of hindsight, now that we know more about what was (and was not) happening behind the scenes. 

 

Why today? Because it's April Fool's Day. 

Oh I like this idea. Then every April 1st I'd have a specific area to visit. It could be the Knight Rider thread for April Fools day! Every year we can check on all the Hardwork going in to disrupting the industry.

[MrBeefy]

59 minutes ago, atarifan88 said:

Yeah, I get the humor because of what Tommy always said about comparison with the Switch.  I was asking an honest question because I have been out of the loop of modern gaming since the Sega Genesis (not kidding).  I've been doing some research on the Switch and it appears the motion controls are worse than the Wii, but hey it's Nintendo so it has to be good right? ?

 

46 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

It doesn't mean the rest isn't better, though. Are motion controls that important to you? Did you have a Genesis solely for the Activator?

I really think the big difference is for lightgun games. The bar on Wii was better for that. The motion on CG51 has been good for games like Bowling and Darts. I'm excited to try Switch Sports so I haven't been turned off by them.

[atarifan88]

57 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

It doesn't mean the rest isn't better, though. Are motion controls that important to you? Did you have a Genesis solely for the Activator?

No.  I had the Genesis because I was a fan of EA NHL & Madden.  When you say "it doesn't mean the rest isn't better" what are you referring to?  I was only comparing the Switch to the Wii because I was trying to determine if I would be better off with a Wii.  Yes I like the motion controls, but if I'm going to buy a system, I don't want them to work half assed.  That's all I'm saying.  This is what I found when comparing the two.  Of course it may not be an end all be all kind of thing, but for someone like me who has never owned either of these, it makes me wonder.  Plus having to recalibrate your motion controls while in-game several times is kind of a turn off for me.  Do any of you all have this issue with your Switch?

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by atarifan88

[mr_me]

8 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Didn't you hear? The Amico doesn't compete with the Switch and consumers would NEVER compare the two ???

Looks like they were prepared to get an Amico without comparing, but one example is not indicative of any trend.

 

1 hour ago, youxia said:

Not a problem, since their target audience counts in billions apparently. It's all been proven by "market research" and "focus groups", hasn't it?

They haven't shared their market research but nothing is proven until it performs in the market.

 

1 hour ago, atarifan88 said:

Yeah, I get the humor because of what Tommy always said about comparison with the Switch.  I was asking an honest question because I have been out of the loop of modern gaming since the Sega Genesis (not kidding).  I've been doing some research on the Switch and it appears the motion controls are worse than the Wii, but hey it's Nintendo so it has to be good right? ?

In what way is Switch motion control worse than the Wii.  Wii Sports didn't really use the sensor bar, nor did it use a gyroscope because the original Wii controllers didn't have one.  Wii sports used an accelerometer to detect motion.  Switch controllers and Amico controllers both have accelerometers and gyroscopes, so they have more motion sensing capability than Wii Sports used.

 

45 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

To clarify it still isn't done. A board is just a fancy Coaster for my coffee mug until the software's done.

 

That board doesn't mean a thing without the rest. It might as well be a SNES board.

 

I just posted the venturebeat article and the link to preorder the VIP woodgrain. He flipped out shouting phoney. Turns out he was probably projecting how everything shown is puffery and the only phoney thing was it coming out on 10/10/2020, 4/3/2021, 4/15/2021, 10/10/2021, 12/31/2021, 3/31/2022. Or projecting how they were phoney for saying they wouldn't us crowdfunding but the Fig link was to a crowdfunding platform. Take your pick, but there is no point in asking anything because if it isn't the SEC asking the questions, it will be an answer full of fluff.

 

 

The console software and library of games has been working for some time.  Over a dozen games played at events, firmware updates over the internet, installing and redeeming games from the online store.  (Comparing it to a coaster or a fake prototype is not correct or fair.)

 

The Fig platform which became Republic hosted a revenue sharing investment campaign.  Although Fig can host a kickstarter style campaign, that's not what they were doing with Amico.  Fig took preorders with a deposit no different than GameStop or other retailers.

 

He might have been projecting, rounding up, extrapolating.  They wouldn't be the first company to "round-up" sales numbers for the press.  How many pre-orders did they peak at considering both direct preorders and those through resellers.  If they reported close to 7k direct preorders to investors they could easily have had 10k adding preorders at retailers.  Again these aren't significant numbers either way.

Edited April 1, 2022 by mr_me

[mr_me]

1 hour ago, atarifan88 said:

No.  I had the Genesis because I was a fan of EA NHL & Madden.  When you say "it doesn't mean the rest isn't better" what are you referring to?  I was only comparing the Switch to the Wii because I was trying to determine if I would be better off with a Wii.  Yes I like the motion controls, but if I'm going to buy a system, I don't want them to work half assed.  That's all I'm saying.  This is what I found when comparing the two.  Of course it may not be an end all be all kind of thing, but for someone like me who has never owned either of these, it makes me wonder.  Plus having to recalibrate your motion controls while in-game several times is kind of a turn off for me.  Do any of you all have this issue with your Switch?

If you look at Wii Sports, the motion control in the gameplay was limited, only measuring swing forces and relative changes in the direction of those forces i.e. spin, only using an accelerometer.  Aiming in Wii Sports bowling was through gamepad controls not motion control.  With Switch Clubhouse 51 darts for example, you aim with motion control.  It uses the gyroscopes to sense changes in orientation to move a cursor on screen.  It actually calibrates every time you press a button to start aiming because it has no idea where you're actually pointing, it's all relative.  The calibration happens without really knowing.

 

Wii Sports Resort bowling is an improvement on the original because it makes use of the gyroscope addon, which the Switch (and Amico) controllers have standard.

Edited April 1, 2022 by mr_me

[youxia]

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

They haven't shared their market research but nothing is proven until it performs in the market.

Well, obviously...I wasn't being serious ? And the market research/focus groups/billions of punters was TT's mantra, used in countelss interviews and hater rebukes.

 

Quote

 

“Our target audience are moms, and families, and seniors, and casuals, and hyper-casuals and even non-gamers, similar to that big audience that propelled the Wii. Those are the folks we’re going for, we’re going for the 3.1 billion people that play mobile games every day, not the 200 million people that are considered ‘hardcore gamers’. [...]

And I can also share with you that we’ve done a ton of market research and focus group testing with our target audience, with people who are not our target audience… I’ll tell you who our target audience is not: 12 to 30-year-old men and boys."

 

There is actually some merit to this, because the number of casual gamers is truly huge and people love buying new gadgets. But when the new gadget is priced nearly the same as its biggest competitor while being hugely inferior, then it's a no brainer to predict what will happen.

 

Like I said back then, if you could sell it for ~129$ then it would have some fighting chance as a cheap impulse buy. But no, they had to harp on about how advanced and brilliant it all is and how it couldn't possibly cost less.

Edited April 1, 2022 by youxia

[mr_me]

32 minutes ago, youxia said:

Well, obviously...I wasn't being serious ? And the market research/focus groups/billions of punters was TT's mantra, used in countelss interviews and hater rebukes.

Again, that's not market research, they haven't shared their market research.  So we can't comment on something we haven't seen.  (I'll add that you can disagree with their findings for your own reasons, but you can't say their research is flawed without having seen it.  Maybe they have something to back that up, maybe they don't, we don't know.)

 

And impulse buying is not a viable strategy for a new platform.  Customers should see the value in their purchase.

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by mr_me

[Downland1983]

14 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

Placeholder box man! That misspelling of their company was an innuendo to catch you in their web! ? Someone like @roots.genoa would need to inform me on how bad the French translation was. I heard it was bad and the localization team might be the same people in charge of proofing their writings.

 

Notice they've been quiet on correcting information suggesting that GameStop is shipping? On the FB group the IE employees haven't said anything but the other admin has. They don't have really any respect for their customers. Still no ship date in sight. 

 

They empty space in the box is for your hopes and dreams. I'm guessing it will hold warranty information and booklets.

No, the misspellings are to set the box apart as the rare variant edition for collectors!