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Is the Amico dead?


Tinman

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6 hours ago, mr_me said:

I  might be the only one not dumping on the company, is how I see it. And I'd do the same for you or anyone else here if you or they were in that situation.

I'm not dumping on them, they are doing awesome.. An "entrepreneur" 's dream.   Take people's money, pay yourself a hefty salary for a few years until money is gone, don't provide anything you say you will provide, ghost people who ask for their money back, sell whatever is left of the company for peanuts and get off scott free and drive your ferrari off into the sunset!  

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7 hours ago, atarifan88 said:

I didn't know this but the Switch has cornhole in a game called Party Arcade.  Has anyone on here tried it?  Does it use motion controls?

Review: Party Arcade | GamingBoulevard

Party Arcade First 15 minutes of gameplay #PS4 - YouTube

Has this game sold 3 billion copies yet? :D

 

I'm glad I didn't pre-order the Amico as it's become just as fascinating a dumpster fire to watch as with the VCS. I have played the Amico at one of their events and Moon Patrol & Astrosmash were cool(my daughter enjoyed Shark Shark), but I never bought into the "market research" hype that billions of people are tanned, tested and ready to jump in on one when there's a Switch sitting there with everything you could want and more when it comes to casual/family/indie/retro games (same can be said for the VCS). 

 

Of course, it may still pop up at one point, but doing an unboxing video without any kind of shipping announcement is really bizarre and a terrible PR move. Starting to feel somewhat like the NUON where it just popped up on CDW one day with zero fanfare or press releases. 

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5 hours ago, roadrunner said:

Amazing System.
Reviewed by GamerGurl909 - October 11, 2021
Im so hyped and excited to get this and start playing. I preordered my Amico and also pre ordered the limited edition 8 game bundle. It is very refreshing to have a new console choice.

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.

 


so hyped for this console!
Reviewed by Geo - October 12, 2021
I have two of these systems on pre-order. There is nothing else out there with modern features such as wireless controller recharging and high definition controller screens. Nintendo really needs to up their game...

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.


Great value
Reviewed by Jason - March 10, 2022
Can’t wait for this game console, finally something I can play with my family!

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.

And now I know 2 out of 3 (given I'm pretty sure Jason is the same as last time). ?

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18 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

All this speculation is pointless. Their former CEO and current president has thousands of posts on here. Surely he could come out and explain himself, even if the answer is “this is a very difficult update to write.”

 

@Tommy Tallarico do you have anything to say to your adoring public here?

 

If he doesn’t show up, not saying anything still makes a statement. 

He had his own private thread where non - Kool-aid drinkers weren't welcome.   Any kind of critical thinking was discouraged, because it was a "fun thread."  

 

That's the thing about egomaniacs, they tend to surround themselves with people who will feed their massive egos.  No, he's not going to come back when his private safe space is gone and people can freely call him out.  This is a guy who manipulated small time YouTubers into committing channel suicide to run propaganda for a failed project.   There's no reason to think he'll ever face the music and admit his wrong doing.

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3 hours ago, crade said:

I'm not dumping on them, they are doing awesome.. An "entrepreneur" 's dream.   Take people's money, pay yourself a hefty salary for a few years until money is gone, don't provide anything you say you will provide, ghost people who ask for their money back, sell whatever is left of the company for peanuts and get off scott free and drive your ferrari off into the sunset!  

If that's what happens than the four founding partners will be personally out a total of over $1.1 million, not including interest which none has been paid, while being compensated a sum total of $354k between them over three years.

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Just received the official cancellation e-mail for my Gamestop pre-order of the Galaxy Purple Amico.

 

"Due to vendor cancelation, we will be unable to fulfill your Order Number_____________. We will be canceling your order and you will not be charged.

Our sincerest apologies. Kindly give us a shout via email, chat, or phone if you have any questions."

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11 minutes ago, bojay1997 said:

Just received the official cancellation e-mail for my Gamestop pre-order of the Galaxy Purple Amico.

 

"Due to vendor cancelation, we will be unable to fulfill your Order Number_____________. We will be canceling your order and you will not be charged.

Our sincerest apologies. Kindly give us a shout via email, chat, or phone if you have any questions."

I know someone will say this is just more an indication of a unannounced soft launch ... but .... 

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54 minutes ago, Albert said:

Why do people hide the identity of people posting public tweets?  It took me 15 seconds to find this:

 

 

 


You broke the scribble code.  ?  
 

 But you are right, Its public.  Point taken. 

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17 minutes ago, Rev said:

You broke the scribble code.  ?  
 

 But you are right, Its public.  Point taken. 

I didn't break the scribble code. I searched for "Amico" and "success" and then looked at the "Latest" tweets. I figured there wouldn't be many tweets with those two words. 
 

  ..Al

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52 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

I know someone will say this is just more an indication of a unannounced soft launch ... but .... 

Exactly. Retailers are cancelling orders due to the plan for the direct softlaunch. I'm sure some exec or something vaguely might have said that somewhere at some point if you strain REALLY HARD and use unprecedented mental gymnastics to unquestioningly trust everything said despite a track record of lies.

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RetroBro says:   I no longer have faith that the Amico will have any sort of success beyond some fans getting a cool gadget.

 

———

 

He has had insider info and exclusive interviews with CEOs. 
 

 “Gadget” isnt a console.  What gadget?  The game boxes??   Sounds like he is warning that a console isnt coming out at all.   

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20 minutes ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Exactly. Retailers are cancelling orders due to the plan for the direct softlaunch. I'm sure some exec or something vaguely might have said that somewhere at some point if you strain REALLY HARD and use unprecedented mental gymnastics to unquestioningly trust everything said despite a track record of lies.

You don't believe the CFO when, in mid 2021, he said they changed manufacturing strategies from a single source mass production manufacturer to multiple sources, starting with a smaller local production run before ramping up to mass production in China, in order to manage costs.  Why not?

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35 minutes ago, Rev said:

RetroBro says:   I no longer have faith that the Amico will have any sort of success beyond some fans getting a cool gadget.

———

He has had insider info and exclusive interviews with CEOs. 
 

 “Gadget” isnt a console.  What gadget?  The game boxes??   Sounds like he is warning that a console isnt coming out at all.   

He is a drama YouTuber it seems. Also full of bad information despite talking to the former and current CEO. I think he recently said he thought it would come out Q2 2022.

 

I think he's a huge fan based on his video of the Game Stop commercial. ? This clip is missing the drink shaker at the end, but still. ? 

 

I couldn't watch his stuff and I heard he had a friend on who harassed a female guest because she was neutral and didn't just love Amico. She ended up having a panic attack on air because of it.

 

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52 minutes ago, mr_me said:

You don't believe the CFO when, in mid 2021, he said they changed manufacturing strategies from a single source mass production manufacturer to multiple sources, starting with a smaller local production run before ramping up to mass production in China, in order to manage costs.  Why not?

So you think it is going to be cheaper to get parts at one place, ship them, assemble them in another place, then ship them, then ship them again? Cheaper than just doing it all in China?

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got an email from GameStop explaining that the item was  canceled by the vendor

shame, as I was really looking forward to it because I like silly novelties like it was shaping up to be (though probably not supposed to be) oh well,  if they manage to limp something out the gate, I'll buy one still (fully aware it will fail+ underdeliver, don't care)

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Just now, masschamber said:

got an email from GameStop explaining that the item was  canceled by the vendor

shame, as I was really looking forward to it because I like silly novelties like it was shaping up to be (though probably not supposed to be) oh well,  if they manage to limp something out the gate, I'll buy one still (fully aware it will fail+ underdeliver, don't care)

Yeah their only retail partner is gone now basically. I'm surprised they didn't try to do preorders on the GTO Red directly. Like another last effort to get more money.

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5 hours ago, mr_me said:

You don't believe the CFO when, in mid 2021, he said they changed manufacturing strategies from a single source mass production manufacturer to multiple sources, starting with a smaller local production run before ramping up to mass production in China, in order to manage costs.  Why not?

I don't believe the CFO.  I have extensive manufacturing electronic products in the US, Canada, and China.  I will walk through how a product like this would be manufactured.

 

(This is a general overview of how the Amico would be manufactured and illustrates why most of what Tommy said was insane)

 

It costs a lot of money to set a production line up to make your PCB for the product.   There are lots of NRE costs (non-recurring engineering costs).  That's stuff like programming all the pick and place machines,  the optical quality inspection system,  get the solder paste stencils made,  train the workers,  circuit board charges (they charge you setup fees for this too).

 

So great, your NRE fees are paid.  Now what?  Well, you need to buy parts AND the bare PCBs to put them on.  You can pay your manufacturer (like Ark electronics) to buy the parts for you, this is known as "turn key" manufacturing- you supply a bill of materials, a PCB design, and money and they will do everything and supply you with finished boards.  The more work you do yourself (parts acquisition, bare PCB acquisition) the more money you will save.   We know that INTV paid Ark for turn-key service, because they bought parts for the project.

 

Next, you get boards made.  Since it cost you so much money to get this far, you are NOT going to "get a few" boards made at one company, a few more at another, etc. because this is dumb.  You'd have to pay all those NRE fees AGAIN for each company.  The electronic parts come in packages too, like capacitors come 10000 to a reel, chips come 200-300 in a tray, etc.  It's a big pain to break them up for each run, and a lot of assembly houses flat out won't take partial reels/trays/tubes of parts since it's such a pain to deal with.  This means a lot of wastage if you get a few made here and there.

 

So cool boards are made.  now what?  Well, getting the boards made is just the start.  Next they have to be programmed and tested.  Something like this will have multiple things that need programming, so that means you have to program each part that needs it, on each board.  This will require some kind of test fixture that the board plugs into.  These can be a clamshell like device with pins that you put the board in and close, and the pins make contact, headers, connectors, or other ways.  The long and short is you have to make these- you cannot buy it; it is custom to your product.  If you want to make 1000 boards a week let's say, you will need multiple test fixtures so multiple people can be working in parallel doing the programming and testing of your product.

 

These fixtures will also be used to make sure every part of every board is working- wifi, bluetooth, USB, SD card, power supplies, storage devices, RAM, EVERYTHING.  Then you have to train the workers to use these fixtures, and do a bunch of work to make it as easy as possible.  Ideally they just plug the board into the fixture and it programs stuff, tests stuff, and gives a pass/fail.  If it fails, I hope your thing tells you why so that other people can work on fixing the boards that failed the tests.  You're going to have plenty that do and they will need reworking.

 

So great, you got boards.  They are programmed, tested, and ready to go.  Now you need to get plastics and boards and boxes and everything together in 1 place so it can all be assembled.  This will require a lot of manpower and a literal assembly line, where there's a moving belt taking your product between different people doing an operation on the product.  Once that's done, you can palletize them and get them ready to ship.

 

Every single step of this operation is expensive, time consuming and exacting.  This is why you cannot make a few here and there for a so-called "soft launch".  Sure you can make prototype quantities but they will be easily 5x to 10x more expensive than the production ones because most of the work is done by hand, and the parts are bought in small quantities.  All INTV has shown have been prototypes like this.  They simply do not have the money or resources to produce anything at scale.

 

All of this stuff takes a very, very long time to do- 6-12 months is probably a reasonable time frame, and that's if you have the money.  I knew from early 2020 that Tommy had no clue at all what he was doing.  When I voiced my concerns in early 2020 that he was not going to have enough time to manufacture, he said I didn't know what I was talking about.  We see how that ended up, now don't we?

 

A little trip down memory lane... (Tommy replying to me back in the day)

 

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29 minutes ago, kevtris said:

When I voiced my concerns in early 2020 that he was not going to have enough time to manufacture, he said I didn't know what I was talking about.

I remember seeing that exchange back then and thinking "This is unbelievable" (also seem to recall that even more nasty stuff followed later). Telling me on one occasion that stuff I quoted directly from their videos is "misinformation" was quite insane, but then I'm a nobody, just another random hater, so no big harm done.

 

But pissing off people such as @kevtris, people who actually are in the business, released succesful products, know what they are talking about, and carry some weight, was on another level of WTFery. And TT did a lot of this kind of bridge burning, like threatening that Ars journo with legalese or insulting the entire Nintendo operation. This kind of stuff creates very bad impressions in the more serious circles, the ones he sought money from,  and might just be one of the reasons why Intellivision Amico are now a bunch of no-friends lame ducks, who're just sitting there and twiddle their thumbs nervously waiting for a miracle.

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8 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

So you think it is going to be cheaper to get parts at one place, ship them, assemble them in another place, then ship them, then ship them again? Cheaper than just doing it all in China?

No he said it would be considersbly more expensive but it's only a few thousand units, and overall would be negligible.  The benefit is to go through the pre-production process locally, so company engineers can work with the manufacturer more efficiently.  Once the process is finalised, it can be duplicated in China.  There are manufacturers that have facilities in both the US and China.

 

2 hours ago, kevtris said:

 

....

All of this stuff takes a very, very long time to do- 6-12 months is probably a reasonable time frame, and that's if you have the money.  I knew from early 2020 that Tommy had no clue at all what he was doing.  When I voiced my concerns in early 2020 that he was not going to have enough time to manufacture, he said I didn't know what I was talking about.  We see how that ended up, now don't we?

 

A little trip down memory lane... (Tommy replying to me back in the day)

What is it that you don't believe?  That they switched strategies or the two source strategy would work.  They haven't committed to manufacturing yet so maybe they can't make it work but that doesn't mean it's not what they are working on.

 

We know they weren't ready for 2020 that's why it was delayed.

 

Even if they do 10k in their first run it would be considered a soft launch, as their initial plan was to produce 10x that amount (as your exchange with the CEO indicated).  Their filing mentions initial production capacity of 2000 to 5000 units per months and expanding that later in the year, I'm thinking less than 5k for the initial run soft launch is what they had in mind.

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