Is the Amico dead?

[Rev]

11 minutes ago, atarifan88 said:

Thanks for your comments.  They are of much help to me.  I spoke to my son who is now married and moved away about buying a modern gaming system.  I think it shocked him since he owns the PS2 & 3 & the XBox.  We had good times playing together when he was growing up.  I introduced him to Doom then he returned the favor and introduced me to Star Wars Battle Front!  Looking at the Switch library it looks like the closest I'll get to that is Star Wars Republic Commando.  It looks like a fun shooter.  Anyways, just to have a family console with games on it that I don't have will be a plus and a reason to get a new system.  I'm done waiting for the Amico...

Check these out on ebay, priced very well. Physical copies. 

[Rev]

Talks about no refunds, gamestop debacle, looking like a scam and losing faith. 
 

Man, Retro Bro is saying stuff that Pat and Ian, Darius Truxton, Dayzed Gaming, TonyTDG, SmashJT and others have been saying. 

 

Will Retro Bro now be shunned and harassed and called a hater????

Edited April 8, 2022 by Rev

[MrBeefy]

1 hour ago, Rev said:

Check these out on ebay, priced very well. Physical copies. 

If you aren't against digital games you can often get some great deals that way.

DekuDeals can help with that. Republic Commando has been as low as $7.49 before. 

 

https://www.dekudeals.com/items/star-wars-republic-commando

 

I will frequently wishlist stuff and slowly pick up things one at a time. I did splurge and picked up the new Lego Star Wars. It has been fun so far.

[+Lathe26]

2 hours ago, Rev said:

...

 

Will Retro Bro now be shunned and harassed and called a hater????

 

 

[crade]

1 hour ago, Rev said:

Will Retro Bro now be shunned and harassed and called a hater????

It wouldn't surprise me because people are so "with us or against us" about everything these days, but that guy is either a really great actor or he is seriously broken up over admitting that he thinks it's over..

This video feels like he is finally admitting to himself that he needs to to sign his divorce papers..  It looks like he's fighting back tears the whole speech

[bigdirkmalone]

44 minutes ago, crade said:

It wouldn't surprise me because people are so "with us or against us" about everything these days, but that guy is either a really great actor or he is seriously broken up over admitting that he thinks it's over..

This video feels like he is finally admitting to himself that he needs to to sign his divorce papers..  It looks like he's fighting back tears the whole speech

Is there even anybody left on the "with us" side of Amico anymore?

[phoenixdownita]

Just because we're into cherry-picking (and yes I am being sarcastic, but not so much since you never replied to the "crowdfunding" rebuttal)

 

 

At any rate, somewhere you stated:

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

something something
 I don't see anything
something something

I can agree with you on that blue part, you really said it yourself in that sliver .... wonder if I can now find a quote of you saying "I don't think" and I am golden  

Yes I am being sarcastic, but it seems you are into winning small battles when the Amico war (the only one that matters) seems all but lost .... maybe this thing ships/sinks but if they are not making them and they kept saying "it was ready" when it was not I don't see any evidence of that trend changing, aka they are still not making them.

 

[Flojomojo]

This does not seem like the kind of move a healthy company would make. Remember how the shamwow guy used to come in here and (falsely) brag about how Amico was the only game console sold with 2 controllers?

 

[SegaSnatcher]

3 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

This does not seem like the kind of move a healthy company would make. Remember how the shamwow guy used to come in here and (falsely) brag about how Amico was the only game console sold with 2 controllers?

 

The optimization is they won't ever hit retail, and if they do then God help them at that price.   I hope they will be content with selling less than 20K units, if they even manufacture that many.   I don't even see how they break even at this point, so why bother?

[bojay1997]

8 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

This does not seem like the kind of move a healthy company would make. Remember how the shamwow guy used to come in here and (falsely) brag about how Amico was the only game console sold with 2 controllers?

 

There is no legitimate reason that they should still be taking pre-orders when they won't even honor the refund policy on the previously pre-ordered consoles.  They don't even know if they will survive for another month let alone be in a position to manufacture a run of consoles which could take months and months, best case.

[phoenixdownita]

50 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

This does not seem like the kind of move a healthy company would make. Remember how the shamwow guy used to come in here and (falsely) brag about how Amico was the only game console sold with 2 controllers?

 

I channel my inner "mr me" here, the first sentence says "keep pushing forward with our launch" which can obviously be soft interpreted as "keep pushing forward the date of our launch", they've done that aplenty .... all the kudos to them for keeping to their words. 

Promise, this is my last sarcastic remark on mr me approach to IntelliSplaining the current going..

[orange808]

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

My expertise has nothing to do with it.

You should reconsider that. 

[Leonard Smith]

My advice to everyone.
Save your money and put it towards a legit console like the Xbox or Nintendo Switch.

This Amigo thing really offers NOTHING NEW in the grand scheme of things.  Similar games are out there on competing platforms which exist and supported by legit game companies.  Not some sketchy Coleco Chameleon Jr / Ponzi scheme.

 

 

[kevtris]

9 hours ago, mr_me said:

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.

 

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.

The multiple source strategy will flat out not work.   I mean, if you have money you can do anything you want.  But your amico is going to cost $500-1000 if INTV did what tommy was saying.  The fewer units you make, the more expensive they will be.   Making 5K units is not very many, and they are going to be extremely expensive.  $500-1000 is probably a good ballpark for making small quantities of them in the US.  They might not even be able to buy that few of the SOCs and other parts; those could have a 10K or higher minimum piece order quantity.  And buying everything else in smaller quantities will make it far more expensive.  The cost difference between 1000 and 10K of something can be massive- 20-50% difference in price.  As quantities go up higher things get cheaper yet.

 

The bottom line is tommy literally had zero clue what he was doing or talking about.  Because he could make music for 1990's era Genesis games doesn't mean his "years of experience" translate into video game hardware design and production- it clearly doesn't.   He admitted that his initial $149-179 price range was just pulled out of his ass, and he didn't do even a very rough spreadsheet to see how much their bill of materials was going to cost before announcing it.  This is why the price kept creeping up and is STILL creeping up.  My speculation is his line of thinking was "well, since this isn't going to be latest gen tech, I should be able to make it cheaper than the competition's products!"   But clearly he didn't actually look at how much the parts were going to cost for this.  He didn't have to go down to the resistor and capacitor level, just the major things like plastics (you can get a ballpark from the size and number of pieces), pcb area,  which LCDs you wanted to use, the major chips and then put in a 20% safety margin.  It'd be accurate enough to give a final retail price within $10-20 or so (you want it to be on the low side, then you can be sure you will hit your target).

 

The other lol I had was when he said that the price would come down as they made more of them, but this is false also.  Microsoft/Sony make their consoles cheaper over time because they actually designed the ASICs in there.  The systems get cheaper because they are constantly increasing the integration-  the first gen might have 2-3 chips while the later generations only have 1.  Since their design is static, it gets cheaper to produce because it's basically all custom inside.  INTV does not have this luxury;  their product is based around 100% off the shelf parts, so their costs are not going to go down much with time, and they will have the other "fun" problem of parts going EOL (end of life) as time goes on.  Their SOC could go EOL and they will be scrambling to replace it and redo a bunch of code to make it work.  The only way they could get them cheaper is to make higher quantities, but they are kind of limited due to being 100% off the shelf parts as previously mentioned.

 

 

[kevtris]

7 hours ago, Rev said:

@kevtris based on your expert experience, how feasible is it that small batches of Amico can be ‘hand built’ in a smaller assembly area, not your typical manufacture like Ark or a Chinese factory?     
 

Can you expand more on this?

 

 

sure.  You can certainly build any quantity of amicos that you want, anywhere you want.  At my day job, we assemble products by hand (we farm out board stuffing, metalwork fabrication, etc) which is very similar to how you'd build an amico.  You'd get all the parts then put it together, one at a time at a work station.   At the day job, we contract with manufacturers to make all the parts, then we get them in house and build finished products in batches as customers order them.  We can do some basic customization (different options) so it makes sense to do it this way.

 

For an amico, you can certainly do this too.  But it's going to make it extremely expensive.  You'll only be able to make say, 40-50 a day or less by 1 person (they have to program the boards, test them, assemble it all, retest it).  This is definitely not suited to mass production.  The price for these style of amicos will be in the $500-1000 range depending on where stuff is made, and what kind of deals they made on parts, etc.

 

The manufacturing of the PCB alone is going to be the bulk of your cost and time.  The part shortage stuff is pretty bad right now, and for a PCB like the amico has, it could have 100 different BOM line items. Each of those things has to be acquired in enough quantity to build the PCB.  There could be 30 different resistors, 20 capacitors, 30 chips, transistors, diodes, etc.  Every single part on there has to be bought and shipped to the board factory where they assemble it.  You can't pull parts out of thin air, and right now getting parts is a huge pain.  At the day job, we ordered microcontrollers in december of 2021.  They are due to ship feb. 2023.  Since INTV didn't buy their parts, they are frankly screwed until 2023 at least most likely.  Sure you can buy some of that stuff from "parts scalpers" (think ticket scalpers, but electronic parts) but you're going to pay through the ass for them.  Probably 2-10x markup depending on what it is.  Those micros I talked about cost $7.50 each normally.  The part scalpers have them.  For the low-low price of $123 each!!  Needless to say, we're waiting until 2023.  It is possible they deliver early but fortunately we have enough stock to weather the storm until 2023 so we should be fine.

 

[SegaSnatcher]

4 minutes ago, kevtris said:

Because he could make music for 1990's era Genesis games doesn't mean his "years of experience" translate into video game hardware design and production- it clearly doesn't.  

I mentioned that exact same thing in the Q&A thread like 3 yrs back and he was super offended by that comment.  I never understood why as it's a totally reasonable point to bring up.   

There were a lot of people giving him the benefit of the doubt that he could get this console released just because he found success composing music for video games back in the 90s and I just never understood why.  Like what does composing music and releasing a console have anything to do with each other?  I would have more faith towards Julie Uhrman for getting a console out because she actually has a track record of releasing hardware.  Yeah, the Ouya is garbage but it did release. 

[kevtris]

9 hours ago, Morpheus said:

I am no one to judge anyone else, so I’m not judging TT with this post.
 

I remember, around one year ago, an answer extremely aggressive and unpolite by TT to someone that was just criticizing, in a very respectful, objective and polite way, some aspects of the Amico project.

 

I guess that at that time TT was already under big pressure, but I was truly suprised by such an answer, so aggressive that normally would have been banned by AA moderators, by a CEO of a B2C company…

 

Was it you that got that answer?

 

Not sure if it's the one you are thinking of, but this is how tommy replied to me.  He threatened to leave AA over my post.  It probably would've been better for all if he actually had followed through on that threat.  chortle.

 

 

Here's what I was talking about, from his own video:

 

 

[kevtris]

5 hours ago, SteveTheColecoDude said:

 

Yes that was Relic Gamer (who is a member here and posted lots in the original Amico threads). He claims to be a "friend" of Tommy. The day after that stream happened and he made that woman have a panic attack, he received a bit of backlash, but claimed he was "glad that it happened".

Ah yes, the same guy that tried to smear me by claiming I was stalking his wife.  He posted it in the original amico thread but it get deleted, but not before I got screen shots.  Tommy still thinks I was stalking his wife.  I hate to break it to both of them but umm, I have no interest in his wife and know absolutely nothing about her.  ?️‍?

[SegaSnatcher]

You know they purposely priced at $289.99 and $339.99 to be $10 cheaper than OG Switch at $299.99 and OLED Switch at $349.99.  You know the console that "isn't direct competition".   Funny

[crade]

9 minutes ago, SegaSnatcher said:

I mentioned that exact same thing in the Q&A thread like 3 yrs back and he was super offended by that comment.  I never understood why as it's a totally reasonable point to bring up.   

There were a lot of people giving him the benefit of the doubt that he could get this console released just because he found success composing music for video games back in the 90s and I just never understood why.  Like what does composing music and releasing a console have anything to do with each other?  I would have more faith towards Julie Uhrman for getting a console out because she actually has a track record of releasing hardware.  Yeah, the Ouya is garbage but it did release. 

Sure it doesn't mean he can run a company or do hardware design, but everything that comes out of his mouth screams snake oil infomercial salesman to me.. Spew out nonsense, don't back anything up, lash out and try to censor critics, it's a bit hard for me to picture him working tirelessly building video game soundtracks (or anything of substance)

[Agillig]

50 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

This does not seem like the kind of move a healthy company would make. Remember how the shamwow guy used to come in here and (falsely) brag about how Amico was the only game console sold with 2 controllers?

 

Wasn't the whole selling point of this thing that it was bringing back couch coop?  So you'd essentially need the 2 controller bundle to use the system as designed. Yeah...340 bucks is DOA territory for this. 

[phoenixdownita]

So the single ctrl pack is not that family oriented, unless you give little bobby table a smart-phone, which usually don't come with wrist straps and will be flung somewhere unfunny in no time during a heated match of cornhole .... 

[phoenixdownita]

16 minutes ago, kevtris said:

Ah yes, the same guy that tried to smear me by claiming I was stalking his wife.  He posted it in the original amico thread but it get deleted, but not before I got screen shots.  Tommy still thinks I was stalking his wife.  I hate to break it to both of them but umm, I have no interest in his wife and know absolutely nothing about her.  ?️‍?

Whose wife? Tommy's wife? Relic's wife? Someone else's wife? 

 

Now now, put a few unicorns before that rainbow and add some more rainbows ( ???  ?️‍??️‍??️‍? ) and you have described the whole Amico strategy ("it'll work, trust me, I know what I am doing, 600 xp years, 3B audience ... ").

 

[kevtris]

11 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

Whose wife? Tommy's wife? Relic's wife? Someone else's wife? 

 

Now now, put a few unicorns before that rainbow and add some more rainbows ( ???  ?️‍??️‍??️‍? ) and you have described the whole Amico strategy ("it'll work, trust me, I know what I am doing, 600 xp years, 3B audience ... ").

 

 

[youxia]

The combo of the new "strategy" and the old obnoxious screencaps on this page is just too surreal.

I need to process it in some simple visuals...