Is the Amico dead?

[Razzie.P]

29 minutes ago, wolfy62 said:

I'm just here for the lonely widow.....I hope you didn't show up as my competition! 

 

Awesome...  I'll probably steal that line a lot in the future.

[+Lathe26]

Here's a timely, related video.  Perhaps Tommy was right after all!

 

 

[Rev]

19 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

Here's a timely, related video.  Perhaps Tommy was right after all!

 

 

Dont forget the sequel! 
 

 

[Pink]

54 minutes ago, wolfy62 said:

I'm just here for the lonely widow.....I hope you didn't show up as my competition! 

On a positive note I just received my Gamestop preorder address verification notice.

The credit card I used I apparently no longer have.

Should I update my payment method so they are able to send me a refund if the system never comes out??

The release date is still listed as 3/31/2022 on GameStop's website. Those are automated emails that GameStop's website is designed to automatically send out when it's within like 10 or so days of the listed release date on their site.

[youxia]

@mr_meJust wanted to say that while I often disagree with your interpretation of various Amico-related information, I do appreciate that you have always been able to deliver it in a calm and dispassionate manner, even when the discussion is getting heated. They should have made you their spokesman, really, because TT's passion, undeniably beneficial in the early stages, later on seemed to turn somewhat toxic and perhaps to some degree also harmful to the project.

 

Nobody can, nor should, control the entirety of the conversation online in regard to their projects. This is simply impossible and also a recipe for disaster, because when you try to argue with every single naysayer you're bound to loose your cool sooner or later, and then those who are really trolling will pounce and not let go. I guess it could've affected even the more serious outlets such as Ars or Kotaku to some degree, though I personally did not approve at all of their personal digs at Tallarico (especially the Kotaku stuff).

 

Nevertheless, a lot of people read this stuff, and while I don't think it was a major factor in contributing to the current situation, it might have had some influence too.

[SegaSnatcher]

25 minutes ago, youxia said:

@mr_meJust wanted to say that while I often disagree with your interpretation of various Amico-related information, I do appreciate that you have always been able to deliver it in a calm and dispassionate manner, even when the discussion is getting heated. They should have made you their spokesman, really, because TT's passion, undeniably beneficial in the early stages, later on seemed to turn somewhat toxic and perhaps to some degree also harmful to the project.

 

Nobody can, nor should, control the entirety of the conversation online in regard to their projects. This is simply impossible and also a recipe for disaster, because when you try to argue with every single naysayer you're bound to loose your cool sooner or later, and then those who are really trolling will pounce and not let go. I guess it could've affected even the more serious outlets such as Ars or Kotaku to some degree, though I personally did not approve at all of their personal digs at Tallarico (especially the Kotaku stuff).

 

Nevertheless, a lot of people read this stuff, and while I don't think it was a major factor in contributing to the current situation, it might have had some influence too.

I actually agree with you on this.   He's done a better PR job than the actual company has.  Hiring dedicated PR could have gone a long way for them. 

[Hydro Thunder]

10 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

I think future startups can learn a lot from the Amico project and how it was handled, especially to prevent making similar mistakes. 

I want to agree with you...but I think the volume and variety of mistakes the Amico project made are all part of a first-year business class at a community college.  Everything from "don't open offices overseas for no reason" to "don't hire a corps of secretaries without any need" to "don't take on terrible loans with horrific terms from a shark".  In other words...not much to learn that isn't frankly simple common sense, or slightly above that level.  All passion, no actual work or learning.

[orange808]

At this point, I am willing to accept that Intellivision had resolved to make their machine and leave it at that. All the comments and jokes have been made. There's nothing new to say, is there? It's all been said and done.

 

They wanted to do it and that's the end of it, okay?

 

With that said, investments were probably very difficult to secure for Intellivision. I think the feature creep and branch offices were partially (or mostly) about satifying investors--and eventually get the machine to market.

 

Yes. It's dead easy to criticize. I get it.

 

That doesn't change the realities for Intellivision, does it? They were determined to make their machine. That came with some big challenges. They weren't doing this as a hobby thing. Real jobs pay living wages at market value, folks. Of course it's expensive.

 

Discussing the business plan from our perspective doesn't really help. They were determined. That's all there is to it. After we accept that, it's easier to understand why their finances are a little messy. Intellvision didn't have much leverage with investors.

 

If this is a calm postmortem discussion, we have to accept all the realities they faced along the way. There was no easy way to get leverage and find money.

 

Mattel's original development on the first machine has nothing to do with this. Intellivision is essentially an indie startup. Mattel had tons of money and slack to dev their machine. Stockholders weren't hovering over the execs about the Intellivision project; it had all the time and oxygen it needed. We also now know, Atari cut costs and stopped spamming the silicon houses, so Mattel was able to get their machine manufactured. Everything worked out and Mattel had lots of time/money to invest. Not so for this indie startup Intellvision.

 

Mistakes were made. I cant wait to read the book.

 

 

 

Edited March 20, 2022 by orange808

[+fdr4prez]

49 minutes ago, orange808 said:

I cant wait to read the book.

 

Once the movie option is sold for the book, who is going to play Tommy T? 

[IMBerzerk]

4 hours ago, Morpheus said:

There you are:

 

 

 

I added an Intellivision cartridge to give you an idea of the actual size…

 

If I understand well, probably, I won’t ever be able to play them…??

I have them as well, as a bunch of us do...and yeah, I feel the same.  On sale on eBay in about 10 years as "games for the console that could have been"... 

Edited March 20, 2022 by IMBerzerk

[Morpheus]

10 minutes ago, IMBerzerk said:

I have them as well, as a bunch of us do...and yeah, I feel the same.  On sale on eBay in about 10 years as "games for the console that could have been"... 

Well, there will be some working prototypes of the Amico consolle that will become even more expensive than the bluewhale or the Tutorvision one day!

I would love to grasp one right now actually, just no idea how!!!

Any hints??

Edited March 20, 2022 by Morpheus
Better spelling !

[roots.genoa]

17 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

 

Once the movie option is sold for the book, who is going to play Tommy T? 

Ralph Macchio. The cast is almost done. ?

[Keatah]

8 hours ago, youxia said:

If there's one thing I've learned from watching various Kickstarter and other similar crowdfunding failures for more than a decade now, is that nobody ever learns from them. The lure of easy money with not many (if any) consequences for failure is just too strong.

The only true "I can sleep at night" winners here are the Kickstarter website owners themselves. And perhaps the participants of a successful project, both project creators and backers alike.

[Wizewonathome]

Please people. DO NOT get suckered in with confirmations from Game Stop. You could be at the whim of a scammer

 

[Keatah]

Seems Amico and gang make the mistake of trying to build too much of an infrastructure too fast.

 

The systems of yore showed up on the shelf, and we bought them. Cartridges were a trickle at first. And we were totally happy with that. Totally happy not knowing what was coming next. We were oblivious to all the corporate politics and maneuverings. Though I suspect they were less complex and more meaningful back in those halcyon days.

 

But.. Consider even the mighty Apple II. It had but a handful of magnetic cassettes and type-ins at first. The stores and outlets and peripheral makers and publishers all came later. There were few, if any, big hits at first. No BBSes. Minimal user's groups at first. There were no Grade A titles in the beginning. No big press announcements for anything aside from a few lame TV ads from Apple itself. Never seen the likes of Gorgon or StarBlazer being shown outside of a magazine sidebar.

 

And, yet, somehow, the Apple II grew into a world-renowned platform. It remained a desirable & premium machine during its entire life. And Apple wasn't fretting how to do things. If they were, it remained behind closed doors. Not for the public to see. Not to tarnish a pristine image.

 

Apple II wasn't the only ecosphere like that. There were others. None of them tried to explode onto the scene already cooked and finished. Nope!

 

Not many, if any, folk that I know know of the atari vcs, let alone amico. But we're all somewhat familiar with PET, TRS-80, Apple, Atari, Commodore, Coleco, Intellivision, and coin-op arcades. Maybe not all those at once, but most.

 

Note they all started raw, and the public consumer mixed and matched and cooked the ingredients into a fine meal.But today's companies trying to do it all at once and instantly have failed - and will continue failing.

[King_Salamon]

I was always interested in playing the newer versions of Cloudy Mountain, Night Stalker and Moon Patrol (to name a few).  Unfortunately, this may not come to be on the Amico.  Perhaps the games will be ported to the other consoles (please not on phones!).

 

On the positive side, I'm excited that my Evercade has my classic Intellivision itch scratched with it's 2 collections!  All I wanted was a cart with Cloudy Mountain and that comes out in a couple of months!  My old school Intellivision game collection will be on the two collections!  Who knows, perhaps they will release Amico games on the Evercade!  Now.... Wouldn't that be something?

[IMBerzerk]

50 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Seems Amico and gang make the mistake of trying to build too much of an infrastructure too fast.

 

You're definitely on point there.   I was shocked watching some of the videos TT was posting and thinking... wow... that's a very big building, a lot of people working in it and a not a single sale to speak of to cover any of it.

 

Completely over-extended themselves with offices, high-profile staff and all sorts of expenses. 

Edited March 20, 2022 by IMBerzerk

[Matt_B]

I'd think that we're past the point where you could just put a console out there without a constant stream of games coming out for it. Even the major players of the industry can come unstuck when they fail to deliver on that, as evidenced by the Vita and the Wii U. When you bear in mind that even those commercial failures still amassed libraries in the high hundreds to low thousands of games and shifted around ten million units, it just shows what a mountain there is to climb for anyone attempting to break into the market.

 

That's not to say that there aren't niches where success is possible though, but they tend to involve piggybacking existing platforms - Windows, Linux, Android, emulation, etc. - in innovative ways so the supply of games is assured. I don't think that, for instance, the Evercade could work if every game for it had to be written from scratch.

[Rev]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

Seems Amico and gang make the mistake of trying to build too much of an infrastructure too fast.

 

The systems of yore showed up on the shelf, and we bought them. Cartridges were a trickle at first. And we were totally happy with that. Totally happy not knowing what was coming next. We were oblivious to all the corporate politics and maneuverings. Though I suspect they were less complex and more meaningful back in those halcyon days.

 

But.. Consider even the mighty Apple II. It had but a handful of magnetic cassettes and type-ins at first. The stores and outlets and peripheral makers and publishers all came later. There were few, if any, big hits at first. No BBSes. Minimal user's groups at first. There were no Grade A titles in the beginning. No big press announcements for anything aside from a few lame TV ads from Apple itself. Never seen the likes of Gorgon or StarBlazer being shown outside of a magazine sidebar.

 

And, yet, somehow, the Apple II grew into a world-renowned platform. It remained a desirable & premium machine during its entire life. And Apple wasn't fretting how to do things. If they were, it remained behind closed doors. Not for the public to see. Not to tarnish a pristine image.

 

Apple II wasn't the only ecosphere like that. There were others. None of them tried to explode onto the scene already cooked and finished. Nope!

 

Not many, if any, folk that I know know of the atari vcs, let alone amico. But we're all somewhat familiar with PET, TRS-80, Apple, Atari, Commodore, Coleco, Intellivision, and coin-op arcades. Maybe not all those at once, but most.

 

Note they all started raw, and the public consumer mixed and matched and cooked the ingredients into a fine meal.But today's companies trying to do it all at once and instantly have failed - and will continue failing.

Great post.  Some older systems were true grass roots or word of mouth. 

[MrBeefy]

10 hours ago, mr_me said:

1)One of the casualties of IE acquiring the Intellivision properties is that the Intellivision Flashback was discontinued.  There is still demand for that type of device.

 

2)Why do you say the Boxed games sales don't count for RepublicFig revenue sharing.  Do we know that's the case or is that speculation.  The amount right now is negligible anyway, and overall boxed sales would be expected to be small compared to digital store sales.

1)Intellivision Flashbacks were stopped long before IE. Last I remember I think Bill L said it and the Coleco ome didn't do well enough to warrant a second one. AtGames has even stopped making the Atari Flashbacks at this point and are focusing on arcade like experiences. I don't think there is much demand for such a device or it would have made it past a 2nd iteration. Wasn't there suppose to be an Arcade 1Up device that had a TV that functioned like a Flashback? I haven't seen or heard anything about those in a long time. Did they ever materialize.

 

2)I say that because no one has received any funds. Terms of purchase were also specific in you weren't purchasing a game. Right now the PP is 100% to digital sales of 0%.

2 hours ago, King_Salamon said:

I was always interested in playing the newer versions of Cloudy Mountain, Night Stalker and Moon Patrol (to name a few).  Unfortunately, this may not come to be on the Amico.  Perhaps the games will be ported to the other consoles (please not on phones!).

I think one of the hiccups from nostalgia is that many of these games do have updates and successors. They just don't carry the same names. Mana Spark is a game that kind of reminds me as a Cloudy Mountain type game. They are out there they just don't have the same name per se.

 

Nick Richards did hint at releasing them on mobile as a possibility. They really should have probably started out with software on other platforms before building hardware.

[MrBeefy]

4 hours ago, Matt_B said:

I'd think that we're past the point where you could just put a console out there without a constant stream of games coming out for it. Even the major players of the industry can come unstuck when they fail to deliver on that, as evidenced by the Vita and the Wii U. When you bear in mind that even those commercial failures still amassed libraries in the high hundreds to low thousands of games and shifted around ten million units, it just shows what a mountain there is to climb for anyone attempting to break into the market.

 

That's not to say that there aren't niches where success is possible though, but they tend to involve piggybacking existing platforms - Windows, Linux, Android, emulation, etc. - in innovative ways so the supply of games is assured. I don't think that, for instance, the Evercade could work if every game for it had to be written from scratch.

These are all great points. WiiU had great first party games but it sucked not having much beyond that. That's where the Switch works better on top of its gimmick.

 

I agree about evercade too. It works because its razor focused on what it wants to do. I personally would love to see it become the "homebrew" console. I know it has some already, but I look at the games I've bought from AA and think how cool it would be to see those thrown on an Evercade cart.

[+fdr4prez]

25 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

AtGames has even stopped making the Atari Flashbacks at this point and are focusing on arcade like experiences. I don't think there is much demand for such a device or it would have made it past a 2nd iteration.

 

There is this:

 

[phoenixdownita]

I think it's fair to say there are 3 clear phases before the current situation.

 

1) the inception and first year or so (all the way to COVID let's say): this is where the idea was key and the people involved really wanted to bring it to fruition thinking it was "da bomb". It doesn't matter if the concept was sound or not, they were dedicated, passionate, no-preorder and working on it.

 

2) the middle phase, when things started to go to the wayside, there were delays, broken promises, some feature creep. This phase was a little overshadowed but the then CEO being the mouthpiece and using his own personality to try and just silence all opposing voices. By this time (or in the middle of it) the console should have stood on its own merit, no need to defend anything, no need to belittle anyone. Yes, naysayer be naysayer, at the same time opinions are opinions and everyone has his/her own. It didn't go too well here, and something started to break, I don't know what but somewhere here it flipped from no-money-taken, to pre-orders, to crowd-funding. I still believe they were really trying to keep moving and get the idea to fruition although some feature crept in that should really not have (but that's my opinion and as I said everyone has at least one anyway)

 

3) the "oh-shit" phase ... let's say the last 6 to 9 months or so. The company was running out of money, it's not clear really what technical difficulties kept on pushing the date out, the HW maybe was not ready, not sure, hopefully we will know. During this phase though there was some desperate moves that are not clear to me if they were directed at "making it to the finish line" or more like to "let's recoup some money".

 

 

Outside phase 3 that has a desperation feel (can't necessarily blame them but at times declaring failure may be a better strategy, note that I am not sure in that case where the liability would rest wrt investors, customers who pre-ordered etc... so maybe there really was no choice), the first 2 phases seem both directed at pushing the idea through and trying to ship something ... still unclear what really delayed the process (there may have been multiple reasons). Only thing that really stood out is the poor PR handling by the then CEO and likely because he was so personally vested he just couldn't help it. This doesn't make it right or excuse it, just that I don't think it was "planned" and "deliberate" but more of an emotional rollercoaster that didn't quite help.

 

Phase 3 though needs some explanation, I have no idea why the extra round of crowd-funding and what was intended to achieve.

Granted there were lot of mistakes along the way and somewhat weird deals even before (getting money from the German taxpayers seems far fetched but maybe there was a potential return for said taxpayers ... who knows) ... maybe once the dust settles some of it will come to light to at least to put things in some "sane" perspective. For sure it seems there was actual HW (not sure how much final) in both console and controllers, so they reached that far.

 

 

[SegaSnatcher]

2 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

I think it's fair to say there are 3 clear phases before the current situation.

They should have started off with a much smaller project to bring in some much needed revenue.   Something like an HD Intellivision plug n play for like $60.  They could have easily sold enough of those to make a nice profit and then once they built up their brand they could have set their sights higher. Though, I still think the best option would have been to just be a software company.  The Amico was always going to struggle on the market, especially at a $249.99 price point.  The games currently developed for it really don't justify the need for a brand new console.  Just release them on hardware most people already own: Mobile, PC and the big three consoles. 

[mr_me]

4 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

1)Intellivision Flashbacks were stopped long before IE. Last I remember I think Bill L said it and the Coleco ome didn't do well enough to warrant a second one. AtGames has even stopped making the Atari Flashbacks at this point and are focusing on arcade like experiences. I don't think there is much demand for such a device or it would have made it past a 2nd iteration. Wasn't there suppose to be an Arcade 1Up device that had a TV that functioned like a Flashback? I haven't seen or heard anything about those in a long time. Did they ever materialize.

 

2)I say that because no one has received any funds. Terms of purchase were also specific in you weren't purchasing a game. Right now the PP is 100% to digital sales of 0%.

I think one of the hiccups from nostalgia is that many of these games do have updates and successors. They just don't carry the same names. Mana Spark is a game that kind of reminds me as a Cloudy Mountain type game. They are out there they just don't have the same name per se.

 

Nick Richards did hint at releasing them on mobile as a possibility. They really should have probably started out with software on other platforms before building hardware.

Intellivision Flashbacks were overproduced in 2014, so it took a couple of years to go through inventory.  In 2017, Bill advised to expect something Intellivision related from ATGames, then Keith passed and then IE took over.  Arcade1up showed some microconsole  mockups, They would have been just a novelty, too small to be playable and never announced as a product.

 

Lots of reasons could delay RepublicFig dividend payments.  RepublicFig revenue shares from 2021 could get paid in 2022.  The 2021 sales might also be deemed to be too small and held for future dividend payments.  The whole thing might not start until the console is released.  The terms of purchase on boxed games aren't up anymore but from memory I don't think that's all of what it said or is it relevant to RepublicFig revenue.  Regardless, I don't see anyway they get around paying dividends on boxed game sales, assuming things move forward.

 

The CFO said they would offer specific versions of certain games on mobile.  It's no different than what other publishers do with some of their most popular games.  However, other publishers games typically have name recognition to get noticed.  It's hard to get noticed on mobile, promoting the Amico platform might give the ganes a better chance.

 

9 hours ago, Matt_B said:

I'd think that we're past the point where you could just put a console out there without a constant stream of games coming out for it. Even the major players of the industry can come unstuck when they fail to deliver on that, as evidenced by the Vita and the Wii U. When you bear in mind that even those commercial failures still amassed libraries in the high hundreds to low thousands of games and shifted around ten million units, it just shows what a mountain there is to climb for anyone attempting to break into the market.

 

That's not to say that there aren't niches where success is possible though, but they tend to involve piggybacking existing platforms - Windows, Linux, Android, emulation, etc. - in innovative ways so the supply of games is assured. I don't think that, for instance, the Evercade could work if every game for it had to be written from scratch.

One of the points of Amico was to offer a curated game library in contrast to other platforms.  They currently have about forty games in development and if things went as planned they would have started on the next wave of fifty games.  The system is android based so it would be easy to port select games from Android e.g. Evel Knievel.  And they've also ported games from other systems e.g. Rigid Force Redux Enhanced.

 

2 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

...

3) the "oh-shit" phase ... let's say the last 6 to 9 months or so. The company was running out of money, it's not clear really what technical difficulties kept on pushing the date out, the HW maybe was not ready, not sure, hopefully we will know. During this phase though there was some desperate moves that are not clear to me if they were directed at "making it to the finish line" or more like to "let's recoup some money". ...

 

Phase 3 though needs some explanation, I have no idea why the extra round of crowd-funding and what was intended to achieve.

Granted there were lot of mistakes along the way and somewhat weird deals even before (getting money from the German taxpayers seems far fetched but maybe there was a potential return for said taxpayers ... who knows) ... maybe once the dust settles some of it will come to light to at least to put things in some "sane" perspective. For sure it seems there was actual HW (not sure how much final) in both console and controllers, so they reached that far.

They probably started running out of money at the end of 2019, when board members started lending the company money.   The fact is, any company that is still developing its product will run out of money unless it gets funding.

 

They claimed that the hardware is ready.  Firmware and OS is undergoing final testing and optimisation, which likely continues after release. They say back-end systems still need some final development work, and more work after launch as they add more features. Manufacturing wise, they might be waiting on some component prices to improve, negotiating better terms.  There's been some talk about pre-production but it's not clear exactly what's going on.

 

Governments subsidize industry all the time for various reasons. The Germans obviously want to develop business in the massive video game industry.  If new businesses and jobs get created than the investment pays returns for many years.