Intellivision Amico’s trademark changed to ‘abandoned’

[Cebus Capucinis]

23 hours ago, Tommy2D said:

Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I wouldn't call a hardware design finalized until AFTER it passes all necessary testing. 

For the first time in a decade, I finally got something hilarious enough to change my custom status.

 

It already passed the testing. They just haven't done the FORMALITIES of actually finalizing the testing and getting the certification. This Has Already Been Discussed ™️

[+x=usr(1536)]

On 11/12/2022 at 4:43 PM, mr_me said:

I'm not here to contradict or convince the people posting here of anything.

Are you here to torture-test your keyboard?  Because if so, you're doing a damn fine job of it, sir.

[Tommy2D]

1 hour ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

For the first time in a decade, I finally got something hilarious enough to change my custom status.

 

It already passed the testing. They just haven't done the FORMALITIES of actually finalizing the testing and getting the certification. This Has Already Been Discussed ™️

I was a little confused, since hardware finalization isn't always a rich vein of comedic gold. 

 

After checking your status, I'm glad to see that you are proudly exhibiting your electronic cornhole...(enthusiasm). 

 

I usually steer clear of cheap innuendo-based humor but we might as well toss a few hot-oily balls...(of corn), into the thread. 

 

 

[MrBeefy]

2 hours ago, Wayler said:

Very hard to get a grasp on this but I think an answer of some sorts is revealed in this response from way back. 

I think there's your horse. As to why would someone associate a video game company to a bullied kid is another thing entirely. But there's a certain skewed logic behind that reasoning. 

 

If that is the idea it's a lie as he never defended anyone that was attacked by other fans or the company themselves. The company gathered information on people in hopes of suing them, trying to find a way to shut them up, or whatever.

 

They aren't a victim of anything but their own stupidity. They are in this spot because they are innept. If they had worried less about astroturfing here at AA, Reddit, and YT, they might have a console out. Instead they focused on just grabbing money and finding ways to burn it while blowing smoke up people's butts.

 

The funny thing is he's actually sticking up for the bully.

 

*Edit* I think you are onto something. 

 

Someone took the console name a little to literal and obviously doesn't care about taking people's money, lying to them, refusing to give people their money back, lying to them, attacking people, lying to them, encouraging doxing, lying to them, encouraging them to attack people's jobs, lying to them, encouraging showing kids pictures online, and finally lying to them.

 

Their barometer for success is now using a screwdriver to put together a unit that should have been made at the end of 2019/early 2020.

 

Edited November 14, 2022 by MrBeefy

[Razzie.P]

4 hours ago, MarioMan88 said:

What I do question is why Mr Me is the lone man standing so to say? Why? I don’t truly get why he still has a horse in the race. 

My apologies if I'm remembering incorrectly, but didn't you say/admit that you did some trolling on here, too?  If so, you should at least understand the "why."    

[Cebus Capucinis]

In his defense, if he is trolling, it's pretty easy to do for some people around here, though it seems most  have gotten wise to it.

[MarioMan88]

27 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

My apologies if I'm remembering incorrectly, but didn't you say/admit that you did some trolling on here, too?  If so, you should at least understand the "why."    

I indeed admitted to my trolling or Tom. While mr me is not a troll I do still wonder why he posts to defend INTV in such an adamant fashion. Maybe he’s just a contrarian? 

Edited November 14, 2022 by MarioMan88

[rayik]

27 minutes ago, MarioMan88 said:

I indeed admitted to my trolling or Tom. While mr me is not a troll I do still wonder why he posts to defend INTV in such an adamant fashion. Maybe he’s just a contrarian? 

 

Exactly. That's why I've stopped responding to whatever they post.  It's just taking an opposing view and trying to trigger a response.

[Tavi]

It could very well be that many of us are just waiting to see what happens.

I still have my FE reserved, and am hopeful the Amico will eventually come out. I do have to roll my eyes at some of the posts here though. So many variations of 'It was a scam since day one! They took the money and ran!', but if it was never anything more a scam would they have designed and then built a functional console? And hired designers to produce games and software for the console? Set up public events to show off the console and let people try it out? All this costs money, and it is a poor scam indeed if you are spending more then you are making.

Honestly, I find it a lot more believable that they were a small startup and counting on pre-orders and initial console and game sales to bankroll the consoles continued development. Then Covid hit, the world shut down for two years and electronics became rarer to find then an honest politician; and about as expensive to buy. I imagine Intellivision simply ran out of money over those two years, and before they could start production to recoup costs and start earning some revenue. That is not a scam, or malicious intent. They just got screwed like the majority of the rest of us by all the global Covid hysteria.

 

I also don't doubt they hoped to get noticed and bought out for an obscene amount of money by one of the industry big players. But then honestly tell me this isn't most new start-ups dream exit ever since the team behind the Oculus Rift kickstarter walked away from their project as new billionaires.

There is very little coming as official news, but they also have not officially announced the Amico as dead either. So I have to wait and see what happens with it.

[MarioMan88]

INTV as a company has run its course…nothing left but the “closing up shop, fought the good fight e-mail”

 

Maybe we will get a sneak peak here as an AtariAge exclusive 😉

[Razzie.P]

1 hour ago, MarioMan88 said:

While mr me is not a troll I do still wonder why he posts to defend INTV in such an adamant fashion. Maybe he’s just a contrarian? 

I dunno... seems too intelligent to honestly believe some of the crap they're on about, so I've always had the impression some of those "contrarian" posts were just an internet user getting their kicks trolling away.  And it always worked, I don't think there's been many (if any) posts that hasn't gotten some bites.

 

1 hour ago, rayik said:

It's just taking an opposing view and trying to trigger a response.

Maybe I just don't know what "trolling" is, then, but isn't that trolling?

 

[rayik]

9 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

I dunno... seems too intelligent to honestly believe some of the crap they're on about, so I've always had the impression some of those "contrarian" posts were just an internet user getting their kicks trolling away.  And it always worked, I don't think there's been many (if any) posts that hasn't gotten some bites.

 

Maybe I just don't know what "trolling" is, then, but isn't that trolling?

 

It is

[Matt_B]

38 minutes ago, Tavi said:

So many variations of 'It was a scam since day one! They took the money and ran!', but if it was never anything more a scam would they have designed and then built a functional console? And hired designers to produce games and software for the console? Set up public events to show off the console and let people try it out? All this costs money, and it is a poor scam indeed if you are spending more then you are making.

Literally nobody is saying that. It is beyond dispute that they designed a console and many people were able to play on it at live events.

Where things get scammy is in how they misled their investors and customers.

Still, don't take my word for it. Here's what a lawyer has to say:

 

 

[MrBeefy]

11 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

Literally nobody is saying that. It is beyond dispute that they designed a console and many people were able to play on it at live events.

Where things get scammy is in how they misled their investors and customers.

Still, don't take my word for it. Here's what a lawyer has to say:

 

 

I don't really know anyone who thinks they didn't have something. I do think that what was shown to MJR and crew was more proof of concept than the actual hardware. It has been confirmed by the company itself that the units DJC and Mullis have are the first production ready units.

 

All the consoles they have shown off were not finalized hardware and were optimized for certain games. Meaning one might run Moon Patrol fine while another wouldn't.

 

The events were done as a mean to try and get more money. As far as consumer showing they sucked and were horribly advertised to try and limit the amount they couldn't control. One of those events is how we found they were using Star Fox text in their game.

 

They paid devs enough to get a handful of things to show off. I had heard in early 2020 they had actually stopped paying a bunch of devs. If you watch much of the footage you see little to no progress on games for a year. Many of the games to never be seen again. And then you have the stolen assets in Tanks, and them fixing Cornhole instead of the devs. This really makes a case for them trying to cut corners to save money.

 

People think that for something to be a scam it means people need to make out like bandits. It is quite possible they were too stupid to do an effective scam. There is no path for success. It got sub 10,000 people interested in buying. They can't get a factory to assemble 25 of the first production ready units (which are at least two years behind schedule).

 

Covid helped them with an excuse. It was never going to hit shelves in 2020 if covid never happened. They had a chance to have console parts sourced for them, and had a chance to make a contract for each console to cost them roughly $150 to make netting them around $100 per console. They passed up on it. This could be because they were lying about their progress, they wanted someone to buy them out before they had to sink in money to make them, or a mixture of both.

 

It is pretty obvious they had no real plans nor took the time to do what other companies did which was adjust and make their product. This product was basically dead in the water as soon as their investor pulled out and they started asking for $100 from people.

 

I doubt it gets released at this point but I would like to see it get released. They aren't giving people their money back so they should at least get something even if it's just a $300 plug and play.

[SteveTheColecoDude]

They lied to get money from investors, and they lied to get money from customers, and it also looks like they lied to get money from the Bavarian grant program. Using lies in order to get money is the literal definition of a scam. Whether they produced anything (or wanted to) or not makes no difference to the fact that they purposely misled people to get money from them.

 

The lies are not in doubt. It's not an opinion that they lied. It's a fact. We have proof of the lies. They wanted to get peoples' money so they lied in order to make giving them money seem like a good idea. It's a scam. End of.

[MattPilz]

On 11/12/2022 at 7:28 AM, MrBeefy said:

They could at least send you those Founders patches they had made that said 2021 on them.

Hey That reminds me how I have 8 lenticular cards from 8 still-not-released Amico titles that all say "Release Date: 2021." The rare physical form of digital vaporware. 😛 

[MrBeefy]

6 hours ago, MattPilz said:

Hey That reminds me how I have 8 lenticular cards from 8 still-not-released Amico titles that all say "Release Date: 2021." The rare physical form of digital vaporware. 😛 

Yet another lie. I would bet that no dev or any Republic investor got any part of those moneies.

[Rev]

10 hours ago, Tavi said:

It could very well be that many of us are just waiting to see what happens.

I still have my FE reserved, and am hopeful the Amico will eventually come out. I do have to roll my eyes at some of the posts here though. So many variations of 'It was a scam since day one! They took the money and ran!', but if it was never anything more a scam would they have designed and then built a functional console? And hired designers to produce games and software for the console? Set up public events to show off the console and let people try it out? All this costs money, and it is a poor scam indeed if you are spending more then you are making.

Honestly, I find it a lot more believable that they were a small startup and counting on pre-orders and initial console and game sales to bankroll the consoles continued development. Then Covid hit, the world shut down for two years and electronics became rarer to find then an honest politician; and about as expensive to buy. I imagine Intellivision simply ran out of money over those two years, and before they could start production to recoup costs and start earning some revenue. That is not a scam, or malicious intent. They just got screwed like the majority of the rest of us by all the global Covid hysteria.

 

I also don't doubt they hoped to get noticed and bought out for an obscene amount of money by one of the industry big players. But then honestly tell me this isn't most new start-ups dream exit ever since the team behind the Oculus Rift kickstarter walked away from their project as new billionaires.

There is very little coming as official news, but they also have not officially announced the Amico as dead either. So I have to wait and see what happens with it.

Exhibit A:

 

 

 

[Flojomojo]

12 hours ago, Tavi said:

There is very little coming as official news, but they also have not officially announced the Amico as dead either. So I have to wait and see what happens with it.

Here’s a hot take: now that they’ve spent all the money, fired all the staff, the face man is an internet laughingstock, and they’ve abandoned all pretense at marketing, promotion, and fundraising, it’s not going to get better. Unless someone can show evidence to the contrary, it seems safe to assume Intellivision brass are just running out the statute of limitations so they don’t get into legal trouble. 

 

Or you can keep your preorder and hope that the sun’ll come out tomorrow. It’s not like they’re going to honor and process a refund request anyway. 

[Bill Loguidice]

8 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

Or you can keep your preorder and hope that the sun’ll come out tomorrow. It’s not like they’re going to honor and process a refund request anyway. 

That's where I'm at at this point. I hate hate hate hate losing money on pre-orders (probably three losers counting this) and crowdfunding (at least four losers over all these years) and what-not, but I think my window to get a refund on the Founder's system has passed me by. I think my biggest regret is getting those empty boxed games, but I think at the time I assumed the system was still more or less coming. Since I have those empty boxes, I feel like I should still hold onto the Founder system pre-order on the 1% (probably being generous) chance the system comes out. Maybe at some point in the far future I'll be able to sell  those boxes off to some collector to get around what I paid for them, but I feel like that's extremely unlikely, hence why I'm not even going to make the effort to try and get the money back on the system. 

 

What's funny is if in the highly unlikely event that the system does release in some capacity and I do get a unit, I wonder how well it will function, whether it will last more than a short time, and if most of the empty boxes will have associated games actually released to play on it. It's comical, really. There's NO positive outcome here at this point, regardless of what happens when the company is actually officially (legally) kaput.

[digdugnate]

13 hours ago, Tavi said:

It could very well be that many of us are just waiting to see what happens.

I still have my FE reserved, and am hopeful the Amico will eventually come out. I do have to roll my eyes at some of the posts here though. So many variations of 'It was a scam since day one! They took the money and ran!', but if it was never anything more a scam would they have designed and then built a functional console? And hired designers to produce games and software for the console? Set up public events to show off the console and let people try it out? All this costs money, and it is a poor scam indeed if you are spending more then you are making.

Honestly, I find it a lot more believable that they were a small startup and counting on pre-orders and initial console and game sales to bankroll the consoles continued development. Then Covid hit, the world shut down for two years and electronics became rarer to find then an honest politician; and about as expensive to buy. I imagine Intellivision simply ran out of money over those two years, and before they could start production to recoup costs and start earning some revenue. That is not a scam, or malicious intent. They just got screwed like the majority of the rest of us by all the global Covid hysteria.

 

I also don't doubt they hoped to get noticed and bought out for an obscene amount of money by one of the industry big players. But then honestly tell me this isn't most new start-ups dream exit ever since the team behind the Oculus Rift kickstarter walked away from their project as new billionaires.

There is very little coming as official news, but they also have not officially announced the Amico as dead either. So I have to wait and see what happens with it.

this from the same person who swore up and down that VCS wasn't coming out.  not a great track record, chief.

[Tommy2D]

2 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

Here’s a hot take: now that they’ve spent all the money, fired all the staff, the face man is an internet laughingstock, and they’ve abandoned all pretense at marketing, promotion, and fundraising, it’s not going to get better. Unless someone can show evidence to the contrary, it seems safe to assume Intellivision brass are just running out the statute of limitations so they don’t get into legal trouble. 

 

 

I've heard this "running out the clock" theory, a few times. Is the idea here that IE would continue the pretense of operating, so that injured parties would hold out hope, instead of filing lawsuits? 

 

It looks like the statute of limitations for civil fraud, in California, is 3 years. The federal criminal fraud statutes appear to be in the 5-10 year range. 

 

Considering that IE had the foresight to put that disclaimer on the boxed games, I doubt that there will be any lawsuits.  The republic investors are another story. You would think that a jury might be sympathetic to investors who relied on statements like "The hardware is done" and "We have J. Allard, the Xbox guy!". 

 

Of course, IE would probably just say that the hardware was "functionally" complete and that they did still communicate with J. Allard, etc. Seems like it would be a classic puffery vs. fraud scenario.  I don't wish litigation on anyone but it would be an interesting case. 

[jerseystyle]

2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

That's where I'm at at this point. I hate hate hate hate losing money on pre-orders (probably three losers counting this) and crowdfunding (at least four losers over all these years) and what-not, but I think my window to get a refund on the Founder's system has passed me by. I think my biggest regret is getting those empty boxed games, but I think at the time I assumed the system was still more or less coming. Since I have those empty boxes, I feel like I should still hold onto the Founder system pre-order on the 1% (probably being generous) chance the system comes out. Maybe at some point in the far future I'll be able to sell  those boxes off to some collector to get around what I paid for them, but I feel like that's extremely unlikely, hence why I'm not even going to make the effort to try and get the money back on the system. 

 

What's funny is if in the highly unlikely event that the system does release in some capacity and I do get a unit, I wonder how well it will function, whether it will last more than a short time, and if most of the empty boxes will have associated games actually released to play on it. It's comical, really. There's NO positive outcome here at this point, regardless of what happens when the company is actually officially (legally) kaput.

I vaguely remember a year or two ago where were talking about wether Amico would be a success compared to VCS and Playdate. At the time you had doubts about Playdate’s outcome. Has that changed now that it’s out? I just got mine and enjoy it, but haven’t been following total numbers or any of that. It’s funny to me though that out of the other systems TT was downplaying they’ve all gone out, unlike his console.

[MattPilz]

5 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

I would bet that no dev or any Republic investor got any part of those moneies.

Nope. because the sales were specifically just for these "physical collector items" and not the license to the games themselves, which may or may not ever release. I saw some question on Republic asking if they'll get any part of the licensing deals Intellivision has now announced but there was never a response (the answer would realistically be "no" because it's outside the scope of the Amico campaign).

 

I wonder how far in advance the lenticular cards were made. What is known is that the boxes were put together on the assembly line in late-July 2021, and apparently even then nobody thought to evaluate the feasibility of whether any of those games or the system itself would truly launch that year as advertised on the cards.

 

We are 13 months in since Tommy and Intellivision said these physical boxes were going fast and nearly sold out. But it turns out they are still for sale.

[Tommy2D]

28 minutes ago, MattPilz said:

We are 13 months in since Tommy and Intellivision said these physical boxes were going fast and nearly sold out. But it turns out they are still for sale.

Someone should really turn those boxed games into one of those 80/90s "As Seen on TV" product commercials. 

 

ACT NOW! SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED!