New website request

[ShleeDragon]

Well, 90% of the reactions on the GamesCom were:


'Oh, that's nice. But the price is way too high. My cheaper smartphone can do the same', and once we showed them the full desktop and running Linux and behaving like a MiniPC, most of them said 'Oh, it's not just for playing games, it's a complete PC... that's neat.'... and after showing them that AbiWord, FireFox, etc., most of them found that the price is fine.

That's the bottom line.. you can hook them with the emulation.. but the fact it's a full PC that looks like a nintendo DS is the nail in the sales coffin.


Don't hide that fact for the love of dog

 

[_wb_]

But we'll see. We'll see if Craig can increase the sales, I'll keep working promoting the Linux side of it and will also be at the FOSDEM again

If you need a place to sleep in Brussels, send me a pm, I might be able to convince my wife to let you use our guest room for a few nights. I live close to the "Brussels Midi" railway station.

 

[fusion_power]

Nice Video but at the end, there are a little to much games shown in short time and especialy totall messed up in order of systems, emulation, etc...


Some more clear onscreen infos of each game (I don't know everyone) would be great like system emulated and name of the game. A more clear showing of original ports and emulation, Stuff like Wesnoth or VVVVVV, Quake, Doom, native games and so on.


No need to waste much time on the desktop, a short intro where the system boots up, shows the Desktop and starting a game/emulator should do the job pretty well. So people see how the system is based on and that there is more underneeth the games than on an average gaming Handheld. ^^

 

[rohezal]

Lots of people buy for emulators. But if you can have emulators AND a real keyboard for surf in facebook / msn / writing emails this rocks. If you can surf with a real keyboard and write notes / shorts texts it rocks more.


The emulators are the core, but they keyboard makes it special and better than any other device. See it as a bonus point for selling. Mention it sometimes in the video (maybe in mid for 20-30 seconds) or make a second page. Like this one but with the apps like firefox they can use. And name big names like firefox, spotify (the free version without paying, which doesnt work on android / ios), thunderbird and facebook. A lot more people will buy it. An other big point is the price. 499€ would ge you a lot of new customers.

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm pretty sure there are as many gamers who would buy it for emulators as there are Linux fans who love to have a Mini Linux PC in their pocket.


Craig currently only focusses on the half of the potential customers, in my opinion.


The problem is: There ARE alternatives out there if you're mostly interested in Emulation, and they are cheaper as well.


But there's no Mini Linux PC out there, and there's certainly no combination of both out there.


That's why I planned to do a website where the customers can choose whether they are interested in gaming or the Mini-PC aspect.


While the new website looks awesome, it's focus is gaming, which is only half the usage case.


I still hope to find time to do the other part of the website - a Mini Linux PC.


It's the combination of both that makes the Pandora awesome.

 

[Grench]

For me anyway - and maybe I am part of that vocal minority user slice...


The games are interesting, fun and a guilty pleasure of owning a Pandora.


The fact that I can use it as a remote administration terminal, email, full desktop environment, file manipulation - those are how I personally justified the expense of purchasing one - let alone two (I own an original CC and a 1Ghz version).


My use of the Pandora:


1. Linux desktop environment.


2. Audio player.


3. Games - native and DosBox


Frankly, I wouldn't have ever bought one if it were, 'just a game emulator'. In fact, I don't even use any emulation features beyond DosBox. I'm sure they're neat and all - but that isn't my thing.

 

[ShleeDragon]

Nods. I've ssh'ed into one of my work servers and fixed an incident on my Pandora.. as a sysmin.. it's quiet good


I'm connected to irc over my shell too.... there are thousands of use cases for the Pandora


but I know I'm likely the 1% who would ever do such a thing... but I did alt-tab out of a game of pokeymon to fix that problem.. so maybe I'm both

 

[WizardStan]

I think for Craig's purposes he's absolutely right. The video is supposed to be a "whiz bang look at me!" to get your attention, and it absolutely does that. Like he says, all the rest of the information is easily accessible on the website, including other videos; this is to simply raise awareness of the Pandora in a group that has no clue. Once they are interested they'll look a bit at the website and see what it can do and figure out if it is worth the cost for themselves.


Can anyone here honestly tell me that if they saw that video they would NOT investigate simply because it doesn't show some more mundane tasks? I certainly would not have not.


So while I don't see how it would hurt to include a bit of the desktop tasks, I don't immediately agree with anyone saying that it is necessarily hurting because it doesn't.

 

[HolySmoke]

Please keep in mind, that this is a commercial, not an informational video.


While desktop applications should appear, the simply could not be shown too much, as that would destroy the fast pace of the video that is supposed to kepp emotions up (as emotions are typically responsible for the buying decision of a potential customer).


Desktop software usually doesn't move that much (so as not so distract) and thus can have .5 to 1 seconds screentime max.


There are tricks how to increase that time (usually be showing a scrolling browser or a fast loading bar) but these must not be overused as the viewer quickly recognizes a scheme, which is a bad.


So for promoting the desktop functionality, other videos should be (and have been) created.


Note that this only applies to static stuff. As a rule of thumb, anything that changes half the screen in half a second can go on for seconds, if not minutes.


If you really want to give those adequate time in the video, you could exaggerate the perceived slowdown by drastically lowering and slowing down the music and then fade to some simple tune while showing the static/slow paced screens and slowly build up to full speed (audio and visuals), maybe even drop in the typical from-zero-to-45 sound.


Anyway, nice video, fits its intention and I just read above that WizardStan basically already said all this.


Maybe next time I read to the end before I try to write :/ .

 

[relliker]

I'd edit out the word "bullshit" though. Isn't something like "No jailbreak required" enough? The intended audience might not all be old geezers who don't mind the odd BS insertion.

 

[Yoyobuae]

How about showing a short-ish intro video and then a menu with links like for example:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5AF0pxoR-pg?feature=oembed

The links would lead to more in depth videos (which are also shown using the "in Pandora's screen" trick) about different aspects of the Pandora.


This would allow the viewer to directly choose what he wants to see, instead of having to sit there for the whole 10 minutes of video.

 

[EvilDragon]

True about the video, no price is given there, so people will be interested.


But does the current website also give enough information about the usage as Linux PC?

 

[LineOf7s]

4:00 "Once you buy the Pandora and there isn't another penny to pay"


Remove the "and".


And no, you don't need the gratuitous use of the word "bullshit".


Apart from that, very nice. I agree though that a bit of "oh and it can do all this mini PC stuff as well" at the end would be very beneficial, as spending $800+ "just to play games" is a bit excessive, but being able to do real work on the machine AS WELL turns it into "ZOMG MUST FIND A WAY".


[edit] F%$%ing Tapatalk.

 

[darkborn]

<snip>


Car analogy: you're selling a station wagon by making it look like a flashy sports car. Sure, you may get more sales that way, but you'll get customers who don't need a large trunk and a large back seat to fit many passengers, and they will complain when driving the car turns out not to be as fun as it seemed and the top speed is a bit disappointing.

Excellent analogy! Pandora is too much "bulky" for "modern gamers": e.g. just look at design evolution of Nintendo DS


Who will buy it - people wanting retro emulators, or people wanting portable PC?


Is it Mini Linux PC or retro game emulator console?


I think this dillema is wrong.


Pandora is BOTH, and this is what makes it perfect.


Moreover, it could be just mini PC - when you need it, and bulky handheld - when you need it.


However, I give advantage to "Mini Linux PC" description, because - it is.


All gaming consoles/handhelds are just crippled PCs, same as most of smartphones.


Pandora is PC upgraded with excellent gaming controles, but could be "just a game handheld".


But most game consoles/handhelds could not be full PCs, and this is where Pandora differs.


So, my desctription of Pandora will be something like


"Mini Linux PC with Excellent Gaming Controls".


Open, flexible, adaptable to your needs, whatever and whenever they are.


Just look at comments at youtube, all is well said.


Price is too high for "retro emulator", and beside that


- you have smartphone with iCP, just for that purpose (gaming).


Anyway, what we are missing here, which should be shown in front are NATIVE games and apps.


Just look at those comments (from youtube):




"But I find it humorous that the entire video shows how good it is at pirating games! =p"





"handheld that's only useful when it's emulating another system."



Also, accent should be on "wide spread standard OS" (+apps, games)


By that standard OS I mean Linux (known distro "flavour"), Android (Win95...)


(and well known, cross platform apps / games)


In fact, there should be standard, preloaded dual-boot option like "Full System" | "Easy Gaming".

 

[dreamer]

there is *nothing* like the Pandora in existence for games.

Any random phone + icp2.


I also bought the pandora mainly for having a portable desktop + watching movies on long flights/train rides, coding, VJ-ing, building weird contraptions that interface with the ext-connector. Less than 10% of its use is for gaming.


Also, I think it's quite ignorant to dismiss what developers and enthousiasts on the board are saying.


One of the best things about the whole project is the community that has formed around it (developers and users alike) and it seems like you don't even care about that at all.


Without the community the Pandora would've been just another random arm-device nobody cared for, but it's the community that actually made the whole project worthwhile.


It's a real shame that you don't see this and I don't blame people for being put off for it.


It's great that the Pandora is a neat gaming platform, but in the end it's still a niche product for a niche audience that consists mostly of geeks and enthousiasts and I for one am proud to be part of that

 

[darkborn]

from youtube




Was honestly about to buy the 1ghz, but then heard of the Pandora 2 and figured I'd wait

i hope it'll have a KS



Craig & anybody else: please no more Osborne effect errors!


Could you give common, official statement like: "There would not be Pandora 2, or 2GHz upgrades until (...) fulfilled."

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

It should surely be marketed in terms of what it actually is. A high powered emulation device and a mini-linux pc. The two aspects can be seperated somewhat in terms of how its advertised. Another video inside a pandora screen, showing the productive side of the pandora makes sense too. It cannot hurt sales at all imo. The thing is it requires a little knowledge to set up some of the emulators too. Not hard for me but not exactly plug and play either.


If the price was lowered temporarily, it might help gauge consumer interest and sales volume, perhaps a larger volume of units could be sold thus making a profit.

 

[rohezal]

Yes please, just do a christmas sale with 499€ per Unit (lets say limited to 100-200 units). 200 units would be enough to pay the missing 20K euros from craig and at least end the "gigahertz queue" drama.

 

[Dead1nside]

It's people like you who have fucked up Eds sales by telling him that.


Why don't you just let me do what I've been doing successfully for 15 years?


90% of people buy the Pandora to use it like an iPod for games with a small amount of desktop use and love the real controls, I know this because I've sold thousands. The people using it only for dev/desktop are a tiny but vocal minority. They are vocal and seem like a bigger group because this forum has a high number of developers, but if you want to know what people are really looking for just check the view counts on things like the PSX threads / emulator videos.


People who want a small desktop alternative will buy something else, like a small laptop as it's a superior product for them. It's just not a viable market to chase.


However there is *nothing* like the Pandora in existence for games. That's why that angle is FAR more valuable.


I do want a slight price restructure which I'm hoping I can have completed today.

Oh, I forgot we're the gang of crazy Linux nuts. You've answered your own question there. Do you want to make an iPod knock-off, or something unique. Why are you chasing that market? You've got that one with iCP2, you're not going to sell a Pandora to the same people.

 

[ShleeDragon]

The video needs fire balls and a power metal soundtrack too..


Seriously, the point of the video is to attract people and keep them watching for like ten minutes... so they go yeah.. yeahhh... LET'S DO THIS THING


If it's cool. add it into the video. It's a nerdy and optional.. keep it out