Retro VGS indiegogo campaign. (changed title)


After the initial chock of the price reveal has gone away I have started to get visions of the Neo Geo, expensive but unique and because of the uniqeness holding a lot of worth for the people that liked it and could afford it. Today there are emulators so you can play the games, but its not the same thing. I have never held a big Neo Geo cartridge in my hands but I can totally imagine the awesome feeling of mega-power! Unfortunatly the Jaguar cartridge sizes are meazly and weak in comparison to Neo Geo... Yea I cant really feel the specialness that I feel with Neo Geo, but there are still no competition out there, no one else is making a cartridge console, and the fact that its not one of the big 3 is positive from the standpoint that anyone can make games for it, if they technically can.

Its just that the Retro VGS is all over the place, I think it should be MUCH more limiting and focused on some specific capability, but then most devs would have complained it seem, but I dont want Unity ports thats available for every other system, I would want games that are all in the same technical style competing in wich is most fun to play rather then wich has the most Unity special effects crammed on. From 8bit 2D to 32bit 3D era? Were it up to me it would be the FPGA chip alone and targeting 16bit 2D with possibly simple 3D like Starfox on SNES. Then it would have been more unique and have more personality and more emotional worth, for me atleast.
 
A higher price than originally stated is mooted for the retro VG currently. This rumor could be embellished with a little colour though.

Still 350 to 400 dollars draws inevitable comparisons with a PS4 or X-Box one and you know which one little Johnny's gonna choose!

I cannot see any world in which this console will be anything more than a niche device, but if they can carve out a sizable niche then great!

Still they need a differentiating factor, something cool or interesting.

I'm not sure that the fpga will be used as much as they think unless they have some cool ideas up their sleeves.

Alas we shall have to wait for the kickstarter campaign which starts in about a week I believe.
 
I am very interested in how the kickstarter turns out.  As long as they can get enough people willing to pay and keep buying games it might work out.  If that $350-400 price is the reduced price for backers, and the actual sales price is higher I still don't see many sales.

Any guesses on the price for the special colors?
 
Wrath of Khan said:
Recent article/interview with the creator.http://www.usgamer.net/articles/retro-vgs-the-flip-side-of-the-quest-for-classic-game-fidelity
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From the article:

The purchasing of the Atari Jaguar tooling was necessary for me to take on such a significant venture. In the end it will have saved us nearly $500M in start-up costs.
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Using the Jaguar plastic design is supposed to save them $500M in costs?! How could they possibly think that? The injection moulding costs for something like Pandora is a lot more complex than a simple console shell and the costs for developing this have probably only gone down as rapid prototyping options have increased. They could probably do it for under $50k. That's a factor of 10,000 off from their quote!

The more I read about this the more I feel like these guys have no idea what they're talking about.
 
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I questioned that as well, but I figured my ignorance was getting in the way of my seeing such value.  I really don't see going with a box with a hole in the top where another box (the cartridge) can fit in costing $500,000,000.  That boxy design might also give more internal room to play with that are missing from a curved design.  Maybe the savings come from less plastic being used.  Or maybe he thinks they will sell millions of units (but as ED has pointed out, once it is designed there shouldn't be many additional costs for the case, just the cost of production and shipping...I think, I am probably forgetting something).

I kinda doubt all development costs for the console and cartridge combined would come close to 500 million.  I don't know, I am not the one trying to do this.  If the kickstarter goal ends up being many millions maybe it will point to other things that potential backers should be looking at and considering.  I understand this is supposed to be a bit more of a professional project than a hobbyist/fan one, yet some things still seem a bit fishy to me too.
 
Sheesh! That's a typo in the article on the official website it says 500,000 dollars. That sounds more like it. Case and cartridge manufacturing are included in this price.
 
Still, 500k is a lot!

The Pyra moulds do cost 50,000 EUR.

However, the price is not always creating the moulds - size (and weight for transport) of the moulds is also an issue, and their console is bigger than the Pyra.

I don't know how much of the costs are for tooling and how much for the material itself though.
 
As microsoft has shown us time and time again, you can piss away a lot of money on a console and end up, depending on how far you want to draw this reasoning, nothing.

They spent microsoft-level money on just trying to develop a new controller alone, before going with the old one.
 
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EvilDragon said:
Still, 500k is a lot!


The Pyra moulds do cost 50,000 EUR.


However, the price is not always creating the moulds - size (and weight for transport) of the moulds is also an issue, and their console is bigger than the Pyra.


I don't know how much of the costs are for tooling and how much for the material itself though.
Click to expand...
They actually bought the original Jaguar tooling machines I believe. A video shows the machine spitting out Jag cartridges. 
 
Wrath of Khan said:
Sheesh! That's a typo in the article on the official website it says 500,000 dollars. That sounds more like it. Case and cartridge manufacturing are included in this price.
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That's one hell of a typo...

EvilDragon said:
Still, 500k is a lot!


The Pyra moulds do cost 50,000 EUR.


However, the price is not always creating the moulds - size (and weight for transport) of the moulds is also an issue, and their console is bigger than the Pyra.


I don't know how much of the costs are for tooling and how much for the material itself though.
Click to expand...
Thanks for always adding things like this.  I am currently taking a class that deals with these topics a bit (which I took now so I could better understand costs and decisions associated with the Pyra), and info like this helps give a more complete picture (the class seems to mostly deal with deciding what course of action to take based on cost analysis).
 
Wrath of Khan said:
Sheesh! That's a typo in the article on the official website it says 500,000 dollars. That sounds more like it. Case and cartridge manufacturing are included in this price.
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I thought it might be a typo, but $500k is still way too much for this.

I could see that much or more trying to get everything right on a handheld, but getting something like this right should be a lot more straightforward.

If anything I would expect the controller to cost more to design if they care about doing a good job. Fortunately they did not opt to use the Jaguar design here too.
 
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Maybe they use the money that will be saved as an excuse, and most of the real value is motivation and he just wanted the Jag molds to add to the story.  I think it is sorta ugly, and the carts are even worse. :D
 
Well I think they have original jag tooling for the molds.


Perhaps they are implying somewhat disengenously that if they had to buy modern tooling for the cases it would cost half a milion.


Still who buys their own tooling/injection machines. Nobody.


They just pay for and use an existing company to do this.


Or else its silly talk.
 
rygD said:
DrHAX said:
I hope it can work out, because it could  be a blessing in the console wars, a cheaper, friendly, slightly quirky companion to the pissing contest that is console gaming.
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You mean like what Nintendo has been doing?
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Or rather failed to be doing in my opinion..

And Holy crap thats alot of money for stuff they already have... half a million? Jeez..
 
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DrHAX said:
rygD said:
DrHAX said:
I hope it can work out, because it could  be a blessing in the console wars, a cheaper, friendly, slightly quirky companion to the pissing contest that is console gaming.
Click to expand...
You mean like what Nintendo has been doing?
Click to expand...
Or rather failed to be doing in my opinion..
Click to expand...
Their last couple of generations seem to fit what you describe.  Where do you feel they failed?

DrHAX said:
And Holy crap thats alot of money for stuff they already have... half a million? Jeez..
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better than half a billion
 
Random thought that just crossed my mind:  Perhaps if they had actually saved $500,000,000 the price for the console wouldn't be so high. ;)
 
Interesting how they went with indiegogo as they had talked up a kickstarter campaign for some time.
Still, I think I want one. Solution? Find more shit to sell on e-bay!!!
I'll check the campaign details first, nearly two million dollars is what they want. 
I hope they succeed and I think they just might.
 
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