Retro VGS indiegogo campaign. (changed title)

[levi]

Well, with Indiegogo, they can keep the money even if the goal isn't reached, which is a nice financial boost in any way.

Unless there's some way of changing it, this is a fixed funding campaign; I think that means that if they don't get the 2 meellion dollars (mwahaha) they don't get anything.

I'll be surprised if they make that figure, for what it's worth, seems very large.  It's off to a good start - they need to make 45k a day and they've beaten that already.  But campaigns like this tend to drop off after the people who've been looking out for it have contributed, and getting new people on board tends to be hard, especially as they're only planning to spend around 2.5k on advertising by my maths.  But campaigns do pick up again right at the end, as people pledge more money, and people who'd been holding off till the last minute commit.

I'll be an interesting campaign to watch.

 

[EvilDragon]

Ah, you can choose that in Indiegogo?
Didn't know that, okay

Yes, that amount will be hard to achieve... unless they get a lot of press coverage!

 

[rygD]

The $3,800,000 stretch goal is what I thought was planned from the start based on what I read in the discussions on the FB page.  I am probably misunderstanding something.

 

[fusion_power]

That  actualy remembers me onto ED's own crowd founding campaign, what happend with the RetroPi project? Wasn't it supposed to already have been started?

 

[rygD]

That  actualy remembers me onto ED's own crowd founding campaign, what happend with the RetroPi project? Wasn't it supposed to already have been started?

He should get it started so he can have it ready to go by christmas so people can get one to go under their tree they decorated with a Pyra.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

And now it seems that they don't yet have a fully working prototype. Kickstarter requires a fully working prototype, so indiegogo it was.

 

[rygD]

Hmmm...so this could still go belly up, and they would have nothing to show for it.  At least, as I understand it, they won't be running off with people's money.  I like to believe they are doing it for the idea and the games, not the money.

Maybe what I mentioned about the stretch goal is a change due to costs.  They may have thought they could go with one thing, then noticed it would be too expensive.  Hard to tell since not much information was shared early on (pretty colored case renderings though).

 

[Chip]

I really like this project.  I'd never actually pay $350 for a console like this (you can build a dedicated emulation box for significantly less), but it somehow makes me happy just to know it exists.  As I understand things, they're emulating the original hardware in hardware (FPGA) which should be truer to the original experience than software emulation.  I don't have the level of appreciation for authenticity to make this worthwhile, but I kind of wish I did.

 

[mjohansson]

Its not meant for emulation, the possibility to mimic other systems hardware was to get developers that currently make games for those systems to get onboard with this system and not have to change their stuff or learn something new, or so they said. I love quirky and unique hardware and salivate at the thought of making use of the FPGA, I just hope there will be good and easy tutorials or some documentation I can make sense of... because no other games announced has been to interesting to me, I would still want one if I could code for it, but it looks like a slow start to the funding and such a high goal... it dosnt look to positive to me.

 

[rygD]

I really like this project.  I'd never actually pay $350 for a console like this (you can build a dedicated emulation box for significantly less), but it somehow makes me happy just to know it exists.  As I understand things, they're emulating the original hardware in hardware (FPGA) which should be truer to the original experience than software emulation.  I don't have the level of appreciation for authenticity to make this worthwhile, but I kind of wish I did.

I thought that was going to be the case for some titles, but based on reading the campaign page it seems that is not the case anymore, if it ever was, unless they get $4 million.  I haven't looked into it any further, but the reason I was under that impression is that some time after this was brought to my attention I was looking through the FB at some interested developers' comments related to how they would work on games, and if they would need special hardware.  The replies given were that the console itself can be used for game development, and that if someone was working on something for an old console the FPGA would handle that and they wouldn't need to make a Retro VGS version, as they could just use the Atari 2600/NES/SNES/whatever version, kinda like what mjohansson said.  This is why I feel I must have misunderstood, since it doesn't seem like it will have that ability anymore, and that, along with the carts, was what made it seem so interesting to me.  It seemed so clear when I read it...maybe I was more excited than I thought, even though I knew I wouldn't get one right away.

 

 

[comradekingu]

Indiegogo has a flexible and a fixed funding.

I think at other places it costs %-wise more of the total to go with flexible, even if you meet your goal.

With indiegogo its a flat 5% on everything, and failing fixed is free. So from the funders point of view, flexible isnt worse, but it could put you in an awkward spot if you meet half of critical mass or something.

Also there is something sneaky about flexible, which could make a difference in how people react to it.

The other trap to go in is putting the bar too high on fixed, which often leads to nobody believing in it enough to go in early, and instead people sitting on the fence instead of it going anywhere.

 

[thatgui]

I would not invest money in a software project (even when the software is just there to describe hardware) that advertises a no bugfix/update stance..

 

[mjohansson]

Looks like some drama have happened and someone might make a pure FPGA system of some sort?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179568533&postcount=279

 

[Chip]

Gotta love that internet drama

If the retro VGS isn't actually using a FPGA, I honestly can't see the point.  If it's only going to give you purely software emulation, you can get that for a hell of a lot less from any of a number of existing platforms.

However, if this kevtris guy really does manage to sell a complete FPGA-based system for ~$200, that might be within the range of being worthwhile, just for novelty's sake.

 

[vcoleiro1]

All I have to say about the Retro VGS campaign is:

 

[WizardStan]

However, if this kevtris guy really does manage to sell a complete FPGA-based system for ~$200, that might be within the range of being worthwhile, just for novelty's sake.

It's on my list of "things that I want to play with but ultimately will not because lazy"

 

[rygD]

Looks like some drama have happened and someone might make a pure FPGA system of some sort?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179568533&postcount=279

I haven't yet read your link, as I was trying to backtrack to where the original drama starts.  I haven't looked at much, but I have already found some things that explain stuff that seems to have changed.  It also seems like it might be more about the money than I thought (I can't tell on which side, though), but that is just a hunch based on one screenshot of a discussion I read that took place on the FB page.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Long bloody neogaf thread.Spells bad news for the vgs. I think the fpga part is not happening.
The consensus is they should cancel the campaign, get their shit together, crowd fund an actual prototype and then engage in a full crowd sourcing campaign. 

 

[rygD]

They should have had their shit together already...

 

[Exophase]

So basically, the VGS developers are smug and condescending towards kevtris about FPGA replications of console cores, when he's the best around at this task, and he makes them look like fools.

But the thing that I'm still really struggling to understand is, why was this ever about using any replication cores, much less super faithful ones? Nowhere have I seen any mention that this is supposed to emulate anything. It's supposed to be about new games. Why do you need to have a bunch of perfect reproductions of classic systems to support new games? Why go through all of that instead of just coming up with some new (and most likely easier to develop for) base system specification and let people tinker with the FPGA (if it'll even still have one - pretty amazing that this is even being discussed after they launched the indiegogo campaign around the concept) to do more things down the road if they want to?

Then I look at the games they're promoting on their indiegogo page and see that the first two are NeoGeo homebrew titles. So I think that's their actual angle, that they want to leverage existing homebrew. Then I look at the other games and see most of them are normal modern indie game titles for normal platforms. And I think, no way are these people going to want to completely rewrite their game to try to make it work on an ancient console. No matter how much they like the concept they're going to look at the actual effort needed and say no way.