The way Tommy Tallarico talks about it it sorta feels like a bit of a reliving his childhood kind of thing? Pretty expensive way to go about it, though..
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First footage and screenshots of Intellivision Amico exclusive games
- Thread starter themadswagger
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I'd bet the PlayDate sells more units than the Amico. If I'm wrong NinjaScooter knows what to do.
Pretty sure Ninjascooter is the one who decides if he eats his own asshole here, Bh.
Unless you're mandating some kind of forced asshole-eating panels.
Also, unless you've ever eaten your own asshole, you can't speak about the viability of autoanusphagy.
I'll eat all the assholes if I have to. I feel that strongly about this.
Yep. We've all seen a lot of dumbass consoles and handhelds over the years. Some of them at least had a semi-decent pitch.
The Ouya had a better pitch than the Amico. The Tapwave Zodiac(my greatest shame, I purchased one) had a better pitch than the Amico. The Ngage had a better pitch than the Amico. The Game.com. The Phantom. On and on. Name a stupid idea, it still made more sense than this stupid thing.
How did OUYA have a better pitch? "Remember when people played games on their television? Now you can do that again, but now every game will have microtransactions!" compared to "Remember those simple pre-NES games, now you can play them again but with better graphics and sound".
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The games look like Unity asset flips. I'm all for throwback games, but give us some whimsy or artistry or something. It doesn't look like anybody wanted to make these games.
The whole system looks like the modern equivalent of an Action 52. Hopefully we at least get a new Cheetahmen out of it.
The whole system looks like the modern equivalent of an Action 52. Hopefully we at least get a new Cheetahmen out of it.
Except they are not "appealing to a niche", even in their video they are stating they are catering to the "3 billion casual gamers".
I doubt the target demographic for this hardware has "fond memories" of Intellivision, I bet a good chunk of ERA users even have that. This is likely targeting young families, with parents that grew up in the NES / SNES era. Atari is a more recognizable brand and yet, I even doubt they would have knowledge of franchises on that hardware besides Pac-Man and PONG or whatever was used as a pop culture reference.
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OUYA had a successful Kickstarter campaign which means their pitch was successful
So how does that make their pitch better than this one? Do you really think that people have stopped playing video games on their TVs, and only play games on their phones? But would like to play games on TV, if only they had a cheap box that could do it?
I doubt the target demographic for this hardware has "fond memories" of Intellivision, I bet a good chunk of ERA users even have that. This is likely targeting young families, with parents that grew up in the NES / SNES era. Atari is a more recognizable brand and yet, I even doubt they would have knowledge of franchises on that hardware besides Pac-Man and PONG or whatever was used as a pop culture reference.
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So they are bad at marketing, and optimistic - that entire video is proof of that. Heck, Tallarico said that for his spoken bits he didn't plan what to say, he just had them point the camera at him and talked. But listen to what they actually say, they are very obviously making this because of fond memories of Atari-era gaming, the simplistic games they had back then, and want to recreate that feeling for both people who played games back then, and a new audience.
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mobile games already have a built in audience so inexpensive micro consoles based on Android seemed like a decent idea. Also I don't see any successful crowdfunding campaign for the Amico.
To wit people (potential consumers) gave OUYA money based on their pitch, No potential consumers have given anything to make Amico a reality
Do you see any failed crowdfunding campaign for it? Also, note that the OUYA pitch was NOT to play existing mobile games on a TV, they didn't want that at all (even if it's what they got). The pitch was to play new original console games on your TV, period. The pitch was that gamers no longer play games on their TV, and would love a cheap box that would let them do so.
I thought i was crazy, super aggressive for no damn reason
Regardless of what the pitch actually was, people gave them money for it. That's the point
Ouya: $99 Android box anyone can develop for. Normal looking controller with standardized inputs included.
Amico: A more expensive version of a cheap Chinese knockoff console. "Exclusive" ripoffs of old arcade games you can literally play on anything.
You're telling me that's a better pitch?
Again, we are talking about the initial pitch, not the final product.
Console has the look of a japanese rice cooker:
Cool, prototypes of the Q!
Or this is an incredibly rushed product flying by the seat of its pants and they took what they had and just said "fuck it, let's roll with it."
Look at the screenshots in the OP you can clearly see Shark Shark and Ecco. They're two different games
Two big warning signs that point to a hodge-podge of slapdash, misty-eyed ideas about the good old days...reminds me of something;
All sorts of big promises about the huge exclusives they were going to land, the good old days are coming back, aren't games so complicated nowadays??? All complete horseshit. That's not to say Tallarico is trying to pull a con like Mike Kennedy was with the Coleco Chameleon, but the core idea is so deeply flawed. Simple games never went away, they're more popular than ever, and pretty much every platform is well served with them. Retro collections abound, remastered classics, re-releases, old genres being revived and finding their audience again, all on hardware that also does the other stuff that people inevitably drift back to once the novelty of old game design wears off. The simple games Tallarico mentions are often available for free on the phones that people already own.
Good luck to him, I really think he's going to need it. Ditch the hardware and just fund the revival of those old classic games he wants on existing platforms...much less of a barrier to entry.
A missing part of the debate on Amico above is the appeal to developers. There is none. Having game prices capped at $7.99, content restricted to E10+, requirement for games to be exclusive thereby limiting upside, and lack of both Unity and Unreal support will make development harder, more expensive, and with less commercial potential than almost any alternative platform.
The opportunity cost and risk are high relative to the limited upside, which just doesn't make this platform a good place to invest time and resources. Especially when the likes of Apple, Google, and Epic are throwing around money to bring content to platforms with much bigger upside.
This would have been a better play - revive the brand as a digital publisher of casual and hyper casual games on mobile and web, including reinvigorating their classic licenses. Still a challenging marketplace, but massively more viable as a business model than where they are headed.
The opportunity cost and risk are high relative to the limited upside, which just doesn't make this platform a good place to invest time and resources. Especially when the likes of Apple, Google, and Epic are throwing around money to bring content to platforms with much bigger upside.
This would have been a better play - revive the brand as a digital publisher of casual and hyper casual games on mobile and web, including reinvigorating their classic licenses. Still a challenging marketplace, but massively more viable as a business model than where they are headed.
I can't say I disagree with his mission statement. I think it would be fun to play some of the simpler games with my young kids, and it might be good to bring to a family get-together. I could see the appeal
This console is for family and casuals players followed by this:
This is an accurate depiction of my family dinner table.
Not really when Nintendo already exists, and not only the Switch but their past consoles too, if people look for something simpler at that point they'll just play a board game.
I could too if this were priced at around $80 and pre-loaded with a bunch of games. And if Nintendo Switch didn't exist.
I say this as a Switch owner. It's still an 8-button twin thumb stick affair and part of the great thing about Switch is you can take more complex games on the go. I'm not saying I'd buy one of these, just that I can understand wanting a simpler game experience you can share with casual gamers
I just wonder if those 3 billion people that they're talking about are playing games or are they simply filling up the voids of time between activities in their daily lives. Is gaming for them a destination or something to do along the way? This thing has to be super cheap if you even want a shot at those people who have literally an infinite supply of free games to play with steadily rising production values.
You know, I kind of understand what they're aiming for with capping prices at $7.99 and restricting content to E10+. They're clearly focused on producing inexpensive, "family-friendly" games, and want to keep the message consistent.
The requirement for games to be exclusive, though...that's where it goes off the rails. I can't see many third-party developers investing their best efforts into an original game for a new and unproven platform, that they're forever restricted from bringing elsewhere.
Likewise, I can think of many awesome low-priced indie games, which would be an excellent fit for Intellivision's ambitions with the Amico...except we'll never see them on the Amico, since they already exist for other platforms.
This policy is a double-edged sword, and they're getting self-inflicted wounds from both edges.
I agree, and I've suggested the same thing in the past. Build their brand by producing their flavor of games on other platforms.
