Enter the Dragon Punch
Banned
350 USD? Who are they kidding?
This is pure hyperbole. Absolutely ridiculous to claim that games as a whole suffered from the same level of game-breaking or performance bugs that we expect to see in AAA games these days. This is a bad opinion, and it's funny to me that you accuse the other poster of having nostalgia goggles that impairs one's judgment.
AAA games area also significantly more complex too. Higher complexity = higher probability of bugs.
Or perhaps you could offer your advice and help them out?They were overcharged for the Jaguar tooling, the controllers they are showing are public tooling and not developed by themselves. I've worked on gaming accessories in China for over ten years. These guys are being ripped off but don't know it and are passing those costs to the end buyer. Stay away from this, it's just another Ouya.
?The idea of AAA-level games have been around for ages, but it's only been within the past decade that we've seen large-scale launch issues. It isn't due to game complexity, but publishers going "well fuck it, we can update it so let's do that" and it's crippled things like Arkham Knight - which ran JUST FINE on 2/3 release platforms, so it's not the game's complexity, it's due to corner-cutting.
Yes, and I've worked on complex cartridge-based games in the past - jRPGs. And we didn't need patches. You just need to test you game more, something modern game publishers don't seem to believe in anymore, instead they seem to believe in rushing the game out, letting customers do the testing, and then fixing them later.
I really hate how modern gamers and developers have become dependent on patches, where it's gotten to a point that a situation like Arkham Knight PC can happen, a game with such bad bugs that they pull the game from stores until they can release the patches.
Retro VGS will be better than we had it in the past, because a developer can have manufactured just a small batch of cartridges, like 25 of them, so if a bad bug *does* slip through it doesn't affect 250,000 pre-manufactured cartridges.
And I already brought up the money issue, game testing is a part of game development, indie or no, just like programming is, just like creating art is. If an indie developer can't give their game to friends and family to test, can't afford to have a tester or two on the team, can't afford to hire a testing service, then they aren't dedicated enough. It's not like friends and family are expensive And even testing services aren't expensive.
The idea of AAA-level games have been around for ages, but it's only been within the past decade that we've seen large-scale launch issues. It isn't due to game complexity, but publishers going "well fuck it, we can update it so let's do that" and it's crippled things like Arkham Knight - which ran JUST FINE on 2/3 release platforms, so it's not the game's complexity, it's due to corner-cutting.
Those patches were due to my game being on a bad console (OUYA), not due to bugs in the game. They were primarily to fix bad controls caused by the OUYA controllers getting worse between the dev kits and consumer release - as a launch title I wasn't able to test the game on final hardware because OUYA didn't send final hardware to developers before launch. I had to both work around their analogue stick issues and add support for third-party controllers because the stock controllers were junk, and then even change the gameplay a little to minimize the controller issue (my game was originally designed around precise controls). And they changed their stock controllers three times after launch so I had to release patches to support how that changed controls. If the OUYA hardware that shipped was the same quality as the Dev Kit hardware, I would have been perfectly happy with the 1.0 game as it launched, it had no major/game breaking bugs (in fact, I shipped on other platforms with no patching needed).Wait a second, are you telling me Dreamwriter released a game and then released patches after release? He/she has the audacity to denounce patching and praise better testing when he/she himself/herself doesn't live up to that standard? That's an amazing revelation. I was about to reply, but I think this about sums up everything. Hypocrite.
I love the strong dedication to NeoGeo and DC communities but, really, what a fucking snob company must be to not release at least its older games in digital! It's a shame...
So, NFev prefers to re-release its games on a mighty vague super-niche high priced console... But it refuses to publish on Live/Psn/Steam, LOL
I love the strong dedication to NeoGeo and DC communities but, really, what a fucking snob company must be to not release at least its older games in digital! It's a shame...
Anyway, good luck at the backers that put money and hopes for this projects. I hope to see their retro-dreams real
Absolutely fantastic post that I couldn't agree more with. I am the target demographic for this console and I will be passing on it for all of the reasons listed above.I've been going back and forth on this for weeks now. I dislike the people who are fully ignorant and claiming this is a scam after doing zero research. I wish the people who are using these VGS threads to unashamedly mock and troll the product would be quiet because those posts are useless and it's embarrassing behavior. Those remarks aside, there are critical problems that others have mentioned and do need addressing if this isn't to become a huge flop.
1. Indiegogo is a huge mistake. The highest visibility platform and reach is on Kickstarter, period. Frankly, no one cares if Indiegogo has gotten a few more campaigns to completion percentage-wise. Kickstarter is a huge site and there will inevitably be a sizable number of ill-planned Kickstarters. If the Retro VGS team is serious in their planning and execution, the percentage of failures due to mismanagement should be a non-factor in the decision to forego the platform. This leads to the other point that no one cares if KS is slightly bending their rules to accommodate your product. Who are you afraid of calling you out and derailing everything? A bitter forumer with no influence? A blogger or youtuber with 20 followers? The vast majority of backers will NOT care and will not see such crappy criticisms. They will see your vision, dedication, planning; the fact that you're better organized and staffed and researched than dozens of other KS campaigns that still met their goals. I say save face, stop BSing in the dark corners of lesser known crowd funding sites and get the Kickstarter pitch going on full cylinders.
2. Discourage day 1 patches and encourage better game testing, but please renege on this no patches nonsense. It's terrible. No one thinks it's a good idea. Human error is impossible to fully eliminate and account for. Patches done right are a highly valuable feature, not a setback. How is this helpful to anyone besides being a silly, braggy bullet point for your presentation?
3. "Made in America" is a useless marketing gesture that will net you a few extra backers who fuss over that sort of thing, but far less if you had gone overseas and had a lower retail price. Many of the world's highest quality electronics are made in China. There is nothing wrong with going that route besides outdated stigma and unfounded beliefs about American superiority in manufacturing quality. All you're doing is passing on extra costs to your future consumer base at absolutely no benefit to them.
4. The price is too high and this is coming from someone who could back the VGS right now without hesitation. I'm not optimistic about backing you because I'm dubious about the goal being met. The problem is that the majority of aware and interested buyers are not in a position to simply drop $349 on a niche device. Newcomers just informed about this will balk at first sight. $199 would have put VGS in a very good place for new enthusiast hardware. It is in impulse buy and handheld device territory but for a full console. It is affordable. Heck, it's reasonable to the mind if you sound it out. $300+ is Sony and Microsoft console territory and a huge mental hurdle to overcome. You're above Wii U prices! At your high price point, the average person has to think a purchase very carefully and weigh comparable options. Those options you have placed yourself among are superior.
5. The cart-only approach is a big mistake. You can't ignore that we live in a world where cheap digital distribution platforms exist. It has opened up gaming to people who previously could not afford it and you're shitting on those people under the assumption that there are enough gamers with the deep pockets and mindsets of the record-buying audiophile. I personally think a digital platform supplemented by carts for those who desire to pay the cart premium is the correct avenue of approach. This also does not price out indies who cannot swallow the costs of having cartridges made for the console (and who cannot handle the strenuous pre-launch testing due to the finality of carts). This digital game library will obviously be much bigger, better priced and more enticing for your customers. People loved the idea of Shovel Knight going to retail for various good reasons, but no one ever suggested that they would love if we lived in an alternate reality where that was the only choice. FYI, the retail version of SK is only a $10 premium over the digital copy. I find it worrisome if your versions of games are indeed $40-$60.
6. Your backer incentives are very weak beyond the $300-$349 tier. There's not much else to add here. It just sucks. Add an extra game or controller, signed poster or packaging, new materials, work out a deal with an indie to add top backers to a game in some way... something, anything more. I see no reason to commit above the base levels besides pretty colors. The print sub locked to the highest tier is really stingy.
7. This is probably my most subjective and personal opinion. I have no issue with the console's shape; that's a trivial matter concerning the tiny hardcore gaming community that knows it's a Jaguar shell. However I do dislike the branding. The name Retro VGS and its logo are painfully generic. Did you seek counsel from a branding agency with top-notch designer who specializes in creating a memorable, attractive brand? It would also make sense to form a company with a good name and attach that to the front of a product with a strong name. Sega Genesis. Nintendo Wii. Sony Playstation. Apple iPhone. Amazon Kindle. Google Nexus. Canon Rebel. The list goes on. You... who are you and what is RETRO VGS? Retro itself is overused genericism and VGS means nothing to anyone. Is it a Famiclone knockoff? That's what it sounds like. Why are you so much pricier than a Hyperkin RetroN? (Hyperkin + slightly unique name. See how even they have a better brand presence than you.)
8. Simplify the feature set to bring the price down. I'm clearly no expert and can't say how, but the consensus seems to be that feature creep has brought up the price considerably from what could have been a lean, solid system.
I can't help feeling that you are inexplicably going extremely niche and obscure, being unyieldingly backwards and settling for unreasonably expensive at a detriment to everyone but a wealthy subsegment of a subsegment of gamers. Please consider reworking the product and your process to make it more affordable and mass-market friendly. Make an effort to reach out and include people rather than be ultra niche for no reason. I really hope this succeeds. Unfortunately I don't see that happening right now.
What money? Who is supposed to pay for all this rigorous QA?I'm ok with the no patch/updates thing. Games will be more expensive. That's where the money will go, longer pre-launch bug testing. I also like the cart-only approach.
Will this play SNES repros?
No, it won't. At least not if they're on SNES format carts.
I'm ok with the no patch/updates thing. Games will be more expensive. That's where the money will go, longer pre-launch bug testing. I also like the cart-only approach.
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So basically some want the product changed beyond all recognition, in one case to an inexpensive rebranded non-cartridge based system that is made in a different country.
If that's what you are interested in, great, but it is so completely divorced from what this crowdfunding pitch is suggesting that the "criticism" is ludicrous. That's not what this project is. It will never not be a cartridge based video game system that plays new games, whether it succeeds or fails.
Making this for a startup simply won't be cheap, no matter how many posts we get claiming it should be. This is a niche product for a small audience that cares about what it offers. If you want another type of console, that's available to you elsewhere. Completely changing their vision after substantial planning wouldn't inspire confidence. It would signal disaster.
Not sure what's unclear about it. The higher cost of games should in theory pay for the extended QA phase. If the developer is confident about his game and wants to pay it upfront, he'll get his money back from the higher price tag of his game. If he wants to go the crowd-funding way, he can do that too. This of course doesn't guarantee all RVGS games will be bug free. If they turn out buggy, this console will have a very short life.What money? Who is supposed to pay for all this rigorous QA?
I'm saying that that's what the concept is about. Will it work out that way? Who knows? Is it possible for a developer to release a buggy game, charge full price and run with the money so to speak? Of course it is. You guys are choosing to look at it "half-empty". If RetroVGS games launch at 50$, then they better be pretty damn flawless. The fact that they're un-patchable will put extra pressure on the developers to test them more thoroughly. If they're able to produce bug free, cool looking and playing 2D games with nice looking cart-box-manual, then yeah, to me that's worth 50$.I have a bridge to sell you...
From my understanding, that was the goal, yes.Will this play SNES repros?
It's completely feasible with the hardware they want to build.
They said they wanted to provide cartridge adapters and use the FPGA to make hardware emulation. Playing SNES games should be easy. But with the recent feud with Kevtris, sole provider of FPGA cores, the idea of playing old cartridge games on the retrovgs is pushed further away.
Not sure what's unclear about it. The higher cost of games should in theory pay for the extended QA phase. If the developer is confident about his game and wants to pay it upfront, he'll get his money back from the higher price tag of his game. If he wants to go the crowd-funding way, he can do that too. This of course doesn't guarantee all RVGS games will be bug free. If they turn out buggy, this console will have a very short life.
Depends on a few things, and things are not going well with what these guys are setting up, but the concept could end up with a good product. The FPGA-based emulation is generally more accurate than the CPU-based one; you play with cartridges; you use only one AV cable set for all the systems.Sure, but why would you ever want to get a cartridge adapter to play SNES games on that console though? And if they're also going to have those manufactured in the US, how much would it cost to get one, right? Would you seriously consider getting multiple cartridge adapters to play all your Nintendo and SEGA carts on that thing?
Sure, but why would you ever want to get a cartridge adapter to play SNES games on that console though? And if they're also going to have those manufactured in the US, how much would it cost to get one, right? Would you seriously consider getting multiple cartridge adapters to play all your Nintendo and SEGA carts on that thing?
Those patches were due to my game being on a bad console (OUYA), not due to bugs in the game. They were primarily to fix bad controls caused by the OUYA controllers getting worse between the dev kits and consumer release - as a launch title I wasn't able to test the game on final hardware because OUYA didn't send final hardware to developers before launch. I had to both work around their analogue stick issues and add support for third-party controllers because the stock controllers were junk, and then even change the gameplay a little to minimize the controller issue (my game was originally designed around precise controls). And they changed their stock controllers three times after launch so I had to release patches to support how that changed controls. If the OUYA hardware that shipped was the same quality as the Dev Kit hardware, I would have been perfectly happy with the 1.0 game as it launched, it had no major/game breaking bugs (in fact, I shipped on other platforms with no patching needed).
You're right in that in a patchless world I wouldn't have been able to fix the controls, but that wasn't a normal situation.
PlaysWithWolves, on 20 Sept 2015 - 07:20 AM, said:
I'm guessing all that money Parrothead [Mike Kennedy] waved in front of Kevtris before taking it away would only come into play if they hit the $3,800,000 stretch goal. Of course, we don't know what FPGA goes into which tier, because they haven't told us. It sounded like even Kevtris himself was unsure.
This "using low-end FPGA unless they get 2x funding for high-end FPGA" thing (paraphrasing) is a real burr under my saddle, since they've essentially been promoting the high-end one for months. So now that bridges have burned, not only is there no proof of any prototyping/developing, we know for a fact they also have no FPGA cores. Maybe if ducks were in a row, Kevtris wouldn't have felt the need to speak up?
kevtris, on 20 Sept 2015 - 5:00 PM, said:
There was never any deal made, and I received no money. Just that I'd get paid if it got funded. Nothing was written down at all anywhere.
The total lack of direction on the hardware end, the total discounting of every single thing I told them they could do to make the hardware better and more importantly cheaper fell on deaf ears. Fast forward 4 months later, and the hardware STILL isn't any closer to being done. Every time I talked to them, they had added some new expensive piece of hardware that they didn't need, and the goal of an affordable system kept creeping farther and farther into the distance. I really tried hard to give the best suggestions for how to fix up the hardware to make it cheaper/better, but the HW guy kept rebuffing me at every point so I stopped trying.
As a ferinstance: I tried to convince them that if they wanted to have that plethora of analog video options, they should use the FPGA to generate the composite and s-video outputs digitally. This would save them the expensive RGB to NTSC converter chip and associated resistors/caps/inductor (About $5-10). On my second proto FPGA system, I pressed my single RGB DAC into quadruple duty. It outputs RGB like you'd expect, but it can also output component, s-video, and composite as well. Of course you only get one of these at a time (RGB, or component, or s-vid+composite) but most people don't connect their system up to multiple TVs at the same time. The component, s-vid, and composite are digitally generated in the FPGA, and simply output to the same DAC. This method is 100% FREE and as a bonus I get NTSC, PAL, and if you're feeling frisky, SECAM. I also used this hardware to generate "exact NES" output video- it has the exact same timing and voltage levels a real NES does, so the composite generated this way looks 100% identical to a real NES. I did A/B comparison on a CRT and you can't tell which is which. Even the overscan looks identical. That's the power of the FPGA.
The BOM (bill of materials) kept going up and up and I questioned who this system was really being designed for- the game player or the people designing it. The final nail in the coffin was when a skype meeting was set up on 9/8/15 for the next day at 6PM. I set up my skype at 6PM, said I was ready, and got a reply about how they are going to hold off for now, because they were debating if the FPGA would still make it into the system. This caught me as extremely unprofessional- I set aside time for this meeting the previous day, only to get rebuffed at the time of. At this point I figured I was pretty much done with the project, because no FPGA would make it into the system, thus rendering me and my cores redundant.
I would like to see it succeed still, but seemingly without them being any closer to done on the hardware today as it was 5 months ago (and probably less so- with all the newly added chips and parts). I kept seeing the BOM rise like a bottle rocket only to explode with a loud report at the top of its travel. There had to be some massive fat trimming but alas it didn't happen, except probably cutting out the thing that made it different- the FPGA. I suspect we still don't have hard specs because hard specs still don't exist. It's all just magic hand waving about how since it's got an ARM, games that run on other ARM platforms should be a "Breeze" to port to it. An ARM's an ARM, right? Without the FPGA, it's just an Ouya that takes carts, so kind of like a Retron 5. The comparison is apt because it's comparing one ARM based SOC to another ARM based SOC. The peripherals added to this core don't really add anything to the GAME PLAYER'S experience (which is the part that counts.... the experience).
Spending all the time and BOM costs on silly things like "100 year flash ROMs" and "thick gold plated connectors" and "made in the USA" do absolutely nothing for the end user and player. These are simply things the dev team wants and not things the game player wants, and it inflates the cost greatly. Using regular single level cell commodity flash ROM is plenty good enough; it will be around 20-30 years from now. Even if the carts start to lose their memory, someone will be around to reflash it for you at a nominal price if the system had any kind of traction at all. I liken it to driving a car for "100 years" without taking it to a mechanic now and again for tuneups and repairs... you just can't do it. Everything needs little repairs now and again if you expect to keep using it for a very long time. Making an electronic product reliable is one thing- we do it all the time at work.
Another ferinstance: At work, I design cryogenic controls. These run 24 hours a day, 7 days at week, for 20-30 YEARS. I have to design them to be as reliable as possible, yet not be stupidly expensive to make. These things have to work around liquid nitrogen, and peoples' lives can literally on the line. (no, they don't store bodies in LN2. hehe. more like blood and cells) I know a thing or two about high rel design I think. I get it done without busting the budget just fine. But we're talking about a GAME PLAYER here and not something more important.
I think I figured it out. Making something that still works 30 years from now smacks me more as a way to "maintain your investment" in a collectable item, rather than something you want to use. I guess the great selection of colours goes along with the "collector" theme, as is the name of the company making Tiny Knight, "Collectorvision".
So that's the long winded take. I will give a few more protips just since I'm feeling generous.
Protip #1: DO NOT think about patenting the cartridge bus. Patents are stupid. I should know, I own a patent. It's expensive to get, and takes YEARS to get it. I doubt something as simple as a cartridge bus would be worthwhile to patent anyways; there's going to be so much prior art involved it's not funny. A patent isn't some kind of magical shield- all a patent does is literally give you a license to sue. That's it. Without money, you cannot defend your patent, rendering it worthless. Don Lancaster has some great tips on why you should avoid patents.
Protip #2: You vastly underestimate how much time and money it will take to get this thing through certifications (i.e. CE, UL, CSA, whatever). I am a veteran of the certification racket. It took about 3-4 months and cost a lot of money. I don't think it needs to be certified anyways. Only the power supply has to; this is the reason you see lots of things that have an external power brick these days and not so many things have internal supplies any more. Some company makes these things and gets them through all the certifications for you. If your thing runs on low voltage, you can self-certify it.
protip #3: Get the boards manufactured and assembled in China. Made in USA is nice, but it will literally cost 30-50% MORE money to get it made here, and the quality tends not to be as high as China. This is highly ironic to me. I wished getting stuff made in the USA was viable but for lots of things, sadly it isn't. One of my youtube vids I explained how I tried to get PC boards made in the USA and the misery I ran into.
Yeah this thing seems quite disappointingly DOA. Like severely DOA. Given their recent manoeuvres I expected this to struggle but I didn't expect this to struggle this hard. I thought they'd at least have the hardcore interested and a few thousand backers by now. I feel so bad for them because I've been tracking this for months and I know the heart and good intention that went in to this. They really should have listened to the overwhelming amount of negative feedback when they announced the jacked up price and lowered this thing down to $150 as per their original price target and hardware intention. I think that in tandem with switching to IndieGoGo at the last minute has doomed this. Kickstarter is just more popular and would have gained them more attention.
It's still a fantastic core idea but it feels like they took a miscalculated wrong turn at the last second and that has doomed them. The only positive thing I can think of is that I guess it's still early? This could turn around and speed up in terms of momentum? As unlikely as that may be.
Wow, I didn't even realize a second thread was started!! And to think someone in the original thread said I'm one of the main sources of brewing discontent with the RVGS. Yeah right, I just found this new thread an hour ago and look how people have been responding to this without my input.
Well, on the AtariAge forums, Kevtris (the now ex-member of the RVGS team) made another detailed post which shines some light on RVGS operations.
This is amazing and terrifying at the same time. The team behind the project looks fairly unprofessional. It seems like everything is still in the air and with Kevtris removed from the project they will have a hard time completing it.
Well, on the AtariAge forums, Kevtris (the now ex-member of the RVGS team) made another detailed post which shines some light on RVGS operations.
By the time this thing would get released it it'll be at the same price point as the PS4 and XB1. These guy are nuts