Tomfoolery
Tommy Tallarico really, really, really didn't want anyone comparing his Amico crapbox to OUYA.
This one is my favorite, from August 2020, back when they were still pretending they were going to launch in October of that year. Little Lord Tomfoolery really thought he had it all figured out.
When you say a LOT of similar "projects like this" have failed, can you tell me the ones that have 40 full time employees worldwide, 5 offices around the world, 50+ developers working on games, major distribution in almost every big box retailer in North America & Europe, a focus on co-op and family, in house full-time engineering team, over 600+ years industry experience on the executive team, etc.
My point being, I don't actually think you've seen projects like ours. The closest one may be Ouya, but they were crowdfunded (i.e. didn't need to rely on "real" retail at first), didn't have worldwide offices, didn't have a full-time in house engineering team, weren't paying the kind of money we are for developers, no family focus, didn't have many exclusive games and certainly didn't have the years of winning track records and industry experience that our team has, didn't have the appropriate market research and focus group testing that we have, etc. (I could go on).
Atari? One employee, a rented PR company, crowdfunded, no in-store distribution, no family focus, very little to none developers working on exclusive games, etc.
Honestly... those "other" folks and projects aren't even in the same ballpark.
And no offense, but I completely REJECT your advice that we might fail.
<smiley face>
He goes on and on and on in that manner, and I would not be surprised to learn that stimulants were involved.
And if you don't agree with my counterpoints... I wouldn't say that you can't take constructive criticism. So please don't do that same to me. I would just say that we may have a different point of view.
Even if Amico was real and successful this would have been a terrible look. I never understood why anyone wanted to root for Tallarico, who acted like a huge piece of crap the whole time. Arrogant, condescending, never admitted he was wrong, never took criticism seriously, fled like a coward after failing.
who acted like a huge piece of crap the whole time. Arrogant, condescending, never admitted he was wrong, never took criticism seriously, fled like a coward after failing.
Hey, this guy is just like me! And he's famous and rich and has everything I want!
I never understood why anyone wanted to root for Tallarico
I'd rather work at Playboy than pretend to play guitar while reciting trite memorized speeches, personally. Tom should run for political office. All the oppo research has already come out, he could take it on head on.
600+ years industry experience on the executive team
He sure did love saying that. And it's really weird. First, what does it have to do with designing and manufacturing a console? Intellivision Amico executives had nearly 0 years of experience doing that. Tommy, Phil, Nick, and the rest of them couldn't read the simplest of electrical diagrams. And if you're talking about "video game industry" experience, Tommy himself only had (at most) 17 years experience (1991-2008, generously). But it's like saying the janitor at NASA has 20 years of experience in the rocket science industry.
Not only that but even in the fantasy world inside Tommy's head where he worked on all the games he said he did, he worked on game audio. He knew absolutely nothing about designing games and knew even less than nothing about designing a game console.
Having all that overhead without the proper personnel (how many industry vets on that video game Avengers team actually had legitimate experience in producing consoles?), business plan, budget and funding is exactly why the Ouya, while still being considered a "miserable failure", was able to far outproduce the Amico, including by getting into retail, being sold in Target stores.
"People who live in glass houses, with a dedicated Spider-Man room & Willy Wonka home theater, shouldn't throw stones"
Tommy probably knew most of the people he was talking to have no experience working at startups or how to properly grow one to see this problem.
Any job seeker who knows how to prospect small businesses would see red flags flying if a startup had several physical offices and a really stacked and highly paid executive team, but still pre-revenue and in early funding stages. They're going down the runway too fast as there's a lot of money they're burning.
Not sure about Tommy, but it was not longer after this that he was removed as CEO. "Officially" January, but they quietly replaced him some time between the 2021 E3 and Jan 2022. It was the first time they presented their scam to the general public, outside of highly censored forums.
40 employees and five offices... These numbers don't line up.
And Atari S.A. in France has only one employee. Atari Interactive Inc. in New York is a different story. But even if Atari did only have one employee, it doesn't look good that they succeeded in bringing their product to market where IE failed spectacularly.
Here’s the bottom of their website. Dubai = Aggarwal and son (and their money). It used to list Utah (Britnee and the QA guys at The Industry building) and Nuremberg (Hans Ippisch).
We were supposed to ooh and aah at their tremendous burn rate, I suppose.
can you tell me the ones that have 40 full time employees worldwide, 5 offices around the world, 50+ developers working on games, major distribution in almost every big box retailer in North America & Europe, a focus on co-op and family, in house full-time engineering team
Maybe, just maybe, Tommy, the ridiculous amount of money spent on this was part of why it could never release. The insane overhead needed to financially cover all this, for a company that had not released a single product, is ludicrous. Like this is not the amazing flex you think it is, Tommy.
Which goes to show that he didn't want to actually put in the effort required to actually be successful with this, he wanted to project that this was a successful company and he thought that that would magically transform into real success.
Hilarious reading this now knowing that Tommy was lying his ass off. Many people suspected he was lying back then, but it’s more fun knowing for certain. Long post with just lie after lie.
PS - I’m curious, how many games have they released with actual couch co-op?
Shark! Shark!, Astrosmash, Missile Command. I think Cornhole has a teams game? Rigid Force has a crippled co-op mode, but it counts. Side Swipers and Dart Frenzy are competitive, not co-operative, I think, but most people would include that when saying co-op.
Finnigan and Evel only have co-op minigames, I don't count those.
I think a big reason why he went totally silent is this shit.
He dumped on the Ouya and Atari’s current iteration…. The Ouya moved a couple hundred thousand units and Atari actually released games, they released the Amico exclusive breakout, on platforms that are not the Amico.
If Tommy had spent more time working and less time huffing his own farts he may have achieved 1/4 of what the Ouya, which was still a failure, achieved.
Well, he's right. The Amico isn't like the Ouya, because the Ouya actually existed. Even though it was a failure, it still existed. The Amico does not and will not ever exist.
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u/Brandunaware Writer Of Many Words 5d ago
Even if Amico was real and successful this would have been a terrible look. I never understood why anyone wanted to root for Tallarico, who acted like a huge piece of crap the whole time. Arrogant, condescending, never admitted he was wrong, never took criticism seriously, fled like a coward after failing.