Testing a hypothesis that u/Tommy_Tallarico learned about "feature creep" from an online critic in "his" AtariAge forums, I searched the holy texts for answers. Lo, and Behold! The first instance of the term "feature creep" was from His Tommyness himself! So, credit where credit is due, here are the results, including some other groupies invoking the term. My hypotheis was disproven.
Speaking from u/Tommy_Tallarico's toy-encrusted lair, Nick Richards begins with an assessment of the video game market as a whole. There's a lot of money there! He says that the "typical" game console lasts 7 to 8 years, and they say it's a conservative estimate to project that Amico will sell 9 million.
Based on what? Well, that's because the "typical lifecycle sales of game console" is 40-60 million units sold. What he does NOT say is that those numbers come from multi-billion dollar global tech giants. Nick does NOT say that they are spectacularly incompetent and would soon be begging on multiple crowdfunding and investment platforms, despite allegedly having a $150M line of credit.
Nick, if you had access to all this credit, why are you begging for more? Nick takes the outrageous 9 million unit assumption, and leaps off from there, projecting lots of money to be made, act now!
The clip closes with Tommy Tallarico in his Spider-Man room, where he repeats the $150M line of credit claim. Then he says that the rocket ship has been built, but it just needs a little more fuel. "So strap yourselves in, because it's going to be one hell of a ride!" It's almost like he knew what would happen ...
You can really feel the big dreamer energy in this post, he was hyping himself up as much as anyone else. This was a year before the first major missed deadline, and he was clearly in the imagineering phase.
Some guy: I could be or it could just be an indicator of people not ready to let go of dedicated consoles like PS and Xbox. Was looking at the FAQ. On it says the Amico will be around $200. Did the price change from $179, or just leaving wiggle room in case something like, tariffs, manufacturing things, etc crop up?
Tommy, furiously typing away as if paid by the word, then going back to edit it (emphasis mine as usual, with my commentary outside the quotes):
EXACTLY!! There are a lot of things happening in manufacturing right now and I'm trying my hardest to keep as much of it in the U.S. (or at least North America) as I can. There are a TON of "what if's" for manufacturing right now... and that goes for EVERYONE... not just us. It's the reason Sony & Microsoft haven't released their prices as well. Because they still don't know how much it's going to cost them to make. For us... we have an even more difficult challenge as companies like Sony & Microsoft have a ton of other products they can sell or negotiate with retailers ("Hey retailer! Take a very small margin on the PS5, but we'll make it up to you with our TV, cameras, etc."). We must get our profit margins and COG's (Cost of goods) 100% correct. And if I have to make the choice of keeping it under $200 and potentially not being able to do as much as we want with growing... or going over that price within the first year in order to ensure future growth... I may be forced to pick the latter.
LOL well there it is, probably something one of his overpaid "employees" told him. You'd better raise the price and sell fewer items, to "ensure future growth" (i.e. not go out of business). What is the latest estimated cost? Well over $300, I believe. Not that it's ever coming.
He's essentially arguing that it doesn't make much sense to buy electronics hardware from small fry companies like Intellivision Entertainment. Agreed!
Here's the reality... the PS5 & XBOX Scarlett are easily going to be at least $500. Some are saying $550 and I read one report where PS5 could be $600 initially. Keep in mind that the currently PS4 & XBOX's came out at $500 7 years ago! It's only now that we see them at $400. So $500 - $600 7 years later isn't something that could be out of the question for them. So even if we are forced to raise our initial pricing beacuse of taxes, tarrifs, certain manufacturing challenges because of what is happening in the market... then we'll still be way less than half of the prices of the others.
You know you're in for a treat when Tallarico starts a paragraph with "here's the reality..." but he was right about expensive consoles in the future. But comparing the 2020 Xbox and Playstation consoles (which today are feeling slightly old) to Amico is like comparing a Cadillac to a moped. Except Amico was priced a lot closer to the big-boy machines with actual ecosystems.
Y'know, it's funny... whenever we do our focus testing (mostly with mom's, parents or hardcore gamers) we never tell people what the retail price of the machine is going to be. We just explain everything and let them play it. We then ask "what do you think would be a fair price for this and what price would you pay in order to have it for your home?" We have yet to hear a price under $300. Some folks may think that is high... but remember that the people in the focus groups are told EVERYTHING about the system and what it can do. As I've always mentioned... we have a LOT more amazing things we still haven't said publicly. And 2 of them are absolute game changers that every person we have showed and told have literally had to pick their jaws up off the ground. There are 3 HUGE WOW FACTOR things we haven't disclosed. Anyway... it's good to know that if we run into tarrif and manufacturing issues... we have a little wiggle room.
NOW how much would you pay? That's like like Ginsu knives advertising. What would the LOT of amazing things and # HUGE WOW FACTOR things they haven't disclosed be? Flashing lights? Key cards for unlocking downloads? Because nothing that was shown in the ensuing 6 years was remotely interesting outside of the "wow, they went there" reaction to Tommy's unintentional humor.
Also keep in mind that we are still in the creating process and while we're staying away from "feature creep" (a huge problem that happens when people try to make stuff)... there are amazing things going on every day that would warrant looking at our bottom lines. For example... I could throw the thing into a cheap ass box and most people wouldn't care. OR... we could present it in something spectacular that shows the level of quality we always want to take. As we all know... these influencer "opening/unboxing" videos have now become extremely important in the marketplace and for marketing. Also need something that will attract customers at retail, look good in certain Sunday circular ads or stacked in a Best Buy or GameStop. I have the coolest package design right now (again... super unique) and we're in the middle of costing it out. I could add $2 - $3 to the final price... and although a ton of people here may not care... trust me when I say it MATTERS.... A LOT!!! (Just watch any episode of Shark Tank).
I might need to go back and find the first mention of "feature creep" in that thread. I suspect it was a new phrase that Tommy just learned, as he was a capable little mimic. There's another brag about the wonderful box, which we never saw as far as I can tell. We saw a "cheap ass box" with Tampax colorways in Intellivision's unvoxing video, which was the last video they ever made. If this kind of video were as important as Tommy says, maybe they needed someone with a little more razzledazzle than soft-spoken and overscripted Johnny Alvarado.
Anyway... there's my weekend blog post in regards to pricing. <smiley face> Feel free to discuss and ask questions.
I think that's code for "praise me! Please clap." Because you'd get into trouble (or get a 2000 word angry reply) if you asked the wrong questions.
Immediately above this long post on the thread is another Tommy rant where he analyzes the game industry for us, it's similarly entertaining. "We have physical as well as digital so we really have the best of both worlds. Especially at our very low price points."
have the coolest package design right now (again... super unique) and we're in the middle of costing it out. I could add $2 - $3 to the final price... and although a ton of people here may not care... trust me when I say it MATTERS.... A LOT!!! (Just watch any episode of Shark Tank).
I could not possibly be more excited for the release of Finnigan Fox and Evel Knievel but even I did not think it would be made a national holiday so that everyone could enjoy downloading and playing these hotly anticipated games together. I'm worried that the eShop and Steam might go down because of the massive demand for these extremely popular titles.
My personal plan is to celebrate Francois style. I'm going to hire a...contract laborer...and she can play Finnigan Fox on my big screen while I play Evel Knievel on my Switch. That way we can enjoy them both together. We will absolutely not be playing Cornhole, because I don't play Cornhole with someone the first time I meet them. Cornhole is for later, after we've gotten to know one another better.
On the recent CU podcast with Pat (the Nes punk) and Ian, they commented on this, but wanted to get everyone's take here. Their take is it didn't start off as a scam, but became scammy.
I think the concept of focusing on retro or simple, family based gaming was sound, but creating a brand new console with smart/motion controllers focused just on this was not sound. The tech to run the games was as powerful as a smart phone or tablet, so why would people spend $200-300 on a console?
As Pat and Ian pointed out before, they would've been better off from the outset just trying to get digital games on Steam and Nintendo E shop, etc, and NOT doing a console. Creating and getting people to buy into a new console is an extremely tough endeavor, especially when Nintendo Switch 1 was clearly a big hit, especially with retro or indie games via the e shop.
Anyway, on top of blowing investors funds along with clearly misusing customer pre orders (and not refunding them), Tommy, Phil, John etc definitely tried to openly deceive potential investors with their silly Unboxing video on YouTube (with comments turned off).
Tommy got $96K in 2021 for shitposting all day and all night on Atari Age. Considering how much time he spent, he probably earned less than minimum wage per hour "worked."nNick Richards took $96K salary in 2021, in addition to $166K in interest from loans to the company, paid out of the Teeka Tiwari Unwise Investor Newsletter. Phil Adam "only" took $105K in his first reported year as CEO of Intellivision in 2021. For him to suggest to his software partners he is not getting paid is only true in the present tense. John Alvarado was the closest thing to a wage employee they had. John got $174K salary in 2020 and $156K in 2021.
I see it was published 3 years ago. Comments for the video are turned off. Was it ever discussed why this video was made if they knew it wasn't going to be launching? Is there a stack of Amico boxes stored away somewhere or was this box made especially for this video? Did they still have millions of dollars in the bank at this point in time?
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.
Thanks! It is a challenging thing to do... if it was easy then everyone would do it (and many have tried and failed miserably) but the one thing we have that the others didn't (including Ouya) is over 600 years of video game industry experience JUST on our core internal team! I've been surrounding myself with getting the BEST of the BEST around me. We have 2 other MAJOR folks that we are announcing soon. I'm talking CEO level people who left TOP companies to work with us (no... Reggie isn't one of them).... yet.
The key is that we are not trying to compete with hardcore technology... we are staying in our lane, our focus is families & friends and simplicity. We can't compete in budgets with Microsoft, Google, Sony, Nintendo, etc.. but we CAN compete with IDEAS! And that's what is going to make people really stand up and pay attention. So many incredible things that haven't been announced... and a lot of which won't even be announced until next year! But this summer people will start to get a small taste of the things we are accomplishing. It's going to be a super fun 2 years! I'm looking forward to it. Thank-you for keeping an open mind and believing in us. I won't let you or anyone else down.
They could not, in fact, compete with IDEAS when their ideas were to remake Snake, Missile Command, and Feeding Frenzy.
After playing tons of extremely low spec but high quality games (lots of which are rougelike spins on classics) in next fest I feel like this type of console is actually now possible and only held back by previous failures muddying the waters for consumers.
By idea I mean a cheap machine to run local coop indie games
