Carl: Right. The main concern most people have is the value on the funding levels.  Some people have done the math and they say it is about six thousand or so units to meet the minimum.  Now is that a figure that um, how did ya’ll come up with the minimum? Is the 6,000 consoles, was that figured out based on what you need on a clear profit margin to continue running the company?

Mike: There was basically two things.  Of course, we needed to allocate enough units–

John (interrupting): May I, Mike?

Mike: Yeah, sure.

John: So what we did was, we figured out what it was going to cost us to develop the product we wanted to make.  We figured out the unit cost. From that we understand our margin, so to make that amount of development funds, we are just dividing that out over the margin that we are making.

Mike: The other thing too, Carl, that is really important is that we have this first batch of developers on board, we had to tell them we wanted to have at least five to six thousand people to start this off of.  You know, we have seven or eight developers on board this thing with us that are looking at all of this negativity and, like “What is going on?!?” These are real people that want to bring games to this thing.  We have got Wayforward looking at this, we got Yacht Club looking at this, we have got DotEmu looking at this.  NG.DEV is looking at this and you know–

John (interjecting): Heck, they are not just looking at it, these are companies that have signed on.

Mike: [part of sentence lost to overtalking] –we needed to guarantee them, and this is what is different than Ouya. I mean, that is an Android system, they knew they were going to have games on it because it was just be porting of all of these Android games.  We have to have games on this thing, on our campaign page ,that people can buy, that will be available for them to ship and receive when they first get their product.  We have had to tell these developers, ‘Look we are going to come out of this campaign with at least five- to six thousand people ,’ and that we are going to build on that with continuation of pre-orders afterwards.  So there is a little bit of a market here, you know, and that is not even that many people. If we set our goal at 500,000… Number one, that would not have yielded enough money for us to operate on.  Number two, that would not have been enough people to get our developers even slightly interested in this.

So, you know, I told you or you had read that we have had over 150 developers reach out to us.  One of the biggest questions early on was who was going to make games for this thing.  I tell you what, we have got, that so far, is the easiest thing.  We have got developers sending us games, you can even see it in the Facebook threads, Carl: people–there are developers that just chime in in the middle of a thread like, ‘How do I make games for this?’  It is non-stop, and so we are getting requests from developers all over the world who are very interested in number 1: the preservation of their games; number 2, the idea that there is a new unsaturated market here that even with the smaller installed user base, you know, instead of making these games that they may get 99 cents or 20 cents off of that are a commodity, you know they’ve got an opportunity to bring their game to, you know, many thousands of people, we hope, and they can make a living at this.  It is a new market that’s, um, you know for these home-brewers that are making Atari games or Genesis games or SNES games.  So anyway, Carl, the thing is there is a new market for developers and that is a great thing. You know, developers right now are in an over-saturated market, none of them are making any money, so anything that comes around that looks like it will give them a new market, they are interested in.  If this gets cratered, I mean it is literally lost opportunities for lots of people and we would hate to see that happen.

Steve: On that note, because I am an indie developer, I am not working for anybody right now.  I am not at a company.  I know when I address the iOS market and the Android market there is no money to be made there that you can count on as a business.  You have to have an astronomical, just an amazing, marketing plan to get word out.  I mean, that is dead-on-arrival, that stuff.  If you get any traction, it’s [unintelligible transition] Yeah, it is fun to prototype your game that way.  You can look at it that way, right?  But as far as making money in the downloadable space, it is very rare.  Where do I go as a developer right now?  I put stuff out on the web, but how do you monetize that?  How do you make money on that, and pay rent and food, how do you do that?  Um, there is really not an avenue that is really… You know, you can try to do something on Steam, you can try to do something with Xbox and Sony, um, but it is hard to get any traction on that stuff.  So, you know, this allows a new platform to emerge, new turntable if you want to analogize it, and allow people a lower barrier to entry to make tangible stuff that is collectible if you want.  Stuff that really exists in 3D: there it is, there is the cartridge, I put it in.  I haven’t been able to work on cartridge stuff since, gosh, I think, when was the last cartridge I made, the Sega days? And I really miss it.

John: I think that all of this talk about collectability is really secondary to the real experience that you get with a cartridge, and that is: you are able to take this thing out of the box ,and plug it in, turn it on, and you are having fun immediately.

Steve: That is where I was going with that till John stepped on my sentence.

John: Sorry, Steve, I couldn’t resist but yeah that is the [idea we had].

Steve: Scratch John’s stuff out of there and put my name. (Easter egg for audio listeners here).

Mike: Hey, Carl, the other thing too is to look at: the boards that are out there as a means of comparison, I mean, some of these like the MIST board and the FPGA Arcade.  These are bare boards that are $250 plus, you know, just for a quick gauge on what we are doing, their quantities may be more than ours, I don’t know how many they are selling.

John: Those don’t include a controller or a pack-in game.

Steve: I don’t think the power supply comes with those, does it?  I don’t know.

Mike: Yeah, no shell.  That is expensive stuff, Carl. I mean, to create a system, and you know people are downplaying us for having this Jaguar shell, but if you do the math–we paid very little for that, that’s not really adding any cost to the system.  If we had to go out and pay what we should have paid for that, you know, that would be adding $50 or $60 to the system.  That was one of the stars that aligned to help allow this to product. Without that, I wouldn’t be doing this. That is what has made this all possible.  Then of course, bringing on two really great guys that have experience shipping consumer products. I mean, all of the stars have aligned on this thing.  The developers are there.  We have a great system we can make, if the people will let us make it. And, um, it is all there.  The pieces are all there, really.

John: Now we just have to get the snowball starting to roll down the hill and get that funding.

Carl Williams

It is time gaming journalism takes its rightful place as proper sources and not fanboys giving free advertising. If you wish to support writers like Carl please use the links below. https://www.paypal.me/WCW https://www.patreon.com/CarlWilliams

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