Homebrew Marketplace for Harmony Cart?

[Andromeda Stardust]

If there were thousands of game ROMs available, I could see an all-you-can-eat type program working. This business model practically requires DRM, which would need to be supported by the emulators and Harmony carts. Additionally, you'll need a syncing mechanism and a RTC embedded so that the Harmony knows when the license expires.

 

Otherwise someone will pay a one-time fee, download everything, and keep the ROMs forever...

[Dan Iacovelli]

another idea, offer demo versions for free d/l like I did with laserman '88 or what was done for stay frosty 2, that only includes a limited number of levels and if a person

wants the full rom version offer it for 15 or 20 dollars (based on rom size the higher the rom the more the charge a game like zippy would be about 25.00)

[akator]

Of course it depends on the game... but I think $5 for a ROM and PDF instructions is the sweet spot. At that price it's an impulse purchase. Over $5 and I have to think about it. Over $10 and the likelihood of me buying it drops to about 20%.

[MAC-42]

Of course it depends on the game... but I think $5 for a ROM and PDF instructions is the sweet spot. At that price it's an impulse purchase. Over $5 and I have to think about it. Over $10 and the likelihood of me buying it drops to about 20%.

 

That may well be the case, but there are costs that we on the outside of the fishbowl are not accounting for--that, frankly, I didn't even think of--that Al laid out above. Of course, the higher the price, the fewer people will be willing to pony up. But if it's not worth it for Al to do it, then we don't get this rather nice convenience at all. And we're all back to square one.

 

If the ROM image prices are going to be lower than the cart prices, then there's another way to look at this. In a way, if you have a Harmony cart, you could be said to be "bringing your own cart" to the party anyway; you could look at that situation as though you're getting a discount of sorts for just buying the ROM image. Or, you could spend more money and buy the full cart and manual. As a potential buyer who would appreciate the convenience of ROM-only purchases, I don't see a disadvantage here. I can understand resistance to higher price points, of course. I'm looking forward to the option, though.

[akator]

To clarify, I am in no way "pushing back" or "resisting" prices. It is up to the content creators and vendors to decide prices. I have no say in that, nor should I.

 

I was pointing out my own purchasing trends for digital distribution. My behavior is pretty much the same on Steam, Android, iOS, Amazon/Kindle, music, or anything else. Like every other idiot consumer in the 21st century, I am more likely to buy 10 games at $5 each to spend $50 total than to buy one game at $50

[Wickeycolumbus]

In my opinion, the more you sell the ROM for the more likely leaking is to be an issue. Not to mention lack of interest from potential buyers. If it is a reasonable price, hopefully people will respect the author and see it as a donation even though the can get the ROM free elsewhere.

 

I see small time musicians and bands sell their album downloads on websites like bandcamp for "name your price". Sometimes they give a suggested price but you can give any number higher or lower than this price. I wonder how something like that would work for homebrews.

[Broonale]

This topic made me post here for the first timesince 2011!

 

I absolutly love the idea of $5 digital downloads.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy a game for $5 if I knew that I could get a $5 credit towords buying the physical copy.

 

DRM? I don't think it's practical on the 2600.

This would have to be a GOG style honor system.

 

You could try a sale promotion for titles to see if less than $5 ea would bring in more revinue.

I think bundles would work better, though. ie. 5/$20.

 

I'm excited about this!

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Like Al has stated above, the ROM will not be sold for $5. Because that's just the bare royalties, no other costs covered.

 

And I cannot see any reason,why the royalties should be any lower for digital downloads than for physical carts. All the work from the homebrewer will be identical in both cases.

[iesposta]

I would like an option to purchase ROMs. Even Byte Knight and I have discussed and asked for opinions on buying a ROM instead of a cart for DK Arcade 2600, but with not many replies or interest.

 

I think "Shameware" is a good alternative to DRM, and you can have it so hex editing breaks the execution. The aforementioned DK and D2K on Intellivision will not run if hex edited the name or cart number displayed.

100% secure? No. But I think a personalized ROM that breaks if edited is enough deterrent to widespread piracy. Remember we are talking Cart Runs of what 300 if it is a blockbuster game? So how many ROMs would sell for less-than-blockbuster games? So a cracked released ROM is a very crappy thing to do to the programmers and the hobby itself that we love.

 

I also want to say how different the mind-set is for each classic system. Intellivision and ColecoVision and Vectrex collectors have no problem with $50-$80 games and Vextrex Hardware in the $100's of dollars range. Have you seen Intellivision (WIP) Super Pixel Bros.? It is an 8 by 8 colored squares game. And the interest in it is high. Makes Princess Rescue HiDef in comparison!

[carlsson]

Those who think $10 is too much for a downloadable file with instructions, makes me wonder how they could afford $60 + shipping for the Harmony or even $85 for the Harmony Encore cartridge to begin with.

[Dan Iacovelli]

thats the reason why I think it should be added as a new teir for the AA subscription service prob at the price of 15 or 20 extra more to cover other fees

and offer limited amount of d/ls per month. makes more sence to me then do a single digital d/l and it also avoids getiing hit by copyrights,because your paying for the service not the rom

the year and 2 year subscribitions already let you know about homebrews that come out before they are announced,why not add digital download for that along with option to d/l others.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Dan Iacovelli

[RevEng]

Screw DRM.

 

I don't want my game disappearing from someone's collection years later when their DRM flash cart breaks, nor do I want them to jump through hoops to transfer the game anywhere. I recognize the reasons that make DRM pervasive in modern software, but it's a compromise I don't have to make in my hobby.

 

I am not opposed to a digital revenue stream, though. The dream solution would be to have AA be the "google play" or "app store" for retro homebrews of all platforms. The key here is the game curation needs to be good, with searching and suggestions based on various criteria, like new arrivals, most popular, demakes, 2 player, ...

 

At the point of download, provide an option for reviewing, rating, tipping/paying. (developer's preference) The dev names the price, and the house takes a percentage. If you really want to get fancy, allow consumer endpoints like Stella and Harmony to easily tie in (i.e. in-app review, tipping, etc.) and they get a cut of the action for that. (this could open up new audiences on portable platforms, though they would probably expect race-to-the-bottom pricing)

 

It is a lot of work to suggest, but AA already is a retrogaming hub, so it has the best chance of making this kind of solution profitable.

 

In case I didn't mention it, screw DRM.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Don't worry, Al completely opposes to DRM too.

[RevEng]

Glad to hear it, though I expected no less.

[Trebor]

My (less than) 2 cents...

 

First, glad to read that DRM is completely opposed. That would be a horror-nightmare to ever see in this community.

 

While the generosity and provision by many developers to allow full ROMs to their games freely is wonderful of them, especially evident on some of the Atari systems, other platforms may have a more balanced approach.

 

We may have become so accustomed to free full game downloads, that providing even a tiny monetary value towards it seems reasonable. Putting it bluntly, we may have been spoiled in this regard.

 

A few bucks is a good -rental- price for a game in the 1980's-90's.

 

Let's show some better support to the talented developers and the efforts behind their works in this community respecting -owning- a full game in the year 2015.

[BrianC]

Carl Mueller, Jr. sells his games as ROMs!

The Intellivision masterpieces DK Arcade and D2K sell for $10 ON SALE!

The ROMs are $20 not on sale, and only a few have Intellivision cartridges that play ROMs, so most sales are for emulator use and for the future two flash carts.

(As far as I know there is no place to download those ROMs for free.) They are encoded with and show the buyer's name which adds prestige and discourages sharing. "Shameware." You share it and it will be known whose ROM it was, and that person will not be sold future works in ROM format.

 

I understand the reasons behind it, but I find it a bit off putting that unofficial ports of other companies' games are often the ones with the ROM being sold for 20 dollars with the most DRM/protection.

 

I also want to say how different the mind-set is for each classic system. Intellivision and ColecoVision and Vectrex collectors have no problem with $50-$80 games and Vextrex Hardware in the $100's of dollars range. Have you seen Intellivision (WIP) Super Pixel Bros.? It is an 8 by 8 colored squares game. And the interest in it is high. Makes Princess Rescue HiDef in comparison!

 

A lot of those games are only sold CIB when the 2600/7800 games are sold with just the cart and manual. Not to mention those Atari games are often in the 40-80 range when sold CIB.

Edited January 5, 2015 by BrianC

[iesposta]

 

I understand the reasons behind it, but I find it a bit off putting that unofficial ports of other companies' games are often the ones being sold for 20 dollars with the most DRM/protection.

Do you think having your name and cart number encoded in the credits screen is DRM, because I really don't.

Sure it is a form of management of the digital content, but it's far from "Evil DRM" that stops working if you change hardware, locked to only one SD card and/or flash cart.

It is more like one step up from the Honor System. You ARE buying the ROM for your own use on any system you own or visit, and you are not to share it.

Having your name and cart number discourages sharing, especially if it breaks if you attempt to change or remove your name.

[BrianC]

Don't get me wrong, I feel it's different from the DRM that prevents games from working, but the measures seem a bit on the extreme side. Then again, I do agree it's less extreme than DRM that prevents the game from working and it does make the person who pirated the game known.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Do you think having your name and cart number encoded in the credits screen is DRM, because I really don't.

Sure it is a form of management of the digital content, but it's far from "Evil DRM" that stops working if you change hardware, locked to only one SD card and/or flash cart.

It is more like one step up from the Honor System. You ARE buying the ROM for your own use on any system you own or visit, and you are not to share it.

Having your name and cart number discourages sharing, especially if it breaks if you attempt to change or remove your name.

Another thing to bear in mind, however, is there has to be room left in the ROM for the user data, as well as the checksum routine. Also will the username be encoded in plain ASCII text or will it be more cryptic? I know from experience NES games generally store text as #00-09 for numerics and #0A-23 for an all-caps alphabet. So a ROM designed to print the username on the title screen won't be readable as ASCII and visa-versa. And it's notoriously difficult to display text on an Atari ROM so the embedded user profile may be viewable only with a hex editor.

 

Either way I think it's a fine way to discourage sharing without employing encryption. Regardless, I would like to believe that the majority of users here on AtariAge would be keen to pay for a download the even if it's available on one of the ROM sharing sites. Also I believe the pool of users emulating classic game systems is much higher than the pool of users buying cart-based homebrew.

 

Digital distribution would be a means to reach out to gamers who don't have access to real hardware to play on but enjoy retro titles.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Having your name and cart number discourages sharing, especially if it breaks if you attempt to change or remove your name.

I like that idea.

 

However removing data which makes a ROM unique is dead easy, even if the cart contains code which tries to prevent that.

[neotokeo2001]

I like that idea.

 

However removing data which makes a ROM unique is dead easy, even if the cart contains code which tries to prevent that.

 

Very easy.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Very easy.

Well the checksum is prolly just an 8-bit value that can easily be guessed by summing up all the bytes of data in a given region.

 

It's not like a fancy 32-bit or 128-bit hash that completely scrambles every time you change a single bit. Add "X" to one byte, and subtract "X" from another byte, and the checksum will still pass most likely.

 

Worse, you subtract or add one to the serial number and point the blame for leaking the ROM on the person who downloaded the game immediately before or after you.

 

Or change the serial from say #0025 (you were the 37th person in decimal to download it) to #FFFF and the ROM is cracked and untracable.

 

I should probably shut up now...

Edited January 7, 2015 by stardust4ever

[CPUWIZ]

It does simply not matter what you put into code, the amount of instructions to look through is piss-ant, compared to 50GB dual layer BluRay titles. It takes no time to figure out what each bit of code does, there is not much to look at.

 

A hardware handshake maybe a solution, but it's just overkill. Although I could prevent slow down people from copying VersaBoard titles, if the author wished to do so.

[Inky]

IMHO,the only way to charge for a homebrew rom is to provide the end user with something tangible that can't be easily redistributed electronically.For example, you purchase the rom for "Zed'sBag O Fun"..Why not send that person a say commemorative patch with the rom's name on it. Kinda like the activision patch. I was originally thinking an instruction sheet or backstory, but that stuff can be scanned . A patch, coin or some other trinket, sure, but the effort may not be worth it. Plus,since the purchaser is including a real physical object, you could charge a little more for production of said trinket.

Or perhaps extra content on the AA website. Access to special forums, or some such for a set period of time. That cannot be duplicated. Say for every $5 rom purchased, a week to "Zed's Forum O Fun" on AA.

To tackle this issue, the downloaded rom needs to have some sort of tangible value-add.

[Albert]

To tackle this issue, the downloaded rom needs to have some sort of tangible value-add.

 

Might as well charge full price for a cart, as once you have to ship something to someone, you are effectively selling a physical item and that negates any cost advantages of not having to make and ship a physical cart, manual, and/or box. Having patches, coins, or other items made is expensive (especially in relatively low quantities), as is the time and expense of shipping items to people. Especially internationally. Even domestically, if you ship a patch or some other trinket to someone, you're looking at a minimum of several dollars including the cost of the item and shipping costs to do so. There goes a good percentage of whatever you're charging for the ROM image.

 

I don't think I've ever received any sort of tangible item for any movies, music, books or games I've rented or purchased online. And those items are typically sold at nearly the full price of what the physical media would cost (which is why I'm not a huge fan of digital downloads at the moment).

 

..Al