lingyi

Hey! What's will all the posts without any mention of tacos! TACOS! TACOS! TACOS! ? I had Jack in the Box mini tacos today and I was pleasantly surprised that the were actually pretty good. They came with some kind of creamy dipping sauce, but were pretty tasty all by themselves. Helped that they were freshly made and steaming hot. Next time I'm buying some to bring home and use them instead of tortilla chips for my nachos!

Next they'll be saying "Hey! We've decided not to include a CPU, RAM or storage so YOU can decide what you run your sandbox mode on! And we're introducing the Platinum Edition for $500 without a motherboard so you can REALLY get the full sandbox experience!" "Oh...BTW, what do you think of the case?"

There's an irony in that the bigger the VCS bombs, the greater chance of secondary market prices going up, though likely never above the $300 [$250?, I forget] entry price. The only way I can foresee a >$300 price tag is if the full ~10,000 units don't ship. BTW, has it been confirmed that there were 10,000 preordered though the Indiegogo campaign, factoring in how much of that $3mil is joysticks, gamepads and possible bogus boosting by Nutari?

Be sure to never open that joystick as it's a sure collector's item! Tiny number of joysticks sold - huge number that don't work = 00000X% working joysticks! Sure, there's no way of knowing whether yours is working or not, but that just makes it more collectible! ? Add a pre-launch and launch VCS, apply the same formula and you've got a collectible trifecta!!! ?

Ahhh...memories. Earlier this year I ate tacos from the Taco Bell on Beretania St. and thought I was going to die. Three days alternately sleeping and pooping. When I went back to work I told my boss I was sick because of Taco Bell and she said "The one on Beretania?". We both just laughed. This was at least the second time I've gotten violently ill from Taco Bell, but I still have a craving for it, though I haven't given in yet.

Tacos or at least what Taco Bell and Del Taco [Taco Del Mar] serves are popular in Hawaii. Like pizza and hamburgers, their popularity spans all ethnicities. My ex-brother-in-law was the manager of one of the first Taco Bell's in Hawaii in the early '70's. He brought samples over to our house and my Dad said the franchise would never fly. ? Tako (octopus) probably has a larger following among the Asian community and locals.

Between the posts on the Indiegogo page complaining about the shells being shiny plastic and not matte, is this gem:

Good call on the 5th person in the pic. We know it can't be Rob Wyatt since he doesn't keep his arms in front. Not butt to keep them warm! ? Definitely looks like a man because of the size of the arm, but he/she seems to have baby fingers! Also the person isn't wearing gloves unlike the others in that line. Also, it's definitely not an assembly line, seems to be a test station with the monitors, keyboards and mice. What's funny is that five people are standing shoulder to to shoulder as if someone (hmmm...who could that be?) wanted to make a big production of having one, possibly two units.

They're not just shells. They have six units with filling! Ummm...shells...filling...drool...tacooooossssss! This pic really gets me. The woman is touching an upside down unit and the other two guys are holding a package that's too thin to be a unit. And next to the keyboards are three, what appears to be monitors and there's someone on the other side of the woman holding something that's not a VCS. ??????? .

TLDR; We're not shipping in December 2019! Edit: "No matter what, we are talking weeks here, not months,..." Translation: We can push the first batch to Feb 27, 2020 and claim it's weeks, not months! "When we adjusted our schedule in March 2019, we were aiming for year-end 2019 delivery goal for the Indiegogo backers. Today, given the work still to be done, including the final stages of our certification and testing cycles, we now realize we will need a few more weeks than anticipated. Our teams, factories, and supplier partners are all working incredibly hard to make it happen; but as we all know, the devil is in the details, and we can win or lose a few days during each remaining step and will update our Indiegogo backers as soon as we have a final date. No matter what, we are talking weeks here, not months, and the Indiegogo backers remain our top priority. Backers will definitely receive their Atari VCS systems before the general public. We will also try to come up with some kind of bonus to reward our backers for their patience."

I just realized who's behind the Atari posts...Baghdad Bob!

Maybe it's something to do with not paying Wyatt. He may hold the rights to something, Atari OS?

I don't mean to keep beating on you, but while it's good that you've thought of the points, maybe even those in my last post, but have you done more than thought about them? Do you have marketing and/or retail knowledge, your own or someone else's to confirm/refute/reorganize your thoughts? GameStop has entire thinktanks trying to figure out how to save their stores, how are your 'thoughts' different and better than those who studied and learned through years of experience and knowledge? Your ideas about retro gaming, either with your ROMs or 'rentals' is what is of particular concern. You seem to have some of the legal particulars covered, but do you have reviewed business plan for it? If I were a lender or investor and you told me that you planned to use 13.5% of store space for something with no proven record or plan for financial return, I'd walk away. *SIGH* I'm getting myself worked up over something I have no vested interest in. I wish you the best of luck and success!

Since you say you have a collection, start with what you have and expand with demand. You probably already saw this, but GameStop was/is planning to remodel their stores with exactly what you're planning to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoSXxGiNosk Pay particular attention to Ian's comments about the gaming being a loss leader and the only way to make money is for the customers to buy something, including snacks. Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAUp-BR6nsY and read this article https://www.polygon.com/2017/7/17/15974096/what-it-costs-to-run-an-independent-video-game-store about why now and the foreseeable is the absolute worst time to open a video game store. If GameStop and Ian's store can't afford to pay 50% of retail vaiue for trade-in games, how do you expect to profit at that level? Looking at your website and reading what you've posted, do you understand marketing and retail? Your website is terrible! There's a row of pic placeholders with "We don't any products to show right now", and there's a section filled with irrelevant images and the link to the video leads to a paid advertisement for the service. Are you related to Fred Chenais and using TinGiant for your web design? Oh, it's not ready for primetime? Then don't make it live for people to stumble upon. First impressions count! For retail, your planned store hours are terrible! Opening at 2:30pm weekdays and 12PM weekends? Hmmm...I have a day off and I want to want until 2:30pm to buy my new game and start playing! Also, 1200sf is a decent size for a store, half the size of the average for a small 7-11 store. And it guaranteed that every square inch of the floor is laid out for maximum profit. You figure you can have nine consoles set up. Estimating a 3'x6' area for the setup (TV, console, chair) and you're looking at 18sf x 9 = 162sf (actually more when you factor in cubic space includes the wall) of valuable sales space, ~13.5% of your store footage! Overall, this sounds like "I wanna" and not well thought out at all!

IMHO, the RIGHT way to do this would be to buy a bunch of common games for $.50 or a $1 and download the ROMs. Buy a few popular rarer carts for sizzle. Start a Wish List for customers to gather info on what they want next. This is how they did it Mom and Pop video rental stores. You don't need or necessarily want ALL the games, especially as some really rare and expensive games are really bad and might actually turn off customers to the system or concept. "Oh look, they have Air Raid! I've never played a VCS game before. This is going to be great! *Plays game* Oh, that's it?" There's also the Paradox of Choice, too many choices can actually make customers less happy. In 120 minutes I can quickplay 50-60 VCS games without any appreciation or understanding of them. Or I can spend 120 minutes playing Laserblast! or Enduro and look forward to my next session.