001 Influence Device

The way I see it, what these devs are really asking for when supporting the Retro VGS idea, is a platform where their games will be exclusive cause Steam is probably oversaturated with these sorts of games atm. And I really don't think that is a problem you can solve with a console release. On the other hand, this "higher" barrier-to-entry for developing for older consoles might be a great arbitrary way of controlling overcrowding of games. Yeah, agree totally. To be fair, I guess a lot of homebrew/Indie titles are 1 man shows, so the devs have to be both software developers and artists. So, while I'm not against the idea of middleware in general, I think we can safely rule it out of this particular niche as not making much sense. They have the place they deserve in modern gaming platforms. Your comment reminds me of an old article from Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

Middleware like unity actually makes the platform insignificant. It is the same reason Microsoft went after Netscape or java in the past. They made windows insignificant. No reason to actually get windows if java or Netscape made the windows platform irrelevant as it wouldn't differentiate on anything compared to say linux or BeOS. Retro VGS is basically gonna have the same problem. Cartridges don't differentiate Retro VGS all that much. And retro-only console is like saying First Person Shooter only console. New platforms are already capable of playing them, can't really beat them on price and therefore you can't really beat them on installed base. Instead, you guys can try to enhance gaming on the actual old consoles we grew up with. The stuff people in this community are actually nostalgic of. Shoot for a cross platform 8-bit toolset so homebrew developers can quickly develop games on the actual 8-bit systems. Get these systems online for multiplayer. Work with the community to achieve it. Ask people actually working on stuff like this and see what they need. Make it open so people wont have trust issues. Getting the best out of these old machines is fascinating. That's my opinion anyway.

+100 on comeback. GG. I hadn't seen that thread, but I'll quote something from it: That article explains exactly why a "new retro" console will never (should never) gain mass market appeal. It's almost like making a "new fps only" console. IMHO, since you guys are gonna try again, have realistic goals this time around. Work with everyone in the community and value criticism. I can't stress this enough. Even bad criticism has truths in it you can use to forward your ideas. Whereas flattery helps nowhere.

I see you're using a Sega Genesis case for your prototype... Where do I sign up? :p

You could be right about it starting out targeting collectors only. It only hit my radar when I read about the FPGA angle. Until then it did not interest me at all. I sincerely hope they do succeed. And people get what they want. But think about this: If they could succeed at something like this, why did Sega drop out of hardware? I'm not saying this as a fanboy (I am a Sega one, lol). But if you actually examine the market forces in play here, just targeting new retro games on a cartridge, removing online is something that would appeal to a subset of a subset of users. The smaller the user base, the less cheaper this thing is gonna be. Unless you piggyback on something ready-made, like android or linux. If they do announce something like this. I wish them all the luck. I however, would not be in their target group.

The way I see it, they fell apart because they didn't know their market. Not bashing here, even a technical guy working at Sony could have made the same mistake. It's not a technical guy's job to be bothered with this kind of stuff. If you check out the Sega-16 thread, most people were like "meh" when this was announced. A Jaguar case is sleek and cool and all, but very few people have memories of it. I remember it mostly as an ad in magazines of the time, thinking it was cool as I bought my brand new Sonic 3 cart. Then I forgot all about it... That's not enough to persuade me to buy a software emulator cased in it. Once the FPGA thing was detailed, people quickly got interested, cause it differentiated this thing from a raspberry pi running software emulation. Once you lose the FPGA angle, you're basically pitting it against the androids. You know, the platform that's terrifying everyone, destroying Microsoft's mobile dreams, slowly eating into Sony and Nintendo's handheld console sales and mopping the floor in the cheap platform market. Good luck getting margins there. So with no reason to buy it anymore, there's no way to get the install base you need to basically get a new platform for devs to want to develop for. I don't know anything about anything on what's going on behind scenes, but being cynical I'd say they mistepped and lost Kevin, thinking FPGA part is not important. Then they panicked and hoped that for 2 million they can get a few Kevins on board to make up for the time they would lose reinventing the wheel. Anyway, I think in making a modern retro console, you need to really play on the strengths of the community. Not just shoot for a collector's money grab. Extend existing console capabilities (like online) so people have a reason to pull out their old gaming consoles. Help software guys emulate your extension and devs to hook into these capabilities, preferably in a unified way. So I can play on my MD while the other player is using his SNES port. Help develop cross platform developing tools. -"BUT THEY WON'T BUY MAH SUPER RETRO VGS THIS WAY!". No they all won't. Even after this, it's still not gonna look like a mass market audience. Many wont even be throwing money your way at all, preferring to emulate the whole thing on their PC. But you've just expanded the market for this stuff, making a good name in this community the whole time. Make your console the console devs would want to get, to have all that in one place. Doesn't have to be cheap this way. It can be sold at a premium, if it's basically a system catering at a community of already existing consoles. FPGA part could be a very interesting way of prototyping new SVP/SuperFX chips for homebrew cartridges that would work on original systems etc.

If I'd had to wager a guess, I'd say that was some internal swing / pissing contest thing. It probably also shows he's still in that 90's mentality where "faster" solves most problems. Realistically, I think a Raspberry Pi 2 is more than enough juice for their needs and it's also dirt cheap. I'd like to know more what they've learned about their target audience, than their technical stuff at this point tbh, (I used to have a PM with that 90s UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE mentality. Always wanted the latest and greatest.. forcing us to basically bug test for the provider, lol.)

Team up with Kevtris, create that Super Sega genesis you were originally thinking of. Give it online capabilities. Throw in a SNES core with online capabilities as well. Design cartridges that would extend original consoles, giving them online capabilities and a way to read data from the SD card direct and download Roms from the store. Team up with Piko in distribution and creating an online market for both consoles. Talk with stef (SGDK) and his SNES counterpart in creating a unified SDK to enable quick porting between systems.... Profit!!!

I'm with you. I'm a software guy myself! Last time I did truth tables and copying logic was in uni (Xilinx and Spartan FPGAs IIRC). Nothing on the scale of what Kevin is doing. And my career went the software way! I agree, software emulation is the way to go for the big percentage of retro enthusiasts. Most people really don't care if the Green Hill Zone song is not as bassy as a model 1 MD would play, nor about the difference in model 1 vs model 2 sound and stuff like that. But, there are a lot of people that would pay a premium to get that sort of accuracy, along with native HDMI out etc. And, (admittedly without knowing the specifics of software vs hardware emulation), I'm willing to bet that this sort of accuracy is a bit more straightforward going the FPGA route. Having said that, the way I see it, there's a market for both hardware and software emulators. FPGA route would be the high price premium market (like the analogue NT) and the software route the "mass market" low cost route. The third road would be the original hardware with an online/SD cart adapter. The problem with retro vgs is that from this niche market they jumped to retroland, where they believe that this is somehow mainstream. As someone said before quite correctly: Sony and Microsoft are afraid of the android freight train atm. And these are companies that can afford to sink billions in costs and sit failures out. I just don't see a "new retro" console getting the traction it needs.

I'll just add a bit to this: If we do away with cartridge collecting fetish altogether, getting online capabilities on these old systems would actually be a way of both distributing software easily and getting some new interesting games on these systems. Why not play online multiplayer on a Genesis? Why not use an SD card with an online steam-playstore-like market behind it? Software emulation would be fine if you want something cheap and don't mind waiting for compatibility updates.

It's not a matter of FCC approval at all. It's purely economics. It's something like how apple's market share will always be small compared to android, but at the same time be as profitable (or more) than all android devices put together. For a collector to want this, it has to succeed first. (If cartridge-only is the sole objective, make an android device, remove google store and online capabilities, and sell the android indie games optimized for cartridges. Instant game library, 0 cost for devs to port stuff over etc)

And yet, I think KevTris' angle has a better chance at hitting the shelves than this thing does, purely from an economic prospective. KevTris-style FPGA emulation is near 100% accurate, works with a huge library of old games people already own and love, and has a homebrew community that already caters for it. So a console like the Analogue NT has a really nice niche carved out already. Sure you can argue 500 dollars is way too much for an NES clone. I wouldn't pay for it either. But I wouldn't buy an iPhone, nor do I have a huge NES cartridge collection. If we were talking accurate Sega Megadrive clone, I could be parted with 150 bucks give or take easily. If I had a collection worth 4-5 digits, 500 bucks is pretty cheap. Now my point is, there is money to be made in these niche markets. Console clone makers and hombrew developers alike. And people, whether they buy a clone or just use their old NES can have fun in this niche market. What I find kind of impossible, economically speaking, is for something like the retro vgs to succeed. It's trying to be everything that modern gaming platforms are, without differentiating on anything at all. No way it can compete with android on price. No way it can compete on AAA titles with Sony or Microsoft. And no way it can beat the old consoles on nostalgia factor.And without differentiating on anything, no way it's gonna sell enough pieces for developers to make exclusive titles for it. Targeting the Genesis or the (S)NES, already gives you a huge install base compared to this. It needs to target a niche market for it to gain an install base as I see it.

This. While I personally love the idea of a Super Sega Megadrive and would actually want to be part of it, mass market audience is another beast altogether.

I personally liked one of the original ideas someone involved posted a few pages back: A Super Sega Megadrive. Something like a backwards compatible iteration of that 16-bit console I grew up with and loved. A version with a higher sprite/color count and a way to actually implement specialized hardware support (like an SVP Chip), through vhdl would be fun to develop for as well. Only problem is, we need the injection mold for the original model 1 megadrive. Or else this awesome Idea is doomed to fail.