Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

[Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A]

23 hours ago, Oldfool said:

I was hoping I could hook mine up in the family room. Is it possible to get a version that also works in the family room?

 

Oh wait a minute, I see what he did here. It was an extremely clever way to make me not want to buy the system. I’ll probably cancel my orders. 

Yeah, I know the target audience is local family multiplayer, but I was just alluding to the fact that I'll probably be playing this when friends come over to my house and Ill have it in my room lol.

[Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A]

On 8/14/2020 at 7:56 PM, GrudgeQ said:

Well actually it won't because you always have the 6 (or maybe 7) games that are built in. Also since the estore will be the last thing to close you are basically only talking about sales off craigslist or something after it has left stores for a long time.

 

Even that assumes the machine isn't hacked and people side load stuff (which has happened on every discontinued console so far, so the chances are pretty good).

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the pack-in games lol.  If I remember correctly now that you reminded me, three of the games I'm interested in are included, namely, Astrosmash, Shark Shark, and Skiing, right?  (The others I'm interested in are Cloudy Mountain Crown of Kings, Major League Baseball, and hopefully Tron Deadly Discs.)

[Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A]

54 minutes ago, GrudgeQ said:

 

Intellivision in targeting to launch with about 20 to 30 games (plus the 6 pack ins) on launch and will have a queue of games in development because they always have to be about a year ahead in development. So even if the Amico doesn't sell well, eStore sales are almost likely almost all revenue so it would make no business sense to close that right away. In a 'disaster scenario' you would finish up the games in the queue that were late in development in order to get them in the store. So worst case, you end up with a console that maybe has a game library of maybe 40 games. Great? No, but that isn't a terrible library if the games are good and they have replay value. Also unlike Stadia, you are not depending on revenue to keep the console or any major feature of the console running except the store (which again, could be run a relative dime and only generates profit as long as you are getting sales). Once the games are on your Amico you don't even need Internet access so they basically are playable until your Amico dies.

 

Getting even further into the weeds, Intellivision business model is structured way differently than most consoles. First they make money on each console sold. They don't do 'loss leader' pricing to sell the console at cost and only make it up on software sales. Not only does Intellivision have much better margins, they offer dramatically better retailer margins too (like $20 or $30 instead of $5). That means retailers get more money per inch of shelf space for the Amico. That is why people like Walmart, Best Buy & Game Stop (plus probably a few other majors 'to be announced soon') want to carry the product. Also Intellivision has flipped the eStore sales revenue model. On the downside Intellivision almost always pays to have the games made BUT what they pay to have those games made is in the low $100,000 range typically. In the gaming business world that is probably what Bethesda spends on the staff coffee machine refills for the development of Fallout 4. However the upside to Intellivision paying for game development is that they take the vast majority of eStore revenue. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo take about 30% from their stores. Intellivision will be taking 70%+ in their store. They turned 30/70 into better than 70/30. So lets say Intellivision only sells 100,000 units and they don't make their investment back. However when they release "Super Space Attack 2" for $8 on the store, it sell say 40,000 copies. It cost $100,000 to develop, sold 40,000 units at $8, Intellivision took 70% of that (actually on an unlicensed game it would be closer to 90+%) and they generate $224,000. That is more than enough to keep the eStore running and maybe even plunk $100,000 of that into "Super Space Attack 3" and continue to produce new games.

 

All of that 'margin talk' is why Intellivision only need to sell 180,000 units to break even and return the investor's investment. Quite frankly that is yet again a 'chump change' number in the video game market especially with major retail distribution. That is where a lot of people have no idea of the scale of just doing that. Just think if you put 10 Amicos in each Walmart Super Center, Best Buy & Game Stop for Christmas of 2021, that is over 100,000 units in the US alone. To even sell in Walmart you have to be able to meet their financial requirements and need a huge line of credit to finance the production & distribution. Just saying you are going to be on a Walmart shelf says a lot about your company if you think about the logistics behind getting a product made and into those stores.

I meant it'll be a brick for people who buy it after it ends support if it fails.  Because it'll only work if you already downloaded your games.

[Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A]

52 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

In his new video about the Sega Saturn in Japan, Sega Lord X made a very interesting reflection about how video game fans are obsessed with sales figures compared to movie fans or music fans. This can be applied to the Amico: as we said a few pages ago, the console will still offer something new and fresh even if it doesn't sell more than 1M units.

Yeah, but it probably means that Intellivision will end up making less money than they spent, leading to layoffs, leading to the console's store going down, leading to the console becoming a brick.

 

That doesn't mean it won't necessarily have any good games.  The people who buy this when it comes out might have some fun playing some of the games with friends in their bedrooms.  I wanna buy one myself, but I don't really think it'll be a huge success honestly.  I'd be glad to be proven wrong, though.

[Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A]

Hey, Tommy.  Has the upcoming release of Tron Ares affected positively or negatively with Disney granting you the license for Tron Deadly Discs?  Do you think that there's a good chance we'll be able to play as Ares in the remake in order to tie in with the movie?