How Popular are CV Homebrews?

[Bartsfam]

Maybe it is none of my business..but I was curious as to how many each CV homebrew sells? Ten's? Hundred's? Thousands?

 

I am asking, (because I am nosy ) and to try and gauge how popular the Colecovision actually is around the world.

 

I know Eduardo is busy trying to create the CV2, but is there enough interest in the world for a major corporation to make a

"Colecovision Flashback?" Didn't the Atari Flashback sell in the hundreds of thousands?

 

Again, I am just interested in the number of people interested in the CV.

 

Or is it just 50 of us posting questions to each other?

[Pixelboy]

Maybe it is none of my business..but I was curious as to how many each CV homebrew sells? Ten's? Hundred's? Thousands?

You're right, it's none of your business.

 

Seriously, a homebrewer is always pretty much assured to sell at least 50 copies of whatever game he releases in cartridge format. If it's a good game, he can go up to 75 copies. Above that, well, it has to be a pretty darn good game.

 

I am asking, (because I am nosy ) and to try and gauge how popular the Colecovision actually is around the world.

 

I know Eduardo is busy trying to create the CV2, but is there enough interest in the world for a major corporation to make a "Colecovision Flashback?" Didn't the Atari Flashback sell in the hundreds of thousands?

Problem is, most of the best CV games are arcade conversions, and for a company to release a "CV Flashback", they would have to (re)negotiate the rights to each and every one of those arcade games with the original owners (Sega, etc.) or whoever owns the rights to those titles today (who owns Venture or Mr Do, for example?).

 

Again, I am just interested in the number of people interested in the CV.

 

Or is it just 50 of us posting questions to each other?

I'd say AtariAge has a subset of the total number of ColecoVision fans. There are many more in the world who do not frequent these forums.

[+5-11under]

Most ColecoVision homebrews sell between 50 and 100 copies. A handful of key ones have certainly sold more than that.

[Bartsfam]

Thanks for the info. I thought that since most of then were so old, and you don't know who owns them, they could be in the public domain and anyone could release them.

 

Aren't there any original (good) ones that Coleco designed from scratch?

[newcoleco]

During the period 2000-2005, I was thinking that 30 cartridges was enough for some games and I was pretty much right... except that now people who years later want these games can't have them.

 

So, yeah, 50 cartridges per game is a safe bet for most homebrew games, but still may be too many for some games, always a wild guess to presume how many labels, boxes or whatever you have to print and made.

[Pixelboy]

Aren't there any original (good) ones that Coleco designed from scratch?

Smurfs Rescue in Gargamel's Castle comes to mind, but the CV doesn't have a lot of exclusives, and most of them (like Destructor) aren't necessarily in the "good" category, although that's always subject to debate. Then there are those that aren't exactly exclusives, but were only released on one other console or computer (like War Games, which was also released on the C64).

 

But the problem with the examples above is that they are based on trademarked properties (Smurfs and War Games) and there would be licensing issues to resolve.

 

The bottom line is that the whole idea of a "CV Flashback" is prohibitively expensive.

[+5-11under]

Thanks for the info. I thought that since most of then were so old, and you don't know who owns them, they could be in the public domain and anyone could release them.

 

Aren't there any original (good) ones that Coleco designed from scratch?

A fair number of the homebrew ROMs are available for download, but most of them are definitely not public domain!

 

edit: I assumed you were speaking of homebrews... probably not, it seem... .

Edited April 14, 2011 by 5-11under

[Bartsfam]

I did not mean homebrews, I meant the corporation backed releases from the 1980's.

 

I mean does Sunrise even exist anymore? Or, does Xonox exist? Is someone watching out for their copyrights?

 

Not that I ever would, I just wondered if they ever enter the public domain, and then someone could utilize them somehow.

 

I know my local cable channel shows public domain movies quite a bit, I just wondered what the criteria was for games.

 

Plus my OP was trying to get hard numbers on the amount of CV enthusiasts.

[PkK]

Maybe it is none of my business..but I was curious as to how many each CV homebrew sells? Ten's? Hundred's? Thousands?

 

For the 5 games I released so far, sales were in the 58 to 92 range.

 

Philipp

[kingofcrusher]

Maybe it is none of my business..but I was curious as to how many each CV homebrew sells? Ten's? Hundred's? Thousands?

 

For the 5 games I released so far, sales were in the 58 to 92 range.

 

Philipp

 

I was curious if any of the publishers have tried using ebay to increase sales? It always seems like you see games start cropping up on ebay relatively shortly after they come out (Pier Solar for example) and sell for way more than the original price. It seems like it might be worthwhile to print up an extra batch of copies and open an Ebay store to sell them through, but I could be wrong (obviously small publishers have probably tried this already). Probably for the amount of profit they make it just isn't worth the time to deal with ebay fees, retarded ebay users, selling one at a time, etc.

[Tursi]

Thanks for the info. I thought that since most of then were so old, and you don't know who owns them, they could be in the public domain and anyone could release them.

 

All the ColecoVision games with a copyright date of 1931 and earlier are now public domain, later than that and you have to wait unless the owner explicitly said otherwise. To use the "nobody knows who owns it" argument you have to be able to prove a reasonable search was made.