Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[StopDrop&Retro]

Dave Nunez of Rabbit Engineering (previously on AA: 3D-printed mini-consoles and Building a Rabbit 2600 & NES Clone Console) does a post-mortem on the Chameleon from a more technical standpoint. He's pretty forgiving of Kennedy--essentially suggesting the SNES2 and DVR card were either rookie mistakes or panicking--but that's only a brief point. Also a nice mention of Kevtris being treated like a vendor when he should have been the technical go-to guy to alleviate concerns:

 

 

Finally watched this and it is DAMN good. It's required viewing for anyone interested in where things went wrong and it could be very helpful to people thinking of taking a project to Kickstarter.

 

The only criticism I have of it is that his analysis was too much of a sobering take on what happened and that might be giving Mike and his team more credit than they ever deserved. I know he wanted his approach to be from an engineering standpoint but it comes at the expense of ignoring key events that had a massive effect on how things went wrong. I agree with him that planning and management mistakes made it almost impossible to get anything done but to me those are incidental compared to the final revelations of willful deception that killed the project.

 

But again, that's only a light criticism, his video is still extremely well thought out. While I wish he could have spent more time on the disastrous parts, I understand he can't help but work with the info he has and when the whole team has disappeared there's not a lot to analyze there.

[Schizophretard]

I assume you're joking or speaking rhetorically, but just in case (we are a literal bunch here), my answer would be ... of course not.

I'm asking literally. I didn't consider OUYA's pitch video one that included showing off a working prototype and if Mike copied the entire video then I wouldn't consider it one that included showing off a working prototype either.

 

Why? Because when Ouya was pitched, Android with a controller was already a decently established thing,

The OUYA's proprietary controller wasn't already an established thing. It was a brand new invention and in the pitch video Julie claimed,"The most important part of this to us is the controller." The idea of the controller was pitched but no working prototype was presented. Not even a non-working controller was presented.

 

as were alternative app stores.

And the app store shown wasn't the one that ended up on the OUYA. Even if the one shown was running on it but for some reason they decided to change their minds later to go with another there is no evidence within the video that it is running on a working prototype.

 

Ouya showed enough for their deliverable to be believable,

I agree. It was believable but that isn't what I'm debating here. What I'm gathering from your response is that it was believable to such an extent that showing a working prototype wasn't necessary and I would agree. However, I wouldn't agree to any claim that a working prototype was shown in the pitch video because it lacks any evidence of that. There is no OUYA prototype shown to be connected to a TV with that pitched app store coming out of it and it being controlled with an OUYA prototype controller to launch a functioning game. Other than a mock up, there wasn't even an OUYA present. No OUYA. No controller. No store. It was an OUYAless video.

 

and it shipped on time with a good amount of transparency all throughout the process.

Everything that happened after the fact is irrelevant to rather or not the pitch video showed a working prototype.

 

We knew the chipset, clock speed, RAM and storage size, and physical ports right from the start. I had a 2012 Nexus 7 with very similar specs and knew exactly what to expect. I knew that Android games would run on this Android device.

Did we know if the chipset, clock speed, RAM, storage size, physical ports, etc. were already incorporated into a working prototype and was the working prototype in question shown to be working in the pitch video? Were Shadowgun, Canabalt, Minecraft, and Twitch running on an OUYA prototype or a 2012 Nexus 7? If prototype then why do they never show any of them launching from the pitched store? That looked intentionally left out. Especially when showing Canabalt. It shows it in the pitched store but it shows no launching of the game from it and then skips to a new clip of the game running with no signs of launching from the store of a working prototype. The store just looked like some computerized demo that they tried to make it appear the games they were showing were launching from it by how they edited it.

 

As for "Chameleon," Mike never nailed down the specifications to any level of detail, and couldn't give a straight answer to a simple question, at least not without his crew falling over themselves with contradictions. They never explained how the Intellivision or Colecovision games would run (emulation? Virtualization?) nor did they show the promised USB-style controllers. SNES games ran great on their demo box because it was a SNES. Q. E. D.

No disagreement there but I don't see what that has to do with rather or not OUYA's pitch video showed a working prototype. OUYA didn't show a prototype of their promised controller either and the games they shown could have also ran great in the video from something other than an OUYA prototype like maybe a 2012 Nexus 7 or something else.

 

The differences between the two campaigns seem pretty stark to me. I don't understand the hate-on for Ouya and don't think it's remotely comparable.

I agree there are differences and I'm not expressing any hate for the OUYA. I own the launch one, I own the 16GB white one, I own an 8GB black one, and I own another 8GB black one autographed by LeVar Burton. I own many controllers and never used a third party controller on an OUYA because I love the controller. I own an OUYA T-shirt. I bought a few hundred dollars worth of games and asked for OUYA game credits as my only gifts for birthdays and holidays from the time they were on store shelves until they were taken off. I was a member of the closed USB support beta and would do extreme testing by downloading every single game in the store to see how it handled them. I helped some devs with games. Especially with Monster RPG. Some of what you see in the store were ideas I suggested. Where did the idea of Newly Updated come from? Whose idea was it to extend the main Treading now and the Trending Nows within the genres to 100 instead of about 20? This guy. Who has been a moderator of OUYAForum since 2013 that has spent a lot of my time banning haters who were just there to troll and cause flame wars. This guy again. Clearly I am an OUYA fan.

 

Anyway, they are at least comparable in the sense that neither of them have started a crowd funded campaign with showing off a working prototype but I would agree that there are many differences. However, I do have to chuckle a little bit about the irony of some of their similarities that aren't public knowledge though and those similarities will remain in that state so don't ask.

 

But you're assuming that off the shelf dev board + off the shelf controller + choppy editing + early OS = no prototype and that's not how I read the OUYA pitch at all. It was perfectly fine for them to show their software running on a dev board and call it a prototype because they're not reinventing the wheel.

Where in the video did they show their software running on a dev board?

 

Every Android box has been unashamed in admitting that you're getting cell phone technology plugged into your TV.

Agreed.

 

Do you see the difference? OUYA's pitch was more about their software than hardware, they were selling you the idea of a perfect app store for gaming. OUYA is not doing anything special so they don't get criticized for running their software on an off the shelf dev board. Mike's pitch is based on miracle hardware so when he can't show any of that he has nothing. He can't even meet OUYA's burden of proof, so he can't be "light years ahead."

 

Sure, I see a difference. OUYA was pitching a proof of concept that didn't really need much of a working prototype and the campaign was before the prototype requirement anyway. All I'm debating is your claim,"(and they had shown a working prototype in the pitch video anyways)." because I believe that to be false. I agree that if Mike couldn't show any of that he has nothing but under the old no prototype required Kickstarter rules he wouldn't have been required to show anything. He could have made a video just like OUYA's while saying in it,"We have a prototype and it works." without a prototype being shown and he would have been allowed to continue the campaign. Here is the OUYA video again:

 

 

Look what is on screen when she says,"We have a prototype and it works." All it shows is a third party controller connecting somewhere behind the TV with an OUYA storefront we have never seen outside of Kickstarter with no game launching. Here is the demo video they used for it in its entirety:

 

 

That is their "prototype" demo. How much more is that showing a working prototype than Mike holding an SNES controller and showing an SNES game on screen? There is no OUYA or OUYA controller in sight or even OUYA's real storefront.

 

The original storefront looked nothing like that and after many updates it wasn't until the last one near the end of the OUYA's life that they were able to add flashy animation effects even close to what that storefront shows.

 

That makes that storefront very suspicious to me because why would they be able to make a storefront that looks that good for their Kickstarter but then once the dev kits started getting in people's hands they get a very bare bones storefront that took a few years to even come close to what they shown in the pitch video? Why start over from scratch and seem to struggle with it over years when you already have a pretty damn good looking storefront in your pitch video? Just look at how those game tiles flip, change to color when highlighted, and how after making a selection everything flashes with a zooming past you like effect and then the new page pulling in smoothly item by item. That is some awesome looking shit and there is more in the pitch video.

 

At one point it shows the OUYA splash screen, it scrolls up out of sight, the storefront page scrolls down, and then the storefront content scrolls back up to fill up the store. That was a very quick, smooth, and awesome animation effect that I haven't seen anything like on the OUYA before. The OUYA is full of spinning loading screens all over the place to load up whatever you click and then watching game tiles load up one by one. But somehow they basically load up three scrolling pages with everything filled in within seconds? How did they have such quick flashy animations that loaded everything instantly while my OUYA today struggles to load less flashy animation in comparison? Now compare that to their very last update 2 years later. Watch the part with the new animation effects. They are cool but nothing like the animation effects from the pitch video. Not even close.:

 

 

So, how did they go from an awesome storefront in their pitch video with very awesome animation effects that ran very smoothly to starting over and eventually never updating to the same level of awesomeness? My guess, the storefront in the pitch video wasn't running on an OUYA prototype.

 

It's also worth noting that Mike set a higher burden of proof for himself.

I agree. He would require a working prototype in a campaign while OUYA wouldn't and didn't.

[PlaysWithWolves]

 

Finally watched this and it is DAMN good. It's required viewing for anyone interested in where things went wrong and it could be very helpful to people thinking of taking a project to Kickstarter.

 

The only criticism I have of it is that his analysis was too much of a sobering take on what happened and that might be giving Mike and his team more credit than they ever deserved. I know he wanted his approach to be from an engineering standpoint but it comes at the expense of ignoring key events that had a massive effect on how things went wrong. I agree with him that planning and management mistakes made it almost impossible to get anything done but to me those are incidental compared to the final revelations of willful deception that killed the project.

 

But again, that's only a light criticism, his video is still extremely well thought out. While I wish he could have spent more time on the disastrous parts, I understand he can't help but work with the info he has and when the whole team has disappeared there's not a lot to analyze there.

 

For the purposes of his video, he may simply have considered the fraud accusations a distraction. By approaching it from "any regular guy wanting to invent electronics" standpoint, maybe it speaks to a larger audience? It may be more helpful to the average wannabe console maker relate to what he's trying to emphasize. "We'll assume this was just a guy with a an idea who got over his head. Here's why it failed: "

[Tickled_Pink]

I'm not at home so typing this on my tablet. I'm assuming that you know that Coleco dropped out of the project a couple of weeks ago?

 

There also seems to have been an issue with Atari. I'm not sure whether the team behind RVGS are behind the supposed claim that they had secured the rights to all of Atari's 2600 games IP. That's something Atari have since denied.

 

There's very much an unpleasant smell emanating from this project. I don't think there's been any deliberate attempt at deception but things could certainly have been handled better and more professionally.

[+rdemming]

I would be happy with a Super Colecovision! With sequels to all my favorite games.

 

 

In a sense a super ColecoVision already exist. The Sega Master System had that same CPU (Z80) but was slightly faster. Both had the same soundchip (SN76489). The graphics chip of the SMS was an improved version of the ColecoVision's TMS9928A. Both had the same amount of video RAM (16KB) but the SMS had more main ram (8K v.s. 1KB). So in a sense the SMS was a faster ColecoVision with more memory and better graphics.

 

And the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis was a Sega Master System with an extra 68000, more RAM, more VRAM, an extra sound chip and a much improved graphics chip that is largely compatible with the the SMS' graphics chip (but omits some video modes from the original TMS9928A chip). Thus in a sence the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis is your Super ColecoVision

 

Robert

 

 

 

Edit:

The SMS predecessor was the SG-1000 which was is almost identical as the ColecoVision hardware wise. Both have the same soundchip, graphics chip and the Z80 runs at the same speed. Both had 1KB of RAM, and 16KB of video RAM. In fact there was a clone console that ran game for both the ColecoVision and SG-1000.

[gavvv]

And of course there's the colecovision Super Game Module the opcode games has developed and produced that can be found in AA's Colecovision forum.

[Keatah]

There's very much an unpleasant smell emanating from this project. I don't think there's been any deliberate attempt at deception but things could certainly have been handled better and more professionally.

 

The Atari thing might have been something made up by those lame bloggers and "reporters".

[+GoldLeader]

 

In a sense a super ColecoVision already exist. The Sega Master System had that same CPU (Z80) but was slightly faster. Both had the same soundchip (SN76489). The graphics chip of the SMS was an improved version of the ColecoVision's TMS9928A. Both had the same amount of video RAM (16KB) but the SMS had more main ram (8K v.s. 1KB). So in a sense the SMS was a faster ColecoVision with more memory and better graphics.

 

And the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis was a Sega Master System with an extra 68000, more RAM, more VRAM, an extra sound chip and a much improved graphics chip that is largely compatible with the the SMS' graphics chip (but omits some video modes from the original TMS9928A chip). Thus in a sence the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis is your Super ColecoVision

 

Robert

 

 

 

Edit:

The SMS predecessor was the SG-1000 which was is almost identical as the ColecoVision hardware wise. Both have the same soundchip, graphics chip and the Z80 runs at the same speed. Both had 1KB of RAM, and 16KB of video RAM. In fact there was a clone console that ran game for both the ColecoVision and SG-1000.

 

When I heard that idea of a Super Coleco, it Wasn't about better hardware. While I appreciate the comparisons, and would love a Super Game Module myself...I already have about 25 consoles that are better in terms of hardware. What I liked was the idea that they would specifically make sequels to my favorite ColecoVision games...

 

I'd say it's all about the games. Do you know what I mean? Like there are Castlevania games in 3D on newer systems, but were any of them better than Castlevania: Dracula X or Symphony of the Night, or the GBA releases? Granted this is subjective stuff...But if you think about it, there are newer Tron games, but were any more fun than Tron The Arcade game or even Tron Deadly Discs on Atari? And games like Pitfall, Metroid, and Donkey Kong were never better in 3D...

 

I (personally) like the idea of classic games updated, but in a way that gives more classic gameplay and more of what made the original great...I don't want to go on and on, but even though I have some modern systems, they don't get as much love from me as my Atari and NES/SNES/Genesis/Turbografx do.

[Flojomojo]

Sure, I see a difference. OUYA was pitching a proof of concept that didn't really need much of a working prototype and the campaign was before the prototype requirement anyway. All I'm debating is your claim,"(and they had shown a working prototype in the pitch video anyways)." because I believe that to be false. I agree that if Mike couldn't show any of that he has nothing but under the old no prototype required Kickstarter rules he wouldn't have been required to show anything. He could have made a video just like OUYA's while saying in it,"We have a prototype and it works." without a prototype being shown and he would have been allowed to continue the campaign.

 

That Official OUYA Kickstarter Video was posted on August 29, 2012, right in the glory days of Kickstarter.

 

I believe that the standards of proof have been raised since then, as many people have been disappointed by this and many other high-profile crowdfunding efforts. (I also think that demo loading screens they show are "close enough" to what I purchased, but I respect that you feel it's significantly different from your real-world performance)

 

I do not feel it is reasonable to hold Mike Kennedy to 2012 Kickstarter standards in 2016 (not that we ever saw his Kickstarter video).

 

Nor do I think it reasonable to expect 1992 console trends such as high-priced cartridges to be viable in 2016.

[leods]

 

The Atari thing might have been something made up by those lame bloggers and "reporters".

Of course. Those People don't even know what a Coleco is, they look at those coleco and intellivision games and they just think it's atari. Or they ask Mike wether there are going to be Atari games, he answers: We'd love to bring all atari classics to the platform, that would be great. We're looking into it, and you know how the reporting goes from there.

[SoulBlazer]

I'm at work typing this on my phone but I just listened to the new ANTIC interview podcast with Steve Baker who programed Defender and Stargate among other games for the 5200 and Atari 8 bits and also worked on the 2600, lynx, intelivision and others. The interview was done on Nov 1 2015. At Bout the 33 min mark he talks about the RetroVGS and how he had been approached and was willing to program games for it, perhaps even did something for the console. ( it's a little unclear). Prob was brought into it by Steve Worita who he says is a long time friend. But in the segament he talks about the original planned specs with the cores and multiple system emulation. So here is someone else who was sucked into this, though I'm sure he knew nothing of the inner working going ons.

[Flojomojo]

So here is someone else who was sucked into this, though I'm sure he knew nothing of the inner working going ons.

 

 

He's probably just as "involved" as the people on the other end of Mike's emails to Konami and Capcom. A phone call or a polite, "yeah, that sounds fun" isn't a binding contract.

[jaybird3rd]

Finally watched this and it is DAMN good. It's required viewing for anyone interested in where things went wrong and it could be very helpful to people thinking of taking a project to Kickstarter.

Indeed, an excellent job by Dave Nunez. It's an eloquent and succinct exploration of the problems with the project that perhaps many of us felt all along but didn't have the background to express at the time as well as Dave does. (However, even if we had laid out all the problems with the RVGS/Chameleon in exactly this way, I think we still would have been dismissed as "hating haters," or else subjected to even more long-winded non-explanations from Mike Kennedy.) I agree that there isn't enough emphasis on the financial shenanigans, or the public belligerence and arrogance, or the many other factors which contributed to the death of the project, but I understand that this wasn't his focus; he didn't set out to produce a comprehensive look at the entire history of the project, but only to do an engineering post-mortem. At that, I think it was done very well, and it is an enormously valuable resource for anyone wanting to understand why this project failed as badly as it did.

 

A few things in particular stood out for me. In the context of comparing the number of "likes" and "tweets" that the project amassed to the much lower number of backers on IndieGoGo, Dave mentioned that one of their mistakes was "confusing interest in the project with commitment to the project." That's a perfect formulation, and I would add that this mistake was also made with respect to potential business partners. How many times did we hear from Mike that he was "in serious discussions with" or "being courted by" some distributor or licensor, only to find out that all he actually had was the vaguest expressions of interest from these people?

 

Dave's discussion toward the end of the importance of experienced management, and of the need for a credible voice to address challenging engineering questions, only makes me wonder yet again what in the bloody hell Mike's team of seasoned industry professionals with decades of experience were actually doing on this project. Let's remind ourselves of what Mike himself said during the IndieGoGo campaign:

 

First off, as a gamer myself, I have to say that it's amazing to have two tried-and-true game industry veterans working with me to bring RETRO VGS to life. Unlike many of the people who are infesting this project with negativity, people who have never written a line of code or developed any marketable hardware of any sort, Steve Woita and John Carlsen have been actually making successful and fun gaming software and hardware for a few decades for companies like Apple, Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Tengen, Activision, Iguana Entertainment, etc. We have all previously enjoyed the fruits of their labors and will continue to do so if RETRO VGS becomes reality.

If that was true of the team when it was just Woita and Carlsen, then how did they manage to make so many rookie mistakes? And how did they manage to start bungling things even worse after they added Paul Wylie, Phil Adam, Ben Herman, and Steven Rosenbaum, all of whom have similarly long résumés? Woita's involvement is especially puzzling: to someone of his experience as primarily a software guy, the points that Dave makes about the importance of supporting developers should have been immediately obvious from the beginning, so how is it that these points were evidently not even considered—or, at the very least, extremely poorly addressed and communicated—through multiple iterations of the project? As for the others, did we ever hear them say a word publicly about the Coleco Chameleon or their involvement in it? Did they even know they were "on the team"?

 

One thing is certain: when I evaluate a crowdfunding project in the future, I'm not going to place much stock in appeals to authority which are based on the number of years of experience that the people involved happen to have. If faced with a choice between a passionate newcomer and a smug graybeard, I'll back the newcomer every time, as long as they have a well-crafted proposal which makes sense to me.

[S1500]

I once said hi to a janitor that worked at Konami. We're in business!

[elmer]

I once said hi to a janitor that worked at Konami. We're in business!

Janitor? Janitor?

 

That was the "Vice President of Custodial Product Research" with a job that keeps him in direct contact with the "office of the President of Konami" ... he roams the "Corridors of Power" all day!

 

Didn't you learn anything from the last year of exaggerated Mike-speak?

[+GoldLeader]

Did they even know they were "on the team"?

 

Haha jaybird3rd that is Brilliant! I'm cracking up...

 

Someone should ask each of those involved if they KNEW they were on the team or if it was just something MK said in an interview because he said hi to them once...

[Newsdee]

They probably did a favor and were promised a position in the eventual company as a result, or a least a share of the credit.

[SoulBlazer]

Flojomojo, on 21 Mar 2016 - 1:00 PM, said:

 

 

He's probably just as "involved" as the people on the other end of Mike's emails to Konami and Capcom. A phone call or a polite, "yeah, that sounds fun" isn't a binding contract.

 

Well, it sounded like to me he was either working on a game or was very interested in working on a game. Listen for yourself:

 

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-148-steve-baker-defender-stargate

[Schizophretard]

I do not feel it is reasonable to hold Mike Kennedy to 2012 Kickstarter standards in 2016 (not that we ever saw his Kickstarter video).

 

I never claimed to either.

[Osgeld]

[Flojomojo]

I never claimed to either.

Then I don't understand your point. You posted paragraphs of details of how you thought Ouya never showed a proper prototype, in the Coleco Chameleon thread. To what end?

[StopDrop&Retro]

Of course. Those People don't even know what a Coleco is, they look at those coleco and intellivision games and they just think it's atari. Or they ask Mike wether there are going to be Atari games, he answers: We'd love to bring all atari classics to the platform, that would be great. We're looking into it, and you know how the reporting goes from there.

 

True. Mike may know jack shit about hardware but he's no fool with the media. He knows that if he just plants the seed some reporter writing his 5 minute fluff piece will twist his words and give Mike what he wants. And Mike will hear this but just throw his hands up and say it's out of his hands now.

 

According to Piko's interview with RGRU, Mike told him someone from Atari approached him to ask if he was interested in licensing. Piko told him not to because they're going to want money up front, Mike looked into it and later told Piko something along the lines of "yeah, you were right." Mike probably told a reporter "Atari's interested! They have about 100 games to bring us!" and that's all it took for a reporter to say a deal was in place.

 

We also saw this here on this forum. Ever since the earliest days of the first mega thread, people were happy to answer on Mike's behalf that the Jag molds paid for themselves. But if you look at his post history you won't find that he ever said that even once. He didn't have to, others told that lie for him. Of course even while watching the thread like a hawk, he never corrected anyone or clarified that the backers would be paying an outstanding loan for the molds (as he explained on the RGRU forms). Like a dog on a surf board, Mike loves to catch a wave [of misinformation].

[PlaysWithWolves]

We also saw this here on this forum. Ever since the earliest days of the first mega thread, people were happy to answer on Mike's behalf that the Jag molds paid for themselves. But if you look at his post history you won't find that he ever said that even once. He didn't have to, others told that lie for him. Of course even while watching the thread like a hawk, he never corrected anyone or clarified that the backers would be paying an outstanding loan for the molds (as he explained on the RGRU forms). Like a dog on a surf board, Mike loves to catch a wave [of misinformation].

 

While I agree with your overall point ("The Homer" mentions something similar), he actually did say they "essentially paid for themselves". That podcast was where the whole thing started. Now, I don't think that excludes the possibility of his making a nice tidy sum before selling the molds to GameGavel. Hypothetically speaking: Spend IRA money to buy and ship molds. Make translucent shells and pocket money as pure profit. Sell molds to GG for same amount as original purchase. Pocket mold money to reimburse savings. Go on vacation.

 

Here's the quote again (the $1000 shipping was mentioned earlier in the podcast):

 

"And then we ended up selling almost ten grand of products; translucent Jaguar cases and cartridge cases to Atari collectors that have been wanting a translucent Jag for years and years and years. And so, we kind of scratched that itch over there. Basically, that helped me pay for the molds. It paid to ship them down here [~$1000]. It paid to set all of the tools up, which were a few hundred dollars per tool. They've essentially paid for themselves already and we haven't [chuckle] used them for their intended purpose yet."

 

[Schizophretard]

Then I don't understand your point. You posted paragraphs of details of how you thought Ouya never showed a proper prototype, in the Coleco Chameleon thread. To what end?

I started out by responding to this:

 

^ It was one of the last hardware projects to not have a prototype. The prototyping rules weren't in place until late September of 2012. So they just barely made it in by about a week before the new rules went into effect. Mike's fascination with the OUYA was the reason why he thought he could get on Kickstarter the first time with the RVGS. On NeoGAF he famously said "we're light years ahead of them!" when referring to their 3D renders and wooden conceptual controllers. This is why he invested so much into 3D renders, his idea was to mimic the OUYA pitch as much as possible. But of course that plan was doomed to fail because he didn't realize OUYA launched before those prototyping requirements were in effect (and they had shown a working prototype in the pitch video anyways).

 

Gaming hardware was big after the OUYA success so it was a gold rush and consumers were willing to dish out money to be a part of "the next big thing" in gaming whether they had a working prototype or not. It's scary to think that the RVGS might have succeeded had Mike launched it back around 2012. All kinds of stupid shit was getting funded back then.

 

It's funny but also kinda sad to look back at these failed projects because the warning signs are so obvious to us now but back then consumers were way too trusting and didn't look for any further information beyond the pitch video. There are still red flags today that won't be obvious to backers until a few years down the road after they feel the sting of a failed project.

The only part of that I was disagreeing with was what is in red because I have no disagreement with the rest of the text. I have been simply pointing out that OUYA didn't show off a working prototype in their pitch video. Nothing more and nothing less. When I first posted on it I thought my explanation was sufficient and would have left it at that but apparently I was incorrect on that based on responses. So, I felt further explanation was required to get that simple point across. Therefore, to what end I posted paragraphs of details is because when I'm detecting reading comprehension issues, things being read into what I'm saying, or whatever I have a tendency to over explain myself to try to make what I'm saying perfectly clear for those who misunderstand with shorter explanations. So, the point is that OUYA did not show off a working prototype in their pitch video. That is it. There is nothing more to my point that you have to understand because that is the entire point.

[phoenixdownita]

....

Therefore, to what end I posted paragraphs of details is because when I'm detecting reading comprehension issues, things being read into what I'm saying, or whatever I have a tendency to over explain myself to try to make what I'm saying perfectly clear for those who misunderstand with shorter explanations.

...

Say what?