Retroblox

[retroillucid]

The likely outcome of this will be "supply your own," methinks.

 

 

 

 

Cool; I'd hate to think John was shilling for something without disclosing involvement again. Forgive my cynicism.

 

Yeah, he's definitely not hyped, take my word

He's supposed to meet the guys at SOCAL

 

As for CollectorVision, well the Retroblox would not change anything for us, released or not

We just keep doing homebrew games

None of our games is going to be bundled with Retroblox

 

Let's just say: Lessons learned

[CatPix]

The likely outcome of this will be "supply your own," methinks.

And this depends entierely on how the underlying system is going to be.

If that retrobox is open, and allow people to install their own emulators, then it's probably going to be the case.

If the system is closed, then the faithfulness of the emulators and the availability of the modules will be totally under control of the makers... because one can assume that the system will only accept snap-on modules that have a correct chip and encryption key of sort.

At this point we can imagine everything.

Edited February 2, 2017 by CatPix

[Keatah]

Time has shown that good emulators take time to develop, years in fact. And usually require a team effort and/or a lot of community feedback. Ideally both.

 

And FPGA based emulators seem to take more time than Software ones.

[keepdreamin]

I still can't wrap my head around why you'd buy an all-in-one emulation console that uses physical software. To me, that's like spending the cash on vinyl, but then buying a record player that rips it to MP3 before playing the music.

 

Less clutter... how exactly? Ten consoles with everdrives, ODEs, or softmods is going to take up less real estate than an emu box, module attachments, plus software libraries for ten consoles.

 

All my consoles, modern and retro are on the same entertainment center. If I were to try and collect the libraries that the everdrives afford, I'd need sprawling bookcases.

[+save2600]

...that's like spending the cash on vinyl, but then buying a record player that rips it to MP3 before playing the music.

 

Word!

 

 

 

 

 

Cost of 2 to 3 records in and you've spent more than the machine's worth. Be interesting to know how many people do, continue to do and have done just that though, in these strange times.

 

 

 

[dj_convoy]

I still can't wrap my head around why you'd buy an all-in-one emulation console that uses physical software. To me, that's like spending the cash on vinyl, but then buying a record player that rips it to MP3 before playing the music.

 

Less clutter... how exactly? Ten consoles with everdrives, ODEs, or softmods is going to take up less real estate than an emu box, module attachments, plus software libraries for ten consoles.

 

All my consoles, modern and retro are on the same entertainment center. If I were to try and collect the libraries that the everdrives afford, I'd need sprawling bookcases.

Well... with 150 PSX games, 80 some Sega CD games (and 250 Genesis carts) 50 or 60 various PC Enginge/Turbografix games and literally hundreds (let's be honest; I'm closer to thousands) of others...

 

 

I need sprawling bookcases.

[keepdreamin]

Well... with 150 PSX games, 80 some Sega CD games (and 250 Genesis carts) 50 or 60 various PC Enginge/Turbografix games and literally hundreds of others...

 

 

I need sprawling bookcases.

 

Ok, that's fine. But then why would go through all that effort, just to use them in a manner any 15 year old PC could achieve?

 

I see it like buying race fuel for a collectible sports car you've got in storage, and dumping it in any sub 18K econobox.

[Keatah]

I still can't wrap my head around why you'd buy an all-in-one emulation console that uses physical software.

 

You shouldn't..

[keepdreamin]

You shouldn't..

 

You know what these are, right? I hope the people looking to buy this (retron 5 as well) figure it out...

 

it's a Rube Goldberg machine to play ROM dumps.

[Eltigro]

keepdreamin is killing it with the analogies

[StopDrop&Retro]

Is there any worthwhile profit in this business, unless your name is Nintendo or possibly AtGames or Retro-Bit? If several of you do it for the love of gaming, possibly some might benefit from joining forces instead of trying to beat eachother to the market. Or perhaps some just revaluate their options when they learn about the competition and that a majority of the potential buyers already are aware and alert.

 

No, you've got it all wrong. You're factoring in delivery, which is for suckers.

 

What you're supposed to do is raise a huge amount of money on Kickstarter (many times the original goal amount). Release a few low effort updates that all boil down to some form of "keep waiting" while paying yourself and your employees your family a full time salary because backers would rather see you live comfortably than get the product. Then about a year or two later after the money's all gone, tell people you tried very hard and just couldn't do it... unless they want to give you some more money to pay for a few more years of salary, then we can talk.

[Keatah]

Well, tomorrow, we should have enough information to determine whether it is a worthwhile project. Ambiguities and unanswered questions will only paint a darker less optimistic picture.

[Lyth]

In my opinion, getting kinda tired of all these "ultimate" retro consoles, the AVS NES was the only 1 to live up to its expectations so far and it has Famicom/FDS support.

 

After watching G81's video. 1 thought came to my mind. Why must the makers of this box go the crowdfunding way?

 

These are "industry professionals" from big names right? Top dawgs? These guys made 6 figure incomes (no way they made pennies working for big names), they can't make it on their own money?

 

RetroUSB made the AVS all on his own, produced videos along the way and then sold it. (this is the proper way IMO)

 

You're telling me these "pros" have LESS money to invest than retroUSB had? Come on.

 

I'll add my two cents regarding this, from my perspective.

 

I personally find that there is 2 types of companies raise money through kickstarter.

1) Companies with just an idea, and want money to make it reality. (Not feasible)

2) Companies that have a prototype, and need money to mass produce it, and then build up from there. (Feasible)

 

Personally, my console (Lythium), falls under the second column. We have a few different working prototype revisions, and are needing that glorious kickstarter cash for mass producing and marketing.

 

Some companies don't need kickstarter and that's most likely because they have capital, or some sort of investment through a seed or angel group. Kickstarter is seen as an alternative to that, as it is micro investments from multiple people. Yet most companies don't realize that Kickstarter money is usually not enough for them to stay afloat or even release the product, as we've seen before. Thus is why secondary funding through a seed or startup group is good to get additionally to kickstarter. Multiple rounds of funding through different sources is quite normal, at least in the part of the world where I am in.

 

What concerns me about RetroBlox is neither of the 2 staff members (don't even get me started on how 2 people would have a rough time to achieve this), are software experts. I don't see any hardware experience in their bio's.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Lyth

[Lyth]

 

No, you've got it all wrong. You're factoring in delivery, which is for suckers.

 

What you're supposed to do is raise a huge amount of money on Kickstarter (many times the original goal amount). Release a few low effort updates that all boil down to some form of "keep waiting" while paying yourself and your employees your family a full time salary because backers would rather see you live comfortably than get the product. Then about a year or two later after the money's all gone, tell people you tried very hard and just couldn't do it... unless they want to give you some more money to pay for a few more years of salary, then we can talk.

 

First, I'd like to say, I watch your Youtube series. Solid work, man. I see that you cover some Chinese stuff sometimes. Well, I live in HK/China, and I'd love to connect with you in regards to that type of stuff. I might be able to help you get your hands on things that aren't readily available on Aliexpress and such. Most people here use Taobao, it's more closed off.

 

Secondly, you are correct. A lot of hardware companies that go on kickstarter end up not delivering on their promise. It's a cruel world. This is why, I think "kickstarter based companies" need to start showing off more of their company itself, rather than just the product. Give people some actual credible information about the staff and such, you know?

 

-Lyth

 

Edit: Double posted. My apologies.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Lyth

[D.Daniels]

I still can't wrap my head around why you'd buy an all-in-one emulation console that uses physical software. To me, that's like spending the cash on vinyl, but then buying a record player that rips it to MP3 before playing the music.

 

Less clutter... how exactly? Ten consoles with everdrives, ODEs, or softmods is going to take up less real estate than an emu box, module attachments, plus software libraries for ten consoles.

 

All my consoles, modern and retro are on the same entertainment center. If I were to try and collect the libraries that the everdrives afford, I'd need sprawling bookcases.

 

money is usually the reason for all these retro console players, they used to just price up model trains for grown adults, now its old games and consoles

[Tanooki]

He's missing one point, maybe not relevant to this, but that retrofreak device you can go straight to piracy just throwing ROMS on a SD card and you're finished. The only module you'd need then, if you wanted it, was one to use original controllers. Otherwise just buy the deck, throw a 16GB SD card in there with as many system libraries it can handle, and be done with it. Small white box, the controller, SD card, and you're set. This thing like the Retron5 it's going for original media with an emulation core wrapped around a general generic ARM setup with a few other supporting chips and some memory/storage.

 

That said though this thing for this topic, it's one device. If you went the other way as he said, you'd need 10 consoles, 10 sets of wires for a/v, 10 sets of power adpaters, and 10 everdrives with 10 SD cards ideally speaking. That's a hell of a lot of wasted space to still screw around with ROMs even if the experience should be accurate as it's playing off original hardware and not emulated.

[StopDrop&Retro]

Thanks, Lyth!

 

You seem to have a good handle on this. I agree with you that speculation was a big factor in killing the Chameleon. Projects like Retroblox would be best advised to show their cards already and stop it with the PR-talk nonsense. But it's a catch 22. Transparency is usually a good thing, but it wouldn't have helped Mike, he couldn't be up front about the VGS/Chameleon because it was a scam since day one. He never once had hardware even close to a prototype so honesty would have done him no favors. These Retroblox guys are an unknown at the moment, so I have no option but to take Gamester81's sage-like advice and withhold my strong opinions. But I have to say, if their next update/launch doesn't blow us away then it's probably not going to get any better from there.

 

There's also another reason why companies go to Kickstarter- it's because the Kickstarter campaign itself is free marketing (or mostly free). The campaign is not only a good spotlight that might get picked up by media, but the do or die nature of a Kickstarter works your biggest supporters into a frenzy and they become free marketing drones. Take a look at the new Atari game watch thing, I assure you that thing would never need to go to Kickstarter to get made, but it will work marketing wonders.

 

But to answer romeoteknik's question, I don't think there's anything stopping these guys from going to a bank and asking for a loan, but there's no incentive to go that route. The best thing about crowdfunding though is that if you fail you don't have to pay it back. If a bank offered that same deal, Kickstarter would be out of business. But instead banks will hound you down for their money back, so Kickstarter remains popular among these startups.

 

Get in touch with me anytime, Lyth! I love all kinds of Chinese devices and I look forward to seeing your own someday!

[Andromeda Stardust]

A good egg on their forum asked something I hadn't even thought of:

 

How are you dealing with the issue of needing a BIOS for many of the CD systems you claim to support?

User downloads the BIOS from the interwebs and installs it him or herself.

[Lyth]

Thanks, Lyth!

 

You seem to have a good handle on this. I agree with you that speculation was a big factor in killing the Chameleon. Projects like Retroblox would be best advised to show their cards already and stop it with the PR-talk nonsense. But it's a catch 22. Transparency is usually a good thing, but it wouldn't have helped Mike, he couldn't be up front about the VGS/Chameleon because it was a scam since day one. He never once had hardware even close to a prototype so honesty would have done him no favors. These Retroblox guys are an unknown at the moment, so I have no option but to take Gamester81's sage-like advice and withhold my strong opinions. But I have to say, if their next update/launch doesn't blow us away then it's probably not going to get any better from there.

 

There's also another reason why companies go to Kickstarter- it's because the Kickstarter campaign itself is free marketing (or mostly free). The campaign is not only a good spotlight that might get picked up by media, but the do or die nature of a Kickstarter works your biggest supporters into a frenzy and they become free marketing drones. Take a look at the new Atari game watch thing, I assure you that thing would never need to go to Kickstarter to get made, but it will work marketing wonders.

 

But to answer romeoteknik's question, I don't think there's anything stopping these guys from going to a bank and asking for a loan, but there's no incentive to go that route. The best thing about crowdfunding though is that if you fail you don't have to pay it back. If a bank offered that same deal, Kickstarter would be out of business. But instead banks will hound you down for their money back, so Kickstarter remains popular among these startups.

 

Get in touch with me anytime, Lyth! I love all kinds of Chinese devices and I look forward to seeing your own someday!

 

No problem, man! And, I totally agree with you. I don't see Kickstarter as bad, I just see it as a sometimes necessary stepping stone that smaller companies need to take (such as myself). Just since a lot of companies believe they can survive solely from Kickstarter funding, is what gives it all a bad reputation. Thus is why I'm seeking secondary funding and have continuously put a large chunk of change towards my own project to keep it afloat. Transparency.

 

Heh, I have a pretty good hold on these things because I've founded a company that's actually been making a quite similar product (minus CDROM and with a few other desirable twists) for the past 2 years. I've seen the ups and downs and experienced the hurdles that we had to jump through. You should be seeing my work on these forums soon enough, with as much transparency from day 1, as possible. Transparency is the exact reason why, we haven't gone public with our work yet, because we want to have a solid foothold before doing so. It's quite important that we have a strong beginning in order to appease customers properly.

 

By all means, I'm not bitter that these guys are following in my footsteps a bit, as I come from quite humble beginnings. I'm happy to share the space, as there's definitely enough for both of us. However, it irks me and concerns me greatly when a company pops up out of nowhere with only renders and an idea.

 

And of course, I'd love to help anyone get their hands on random chinese gadgets, heh. I've got proper access to Taobao, which comprises of a lot of gadgets that don't make it outside of China. So feel free to ping me anytime and request some help. I also know the Chinese manufacturing/production side quite well and have written a few large posts on Reddit before, detailing the "life of a Chinese factory worker" and such.

 

-Lyth

[Keatah]

I want a module that lets you plug in other modules. Because, Modules!

Edited February 3, 2017 by Keatah

[Eltigro]

Yeah, instead of loading up Bleemcast, just plug your Playstation module into your Dreamcast module and you're all set.

[keepdreamin]

 

money is usually the reason for all these retro console players, they used to just price up model trains for grown adults, now its old games and consoles

 

Well, that was random.

[keepdreamin]

He's missing one point, maybe not relevant to this, but that retrofreak device you can go straight to piracy just throwing ROMS on a SD card and you're finished. The only module you'd need then, if you wanted it, was one to use original controllers. Otherwise just buy the deck, throw a 16GB SD card in there with as many system libraries it can handle, and be done with it. Small white box, the controller, SD card, and you're set. This thing like the Retron5 it's going for original media with an emulation core wrapped around a general generic ARM setup with a few other supporting chips and some memory/storage.

 

That said though this thing for this topic, it's one device. If you went the other way as he said, you'd need 10 consoles, 10 sets of wires for a/v, 10 sets of power adpaters, and 10 everdrives with 10 SD cards ideally speaking. That's a hell of a lot of wasted space to still screw around with ROMs even if the experience should be accurate as it's playing off original hardware and not emulated.

 

Using a rom box with digital files makes sense.

 

Using a rom box that uses actual physical media to "reduce clutter", does not make sense or reduce clutter.

Edited February 3, 2017 by keepdreamin

[Lyth]

 

Using a rom box with digital files makes sense.

 

Using a rom box that uses actual physical media to "reduce clutter", does not make sense or reduce clutter.

 

Heh, makes me excited for what you guys' will say about my upcoming console. QwQ

 

~Exciting~

Edited February 3, 2017 by Lyth

[keepdreamin]

 

Heh, makes me excited for what you guys' will say about my upcoming console. QwQ

 

~Exciting~

 

Why don't you start a thread about your console, instead of talking about it in a thread talking about another one.

 

And I'll probably say the same thing about any emulation console, you can just use a PC.

Edited February 3, 2017 by keepdreamin