Retroblox

[godslabrat]

90 days until this bad boy is expected to ship! Who's waiting by the mailbox??

[cybercylon]

Is there anyone in this thread that really pre-ordered this? Don't hold your breath waiting by your mail box.....

[derFunkenstein]

Relax, guys. It was just a typo. They expect Polymega to be available BY 2028.

[atm94404]

 

On 20^th November they replied - it went into Spam so was only recently found:

 

Since the pre-order is wrapped up we are no longer marketing the console until the initial preorders have shipped, which is what we're focused on at the moment.

 

 

Very telling they view all communication (including fulfilling promises of video proof of the functionality or production updates) with their customers as "marketing". They may as well have said "Hey, we got your money so we don't need to bother with you anymore".

I think the BEST outcome for all this that people who pre-ordered can hope for is how the Vega+ ended (

) which is a shoddily manufactured console that uses a bunch of free software and some off-the-shelf boards in a cheap case that only loosely meets the description. I would not be surprised if in the pre-order agreement there was some vague language about "final parts may differ from list spec" or some little legalese out.

A more likely end scenario is they spend the next three months draining the pre-order funds from the LLC they set up, so the company can declare bankruptcy and then the officers walk away to their next "project". If the LLC in its paperwork has some language like "corporate officers will receive an annual consulting fees of at least $200,000 and must be paid before all other expenses" it would be easy for them to get to April, write themselves some nice checks, and then say "corporate funds are insufficient to start production. Bye, bye." and legally walk away.

Edited January 2, 2019 by atm94404

[VintageGamer74]

Even if this were to ship? How many units will be shipped? 1,500? 2,000? I love retro gaming but outside of Nintendo, Sony and Sega. How many units do Hyperkin, Retro-bit, AT Games, and Retrousb move? I'm not dogging any one company but it seems a lot of folks/companies have a retro this or a retro that coming out. There is only so much $$$ out there to support these companies.

Edited January 2, 2019 by VintageGamer74

[Bill Loguidice]

Even if this were to ship? How many units will be shipped? 1,500? 2,000? I love retro gaming but outside of Nintendo, Sony and Sega. How many units do Hyperkin, Retro-bit, AT Games, and Retrousb move? I'm not dogging any one company but it seems a lot of folks/companies have a retro this or a retro that coming out. There is only so much $$$ out there to support these companies.

 

There are different tiers/niches with this stuff. A low-cost, mainstream retro-gaming product could sell in the hundreds of thousands these days under the right circumstances (and discounting something from a big name like Nintendo, which is in a different class all its own). I would suspect a higher-priced connoisseur's product that is properly targeted to one of the major retro-gaming platforms could break into the four figures if everything fell into place just right. Anything else higher priced, more generic/less focused, etc., like a Polymega, I would suspect would be more along your own estimates, say low thousands under the absolute best case scenario.

 

And yes, we're in another boom time in retro-gaming, so there's definitely product glut/fatigue again like was experienced in the mid-2000s. That will have ripple effects, although I think that the higher-priced, more niche products will mostly be unaffected (although competition in that area is surprisingly heavy these days as well, with lots of FPGA this or that implementations, for instance). It's a great time to be a fan of this stuff, but a challenging time for companies trying to stand out.

[VintageGamer74]

I was reading on Polymega's website, under their faq page that they have licensed an emulator for Sega Saturn games to run on the Polymega but I thought most emulators for the Saturn are dodgy at best. Has some outfit actually created a stable emulator for the Saturn?

[godslabrat]

I was reading on Polymega's website, under their faq page that they have licensed an emulator for Sega Saturn games to run on the Polymega but I thought most emulators for the Saturn are dodgy at best. Has some outfit actually created a stable emulator for the Saturn?

No one really knows. That's why it's been asked that PolyMega post a video of the actual hardware playing Saturn games, including inserting the disc and booting. PolyMega claimed this video would be shown "soon", and that was almost four months ago.

[elmer]

I was reading on Polymega's website, under their faq page that they have licensed an emulator for Sega Saturn games to run on the Polymega but I thought most emulators for the Saturn are dodgy at best. Has some outfit actually created a stable emulator for the Saturn?

They have licensed a customized version of Mednafen's Saturn emulation.

 

Mednafen's Saturn emulation popped-up out of nowhere a year-or-two ago, and it is now arguably the most-accurate of the Saturn-emulation cores.

 

BUT ... it is still considered "BETA", it still has issues with a (decreasing) number of games, and it is written for accuracy-over-performance.

 

The Mednafen version recommends using a quad-core 64-bit Intel CPU with much higher processing power than the PolyMega is specified to ship with.

 

Yes, Saturn emulation has gotten a lot better recently, but PolyMega's reliance on it for their sales-pitch shows just how desperate they are ... especially since Seedi are releasing free BETA software that does almost-everything that the PolyMega is promising.

[VintageGamer74]

@elmer Thanks for the info. I just don't think it's going to sell even with Saturn emulation? I'll stick with my US and Japanese Saturns.

[Keatah]

As civilly as I can say this, I doubt anyone on this forum was that stupid.

Is there anyone in this thread that really pre-ordered this? Don't hold your breath waiting by your mail box.....

 

I certainly hope not. But as a seasoned consumer and enthusiast I've seen people throw tons of money at shoddy products and shady companies just because!

Edited January 3, 2019 by Keatah

[Keatah]

Hopefully by talking about it here we can prevent future disasters. We may be labeled the Hater Brigaders but at the end we are just dissappinted at how half-baked some of these ideas are, and without skill to pull them off.

 

Even Sony doesn't seem capable of producing a decent emulation device, so any random Kickstarter/crowdfunding startup doesn't look very good in comparison.

 

An established company using kickstarter to fund production is a different story. GPD for example made some neat products, although they had a share of minor issues. At least they shipped and the things worked mostly as advertised.

 

Emulation is a rather personal thing and customizations are key to making it an enjoyable, superior, experience. Emulation is something that shines when time is taken to set it up in a manner that's right for you.

 

It's not likely 1 company with 1 product will satisfy every vintage gamer.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Keatah

[Keatah]

I was reading on Polymega's website, under their faq page that they have licensed an emulator for Sega Saturn games to run on the Polymega but I thought most emulators for the Saturn are dodgy at best. Has some outfit actually created a stable emulator for the Saturn?

 

Stable emulation? Perhaps. Good emulation up to my standards? No.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Keatah

[atm94404]

So how long before all the Youtube "influencers" who hyped this fiasco will start posting videos saying "Hey, I was fooled too. I'm a VICTIM here! It's not fair you guys are acting like I was somehow a part of this"? I'm guessing right before the next scam comes along and they want to make a video singing its praises and encouraging everyone to pre-order. Hopefully, people won't let the "I was just conveying news" excuse go unchallenged (again).

[RetrogamerX]

It’s been very quiet on the polymega’s news front? This so screams SCAM.

[DurradonXylles]

It’s been very quiet on the polymega’s news front? This so screams SCAM.

 

I have nothing to report, been pestering their twitter on occasion to no prevail. They've had some empty platitudes about being busy after the preorder campaign to ensure that buyers get their units, which makes no damn sense when they purport to have a manufacturing facility that could produce multiple units without needing constant management supervision, and they said that they have new features they want to show off... Despite the fact that they've yet to show actual video footage of a console booting and/or taking discs and running games. Oh, and the occasional, "DM us" for people who have troubles with preorder info and other inquiries of that fashion. Without any meaningful news or updates since the campaign ended, the radio silence makes them look worse and worse by the day.

 

At least with Kickstarter or IndieGogo having periods of silence is normal since campaigns on those sites often don't try to guarantee an impossibly quick R&D and manufacture turnaround times for hardware projects.

[Keatah]

It’s been very quiet on the polymega’s news front? This so screams SCAM.

 

It's been screaming since it was announced!

[Silanda]

So, nothing's happened then? I'd love to be wrong. I'd love for them to deliver the product and I could chalk my doubts up to being a cynical bastard, but If the project is legitimate as they claim, these month long periods of radio silence don't look good. They still haven't produced the video of operational hardware yet, have they?

 

I'm curious about whether the latest release of Mednafen suggests anything or not. Mednafen's Saturn emulation is quite demanding and still has quite a few bugs, but I figured that if significant bug fixes and optimisations had been made for Polymega there's a good chance that they would find their way into to the stand alone releases. However, the last release from December (the first since Polymega announced Saturn support) has hardly any Saturn bugfixes, with Apple II support being the major change.

 

I suppose it's possible that Mednafen's author could be contractually forbidden from incorporating work done specifically for the Polymega's emulation, but it's just another thing that makes me wonder exactly what hardware they were running to produce those videos.

[Flojomojo]

It's as if they went out for tacos with Michael Arzt and Rob Wyatt of "Atari VCS" and never came back.

[DurradonXylles]

It's as if they went out for tacos with Michael Arzt and Rob Wyatt of "Atari VCS" and never came back.

 

I'd say more like they told backers that they're heading out to the gas station for a pack of smokes back in November.

 

So, nothing's happened then? I'd love to be wrong. I'd love for them to deliver the product and I could chalk my doubts up to being a cynical bastard, but If the project is legitimate as they claim, these month long periods of radio silence don't look good. They still haven't produced the video of operational hardware yet, have they?

 

I'm curious about whether the latest release of Mednafen suggests anything or not. Mednafen's Saturn emulation is quite demanding and still has quite a few bugs, but I figured that if significant bug fixes and optimisations had been made for Polymega there's a good chance that they would find their way into to the stand alone releases. However, the last release from December (the first since Polymega announced Saturn support) has hardly any Saturn bugfixes, with Apple II support being the major change.

 

I suppose it's possible that Mednafen's author could be contractually forbidden from incorporating work done specifically for the Polymega's emulation, but it's just another thing that makes me wonder exactly what hardware they were running to produce those videos.

 

Yeah, no tweets for over a month, and the last one is their umpteenth promise of a video showing off a working unit. The absolute closest they got to showing off the Polymega working is a few pictures and a two second gif done by Peter Kitsch, the photographer and "hype guy" (for lack of a better term) Playmaji hired to do a promotional photo shoot of the console. He swears up and down that he's tried it and it's working, but won't say anything more beyond that. As far as any of us knows, he's fibbing to keep his clients happy, or tested out one of the original ARM units before the change over to the x86 architecture back during the summer.

 

Mednafen's beetle-Saturn core was announced to be used by Playmaji, and promptly retracted soon after, back in October. The author didn't like their chummy tweet of her emulator core used making it sound like Playmaji was in bed with the Mednafen team, so they rescinded that tweet after she made her displeasure known on the Mednafen forums. They won't deny the usage of Mednafen in their console, but they still haven't fully stated that fact in public, at least on social media, as of now.

 

With all of that said, my biggest concern is the disconnect between their specs and what requirements the emulators they are apparently using go for. They purport an Intel Gold G5500T dual core processor running at 3.2GHz with 4GB of DDR4 RAM in their technical specs on the Polymaega's FAQ page, which is barely scraping by the processor minimum requirements for running the stock beetle-PSX core of Mednafen (dual core CPU running at least 3 GHZ with 2 GB of RAM), nevermind the Saturn core. The Mednafen team even says that the minimum requirements only apply if you're running this core straight from them, nevermind any forking that Playmaji has to do for their hardware specs and custom [assumed Linux-based] OS.

 

As previously discussed, the hardware they ran in their recent Saturn demonstration videos was more than likely a Windows gaming PC running the Polymega software. It would explain why they never show the console from boot into the menu UI and why all of the videos were direct captures instead of ever showing the console booting. As before, the ball is in their court to prove the critics wrong, but they still haven't. It could take them less than twenty minutes to set up the console, a camera, and have some games laid out to show them being inserted and booting up on a television. Their refusal to do so has spoken more about their project then every last glorified glittering generality they've said to hype up their suckers I mean, backers.

 

Since I'm more than certain they're following this forum thread: you guys at Playmaji have always had an open invitation to make us eat our words. We aren't just bashing you guys for shits and giggles, we legitimately want more than anything to not have our cynicism be proven correct and for you to show you're honest and know what you're doing. You guys have sadly, though maybe not surprisingly, been disappointing us and going far below our expectations at every turn.

Edited January 15, 2019 by DurradonXylles

[dj_convoy]

I said over and over that I'd be interested in a way to play SEGA CD, Saturn, Turbo Duo and Neo Geo CD games that utilized my hundreds of actual games that could be plugged into my living room TV. It's obvious this won't be it.

[Keatah]

Fixing ratbag 486 PCs is more fun and real than this playermaje stuff. You know?

[Flojomojo]

Fixing ratbag 486 PCs is more fun and real than this playermaje stuff. You know?

[godslabrat]

Paraphrased from Twitter:

"Analogue does what PolyMega don't."

[Keatah]

Polydent! That teeth glue stuff!