Is the Amico dead?

[roadrunner]

Still listed on the Walmart Canada website, almost sold out!

and two 5 Star Reviews!


https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/intellivision-amico-console-white/6000203663873




 

★★★★★5 out of 5 stars.    Jason Hachey · 25 days ago  
Great value
This game console will finally bring families back together in one room for an affordable price!

Recommends this product ✔ Yes

★★★★★5 out of 5 stars.    Zeto · 4 months ago  
Great
Families , non gamers , everyone , we need something different and this is it cant wait for it.

Recommends this product ✔ Yes

 

[Razzie.P]

12 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

 

"No. You're getting it wrong. <Cites "facts" precisely the opposite of what was said solely to be contrarian>"

 

7 hours ago, mr_me said:

What is this about.  The post about the kids says they agree with you.  They also say kids of that age will ask for the other game systems, and they don't expect to do well in that demographic according to their market research.

 

 

That reminds me of being at a local diner and two old farts were bickering.  They were friends, or relatives, or something, but  1 would always try to find a reason to tell the other “you’re wrong because…” in their back n’ forths.

 

So one says “Don’t’ matter what I say about it, you’re just gonna tell me it’s not true.”   The immediate reply was … ”that’s not true!”

Everybody around starting laughing and the dude got all embarrassed/agitated.

 

 

Anyways, just rambling about something that was funny to me.  To contribute to the topic in a small way – even with the ups n’ downs of this thing, I gotta say if it came out tomorrow at the current price (not that future potential increased nonsense) I’d still buy it and really look forward to checking it out.

So yeah, it may be dead and we’re just watching scammers release box videos in a desperate attempt to squeeze more money from the uneducated, but there’s still potential for a wee bit of life if they’d ever figure out how to release the thing.
 

[Beatley82]

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

Where did they say this.  Online gaming didn't really happen until well into the 2000s.

The Amico 'Family Trailer' is the most prominent example. "By the mid-nineties, the video game industry took a turn....."

Edited April 4, 2022 by Beatley82

[Pink]

14 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet including kids, the 3B number cannot work even if each person has a partner and they all have exactly 1 kid as that would give 7.9/3=2.6 "families" and that is nowhere near realistic (there's no way anyone serious assumes a 100% reach and the number above assume all kids are young etc...etc.... note that if a family has 2 kids it's still only 1 Amico so more kids per family makes the target smaller not bigger) .... drilling deeper estimates give the global kids population at 1.9 B of which ~1.7B are not in high income countries (defined as GNI per capita of 12K or more) .... so that leaves a lot less potential audience than the nonsense number they published (if you make <=12K US$ per year you are looking at less than 1K US$ per month .... I don't see an Amico as a wise thing to buy under those conditions, and 12K US$ [12.6K US$ to be pedantic] is the upper limit of the upper-middle income countries, the lower limit for the upper-middle income countries is at 4.1K US$, aka ~350US$ per month ... not a target ....)

 

12 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

Just to make it painfully clear, low income countries have a GNI per capita of less than 1K US$ per year (and count about 650M people), lower-middle income countries go from 1K to 4K which is also completely unrealistic as a target for Amico imho.

Even the upper-middle income countries are a stretch in that many of them are less than 7.5K US$ a year (that's 625 gross a month) https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/the-world-by-income-and-region.html
 

Population by income https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-income-level

NOTE: this search is making me depressed, I feel now so "blessed" for what I have (not because I particularly deserve it but because of the luck of being born in some place instead of some place else and a few and at times lucky choices my parents and then me made along the way ....).
Literally from the data above about 1.2B people live in high income countries (and even there poverty is an issue) and that's about 16% of the population, the remaining 84% has it much much rougher one way or another, to anyone reading this and attempting to market a glorified toy please stop throwing around numbers that can be seen as insulting. Reality is the vast majority of the world population cannot afford a 250-350US$ console.

I traveled to Liberia in Africa back in 2018 for almost 4 full weeks. The vast majority of people there have no electricity, let alone a TV to hook a video game console up to. Heck, a lot of people don't even have homes. People do have smartphones though, and for many people that's about all they have. Even then their cell service is insanely expensive and ultra limited. Anything we take for granted in a first world country they barely have or is almost nonexistant, like 911 services, emergency rooms, clean & safe hospitals, etc. There was a gigantic lack of paved roads, street lights, garbage service, running water, washing machines, toilets that flush, etc. They barely have money for food, they aren't spending anything on a video game console regardless how much or how little it costs.

 

Good luck selling a game console to them. The people I stayed with, there were relatively "wealthy", and even than they only had a generator for electricity but it was only ran at night after the sun went down so they could turn lights on to see and plug their phones in and that was that, because it was so ridiculously expensive to run. Even then, those relatively "wealthy" people, they washed their dishes outside on the ground in a plastic tub by hand, and did their laundry the same exact way. Garbage is just thrown outside in a giant pile and when it gets big enough they very carefully try to incinerate it. And if you start your house on fire accidentally? In a first world country such as the US you can call 911 and a fully loaded, state of the art fire truck will show up in minutes with numerous firefighters skilled & trained and also armed with all the equipment that they'll need to put out a fire for you. Over in Liberia? Better hope you know how to extinguish a fire yourself, and also better hope that you have all the water and equipment and protective gear on hand that you'll need as well.

 

I know Liberia only has around 5 million people, which is miniscule compared to how many billions of people are on Earth, but Africa as a whole has over 1.2 billion and a I know a lot of the other countries there aren't in much better shape then Liberia is, or they're even worse. Nigeria, just a few countries over from Liberia, is the 6th most populated country in the world with over 216 million people, and more then 123 million people lack access to a decent toilet, with millions and millions being forced to have to defecate in the open. There are also many more countries in the world as well outside of Africa that are equally as poor and poverty laden, not just in Africa.

 

Point being, a large percentage of the world is living in dirt poor, third world countries laden with astronomical amounts of poverty, living conditions so bad that people who've spent their entire life in a country like the USA can't even fathom. Making that "3 billion potential customers" claim insanely ridiculous. I knew it was going to be bad back when I traveled to Africa, but man even with all the research I did, I was still in shock when I actually arrived there and saw it in person with my own two eyes.

 

My Liberian tourist visa inside my passport for proof.

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Pink

[Lost Monkey]

2 hours ago, roadrunner said:

Still listed on the Walmart Canada website, almost sold out!

and two 5 Star Reviews!


https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/intellivision-amico-console-white/6000203663873




 

★★★★★5 out of 5 stars.    Jason Hachey · 25 days ago  
Great value
This game console will finally bring families back together in one room for an affordable price!

Recommends this product ✔ Yes

★★★★★5 out of 5 stars.    Zeto · 4 months ago  
Great
Families , non gamers , everyone , we need something different and this is it cant wait for it.

Recommends this product ✔ Yes

 

Obviously haters working at Walmart.ca:

 

Walmart.ca›Video Games›Retro Gaming›Retro Gaming Consoles›Intellivision Amico Console White

As we all know, it is NOT a retrogaming console!

[roots.genoa]

3 hours ago, roadrunner said:

and two 5 Star Reviews!

 

★★★★★5 out of 5 stars.    Jason Hachey · 25 days ago  
Great value
This game console will finally bring families back together in one room for an affordable price!

Recommends this product ✔ Yes

★★★★★5 out of 5 stars.    Zeto · 4 months ago  
Great
Families , non gamers , everyone , we need something different and this is it cant wait for it.

Recommends this product ✔ Yes

 

And I know one of them, which is very sad. ?

[wolfy62]

We are almost on page 30 here,have we come to a consensus yet?

How about starting a poll to vote in,

Is the Amico dead or alive?

[Razzie.P]

18 minutes ago, wolfy62 said:

Is the Amico dead or alive?

Yes, I believe so.  ?

[mr_me]

4 hours ago, Beatley82 said:

The Amico 'Family Trailer' is the most prominent example. "By the mid-nineties, the video game industry took a turn....."

 

Thanks.  Yes, and at that point in the video they show a PC gamer. Home PC sales did start to take-off in the mid 1990s, it's also when first person shooters became popular, and as Albert pointed out some popular online multiplayer games started coming out.  There were all types of video games and people have different experiences.  My videogame experience in the 1990s was almost all single-player.  All they said was the industry took a turn at a time some new trends were being established.

 

7 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

It's still deceiving to cite bs numbers on an official "fund raising" campaign, there are no 3B casual gamers in the "potential audience" given the total population in the high income countries is 1.2B ... period and as we are at it "no, really" and I mean it as "really, really".

I don't know about deceiving or BS as much as it is an unconvincing business case and a bad investment proposal. An investor needs better product market data.  You've got income variations between countries but you also have big differences in cost of living.  China, India, Indonesia, Brasil, for example, might not be considered developed or high income countries but they are significant video game markets, not that they have a plan to be in those countries anytime soon.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[JohnPCAE]

2 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

We are almost on page 30 here,have we come to a consensus yet?

How about starting a poll to vote in,

Is the Amico dead or alive?

AFAIK they'll be out of money in six months. Then it will be dead.

[Matt_B]

9 minutes ago, JohnPCAE said:

AFAIK they'll be out of money in six months. Then it will be dead.

Then someone will buy it up at the bankruptcy auction and it'll be alive again. ?

[MrBeefy]

18 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

 I doubt any new games have been given a green light to either be developed exclusively or ported to Amico in the past couple of months. 

I'm sure dev stopped a long time ago when the money dried up. Remember them stealing assets from two different tank games.

17 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Dolphin Quest (Ecco the Dolphin's spiritual successor) is another one. Actually it was never supposed to be an Amico exclusive, but the Amico was supposed to get an exclusive 4-player coop mode (instead of 2-player). A Kickstarter campaign should happen this year as Beefy already said.

 

Also I'm glad you mentioned the latest BurgerTime game, because I'm still puzzled about it. When it was revealed, I was struck by the fact it really looked as if it was made for the Amico: several 4-player modes including both versus and coop, 2D graphics that are not pixelart (mimicking Cuphead that Tommy mentioned several times iirc), and of course a license that was supposed to appear on the Amico.

When I talked about it here, IE's CEO dismissed it immediately, claiming 'their' BurgerTime would be prettier and (of course) sound better, etc. But Amico's BurgerTime is precisely one of the games we never saw (and may never will). So personally, I'm still not convinced they're not the same game and, given what happened with ToeJam & Earl and other games, I wouldn't be surprised if we find out one day that it was made for the Amico (or at least several systems including the Amico) but the deal didn't work out. But of course, we may never find out even if it's true unfortunately.

The Former CEO Says A Lot of Things™

13 hours ago, Beatley82 said:

What always bugged me most about the Amico marketing was the total mistruth that the mid 90s onwards killed local multi player be it versus or co-op, as if I'd been imagining playing Mario Kart with my little nieces and nephews, or Super Puzzle Fighter on the Playstation with my 63 year old mum, or various sports or fighting games with my friends down the years. Just an absolute nonsense. 

I think the former CEO used a bunch of annedoctal evidence from his experiences. Anyone remember him complaining about navigating Clubhouse Games? I do I find it funny because my Toddler can navigate it. Over 600 days of gaming experience! ?

10 hours ago, IMBerzerk said:

Whatever they did or possibly  doing (no one really knows) just pissed off a whole lot of people, completely ruined one guy's personal integrity and put a great community on the balls of it's ass with a truckload of total BS.  

That is assuming some was there to begin with. Was it there and lost? Or was it never there and you didn't know until the later. Past behavior suggests there has been zero change in attitude and behaviors over the years.

9 hours ago, jerseystyle said:

It’ll always be a mystery to me why, with these millions of marketing research/budgeting, kid friendly, made for moms, etc, what they actually did was completely the opposite: let’s have our CEO go on random middle age man hyper niche YouTube channels for two years. How is that appealing to families? It’s been shown he was having “secret” meetings with these guys to discuss strategy FFS! Remember when all those random creepy dudes showed up at Crayola (one even bringing “security”?) I mean, just maybe, the temperament of their CEO wasn’t really a good fit for their ideas…

Retro bait, not for families was the original idea. The CEO I'm sure was unhappy with (I'm assuming) investors or partners who said to branch it out or we are out. Not only was there strategy talk but there were black lists of people to ban or not have on podcasts. People were told to stop being friends with people they were friends with previously. The only thing kid about Amico is the juvenile behavior of the company employees. But forcing a hater crusade because you don't actually have a decent product kind of showed they had no interest in doing anything really worthwhile.

 

Also games requiring split attention in no particular order...

 

Shark Shark

Cloudy

Side Swipers

Finnegan Fox

Brain Duel

Pool

Emoji Charades

Back Talk Party

*Every Card game

Bomb Squad

Safe Cracker

*Any game that has more than one button on the touchscreen.

 

*varying degrees of split attention*

Breakout

Armor Battle

Missile Command

Sesame Street

Night Stalker

Pong

 

Tonight for family fun we are playing with the Leap Frog laptop. That dog Scout is cute.

[mr_me]

55 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

Retro bait, not for families was the original idea. ....

From the October 2018 press release, introducing Amico.  "We are creating a console that parents WANT to buy", "I think it’s about time somebody focused on families with kid-friendly games", "Our goal was to create a console that both gamers and non-gamers are able to have fun with and play together", “Intellivision’s policy to only offer games rated E for Everyone and E10+ for Everyone 10 and up on its new system makes finding the right games easier for busy families, especially those with young gamers.”

 

I don't see any evidence to suggest this wasn't the original vision presented to the founding partners, especially after hearing some of them talk about it.  You can maybe say that they might not be delivering on that vision; too many action games, not enough casual/party games, or kids edutainment.

 

55 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

Bomb Squad

Safe Cracker

*Any game that has more than one button on the touchscreen.

With games like Back Talk Party, Bomb Squad, Safecracker we're talking about casual/party games rather than kids edutainment.  These three games are expected to have some activities on the controller. Using two displays is not necessarily the same as having to split attention between two displays nor should it be an issue.  We only saw the one thing with Bomb Squad where a player is doing the activity on the touchscreen while others can see what they're doing on the TV.  Haven't seen enough gameplay of Safecracker or Back Talk Party to say.

 

Action games on Amico typically use the touchscreen as one single action if at all.  Other examples use it as a swipe action.  No need to look at it, in either case.  If there are more functions on the touchscreen it's typically a setting, e.g. turning on autofire in astrosmash.  Sideswipers only uses the touchscreen after you've lost out of the round, not during main game action.  After deciding on one of three options it becomes single touch action.  They could easily move them to disc/buttons which is how I'd do it.  With Shark Shark, the controller display is only used during action to help a struggling player.  They'll get a rumble notification when it appears so no need to split attention.

 

Again, card games or any turn based strategy games, look at your hand, look at the table/TV, look at other players, no different than real cards.

 

 

[+GoldLeader]

Hey!

 

I'm finally caught up in this thread...

 

 

 

At least until I get up tomorrow, get some coffee...Turn on my computer before work,

 

And find myself 3 pages behind once again!

[Rev]

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

From the October 2018 press release, introducing Amico.  "We are creating a console that parents WANT to buy", "I think it’s about time somebody focused on families with kid-friendly games", "Our goal was to create a console that both gamers and non-gamers are able to have fun with and play together", “Intellivision’s policy to only offer games rated E for Everyone and E10+ for Everyone 10 and up on its new system makes finding the right games easier for busy families, especially those with young gamers.”

 

I don't see any evidence to suggest this wasn't the original vision presented to the founding partners, especially after hearing some of them talk about it.  You can maybe say that they might not be delivering on that vision; too many action games, not enough casual/party games, or kids edutainment.

 

 

 

 

Here is the original vision from the reveal video. No one reads press releases. This is what drew people in at first. 
 

 

The 2018 reveal trailer is geared toward pretty much retro gamers only. Even using terminology “arcade style buttons”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MrBeefy]

1 hour ago, Rev said:

Here is the original vision from the reveal video. No one reads press releases. This is what drew people in at first. 
 

 

The 2018 reveal trailer is geared toward pretty much retro gamers only. Even using terminology “arcade style buttons”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exactly. Just to emphasize the point just a little more...

Relying on nostalgia,

Old games...

What does console wars have to do with kid gaming?

Oh and Pong. Move Paw Patrol or Little Einsteins nothing screams not retro bait like PONG! ?

[roots.genoa]

9 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

Is the Amico dead or alive?

[Beatley82]

8 hours ago, mr_me said:

My videogame experience in the 1990s was almost all single-player.  All they said was the industry took a turn at a time some new trends were being established.

I mean, ok if that was your experience. But it wasn't mine or any of the people I played with well into the 2000s and beyond. The PlayStation 1 and 2 era were hugely social, in a "sitting round in the same room playing way" in a way that consoles still are today. There were always people who preferred or maybe even had no choice but a single player experience and there has always been software to cater for that. Intellivision have seemed very keen to push the narrative that local multiplayer was all but wiped out. Hence people trotting out things like "finally something to bring the family together in the same room again". It's disingenuous.

[Agillig]

3 hours ago, Beatley82 said:

I mean, ok if that was your experience. But it wasn't mine or any of the people I played with well into the 2000s and beyond. The PlayStation 1 and 2 era were hugely social, in a "sitting round in the same room playing way" in a way that consoles still are today. There were always people who preferred or maybe even had no choice but a single player experience and there has always been software to cater for that. Intellivision have seemed very keen to push the narrative that local multiplayer was all but wiped out. Hence people trotting out things like "finally something to bring the family together in the same room again". It's disingenuous.

Yeah, we had 2 tvs and 2 PS1s linked together to play Test Drive 4.  And of course we had an N64 that got plenty of play time with Golden Eye and Mario Kart.  When the Wii rolled around, I'd argue couch co-op was even bigger. 

 

But all of this is a moot point.   The big 3 don't label each other as dens of Satan.  They build hype by showing their own products.   The fact Intellivision takes the former route says volumes about their product, and what they think about it.

[SegaSnatcher]

13 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

We are almost on page 30 here,have we come to a consensus yet?

How about starting a poll to vote in,

Is the Amico dead or alive?

The Amico is in a long coma.

[MrBeefy]

3 hours ago, Beatley82 said:

I mean, ok if that was your experience. But it wasn't mine or any of the people I played with well into the 2000s and beyond. The PlayStation 1 and 2 era were hugely social, in a "sitting round in the same room playing way" in a way that consoles still are today. There were always people who preferred or maybe even had no choice but a single player experience and there has always been software to cater for that. Intellivision have seemed very keen to push the narrative that local multiplayer was all but wiped out. Hence people trotting out things like "finally something to bring the family together in the same room again". It's disingenuous.

Exactly. The only consoles that have been single player for my household through the years would be handhelds. Even then, those were not a solo experience completely.

14 minutes ago, Agillig said:

But all of this is a moot point.   The big 3 don't label each other as dens of Satan.  They build hype by showing their own products.   The fact Intellivision takes the former route says volumes about their product, and what they think about it.

This is what bothered me. I could care less if the former CEO disliked a company. What it showed was the product is weak and they don't have faith in it. Same could be said about how he started the feud with Pat and Ian because they didn't automatically say it was great.

 

There was/is an inability for them to let the product speak for itself. Show me why it is great and stop talking about how it is great. Talk was cheap and would constantly change depending on the day and situation.

[+5-11under]

1 hour ago, SegaSnatcher said:

The Amico is in a long coma.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Amico lying on the ground twitching, but you're probably more correct.

[mr_me]

8 hours ago, Rev said:

Here is the original vision from the reveal video. No one reads press releases. This is what drew people in at first. 
 

 

The 2018 reveal trailer is geared toward pretty much retro gamers only. Even using terminology “arcade style buttons”. 

Yes, but Mrbeefy is saying the family friendly, casual gamer aspect idea came later.  The press release shows that it was the focus from the beginning, whether you read it or not.

 

There's no question that at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo their reveal video presented a lot of retro licensed for modern remakes.  No mention of emulating the classics, which is what many fans of the games and at the expo would want.

Edited April 5, 2022 by mr_me

[mr_me]

5 hours ago, Beatley82 said:

I mean, ok if that was your experience. But it wasn't mine or any of the people I played with well into the 2000s and beyond. The PlayStation 1 and 2 era were hugely social, in a "sitting round in the same room playing way" in a way that consoles still are today. There were always people who preferred or maybe even had no choice but a single player experience and there has always been software to cater for that. Intellivision have seemed very keen to push the narrative that local multiplayer was all but wiped out. Hence people trotting out things like "finally something to bring the family together in the same room again". It's disingenuous.

My point was that my experience is only my experience and not typical. I played video games on PC. The PC video game market share was still growing in the 1990s, it didn't catch console gaming until many years later.  And the video is not saying local multiplayer was wiped out but with the popularity of online gaming today and then tablets and other handheld games with kids, some people will recognize what they are saying.  If there aren't people that do than the message will fail, no reason for others to be offended.

Edited April 5, 2022 by mr_me