Newt

Been there since I posted the message.

MAGFEST I'll be playing monster hunter in the lobby until Bahamut shows up.. With my luck that will be sometime late tonight.

How can join megroup?

Stop watching TV. Reduce my commute by half or more. Apply the time gained well. Submit a game for Indiecade 2015.

Did you forget me (not that I will have/need a key), or do I need to seek shelter elsewhere? Also, when you decide to break one of the paintings in the hallway try to do it near someone else's room this year.

just got my 3ds; friend code is 5472-7760-7577 friend codes are the dumbest thing

I'm running out of space on my 32 and waiting for the 64 to come out stateside.

I'm just confirming that I'll be going and requesting some floorspace from someone.

Consoles are typically loss leaders. You make the money back in publishing fees.

Glicko http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko.pdf Glicko-2 http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf TrueSkill http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/67956/NIPS2006_0688.pdf I'll throw in another for good measure http://jmlr.org/papers/volume12/weng11a/weng11a.pdf ELO has a lot of problems. People hoard their ranking when they're near a placement cutoff. Rankings don't adjust quickly. There is never a point in which a high skill player would want to play against a low-medium skill player. And all of that doesn't even touch the team dynamics issue.

So Ragnarok Odyssey is a game. Does anyone else have it/want to hunt together?

You left me out.. Also, it's probably best to keep registration and boarding separate.. Otherwise things will get exceptionally complicate.

Everything I've read indicates that people buy a console precisely for a single game. Then they maybe pick up a couple others.

I dunno.. cloud haz bigger swordz

The argument about different hardware specs is facetious. Any independent game will be of the graphical and computational scope such that it really wont matter. Any AAA game will be expected to run only on a recent computer (just as it's expected to run on only recent consoles). Rendering at various resolutions is handled by every major engine that I know of. Doing it from scratch isn't particularly difficult, either. I'll give you preferential control schemes; some games do indeed feel better on a controller (though others better with KBM or HOTAS). Input mapping is a pretty simple problem, but needing to have the experience work with KBM could be a real issue.

After just a few short months in this Lovecraftian dreamscape, I've taken a job offer in Los Angeles, CA. To anyone on the (north)east coast -- if you want to hang out sometime before MAG, it will have to be within the next couple weeks. I'll import a deep dish pizza or two from Chicago if anyone wants to set up a mini-meetup. People in LA -- who all is out there? Anyone have couch-space for a few days sometime in the next few weeks for me to go apt hunting?

Failing is the default case for startups. Until I've seen numbers that give me confidence that this will make it to market and be profitable for 3rd parties, I have no reason to believe it will succeed. I'm yet to see those numbers, so I don't believe it will succeed.

I am yet to see a compelling argument that this is true.

I don't know of a game that can be put to market in less than three man-months and no outside resources. Opportunity cost is a cost; if a developer isn't at least making that back, it's not fiscally responsible for them to create games. "Has games that you could play on your phone/tablet" is not the draw of the system. "Has a real controller" is a draw. There is /literally/ no reason to get one if games on it wont make reasonable use of the controls -- the only benefit you get from it. I fail to see how "it's an indie console" means "developers ignore money". Business is business.

They need to sell enough units to make their platform worthwhile to acknowledge for developers. 70k is an exceptionally low number. At that number, even 'major hits' would likely not provide any return on investment. Especially with free-to-play numbers. You realize that $0.25 ARPU is pretty good for free-to-play, right? Let's be generous and say that they get $0.50 ARPU and /saturate/ the market (which is essentially impossible, especially with a non-zero number of people who want one only to play SNES games). That's only $35k for a miracle game. Games cost more than that to make. If even the unicorns can't make back their opportunity cost, why would anyone bother with it?

Even with your much more generous numbers, they're an order of magnitude off of the target. The terms the investors would demand for the money would probably be pretty crazy too..

Very bad back-of-the-notebook approximations follow: Lets say that to get major developer attention as a primary platform they will need a million units. A more realistic number is 2-3mil, but let's be nice. Much as I love it, the Vita is currently struggling with something around 2.2mil devices sold. Let's also assume that unicorns exist and they can manufacture it for $100. That's $100MM just in manufacturing costs. Up-front. They're also going to need a strong marketing campaign.. I have no idea what that would cost, but surely in the millions to tens of millions. By my (admittedly extremely poor) estimation, they could probably make a reasonable play for $200-500MM. They have ~$8MM.

It is not uncommon for game consoles to be sold at a loss -- see Xbox, Xbox360, PS2, PS3, ... Notable exception is the Wii, which since launch sold at a profit. They're able to do that for a variety of reasons including: licensing fees, expected first party game sales, expected platform revenue, etc. The main problem with the approach is that it requires vast amounts of capital up front -- something that the Ouya presently lacks. 'Vast' in this sense would be on the order of a million units. The short of it is that they're going to need to pick up a bunch of funding or this thing is almost guaranteed to either not launch or not do anything significant even if it does.

Anyone investing with a guaranteed best null-return on investment is a sucker. People buy stocks because they could be worth /more/ than they put in. Assuming Ouya launches at $100, you're better off putting the money in a CD and waiting for Ouya to launch. You can then buy a hamburger with the excess or something. You also don't absorb someone else's risk for no reason. Nexus 7 also doesn't have a controller. Also consider shipping weight.

A few points: 'Investors' are people that will get a return on their investment. A more appropriate term for people who backed the kickstarter is 'Suckers'. Anyone who backed the kickstarter spent $100 with no liability for anything. Kickstarter + Amazon is something like 7% off the top. So they have about $137 per console they need to deliver. And controllers. Anyone saying 'Samsung can make phones for $100 so Ouya can be $100' doesn't understand supply chains. Samsung (or other major electronics developers) can only offer those prices because they move sufficient quantity to hold very good relations with the sweat-shop manufacturing facilities. I obviously don't have hard numbers, but it's been made very clear throughout various media outlets, corporate statements, etc that margins are exceptionally worse for projects with smaller quantities and corporations without prior relationships. Ouya will not get the same rates for manufacturing as Samsung/Apple/Nokia/etc. Phones are also often subsidized by contract fees - this is not the case with Ouya. It /is/ the case with the Xbox360 and it's eventual successor (sans the 'often' bit..). They either have a staff of at least a dozen, or they are legitimately conning people. Their burn rate is going to be a large issue. There's basically no way this thing is going to get off the ground unless they can convince some VC to open their wallets. I'm not sure if the Phantom is old enough for them to trust a crazy scheme like this again. Add that to the obvious 'piracy; games; incumbents; market demand; ..' issues, and it looks very questionable that they'll be able to pull it off. Have they even shown a real finished prototype yet? No; photoshop renders don't count.