Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

1 minute ago, tripletopper said:

Battlefish I'm apologizing to the whole Amico fandom on AtariaAge.

 

Remember that day I broke down and someone thought there was a psychiatric issue with a post?  

 

That was me.

 

I have no problem with the machine.  Looking back on it now, I have no problem with the man.  I guess I was just feeling self-pity for my circumstance that I can't enjoy the system primarily made for local multiplayer because I'm the only gamer in the house.

 

If you don't have a local human to play with/against, the Amico looks less attractive.

 

 

No worries, man. 

2 minutes ago, tripletopper said:

Battlefish I'm apologizing to the whole Amico fandom on AtariaAge.

 

Remember that day I broke down and someone thought there was a psychiatric issue with a post?  

 

That was me.

 

I have no problem with the machine.  Looking back on it now, I have no problem with the man.  I guess I was just feeling self-pity for my circumstance that I can't enjoy the system primarily made for local multiplayer because I'm the only gamer in the house.

 

If you don't have a local human to play with/against, the Amico looks less attractive.

 

 

I'm just happy you made another post so you're not at 666 anymore!

Seriously though... no need to apologize... but I appreciate the thought.

20 hours ago, mr_me said:

First person couch co-op games can be done and have been done with split screens (not encouraged on Amico). 

Yes, sorry, meant without split screens. Never liked those. 

4 minutes ago, Starpaddler said:

Yes, sorry, meant without split screens. Never liked those. 

I'm with you.  The only one I ever liked was GoldenEye on the N64.  But we would always play on a super big projector type TV so it didn't make it as bad.

8 hours ago, Silverbot said:

Tommy,

 

Will the lights on the system flash in time with what’s going on on the screen, is it like the TVs you can get that light up on the back and react to what’s on the screen, so if I shot something on the right of the screen will the console flash on the right had side. Thanks 👍😀

I remember a Xavix game where you could plug music into the console with a jack from an ipod or whatever and it could set the action to the beat of the song if you stepped on the mat to the beat of the song. It was an adaptive dance dance revolution type thing from early 2000's which has gone pretty much caput now, but the tech is possible to do these sorts of adaptive things if input such as audio, visual, etc. is possible.

Tommy, thank you for being honest.  Thank you for saying that the cards just happened the fall that way to add up to my hour-long psychiatric breakdown.

It just seems like with the ads no one was talking about that as an issue and when I said that could be one option for long-term residual income where you can either choose to pay $10 at once and have ad free or promise no more than 5 minutes of ads per hour of game time and make perpetual residual income, people choose whether they want to give ad time to you or physical dollars to you both of which are worth various amounts of money.

My friend actually think it's a virtue to pay blind before the game comes out and if you happen to get stuck with a lemon it's your fault.  I kind of find that anti-consumer but that's his mentality.  Likewise he feels being forced to watch ads to him is being anti-consumer.

We all agree that the Intellivision Amico is going to intend to be9 Pro-consumer.  People just have different ideas about what is pro consumer.

the friend who took that stand has a pretty good job therefore 30 seconds of his time multiplied by the number of games averaging 5 minutes per 30 second s to play on it would be more costly to him than a maximum of $10 once and saving those 30-second slots.   I am on  Social Security disability and plenty of time but limited money and would obviously feel the reverse.

the timing just happened that 2 days after I sent the email to the general mailbox about ads was the first time the "no ads" proclamation was made explicit.  Since there was no internet chatter or controversy about ads I thought I uniquely brought that up, and that's why that,  combined with removing Network play, felt targeted.

the funny thing is I don't regret my friend paying for something to skip ads.  But the funny thing he says is that if we're playing online him pain to skip ads and me preferring the ad license would cause chaos in head to head online games.

I could see how ads are abused and how one would would want to initially avoid it.  If you were going to, you want to take clear stands to appeal to both paid and ad license holders. 

1. No double dipping: once a consumer paid for the license, it's ad free, period.  Though your demos could have ads.

2. No cliffhanger ads where you're in the middle of gameplay everything pauses you watch at 30 second ad and it resumes.  that is not only annoying but it alters the gameplay in an unintended way of people double guessing their strategies and trying to outpsyche their opponent instead of just merely reacting to the situation as it lies.

3. No real world ads tied to the story or characters, unless the IP was an ad or had real world mentions before the Amico version.  it makes the IP seem cheaper if it's tied to a brand artificially for the game, when the original work had no ad tied to it.

4.. Ad content clearly identified at a natural break in a game, like kids TV.

5.  No advertisements for products that would be considered M rated.  T rated products may be advertised, but just like green label movie trailers the content within the commercial has to be e10 or tamer.

6.  Since you intentionally refuse games that are large in scope by instituing a $10 limit, only games that are not theoretically allowed by you could be advertised for other systems.

7.  If a game is allowed by you and is also playable on other systems, you could use the phrase "includes special version for Amico with blah blah blah.". Features on other systems will not be advertised.

Here's one I haven't thought of that I think might be good.  No one said you had to offer the full and free version on day one.  You could offer a one level or otherwise limited  demo and have ads on it on release day, like a free sample.  You could on a certain anniversary (6 month, 1 year, 2 year) when the sales go close to zero, allow the developer to allow  the option of either purchasing full ad-free license or get the full game with an advertising license.

Also there'd be no advantage to either being a paid license or an ad license in terms of head-head gameplay once network play starts.

I think those are good Pro-consumer, pro-neo-retro gamer ad policies.  Some would doubt if networked  paid vs ad gameplay parity is possible like my friend.  But if the ads only happen at natural game breaks/story breaks you could assure there'll be no pollution of ads within the gameplay.  usually you'll just wait in the lobby for another opponent / partner and that's when you play the ad.

1 hour ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Thanks for kind words and support.  Yep, that is their main goal.  To lie and misinform in hopes that people won't like me or Amico.  Nice hobby eh?  

 

And they do pick up a few like minded stalker folks along the way to engage in their hate parade (I think they've made it up to about 10 people now!).  But as you rightfully mentioned, anyone who actually looks into it finds that all the negativity and misinformation disappears.  And for that... we must thank them!  It leads people like you into becoming a part of the positive conversation.  Pretty cool. 

Of course you'll be now labeled a shill who can't think for themselves.  Welcome!

 

Please let me know if you ever have any questions regarding Amico.

 

Thanks!

These people contradict themselves all the time. One day a person will say you should focus only on retrogamers and then the same person will say you aren't being inclusive enough by not targeting hardcore gamers. One day they'll say they have nothing against the Amico itself and the next day the same person will say they are fighting against budget gaming consoles by fighting the Amico. I'm often reminded of a line from Vanilla Sky spoken by Kurt Russel: "Do you know what derangement is?"

1 hour ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

I'm with you.  The only one I ever liked was GoldenEye on the N64.  But we would always play on a super big projector type TV so it didn't make it as bad.

 

 

A spy vs spy game would be great use of split screen though

Hey Tommy, since you were unaware of my invention I was working on with Keith, it might be the exact key you're looking for getting Amico online without programming special net code. A network game that feels like a local couch multiplayer game.  The secret is beating 8 milliseconds of ping for 60 controller frames per second game.  That gives you the furthest distance between two people in a group must be 2400 km or less.  There are plenty of people you can play within 2400 km of yourself.

The last thing he said to me was that it sounds like a great and possible idea it should work in theory.  but the one thing that's risky was not knowing whether Sprint Direct Connect with its straight line network connection had the speeds of whatever the Sprint network offered or were automatically 56k if they were using Sprint Direct Connect as data.  So I called Sprint, got a hold of Tex Tiexera, the executive of the engineering department, and he said two things one the network is already built and you do not have to do anything special to make data work in a low ping way.  And two whatever speeds of Internet are between you and your opponent you'll get the fastest speeds between opponents.  There is no technical reason other than deprioritizing (limiting speed based on traffic) why you shouldn't get the full network speed.  Keith said that Steve Toney said working at dial-up speeds is working without a net but if we were guaranteed 3G speeds plus throughout the nation it might make sense.  a few years later now that 4G is considered the minimum combining that with low paying Direct Connect makes it even more possible.

My Invention I'd called Netrogames.  This is probably the easiest way to add Network to in television games because the theory of a product is if a game could be two plus  players split screen and/or  same screen it should work without writing any extra game-specific  code unless you're outside of 2400 km.   In other words if this works for one game then it should work in theory for every game, except if you need a second screen or a VMU like privacy screen.

30 minutes ago, tripletopper said:

Hey Tommy, since you were unaware of my invention I was working on with Keith, it might be the exact key you're looking for getting Amico online without programming special net code. A network game that feels like a local couch multiplayer game.  The secret is beating 8 milliseconds of ping for 60 controller frames per second game.  That gives you the furthest distance between two people in a group must be 2400 km or less.  There are plenty of people you can play within 2400 km of yourself.

 

The last thing he said to me was that it sounds like a great and possible idea it should work in theory.  but the one thing that's risky was not knowing whether Sprint Direct Connect with its straight line network connection had the speeds of whatever the Sprint network offered or were automatically 56k if they were using Sprint Direct Connect as data.  So I called Sprint, got a hold of Tex Tiexera, the executive of the engineering department, and he said two things one the network is already built and you do not have to do anything special to make data work in a low ping way.  And two whatever speeds of Internet are between you and your opponent you'll get the fastest speeds between opponents.  There is no technical reason other than deprioritizing (limiting speed based on traffic) why you shouldn't get the full network speed.  Keith said that Steve Toney said working at dial-up speeds is working without a net but if we were guaranteed 3G speeds plus throughout the nation it might make sense.  a few years later now that 4G is considered the minimum combining that with low paying Direct Connect makes it even more possible.

 

My Invention I'd called Netrogames.  This is probably the easiest way to add Network to in television games because the theory of a product is if a game could be two plus  players split screen and/or  same screen it should work without writing any extra game-specific  code unless you're outside of 2400 km.   In other words if this works for one game then it should work in theory for every game, except if you need a second screen or a VMU like privacy screen.

The lack of technology isn't the reason that Amico doesn't support network games right now. The whole point of couch co-op is to bring people together, especially for our first target demographic... young families. Having your family (and eventually friends, once Covid is finally reduced as a worry) laughing, yelling, hitting each other (hopefully in a friendly manner, but sometimes brothers can be hard on each other, LOL), etcetera, while in the same room. You can't have this interaction over the internet. My best friend and I skype a couple times a week, playing various games cooperatively with each other. While we are happy that we have that chance to "hang out", we both want nothing more than to get together and play in the same room, which is just, sadly, not possible right now.  (He's in an extremely high risk group.) 

Once Amico has a wide install base, and if our customers are clamoring for it, we might add network support. But it's not a year one, or probably even a year two or three, priority. 

16 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Question:  I'm curious.  Are you more interested in seeing the machine just booting up... or in the UI (User Interface) itself?  The reason I ask is that you didn't mention the UI in your question... only the "boot up sequence".

 

Thanks.

At the time of writing I was only thinking about the boot up sequence, but it would be cool to see both 

3 hours ago, tripletopper said:

I guess I was just feeling self-pity for my circumstance that I can't enjoy the system primarily made for local multiplayer because I'm the only gamer in the house.

just so you know, most games on Amico will have a single player option.  I look at the Amico also as a nice addition to game night or heck, a reason to start a game night. God knows if I have some friends/neighbors and their wives over, any game that has more than a 3 minute learning curve or rule explanation wont make the cut, and hand my buddies or their wives an xbox controller and they'll look at me like I lost my mind, the amico however will be a whole lot more inviting.  So anyway, welcome to the conversation and dont be afraid to stop back. Hell how many times can you post on a forum and get a direct answer back from a legendary game maker and CEO like Tommy T. 

Several items:

- Warlords is one of the few 2nd generation games (with Pitfall, HERO, Safecracker or Triple Action) and  that make me feel like "man, I missed that...". I started with the 3rd generation. Looks like an awesome game to play, great news that it will come out for the Amico.

- I agree with what Tommy said about the haters and the details about how bullying comes from your own insecurity are very informative, but I would also like to point out that many of them are not exactly "communistic", but more like the opposite (from what I've read from them in the comments). I believe communism can be applied in a modern, democratic way that just affects the economy and not the freedom of speech/though. I would have used "totalitarian". 😇

- In 2020 we got the virus and discussed about Ray Tracing and day 1 patches. In 2021, we will get the vaccine and discuss about the spinning wheel of a controller and the LED lights or cranks included in two consoles. It feels like an improvement!

- Now that The Last of Us 2 has won almost every award, I feel pretty nostalgic for the time video games didn't have a story or just didn't take themselves seriously. Along with the better gameplay, it's the thing I miss the most about old games, more than graphics or sound.

- The Monkey Island unused sprites and backgrounds are nice to see, but they frustrate me a bit. I just wish the original team would have programmed 7 sequels. Commander Keen proved that it was possible! 🤘 Somebody should release new "missions" for 20-40 year old games. NOW.

- Fun fact: This is the first time since 1990 that Nintendo doesn't release a new console when the generation change happens.

10 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

In this case, there is a small handful of negative "blokes" with multiple fake accounts who believe that whatever they don't like... you shouldn't either.  Typical Communist type thinking and narcissistic behavior.  They will declare that "Anyone who likes Amico MUST BE A STUPID SHILL who can't think for themselves!"

 

It started because they weren't capable enough to have an adult conversation with the rest of the people here and when they continued to keep breaking the forum rules the mods had to step in (after many warnings) and banish them.  When their bully privileges got taken away, it drove them nuts.  And of course, they blame me for it.  So they have made it their life mission to lie and misinform people.  And to pile on, their ego's can't handle the fact that literally everything they have ever said about me or Amico continues to be proven wrong on a weekly basis.  It drives them absolutely insane to the point of stalking me and anyone who says anything positive about Amico anywhere on the internet.  So pathetic that literally within minutes of posting anything, anywhere online (social media, here, YouTube, etc.) they need to immediately react within minutes (hi boys!).  Not even really trolls at this point, but true legitimate stalkers.  Of course, they have zero self awareness about how I've taken over their lives and free time on a daily basis.  This is a typical behavior you'll see when a bully encounters someone who punches back and they continue to be proven wrong.  They can't stand it... so they double and triple down to the point of obsessing over it every minute of every day.

As long as we exist and continue to be successful... it will continue to bring sadness, frustration and negativity into their lives.  They'll try to hide it by saying that they are finding enjoyment by trying to destroy us.  That thinking alone tells you all you need to know about the type of folks we're talking about here.  At one point I kinda felt sorry for them, but what they don't realize... is that they only have themselves to blame for the constant anger they feel whenever they read another positive post, watch another positive video or seeing us successfully raising more money.

They will lie and try to trick others by saying that none of us can take criticism when all anyone needs to do is read the pages here to see that it isn't the case.  I, and most of the folks in here welcome a healthy debate and exchange of thoughts, perspectives and ideas.  No 2 people are the same.  It's one of the reason places like this exist.  But not in their communistic world.  BELIEVE WHAT THEY BELIEVE OR ELSE YOUR AN IDIOT!!

As I've always said... Amico definitely isn't for everyone.  So I completely understand that a lot of folks out there won't get it and won't enjoy it.  No worries.  Fair enough.  Why on Earth would I get upset if someone doesn't like Amico?  It would be like getting upset if someone didn't like a song I wrote.  Who cares?!?!  It's impossible to please everyone... I learned that a long, long time ago.  But what really drives these folks wacko is when they see others that DO like it.  Just think about that for a second and soak it in.  Yikes! 

At the end of the day though... it all really boils down to one simple thing. 

 

They are extremely jealous of my past, present and future success.  It's so obvious by their idiotic behavior and I guess they believe that they are somehow hiding it.  Ha!

 

Sorry fellas, you picked the wrong guy to want to fail.

 

Sucks for you.

 

 

Wow, Tommy, you would think people have better things to do in their lives. Go and enjoy something you like instead of hating something you’ve never tried, any way, they sound like a bunch of plonkers!!! 
 

👍😀

10 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Yeah, there are some things like that.  Not all the time... and some of it is subtle... but definitely some cool things that people will enjoy!

 

 

Cool, really looking forward to seeing it in action.

👍😀

12 hours ago, Swami said:

I remember a Xavix game where you could plug music into the console with a jack from an ipod or whatever and it could set the action to the beat of the song if you stepped on the mat to the beat of the song. It was an adaptive dance dance revolution type thing from early 2000's which has gone pretty much caput now, but the tech is possible to do these sorts of adaptive things if input such as audio, visual, etc. is possible.

Imagine an "app" where you could load in music from a USB and Amico would do an on screen video show as well as light show on the console & controllers (and you could use the controllers to interact or change the visuals.

Wouldn't That Be Something?™

11 hours ago, tripletopper said:

Tommy, thank you for being honest.  Thank you for saying that the cards just happened the fall that way to add up to my hour-long psychiatric breakdown.

 

It just seems like with the ads no one was talking about that as an issue and when I said that could be one option for long-term residual income where you can either choose to pay $10 at once and have ad free or promise no more than 5 minutes of ads per hour of game time and make perpetual residual income, people choose whether they want to give ad time to you or physical dollars to you both of which are worth various amounts of money.

 

My friend actually think it's a virtue to pay blind before the game comes out and if you happen to get stuck with a lemon it's your fault.  I kind of find that anti-consumer but that's his mentality.  Likewise he feels being forced to watch ads to him is being anti-consumer.

 

We all agree that the Intellivision Amico is going to intend to be9 Pro-consumer.  People just have different ideas about what is pro consumer.

 

the friend who took that stand has a pretty good job therefore 30 seconds of his time multiplied by the number of games averaging 5 minutes per 30 second s to play on it would be more costly to him than a maximum of $10 once and saving those 30-second slots.   I am on  Social Security disability and plenty of time but limited money and would obviously feel the reverse.

 

the timing just happened that 2 days after I sent the email to the general mailbox about ads was the first time the "no ads" proclamation was made explicit.  Since there was no internet chatter or controversy about ads I thought I uniquely brought that up, and that's why that,  combined with removing Network play, felt targeted.

 

the funny thing is I don't regret my friend paying for something to skip ads.  But the funny thing he says is that if we're playing online him pain to skip ads and me preferring the ad license would cause chaos in head to head online games.

 

I could see how ads are abused and how one would would want to initially avoid it.  If you were going to, you want to take clear stands to appeal to both paid and ad license holders. 

1. No double dipping: once a consumer paid for the license, it's ad free, period.  Though your demos could have ads.

2. No cliffhanger ads where you're in the middle of gameplay everything pauses you watch at 30 second ad and it resumes.  that is not only annoying but it alters the gameplay in an unintended way of people double guessing their strategies and trying to outpsyche their opponent instead of just merely reacting to the situation as it lies.

3. No real world ads tied to the story or characters, unless the IP was an ad or had real world mentions before the Amico version.  it makes the IP seem cheaper if it's tied to a brand artificially for the game, when the original work had no ad tied to it.

4.. Ad content clearly identified at a natural break in a game, like kids TV.

 

5.  No advertisements for products that would be considered M rated.  T rated products may be advertised, but just like green label movie trailers the content within the commercial has to be e10 or tamer.

 

6.  Since you intentionally refuse games that are large in scope by instituing a $10 limit, only games that are not theoretically allowed by you could be advertised for other systems.

 

7.  If a game is allowed by you and is also playable on other systems, you could use the phrase "includes special version for Amico with blah blah blah.". Features on other systems will not be advertised.

 

 

Here's one I haven't thought of that I think might be good.  No one said you had to offer the full and free version on day one.  You could offer a one level or otherwise limited  demo and have ads on it on release day, like a free sample.  You could on a certain anniversary (6 month, 1 year, 2 year) when the sales go close to zero, allow the developer to allow  the option of either purchasing full ad-free license or get the full game with an advertising license.

 

Also there'd be no advantage to either being a paid license or an ad license in terms of head-head gameplay once network play starts.

 

I think those are good Pro-consumer, pro-neo-retro gamer ad policies.  Some would doubt if networked  paid vs ad gameplay parity is possible like my friend.  But if the ads only happen at natural game breaks/story breaks you could assure there'll be no pollution of ads within the gameplay.  usually you'll just wait in the lobby for another opponent / partner and that's when you play the ad.

 

 

Thanks for the reply.

Having free games with ads definitely works great for mobile and is a big percentage of how they earn income.  But the research shows that folks are getting really tired and annoyed with these types of ads.  All of us see them everywhere we go online.  Whether its social media, Google, mobile gaming, etc.  The other negative aspect is that people feel like they are being spied on at this point (which to a great extent they are).

Our two main goals with our consumers/customers is to build TRUST and VALUE.  Giving someone hours and hours of entertainment for under $10 is definitely a value proposition for the people we are targeting.  And the TRUST factor comes in because they don't feel like they are being spied on, or need to continue to pay for something, or are going to be bothered every few days to pay for something, etc.

It's just not how our particular value system within our ecosystem is structured.

I think it's an interesting idea for a home console... just not ours.

Also interesting to point out that Ouya did something quite similar on launch with free trials, etc. and they quickly removed it as it was killing their business model.  Of course not having great games that people wanted to purchase was an issue... but even the good ones were not being sold because they had too many choices and not enough quality to warrant it.  The VALUE proposition just wasn't there. 

I'm not sure if an ad blocker can work while playing mobile games.  I know it works when watching YouTube videos or looking at websites.  Being able to block those ads is great because they're so annoying.  

40 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Imagine an "app" where you could load in music from a USB and Amico would do an on screen video show as well as light show on the console & controllers (and you could use the controllers to interact or change the visuals.

 

Wouldn't That Be Something?™

 

 

 

Sounds cool Tommy.  And yes it would indeed be something. 

When Dragon Fire releases on Amico, there can be a live action commercial for it.  In the commercial, Tommy would be seen running across the bridge dodging fireballs.  Then he would enter the room with all the treasure trying to avoid the dragon.  

11 hours ago, Swami said:

These people contradict themselves all the time. One day a person will say you should focus only on retrogamers and then the same person will say you aren't being inclusive enough by not targeting hardcore gamers. One day they'll say they have nothing against the Amico itself and the next day the same person will say they are fighting against budget gaming consoles by fighting the Amico. I'm often reminded of a line from Vanilla Sky spoken by Kurt Russel: "Do you know what derangement is?"

Haha!  Contradict is a bit of an understatement I would say. 

This small group of ding-a-lings moves the goalposts so much from week to week that they can't even keep their own lies, demands and misinformation straight and often end up arguing and fighting among themselves.

My personal favorites are when they INSIST and DEMAND that I give exact dates for everything we do.  If something changes... then I'm a liar and the entire project is a scam.  However... if I give a loose date on something (beginning of the month, maybe sometime soon, hoping for early next year, etc.) THEN the entire thing is also a scam because we must not be ready and don't know an exact time.

The other good one is that if we are looking to expand our team and are hiring... then that equates that we're in trouble, not finished and the entire project is a scam.  They are so narcissistic that they think they've figured out something that intelligent & successful investors, retailers, big name licensors, distributors, big agencies, governments, etc. who have done a ton of due diligence... have not.  Any normal person can go on our LinkedIn page and see the folks who work for us to clearly see what and who Intellivision is (and a portion of our folks aren't even on LinkedIn).  At this writing, 44 people on LinkedIn and we just hired 2 more that start at the beginning of December.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/intellivisionentertainment/people/

Sadly, our employees are contacted a few times a month by these whiny deplorables (posing as journalists or customers) to try and get dirt on the company.  They've gone after my wife on social media and YouTube (calling her a whore, etc.).  The more successful we become (and the more jealous they get) the more they will continue to cross the line.  All under the guise of "constructive criticism".

These are miserable folks who know nothing about the video game industry or running a business.  They haven't run or operated anything in their lives, which is why it is so easy for them to want to destroy something that hundreds of people are building.  As previously mentioned... it always comes down to jealousy.  They'll never be able to build anything themselves, so they'll try their hardest to tear down something that others are trying to accomplish.  Sad and lonely human beings too cowardly to even have a two way conversation.

11 hours ago, Nolagamer said:

A spy vs spy game would be great use of split screen though

I could see that... although I think plotting things on your own controller screen without the other person seeing would be pretty epic!

The camera on the level zooms in and out depending on how close the characters are to each other (i.e. so you can always see both of them).

11 hours ago, tripletopper said:

Hey Tommy, since you were unaware of my invention I was working on with Keith, it might be the exact key you're looking for getting Amico online without programming special net code. A network game that feels like a local couch multiplayer game.  The secret is beating 8 milliseconds of ping for 60 controller frames per second game.  That gives you the furthest distance between two people in a group must be 2400 km or less.  There are plenty of people you can play within 2400 km of yourself.

 

The last thing he said to me was that it sounds like a great and possible idea it should work in theory.  but the one thing that's risky was not knowing whether Sprint Direct Connect with its straight line network connection had the speeds of whatever the Sprint network offered or were automatically 56k if they were using Sprint Direct Connect as data.  So I called Sprint, got a hold of Tex Tiexera, the executive of the engineering department, and he said two things one the network is already built and you do not have to do anything special to make data work in a low ping way.  And two whatever speeds of Internet are between you and your opponent you'll get the fastest speeds between opponents.  There is no technical reason other than deprioritizing (limiting speed based on traffic) why you shouldn't get the full network speed.  Keith said that Steve Toney said working at dial-up speeds is working without a net but if we were guaranteed 3G speeds plus throughout the nation it might make sense.  a few years later now that 4G is considered the minimum combining that with low paying Direct Connect makes it even more possible.

 

My Invention I'd called Netrogames.  This is probably the easiest way to add Network to in television games because the theory of a product is if a game could be two plus  players split screen and/or  same screen it should work without writing any extra game-specific  code unless you're outside of 2400 km.   In other words if this works for one game then it should work in theory for every game, except if you need a second screen or a VMU like privacy screen.

There are a few problems with this kind of thing in our eco-system.  Adding online multi-player in video games easily more than doubles the time it takes to make the game and the budget to do so.  Our games would easily go to $20 each instead of $10.  That's a HUGE difference for the market we are intending to focus on.

You also need a LOT of data passed back and forth over servers.  Which means there is a cost associated to that.  That is why big companies are all now charging a monthly fee to play online games.  And those guys can afford to do that and keep it lower because of bulk.  Something we do NOT have (yet!).

So $20 minimum for games and $20 per month to play them is not something we are interested in accomplishing with Amico.  All the others are doing similar things... we're trying to be unique and different and we find that for the people who are interested in Amico... they love how we are approaching it.

A few other quick points.  I read ahead and saw Jeff's post about being together.  Nothing can or ever will substitute that.  Also... (and this is VERY IMPORTANT) online gaming tends to form a toxic environment of immature strangers screaming at each other and bullying people.  Completely breaks our TRUST proposition.

So while I understand that folks would potentially like to have this kind of play... for the people we are focusing on... they do not.

Hope that helps you understand where we're coming from.  I appreciate your dialog.